By morning almost the whole of the Soot had gathered at the three stoves.
Marek had prepared a speech, but Dara did not let him begin. She brought forward a laundress, a water carrier and the senior stoker from the infirmary. Each asked a question that no promise could answer.
Who would extinguish the sparks if Marek lost consciousness? Who would decide whether an operator's memory had been given freely? What would happen if the salt contaminated only one form? Could a node be shut down without destroying all its bodies? Who would answer for a child dropped by a carrier while it carried out someone else's task?
Marek answered only what he had already tested. To everything else he said, "I don't know." After the third such answer, the people stopped interrupting. They did not trust him completely, but they heard that he was not hiding the unknown behind the Shepherd's authority.
Saya laid the silver thread of her licence on the stone.
"The node will hear only the tasks of its own district," she said. "A human echo cannot be burned to make a new form. Every operator will be physically able to cut off their stove with salt. Neither Marek nor the Chamber can revoke that right from a distance."
She proposed one more rule. Before starting the stove, the operator would name aloud the memory they were giving as a key and the cost of possibly losing it. Two witnesses would enter the words in the common record. If the person could not refuse or change their decision before the stove was lit, the consent would be invalid.
Saya herself went first.
She removed the thread from her wrist and cut it with a knife. She laid one end on the casing and kept the other in her hand.
"I give the voice of my mother calling me home from the yard. While the node is working, I will remember the words, but I won't hear her intonation. If the salt destroys the key, that voice will not return."
Dara became the operator of the second stove. Her key was the smell of the first loaf she had baked without a master. Beran gave the third stove the feel of a sledgehammer's weight in both hands. The old accident had left him with only one living hand, but that memory still helped him keep his former balance.
Yuna and the infirmary stoker recorded the three costs. Then each operator touched the salt cut-off once more and confirmed the decision.
The stoves lit.
First Saya's silver thread touched the twenty-four motionless forms. They did not rise together. A listener opened its eyes beside her stove. A holder at Dara's tested its grip and released it without an order. Near Beran, a seam spread across an old crack, but stopped when the mechanic said, "Enough."
Marek heard them like knocks from the other side of a wall. He could ask, but he could no longer make a local line accept a task.
Irsa flew around the three casings.
"Not hands," she said.
Marek waited for her to continue.
"Neighbours."
Production began after that. Each stove produced up to six sparks every seven minutes. For five cycles in succession, the stokers weighed the material, checked the heat of the service fires and closed the dampers between batches. No human memory heat was burned in them.
The three stoves could create ninety forms. There was enough purified ash for eighty-four. In the final cycle, all three stoves produced incomplete batches.
The network now held one hundred and twenty active forms. Twelve direct lines remained with Marek. The other one hundred and eight sparks were divided between Saya, Dara and Beran. Each node had twenty-four task lines. One line could lead up to five identical forms, but listeners, seams and carriers could not be combined in a single team.
The first test was devised by neither Marek nor Saya.
The water carrier asked for barrels to be delivered to the upper street. Dara sent the carriers, but kept one at the stove in case of an accident. Beran led the seams to the red crack beneath the trestle. Saya sent listeners through the dry pipes where salt scouts had been seen.
The three groups began work at the same time. Marek stood between the stoves and gave them no orders. He heard only the steady rhythm of completed tasks and the occasional faults the operators reported themselves.
The water reached the upper street. The crack stopped growing. The listeners found two Guard observation posts and went around them without killing anyone.
The people had not yet had time to rejoice when the White Bell sounded above the Soot.
After the first stroke, the forms lost their step, but the operators held the lines: it was the standard frequency. The second stroke came through the salt-treated supports beneath the district. White circles appeared on the casings.
Saya turned towards the northern tower.
"That's the full frequency."
In the upper hall, Rador was ringing the bell himself. It did not order the sparks to stop. It forced every line to accept a single common rhythm, then burned away the memory binding the forms to their operator. If the three nodes merged for even a moment, they would become the very unified choir Rador feared.
Marek severed all twelve direct lines. It was too late. The white note had already entered the bond between the sparks and Irsa.
The first listeners went out in the street. Then the seams beneath the trestle crumbled. The carriers managed to set down the barrels, pressed themselves against the stone and turned one by one into cold powder.
Saya reached for the cut-off, but her node was holding the infirmary damper. If she severed the line at once, steam would strike the ward. Beran waited for the workers to fit a temporary brace beneath the crack. Both refused to abandon the people, and the full note reached their keys.
Dara heard the stroke before the others. Her memory of the first loaf answered with the smell of burnt crust. That day the master had also ordered her not to open the stove until the common bell rang. Dara had disobeyed and saved the bread.
Now she refused the common rhythm again.
The stove-setter struck the salt cut-off. A white partition dropped between the stove and the outer lines. Thirty-five of her sparks were already working in the district and went out with the rest. One remained inside, waiting for a task. The full note did not reach it in time.
The bell fell silent.
Grey powder lay in the streets. Of the one hundred and twenty sparks, one hundred and nineteen had died. Among them was Irsa's shell, bound to Marek's direct lines. Saya remembered her mother's words again, but the familiar intonation now sounded like the voice of a strange woman. Beran stared at his metal palm and could no longer remember how the sledgehammer had rested in two living hands.
The three communal stoves survived. Not a single form remained in the middle or northern stove. One small red fire burned in Dara's stove.
Rador had proved that he could destroy almost the entire network with a single stroke.
Irsa's cold echo stirred beneath Marek's collarbone. She no longer had a body, but her voice remained. This time she spoke without anyone else's intonation.
"One disobeyed," she said. "So we can teach the others."
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