The cold went into the manifold in three stages, and Mara called each one from the written procedure.
She did not call them from memory. She had memorized it, of course; she had read it a dozen times since Anwen built it, and she could have said it with her eyes closed. She did not. She held the procedure in her hands: a sheaf of pages, clipped, in Anwen’s blunt print, with every stage and every valve and every tooth on the timing wheel. She read from it. Word by word.
The sequence was old. Older than the manifold. It had been tested first in the small hearts at Lorn, on the bench, in the weeks after the first test ring cracked: three stages of cold, each one setting one part of the grain where it sat, so the metal held its shape when the heat was gone. Then refined through the ribs. Then through the grown collar, with Ysol’s argument and Sen’s water and three bands like rings in a cut trunk.
Now the manifold.
“Stage one,” Mara said.
Her voice shook.
She heard it. Everyone heard it. A tremor on the first word, as if she were cold, as if she had been running. She did not stop. She went on reading.
