For seventy-two nonstop hours, the summit of the Great Sky-Spire was an engine of disciplined, sleepless labor. Day and night, through freezing autumn squalls and dense river mists, the steam capstans in Sovereign Square kept their rhythmic, bone-shaking rhythm. Calcium lime-burners mounted on iron tripods cast harsh, brilliant circles of white light across the five-hundred-foot belfry platform, lighting up the riggers as they slung, lifted, and lowered each successive bronze petal into the deep pit.
The night shifts were especially dangerous. Freezing rain glazed the timber staging with slick coats of rime ice. That forced the crew to scatter crushed fire melted rock waste across the ash planks to maintain their footing. The blazing bright lime cylinders hissed continuously in their iron reflectors, throwing ghostly, sharp shadows against the white marble tracery. In the square below, the coal fire bowls of the steam capstans glowed like red eyes through the swirling fog. Meanwhile, the steady exhaust strokes of the steam pistons echoed through the empty avenues of Crown-Reach.
Petal Two, Petal Three, Petal Four—each ten-ton segment yielded to the cold chisels, the copper mallets, and the four-foot socket wrenches. On the eastern side, where sixty years of morning sun had baked the joints, the bronze flanges had bowed outward under heat stress, pinching the two-inch studs tight in their holes. Tomas and Kael had to drive two five-ton clockwork jackscrews between the ribs. That forced the flanges apart fraction by fraction before the bolts and pins could be backed out.
