Chapter 30 Heat Has Weight

Maelle has no combat Class, no licence, no weapon beyond a hammer she made herself, and she is eleven metres underground behind a sealed door.

Nothing in the next twenty minutes changes any item on that list.

'She came down for a core and she is in a plant room with an animal... my clause, my fault,' Ossian kept himself between her and the floor, 'get her out first.'

Ironback Left had gone from warm to painful inside four minutes, and nobody had hit him yet.

Stored impact behaves like everything else in a hot room, taking on the temperature around it and passing the whole lot straight into skin.

Two hundred kilograms off a Directorate drop weight sat in that socket, and the plating had begun cooking the forearm holding it.

"Spend it," Maelle shouted it across nine metres, "you are carrying a kettle and you are wearing the kettle."

Spending it means putting the stored load into something, with two candidates available, being a monster and a building he happens to be standing inside.

He put it into the floor, flat-palmed, and the plant room slab took the whole two hundred kilograms without complaint.

Relief arrived in the forearm within seconds, the plating cooled, and the socket sat empty again waiting for the next thing to arrive.

'It has to go somewhere every time... a full hand in a hot room is a burn on a clock,' Ossian shook the arm out, 'shit, take it then set it down.'

The north column gave up at twelve minutes past two with a sound nobody in that room will describe well afterward.

A four-storey building does not come down in one motion, and a support column failing sends the load sideways into whatever else is holding.

What comes down first is the plant room ceiling, in sections, along the lines where the frame used to be.

Maelle stood under the second section with nowhere at all to go, as a woman holding no Class outruns falling concrete on no day of her life.

Ironback Left took that beam open-palmed, above his head, standing over her with both feet planted on a slab.

Nothing came through into his shoulder and the beam stopped nine inches above her visor, a distance she has not mentioned once since.

'It held... a tonne of ceiling arrived and my arm did not care,' Ossian stood underneath it with his elbow soft, 'that is what the hand is for.'

Calista had gone off the comm nine minutes earlier, given that a stairwell full of set steel blocks a signal as well as it holds a body.

Nobody upstairs knows whether either of them is alive, and Bastien has been cutting at that wall since the lighting failed.

Then the arm went hot again, faster this time, as a tonne heats a socket rather quicker than a lighter load manages.

He put it into the floor, took the next section, cleared that as well, then had the rhythm by the fourth one.

Catch above, spend below, hold onto nothing at all, brace against no part of the room, plus keep that socket empty at this temperature.

Maelle had her meter out under a beam he was holding, and that tells you everything about how the woman reacts to danger.

"There it is," she read the display upside down in the red light, "eleven seconds of cooling after every discharge, and it is blind while it cools."

A Furnace Salamander takes metal in, holds the heat, then blows it out to soften whatever the animal intends to swallow next.

Every discharge costs the animal eleven seconds, spent with the crust resealing, during which nothing whatsoever gets past that armour.

That window counts for nothing in a fight, unless a man knows the exact moment before it opens.

'Eleven seconds of a blind furnace... and she got that off a meter under a falling ceiling,' Ossian caught another section, 'she is worth the entire fee.'

Hitting the animal achieves nothing, given that a Furnace Salamander wears its armour on top and anything above the crust belongs to somebody else.

What sits underneath it is a plant room floor, a support plate, plus a core sitting six inches above both of them.

The plate under a main column runs thirty millimetres of steel bedded into concrete, and that counts for very little against a hand carrying a ceiling.

He waited out a discharge, moved on the second of those eleven, then put every stored beam in that socket through the plate underneath.

Steel that thick does not shatter, it deflects, and a deflecting plate under a four-metre body sends the whole thing down into its own bed.

The core came off its mounting inside the thing, which stopped qualifying as an animal a few seconds later.

Nobody struck a monster in that plant room, and the paperwork for this one is going to read almost exactly like the freight yard.

[Furnace Salamander, claim yours]

[You killed a thing by hitting the ground under it, which is either cowardice or the beginning of a method]

'It cannot decide whether to insult me... and neither can I, at this point,' Ossian sat down on a slab in the dark, 'the method, then.'

Nobody in this city fights the way he fought that basement, and no guild teaches a man to spend a monster's own building against it.

[Identity Fracture, thirty-five percent]

Four points for the whole afternoon, the largest single jump since the terraces and the cheapest hourly rate he has ever managed.

Thirty-five per cent is where the ladder starts asking questions he has been putting off since the nest.

'A third of me is filed under a name other than mine... and I am pleased about the arithmetic,' Ossian read the number in the red light, 'shit, that is the real problem.'

Fourteen per cent is where that ladder stood the week he put a licence into a bin outside a station.

Maelle had the core out of the mounting in nine minutes with the plant room still at sixty degrees.

Intact, whole, cooling on her own cradle, six years of asking answered by a clause in a contract nobody upstairs read properly.

No thanks came out of her mouth and none was required, given that a woman crying inside a visor has already said the thing.

Bastien and Calista came through the sealed stairwell at four with a cutting rig, plus a quantity of language nobody wrote down.

Two hundred and eleven people came back to work in that arcade nineteen days later, on a north column poured fresh over a plate with a fist-shaped dent in it.

The building manager asked whether the dent needed reporting, and Paloma told him the truth, that it holds four floors up rather better than the old plate did.

Payment landed at thirty-five thousand before the arcade owners finished their building count. For the first time, the account stood at thirty-eight thousand one hundred and sixty.

Paloma's twenty per cent came to seven thousand, posted before the remaining bills reached her ledger. Bastien's shifts, aftercare, utilities, plus old salvage fees took another eleven hundred and sixty, leaving thirty thousand before repair.

Maelle's invoice took fifteen thousand straight back, given that Dreadweight came out with the left plating warped along the forearm. What remained became a fifteen-thousand-credit operating reserve after every guild bill cleared.

'Fifteen thousand to fix the hand that saved the fee... and she itemised every line of it,' Ossian read the invoice at the depot, 'hell, pay it without arguing.'

Four faces remained his: the Human Mask, Carrion Jackal, Ironback Ape, plus Furnace Salamander. The Mantis belonged permanently to Calista, while the unmastered flyer had already left the plating.

'Five of us, one address, paper on the wall... two months ago I was on a fire escape,' Ossian stood in the loading bay, 'do not waste any of it.'

Then the core sat in an open case on the loading bay that evening, and Dreadweight did not wait for anybody to offer it.

The salamander went in through the plating and straight at the imprint sitting in the left hand.

Nobody requested that and no part of him refused it either, given that neither hand asks its owner for an opinion any more.