By mid-afternoon, the combat pit had been cleared and fitted with eight stone work platforms. Each held a brick forge, bronze bellows, and a granite trough of cooling water.
Two hundred and fifty thousand spectators leaned toward the floor. The Grand Artisan Championship was where the royal guilds revealed their secret methods, and the crowd wanted fireworks.
Platforms One through Seven provided plenty.
Grandmaster Mo heated ancient Cold-Iron with Nine-Yang True Fire while chanting metalworking scripture. Master Lu fed powdered phoenix marrow into a bronze crucible and wove silver lightning into a seven-foot axe-spear. Master Qian quenched a flexible sword in frost-adder venom, covering his platform in blue mist.
Then there was Platform Eight.
Austin stood behind a plain spruce workbench in his hard hat, denim overalls, tool belt, and steel-toed boots. Pebbles and pine needles circled slowly in the shade beneath the bench.
The other smiths had requested chimera sinew, powdered spirit gems, and star-iron worth more than a province’s taxes.
Austin had asked for four things:
1. Forty pounds of standard four-inch schedule-80 black iron pipe. 2. A two-foot scrap of harness leather. 3. A five-gallon jug of castor oil. 4. A hacksaw, threading tools, a file, and an oil can.
The royal storekeeper had bowed every four steps while delivering the crate. He kept asking whether the honored master needed dragon-bone powder or star amber. Austin checked the pipe, found it acceptable, and sent the shaking man away.
He clipped Master Tang’s drawings to his board.
Austin sipped his tea and looked across the smoky arena.
“Swords. Fancy spears. Flaming daggers. How many pointy weapons does one kingdom need? You can’t pave a road with a broadsword or hold up a bridge with a glowing spear. When a flood drops fifty tons of gravel across the supply road, are they going to challenge it to a duel? What this place needs is lifting power. A jack lifts fifty tons with ten pounds of elbow grease.”
He clamped the iron pipe in the bench vise and picked up the hacksaw.
SKRRR-CHIK. SKRRR-CHIK.
His strokes were long and steady. In less than two minutes, he cut a fifteen-inch section for the fluid chamber. He filed the inside edge smooth.
For the lifting ram, he took an irregular piece of Tier 4 Stellar-Steel from his pack. It was left over from the wellhead repair on Sunset Peak.
He did not light the forge or touch the bellows.
Austin held the blue metal in one gloved hand. A pinpoint of heat from his inner star softened it. He fitted a threading die to the shaft and turned it with his pipe wrench.
Screee-chink. Screee-chink.
Thin blue curls of metal fell to the floor.
He punched two round seals from the leather and soaked them in castor oil until they became soft. Then he fitted them into grooves on the piston. Two polished ball bearings from an old wheel hub became simple one-way valves.
He poured oil into the chamber, worked the pump twice to force out trapped air, and tightened the top fitting.
CLANG.
A twelve-inch pipe became the pump handle.
The finished jack stood sixteen inches tall. It had a dark iron body, a brass release valve, a flat steel base, and a polished lifting ram. One smear of black grease marked the fill plug.
Total build time: eighteen minutes.
Austin wiped his hands and pulled up a three-legged stool. He opened his lunch box, peeled a warm solar egg, and salted it.
Then he spent the next three hours and forty minutes eating lunch and drinking tea while seven royal grandmasters screamed, sweated, and spat blood into their crucibles.
***
Late in the afternoon, the judges reached Platform Eight. Tang joined Austin beside the plain spruce bench. His workshop deed was still in Zhao’s custody.
Grandmaster Mo’s halberd had earned 94 points. Master Lu’s lightning mirror had earned 95. Now the judges looked at Austin’s small gray jack.
Registrar Han did not bother to hide his smile. “A metal bottle. The Royal Guild will accept its design after the demonstration, whether or not the makers agree.”
“No,” Austin said. “You asked for a tool. Watch it work.”
Near the eastern stairs sat a granite counterweight listed at sixty tons. Four attendants wedged the jack beneath one corner. Austin offered the handle to Ouyang.
“Use your hands, not qi. Three steady pumps.”
Ouyang pumped. The stone rose one inch, then two. On the fifth pump, it stood six inches clear of the floor. The old inspector checked the pressure gauge and wrote an honest score.
A sharp crack came from the eastern gallery.
Huo Yun’s earlier blast had weakened a support, and the afternoon crowd had shaken it loose. A stone beam dropped onto the maintenance platform below. Two riggers jumped clear, but a young apprentice named Mei went down with her leg pinned beneath the beam. Above her, the balcony tilted toward the occupied seats.
Ruan made the first decision. “Clear the eastern stairs! No one else goes under that balcony!”
Xiaoyao opened the route he had marked that morning. Ushers moved spectators away while Tang ran to the fallen beam.
Austin picked up the jack. “Get cribbing under the far end. We lift once, pull her out, then set the load on blocks.”
He slid the jack beneath the beam. Tang checked the base and found it sinking into broken fill. He shoved a flat iron plate under it himself.
“Now,” Tang said.
Austin worked the handle. The small ram raised the beam an inch. Mei cried out but kept still. Xiaoyao and a rigger pulled her free by her shoulders. Ouyang led two attendants in with timber blocks and packed them under the raised stone.
When the beam settled on the cribbing, the balcony stopped moving. Mei was bruised, but her leg was not broken.
The watching crowd understood what it had seen. No famous bloodline had saved the apprentice. A hand tool had lifted tons of stone while ordinary workers did the rescue.
Han reached for the design roll. Austin put one boot on it.
“That rescue doesn’t transfer ownership.”
Ouyang tore up the seizure order. He returned Tang’s deed and wrote 100 POINTS in his ledger. The other judges followed, this time without waiting for Zhao.
“THE GRAND ARTISAN CHAMPIONS ARE AUSTIN OF SUNSET PEAK AND MASTER TANG OF CANGLAN!” Ruan announced.
The applause began around the eastern stairs, where the rescued apprentice sat with her crew. It spread through the arena.
Tang folded the deed and put it back inside his coat. “Keep the workshop copy of the plans,” he told Austin. “I’ll teach the first public class at my shop.”
Austin packed his oil can. “Now that’s a useful prize.”