"I could do so much here if I got the chance." Patricia glared at me. "But I won't bend the knee to a savage."

"I'm not a savage. The nomads aren't savages. They're what their environment has made them. Rough edges, no frills."

"And because of you, they will rule the world. What would they do with all this?" She ran her hand over a pile of scrolls, resting her fingers on a leatherbound tome on the shelf next to her shoulder.

"Probably sneer at them, then ignore them."

"They would burn them or use them as toilet paper!" she snapped.

"Maybe." I shrugged. "Literacy isn't considered manly, but a lot of the noble women are able to read and write."

"And are not allowed to."

"They can, though. No one stops them. I'm building a goddamn library at Riverwheel!" I threw up my hands in frustration.

"Built by slaves you've kidnapped, terrorised into serving you or be fed to your giants."

"What? I expressly forbade them from eating people."

"And yet your monsters have."

"The Titans? They've only eaten dead people."

"You're library is built by slaves," she repeated. So we're leaving that argument behind, then. This was going to be annoying.

"Do you want to see it?" I opened a portal next to me onto the steps leading up to the front of the largest building in Riverwheel.

"You want to strand me away from my acolytes," she accused.

"Patricia. I swear I will return you immediately after we take a tour of the library. I swear on my son's life."

"He matters to you?"

"What sort of fucking question is that? Of course he does. He and Faye are the reasons I won't let this world be undone."

"You… I believe you. A selfish motive makes sense."

"It's selfish not to want your wife and son to die? That's… twisted."

She pushed back a strand of hair, tucking it behind her ear and away from her face. "Shintzu can accompany us?"

I glanced over at the trinket-armed man. Not having magic of his own meant I had no way to gauge the power of the spells he might be able to call on. It was unlikely, all of my most powerful spells couldn't be enchanted into artefacts, like Burning Skies and Volcanic Vent. He probably didn't have any city-killing spells.

I was willing to bet that my reflexes were fast enough to kill him before he could do much damage, but Riverwheel was the salve to my conscience. It was the vehicle that would drive the nomads up, let them elevate themselves beyond a life of raiding and warfare.

A crowd was forming on the far side of the portal. The babble of the polyglot voices reached us. Men and women in a variety of clothes, partially hidden under heavy furs and cloaks, stood and whispered to each other, staring at Patricia.

I walked through and turned to look back at the Scholar and his mistress. Snow settled on my shoulders, and a man approached me cautiously.

"Lord?"

He had a row of Fs floating above his head. "I'm just visiting."

"How did you…" He waved a hand at the portal. "That kind of portal would allow us to converse with the Scholastics in Urkash."

"What's your name?"

"Varnal sal Garn. You took me at Settal."

"So you are a slave?" Shintzu asked as he stepped through and glanced up at the building behind Varnal.

"I have another year to go before I am free."

Patricia passed through the portal and looked around, her eyes narrowed against the swirling snow. Varnal stepped back at the row of crimson S's floating over her head.

"Lord?" he glanced at me nervously as he inched away.

"She's here as my guest. You work at the library?"

"No, at the forges. I'm an artisan."

"What do you make, Varnal sal Garn?"

"Decorative bronzework, Lord." His head bobbed as he bowed to me.

"Can you show us where you work, and some of your products?" I asked gently. The man was petrified.

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"Lead the way, please."

The buildings were mostly built from thick wooden planks, with steep shingle roofs. A few were made with cut stone, and as we wended our way through the busy streets. The sounds of industry filled the air, even in the dead of winter, the growing city was booming with hammers falling, saws cutting, and people arguing over prices.

Varnal led us to a long stone building and pushed at a heavy wooden door. He moved over to a large hearth and added some wood to stoke the embers back to life. "Here. Close the door." He shucked off his furs and moved over to a heavy chest, scrabbling around in it for a few seconds before emerging with a cloth bag the size of a clenched fist.

He carried it as if the thing inside were made of glass and could break at any moment. Carefully tipping it out onto his palm, I had to admit I was impressed. Shintzu stepped forward and looked closely at the delicate filigree of bronze.

It was shaped into a wolf, the eyes picked out with tiny emeralds, judging from the green glow when the firelight caught a facet. It was perhaps three inches from snout to tail, and composed of dozens of twisted orange wires. He held it up proudly, and Patricia moved forward to peer down at it. Varnal nudged it with a finger, and the orange light of the fire made the bronze shimmer.

"It's… beautiful."

"Thank you, Lady. Please, take it." He glanced at me, and I nodded slightly. He passed it over to Patricia and handed her the bag as well, but she shook her head.

"Is it valuable to you?"

"It's my journeyman piece. If the council decides it is good enough, I will be permitted to move on to more complex work."

"This is just a practice piece?"

"Yes."

"How long did it take you?" Shintzu asked.

"Two moons."

"This is impressive for apprentice work."

"I used to think myself a master." He closed the lid of his trunk and added more wood to the fire. "In Settal, I was a famous smith; here, I am no one."

"Because you are enslaved?" Patricia asked.

"No. I didn't come here of my own free will, and I look forward to going home again, but I will be taking so much back with me that I would regret never having come." He looked over at her, the flames below his face throwing dancing shadows across his cheeks and brow. "And now I have magic. Nothing compared to you, I'm sure. I wasn't aware Lord Mond had elevated anyone else so high as you."

"I didn't give her any souls. She took her own."

His eyes went wide, then he backed away slightly. He had only just calmed down, and now the man was frightened again. "Another harvester?"

"Yes. But we aren't enemies. I hope." I met Patricia's eyes, but her face was unreadable in the half light.

"I cannot accept your gift. I trust your masters will be suitably impressed. It is beautiful. What will you be taking back to Settal with you?" Patricia said, carefully passing the tiny sculpture back to Varnal.

"Skills and experience. I've learned so much. Most of us are, ah, transplants." It was a polite way of saying kidnapped, I supposed. "So we have shared our traditions. Smiths are usually unwilling to give anything away to our competition, but here, there's none of that. Well, there's a little, but that is human nature. Perhaps another gift? Let me look."

"It's very kind of you, Varnal, but please don't. Thank you for your time," I interjected, and he stopped, turned and bowed deeply.

"You are welcome to stay in my forge as long as you like."

"I would like to see the wheels," Patricia announced.

Varnal showed us to the door, bowing as he went, and we set off towards the towering waterwheels that dominated the centre of the city. There had been two, on opposite banks of the river, the last time I was here. Another pair had been ready to drop into the water and put to work upstream. They had now been lowered into their cradles with construction underway on a fifth further downstream.

The wheels had axles that led into small huts from one side, and from the other three, they emerged. The power of the wheel was split and sent to three workshops, where each was split again to power various machines via complex arrays of steel cogs. They really had taken the idea I gave them and run with it, innovating and improving it at every step of the process.

With the river frozen solid, the wheels didn't turn, and all the work was being done by hand or aurox in heavy harnesses walking steadily in circles to power some of the lighter equipment. It robbed some of the effect I had hoped to convey, but perhaps it also helped.

Huskar worked alongside men and women from a dozen cities, arguing good-naturedly and producing simple items that were themselves almost works of art.

"This is my way of saying sorry," I said as the three of us watched a Huskar wielding a hammer on a glowing piece of metal held in place by a pair of strong men with tongs. They worked as one, the men shifting the metal as the hammer rose, then locking it in place as it fell.

"An odd apology," Shintzu said. "But I can see the grace in it."

"If you'd kept to your steppe, you wouldn't have anything to apologise for," Patricia added.

"Mortimer didn't give me a choice."

"Perhaps not. I'm sure this is all very impressive when the river isn't a block of ice, but showing me how efficiently you can make swords and arrowheads seems a little on the nose."

"They make other things as well. Come on."

I led them back up the slope away from the river towards the looming edifice of the library. The giant doors stood firmly closed, but in the bottom of the right-hand one was a more human-sized door. I stamped my feet to knock the snow and ice from them and moved into the well-lit space. Fist-sized rocks that blazed with white light sat in ornate sconces along the walls, polished silver mirrors behind them to focus the glow into the centre of the corridor.

I had examined the interior of the library via my god-sight, but seeing it with my own eyes was a different experience. The ground floor was over ten metres tall down the centre of the building, built with a mixture of Huskar and human-sized desks and chairs. To either side, mezzanines that were strictly for the use of humans rose, three of them stacked above the others.

Shelves filled with books and scrolls occupied as much of the free space as possible, and at the end, groups of scribes worked to carefully copy out the existing books I'd had shipped back to Riverwheel. Many of them were the only copies in existence, as far as I knew, so recreating them had been a priority for the first librarians.

"It's not much compared to your collection, but to the tribes, this place represents a link to their past, and a chance for their future to be more than raiding and fighting. Even if most of them hate it," I chuckled.

Shintzu moved forward, touching the nearest shelf and craning his neck back as it stretched more than six metres above his head, made of thick, solid planks of some dark wood. Every inch of it was piled with scrolls neatly stacked on top of one another, or books organised by title and author.

"This is a thing of beauty," Patricia said reluctantly. She hesitated and turned back to me. "You don't want me to go into storage?"

"Nope. I've got Jeremy stashed away. As long as that rock remains, this world won't go anywhere. You could make it a great world, given a little time."

"Where will you be?" she asked suspiciously.

I raised a finger and pointed up towards the ceiling and the distant heavens beyond it.

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