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be seen. That you might be liberated from your execrable detention. Bestow your numen upon us!’
    Silence.
    Castor stood back from the altar, watching the High Priest. The Earl’s blood still continued to drip from his body but it was now beginning to congeal, and did not flow down the channels of the altar quite as well as it had.
    Seconds passed, and still the assemblage waited. No one dared move, least of all Castor. Everything hinged on this, everything they had worked for and believed in. Should this fail the High Priest would have much to answer for. For the first time in a while, Castor was thankful that he was only a simple acolyte.
    A sudden shocked sound came from within the congregation. A group of red robes moved aside, revealing one of their number, bowed in discomfort. Men were murmuring with disquiet as one of the acolytes began to make choking sounds. Before Castor could react, another sound alerted him to more movement in another part of the hall. Then, right next to him, one of his brothers suddenly fell to the ground as though he had been hit by an eight-chamber carbine. The man writhed on the floor, and Castor found himself backing away in disgust and fear.
    All the while, the High Priest stood impassively, as more and more acolytes were suddenly afflicted, some screaming, others falling silently in violent spasms.
    Some acolytes fled in panic, others backed away from their writhing fellows, knocking over candlesticks and grasping their brethren in fear. As Castor watched, wondering if he would be next, he realised he was standing in the centre of the sign of Legion.
    The blood had congealed within the furrows and he could feel it beneath the thin soles of his sandals. He looked down and saw a faint glow, as the outline of the sigil seemed to reverberate with unnatural power. A strange sensation was beginning to consume Castor, a feeling of inculpable elation and blood curdling terror all at once. He looked up, and saw that the High Priest’s steely gaze was upon him.
    ‘Accept the gift of Legion,’ he said, his voice but a whisper. Despite the noise in the hall, Castor heard the words clearly; they reverberated in his head like the sounding of a bell. And then he felt the pain.
    Searing heat, or was it freezing cold, wracked his body in an instant from the tips of his extremities to his very core. Castor wanted to fall, to land on the ground in a heap, curl up into a ball and moan and whine and weep. But he could not. The sigil of Legion on which he stood seemed to hold him in place, filling him with an eldritch light, consuming him and nourishing him, changing him but reaffirming his very being. He felt sinew strengthen and grow, felt his senses heighten. Knowledge forbidden to mortal men flooded into him, and in an instant Castor Cage was one with Legion. He was all of them, and only himself at the same time.
     
    In the end there were a mere dozen acolytes who had been granted the boon of Legion. The rest of the congregation stood at the fringes of the sanctum, those who had not fled anyway. The High Priest looked at his chosen few from within a sunburst mask of bronze. He did not need to speak. The Legion knew their task as one mind, and with their boon they could now accomplish it with ease.
    This was just a taste of things to come; Castor knew it instinctively. Soon the Legion would be free to spread its power throughout the Manufactory, and beyond.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Thaddeus knew the quickest way to get the information he needed. It might not be the easiest, or indeed the cleanest way, but it was by far the quickest.
    The estate of Lord Julius was set a ways from the Spires of the Manufactory, where most of the Highborn dwelt in their sequestered towers. Not the sky-borne grandeur for Lord Julius, oh no. He demanded something even more exclusive.
    To an outsider, a visiting dignitary or a travelling merchant-baron, the Manufactory might seem like a huge stinking machine, constantly moving,