Malekor Ironjaw bent a brass bar across his knee until it snapped. He dropped the pieces on the workbench with the dozen other failures. Common brass warped every time his demon half flared, and his flesh could not hold metal that soft. He needed something that would fuse with him instead of melting against him. He wanted to build an augmentation that joined his demon blood to his machine, a fighting form no one could break. But first he had to find metal that would not quit the moment he burned. The left side of his chest was already gone. A steampunk rig of brass and pressure valves filled the hole, hissing with each breath. It kept him alive. He pressed a scrap of new alloy against the exposed edge and let his demon half rise. Heat bloomed under his skin. The metal buckled and slid off, useless. He had tried nine alloys that night. All nine had failed the same way. The barn door opened without a knock. Crystalline Mortis stepped inside, her see-through body catching the lamplight in shifting colors. She was the strongest shapeshifter alive, and she wore a body she had stolen and scrubbed clean of its first owner. She did not trust anyone, and she made sure everyone knew it. She looked at the pile of broken brass on his bench. "Soft metal for a hot man," she said. "You're wasting your flame." "Then tell me what holds," Malekor said. He did not turn around. Mortis walked to the far wall, where an old barn leaned stacked with books in strange scripts. She pulled one down, read a line, and set it back. "The dead write everything down," she said. "Demons burn out normal steel. But crystal does not warp. It takes heat and gives it back." She raised her own crystal arm. The lamplight split through it. She crossed to the corner and lifted a weapon left behind by a shifter who had fled MukMuk. A battle ax, its head cut from faceted crystal, throwing color across the ceiling. She held it out, handle first. "Melt this into your rig," she said. "It won't quit on you." Malekor took the ax. He pressed the crystal head to the raw edge of his chest and let his demon half flare hotter than before. The crystal glowed. It did not buckle. It sank into the brass seam and set, binding to his flesh as the heat passed through it instead of fighting it. For the first time the metal held. He breathed. The new seam pulsed with faint color beneath his skin. "It works," he said. Mortis watched the glow travel across his chest. "It works too well," she said. "Crystal remembers everything it touches. Your demon half is in it now. So is whatever that blade carried before." Malekor felt the pressure gauge on his left shiver. Something moved inside the crystal that was not his own.

The crystal held in Malekor Ironjaw's chest, but it did nothing. He flared his demon half and let the heat rise. The fire bloomed, then scattered. It poured out through the brass valves and vanished into the air. The crystal glowed, caught the heat, and gave it back as useless light. He had a conductor now. He had no way to aim it. Without a path, the fire spread thin and powered nothing. He could not build a fighting form on wasted flame. He needed a channel. Something to pull the heat from the crystal and drive it where he wanted. He had heard the Reanimators built strange hardware into dead bodies. So he went to their barn, the red and gold shack with the crowning sign and lanterns bolted to every board. Jester Deadlock met him in the doorway. The zombie clown was the Reanimator's first success. He called himself the founder of their faction. A shrunken head swung from his belt. He looked at the glow under Malekor's chest and did not smile. "You want what's in me," Jester said. "The Reanimator put something in my chest. Keeps me running. You can't have it." "I need a conduit," Malekor said. "Not yours. The design." "Design costs," Jester said. "A fight." Two other men stood inside the barn's left ring. Rios Samos, the C.C.C. enforcer, leaned on the ropes in black and purple, tattoos across his face. Beside him Kuro Voltage waited, face painted like a candy skull, arms crossed. They had come hunting the same knowledge for their own reasons, and found Jester charging the same toll. "He's lying about the price," Rios said. Flat, final. "The conduit isn't buried in him. It's a coil. Jester hoards the trick." "Show us," Kuro said. Jester's dead face twitched. He unhooked a coil of brass wire from the wall. It was wound tight around a single crystal shard. "Build it wrong, it burns you hollow," he said. "That's the price." Malekor took the coil. He pressed the shard against the crystal seam in his chest. Then he wound the brass wire around the valve on his right, not the left. The left gauge he did not touch. He flared his demon half. The heat rose. This time the crystal caught it and the coil pulled it straight. Fire ran down the wire in a thin hard line. It did not scatter. It gathered at his right fist and held there, burning and steady. He drove his arm forward. The flame followed the hip, followed the drive, exactly the path of his Ironclad Fold. Kuro watched the fire track the motion. "It feeds the throw," he said. "It works," Malekor said. He closed his fist and the fire banked down into the coil, waiting. Then the left gauge shivered. Something moved in the crystal that was not his heat. The coil pulled it toward his fist too. A fire he had not called rose in his hand, and he did not know whose it was.