The boiler screamed like a dying animal.
"Stop now!" Diablo slammed the casing down, fingers trembling from the heat. Steam spat through a seam and painted the room in a thin, metallic fog.
He let the silence finish the sentence.
"Third time," he said, more to the metal than to himself. "Third goddamn time."
A folded commission lay on the bench, a small thing next to the ruin: crimson wax, neat script.
Miniature self-propelled carriage. Color: crimson. Delivery: seven days. Deposit: half paid.
"A toy," he muttered. He heard the market before he saw it the clatter of worker boots, a kettle's low whistle threaded through pipes, the far-off chime of a tram. He tucked the commission beneath a weight and turned back to his table.
"Frame," he said aloud as if teaching a pupil. "Heart. Current regulator. Tension motor. Signal node. Control transmitter."
His pen danced. The words felt more honest when he spoke them: skeleton, heart, ears, hands.
A cough of black smoke escaped the boiler's throat. Diablo inhaled it. It stung in a way that memory never did.
"Once," he said, "we used less language and more fire."
A sound at the door made him look up: the bell tinkled sharp, ordinary. The mountain light was slanting; the workshop smelled hot and iron-true.
He packed the broken boiler into a corner and wrapped his hands with a cloth. The mountain road down to the Lower Market was a ribbon of steam and shouting; the market itself was a never-cooling lung of commerce and haggling.
Branton's Industrial Supplies sat crooked between a haberdasher and a smith, its windows fogged with oil. The bell announced him; Branton looked up mid-polish like a butcher interrupted.
"Well, if it isn't the mountain shade," the man grunted. His voice was a low roll Branton's laugh had a habit of taking the top off conversations.
"I need small-scale parts," Diablo said straight away. "Refined copper coils, thinened steel sheets, micro gear assemblies."
Branton set down the goggles and wiped his hands. "Precision, eh? You aiming to build an elevator to the Upper Lands?"
"Just a toy," Diablo said. "A fast one."
"There's your problem." Branton tapped a dusty box. "You come here expecting Upper Land prices and tell me it's for a child. I sell what I have. Supply's tight. Tell the noble to buy it himself."
Diablo picked up the coil Branton offered and turned it in his hands.
"You're charging pure-metal money for this," he said. "The windings are uneven. You've got insulating seams and" he bent close, tracing a thumb along the copper "and a variance in resistance that'll sing heat under full load."
Two customers nearby froze their bargaining to watch. Branton's grin thinned. "You calling me a liar?"
"Calling you a swindler would be impolite," Diablo said. "But this?" He tapped the coil. "Good for lamps. Not for motors."
A soft scuffle of movement; the market leaned in as if the stall itself had become the scene. Branton's temper went from dry to hot very quickly.
"You gonna test it then? Fix it? Prove you're worth more than the mountain dust?" he barked. "If you break it, you'll pay for the lot."
Diablo shrugged. "Fair."
He opened the coil's casing with a tiny set of blades an act so precise the market's murmur slid aside. He wound the copper tighter, corrected the pitch by a fraction that would make coils hum more evenly, and replaced an insulating strip with one scavenged from a steam-timer's sheath. He handed the timer back.
"Wind it," he said.
Branton straightened, then twisted the key with a growl. At first the ticking was ragged then smoother, like someone had retuned the street itself. The sound drew a few chuckles and a single, surprised exhale.
Branton stared at the little device, then at Diablo. "What did you do?"
"Not magic," Diablo said. "Technique. Distribution. Less waste."
Branton spat. "You're odd. All that fuss for a toy?"
"Children notice more than adults do," Diablo answered, cold and soft. "You built your price tag before you built a reason to buy."
The crowd's mood sharpened; the air tasted of steam and watch oil. Branton hesitated, then pushed a smaller sack of coins across with a grunt. "Half price. Take it. And don't come back bragging."
Diablo took the coins without looking at them. He crossed the lane and paused under the eave. The market's ceaseless noise closed over him like a wave; for a fraction of a second a memory sharpened a shape of light that wasn't this world, a voice that asked and ordered. He felt a hollow where an answer should be and a small, bitter amusement.
"Orders are easy," he said to no one, and pushed the memory away like something wet off his sleeve. "Followments are harder."
Back in the workshop, he laid out the raw pieces: warped gears, a busted mini-piston, scraps of insulated thread. The pieces looked defeated. Diablo smiled.
"Fine," he said. "Then we'll make structure do the work."
He rewound a coil until the windings were so close they leaned on each other like careful fingers. He laminated steel into ribs instead of adding bulk. He created a rotary core layered with two compression rings less mass, better compression. The signal node he made from a mineral-threaded strip that carried conduction through patterning rather than purity; it needed no mana, only clean geometry.
Each motion was a sentence; each sentence reduced waste.
When he set the skeleton on the bench and pressed the starter, the motor lifted with a low, confident hum. No whining, no jitter. The chassis rolled across the wood with an even, obedient pace.
He watched it with hollow brown eyes that were not unkind. The hum filled more than the room. For a flash no more something else responded. Not flame. Not infernal thunder. A memory of hands that once shaped engines that broke cities.
He exhaled. "Not now," he told himself. It was enough that the little carriage moved true.
He fit the unfinished red shell and stepped back, wiping a smudge of oil across his lip like a pen across a page.
Outside, the market's noise folded around the mountain. Above the Lower Lands, the silhouette of a floating platform caught the sun and kept going innocent and distant. Somewhere up there, someone adjusted a regulator that kept their lights lit and their servants pacified.
In the workshop, a small motor hummed. A child's toy. A demon's fingers. The two things sat side by side as if they had always belonged together.
Diablo set the commission on the shelf and clicked the workshop light off, leaving the room lit by the motor's faint glow.
"Three days," he said to the dark. "I'll have it ready in three."
He didn't promise himself anything more.