The big still had stopped leaking cold water, but that was a very different thing from working.
Alric stood near the river end of the still house and tried to enjoy that distinction responsibly. He failed, at least for a moment. Maggie the still was whole now although not finished. No piece of equipment Stromni touched ever seemed finished while there remained a way for him to glare it into improvement, but it was whole.
It stood just over four metres high, broad in the belly, narrowing up through the neck before the top arm ran outward toward the temporary thumper. The thumper was still a barrel, though it had received enough iron bands, copper fittings, seals, and suspicious attention from Stromni that calling it merely a barrel felt unfair. If Alric was forced to name it, it would be a siege barrel. From there the line ran to the worm, which vanished into three stacked cooling barrels bolted and braced together near the far wall.
The worm was coiled badly but it would work. Alric had decided not to mention it.
The still was beautiful in the way large useful things could be beautiful when no one had wasted time trying to make them pretty. The copper plates did not hide their seams. Some had been hammered smooth enough to pass casual inspection. Others remembered being individual sheets with a stubbornness Alric respected. Rivets caught light along the joins. Darker patches showed where the copper had been heated, worked, adjusted, and then treated again because scale had made every small mistake more expensive.
She held water. It was not enough, but it mattered. Alric could feel it was getting close.
The still house was quiet around him. The city had its day off. The lack of building noises somehow made the space feel sacred. The raised sections were complete enough to use, with stairs along both sides and platforms running across the chamber where men would eventually reach the washbacks, troughs, and upper fittings.
The washbacks were not in yet. Their cleared spaces waited in the middle of the room, two large absences that already felt difficult to walk around.
The old inn however was gone. It still had some of the shape. A wall here. A doorway that had once led to a guest room and now led to a future injury if someone failed to notice the floor had changed. But function was stronger than memory. Grain would enter at one end. Heat would work along the side. Wash would gather in the middle. Spirit would come from the river end if everyone involved behaved, including the building.
A side door opened behind him. Stromni entered, stopped, and looked straight at the still.
The smile arrived slowly. It began under the beard, fought its way through his normal expression, and then settled into something very close to pride.
Alric glanced at him. “Good to see you.”
“Aye,” Stromni said, still looking at Maggie. “You too, and you Maggie.”
Stromni walked over rolling his sleeves up and tying his beard tied back. He had a piece of charcoal tucked behind one ear. Alric had no idea whether he had brought it for marking leaks or whether charcoal simply migrated toward Stromni as of late.
The dwarf stopped beside him and tilted his head upward.
“She’s got a shape to her now.” Alric said running his hand around the bulb.
“Aye, She does, call em curves.” Stromni said with a grin.
“Better than the drawings.” Alric said nodding.
“Your drawings, aye,” Stromni said, pleased.
Alric smiled despite himself and looked back at the still. He had seen it in pieces for so long that the whole still seemed almost surreal. The belly, the arm, the thumper, the worm, the brackets below, the drain route, the support points, the platforms. All the decisions had found each other and become a thing large enough to make future paperwork inevitable. Alric expected Vale would be happy.
Stromni rubbed his hands together once, then rested them on his belt. “We running her with water, aye?”
“That is the plan,” Alric said.
“Good. I like the plan where we don’t throw wine into the copper beast that has only just learnt not ta wet herself.” Stromni said with a grin at Alric, the grin was followed by an eyebrow wiggled.
Alric looked at him, pushing the corners of his mouth down with effort.
Stromni shrugged. “What? It’s accurate.”
“That’s disrespectful.”
“She earns respect hot. Took me ages ta come up with that line.”
Alric shrugged, not arguing further.
Stromni’s pointed along the upper arm. “I reckon I understand why we’re doing water first, but say it proper. I want ta know if I’m understanding it the same way as you are.”
Alric nodded. That was one of the reasons he liked working with Stromni. The dwarf would grumble, mock, and occasionally accuse Alric’s old world of crimes against proportion, but when the work mattered, he wanted the reason.
“Cold water tells us we have no obvious leaks,” Alric said, folding his arms as he looked up at the plates. “Hot water tells us what happens when the copper starts moving.”
Stromni nodded slightly, his eyes already dropping to the seams.
“Water boils hotter than alcohol,” Alric continued. “If she can handle water vapour without opening too badly, then alcohol vapour should be easier in that one way. Not safe or simple but easier.”
“Aye, mash’ll have its own nonsense.”
“It will foam. It will scorch, I think. Actually it will scorch, we will fix that in a different way later, thumper helps catch it though. Mash will do whatever it can to climb where it should not, because mash has less manners than you.” Alric said pointing up to the top arm, “But this lets us push the heat.”
Stromni gave a low grunt. “And the plates?”
“That’s the other part. The copper will expand. The rivets, seams, plates, everything. But not all of it the same way. Some parts will heat faster. Some sections will push. Some will pull. A seam that holds cold water might open once she is hot.”
Stromni’s expression shifted, he nodded in satisfaction at hearing the ugly part named.
“Aye,” he said. “That’s the bit men forget when a thing gets this large. Copper moves in a small pot too, but a small pot forgives ye. This size, it writes down what ye did wrong and reads it back loudly.”
“I’d prefer it didn’t.”
“Then build smaller.”
“We tried that. It spat mash on your wall.”
Stromni grinned. “Aye. I miss that ugly little thing.”
“You said it was a pain.”
“It was. Good things can be a pain. You should know.”
Alric decided to ignore the direction of that sentence. They began filling Maggie.
A trough had already been fitted high enough to carry water into the access opening. It was not a permanent arrangement, but very little in the still house was, despite the stone, copper, and coin saying otherwise. Alric used the item box because there were limits to what two men needed to prove by carrying water manually.
He placed the first barrels near the trough. Stromni tipped them one by one.
Water ran down the wooden channel and into the still with a deep, hollow sound. The first rush echoed inside the belly, large and empty. Then the sound thickened as the level rose.
Alric found himself listening with more attention than the noise deserved. Months of work had become water going where he had told it to go. That was not grand, perhaps, but it was real.
Stromni circled the lower body as the water went in. He watched the seams, crouched near the lower joins, stood, moved, and watched again. A worker might have looked anxious doing the same thing. Stromni looked like a man waiting for an old enemy to show up.
Alric watched the access plate.
That was the part he trusted least, probably because he had designed most of it. It was a wide opening with an inner plate, a handle, a latch, and a seal that made excellent sense in charcoal. Things that made excellent sense in charcoal had a habit of becoming much more nuanced in copper.
They filled her higher than the cold leak test, not to the full working limit, but enough to put weight against the lower body and vapour through the upper path once heat took hold. Stromni checked the drain assembly at the bottom, then the marked release point along the wall. Alric followed his gaze.
Once the access was sealed and the last barrel emptied, they stood back and waited.
The floor remained dry. Stromni looked almost disappointed.
“Cold water is trying ta make us overconfident,” he said.
“It is not succeeding.”
“Good.”
Alric moved toward the heating stones.
The brackets sat under the belly but not deeply beneath it. He could reach them from the side without crawling under Maggie, which had been one of the few compromises that had survived contact with reality. It was not spacious. It would not be comfortable during a long run. But it could be done.
He set the first stone into its cradle and charged it, all the stones had been wrapped in adamantite with powder to try fill the gaps. A dull glow came into the stone, low and steady. He placed the second, then the third, charging each in turn. Heat gathered quickly beneath the belly, not fierce yet, but present enough to change the air.
Alric straightened. He raised one hand toward the lower body and stopped before touching it.
The problem revealed itself immediately.
He could reach the stones. That was not the issue. The brackets worked. The cradle spacing was usable. The stones could be charged and removed with tongs if needed.
The still could not be touched. Not once she was running.
Alric looked up, then around the room. The second problem arrived immediately after the first, which was rude but effective.
The room would trap heat.
The still was not sitting in a forge open to air and interruption. It would be in a chamber built to contain danger. Stone walls, slate roof. A planned wall line that would eventually separate the dangerous section from everything else. All sensible and necessary but also a problem.
If the room heated enough, he would not be able to walk in and recharge Maggie safely. Not for long. Maybe not at all during a hard run. A run by Alric’s estimate would take well over fourteen hours.
Stromni saw his face. His own expression tightened before Alric had finished putting the thought together.
“What have ye found?” Stromni asked.
“I’ll explain in a minute, let me finish,” Alric said slowly.
Alric finished charging the rest of the stones before he moving to join Stromni a fair distance away.
“I can reach the stones,” Alric said, pointing toward the outer wall. “But once she is hot, I can’t touch her, and then room gets hot, I may not be able to stand there long enough to recharge her.”
Stromni followed his gaze to the wall facing the river section. For a moment, he said nothing. Then he cursed. It was short, dwarven, and while Alric didn’t understand it, he found himself agreeing with it.
Stromni kept staring at the wall. “Windows won’t be enough.”
“No,” Alric said. “Not unless they are large, and even then, I need air moving.”
“High vents for the roof heat,” Stromni said, already working through it, pointing up at the wall.
“Yes, but I think we need something lower too. Large openings. Something we can open during a run and close after.”
Stromni scratched at his beard with increasing displeasure. “Sliding doors.”
Alric tilted his head. “On the river wall?”
“Aye. Big ones. Wide. Open while she runs. Closed when she don’t. Let the heat leave before the room cooks the only man who can feed the stones.”
“That sounds right,” Alric said. Then, because the thought had to be said even if it annoyed them both, he added, “Wood worries me.”
Stromni turned to him with impressive slowness.
Alric raised a hand. “I know.”
“Do ye?”
“Yes.”
“Because ye are standing next to four metres of heated copper, talking to a dwarf who has worked near fire longer than ye’ve had that face, and ye still decided ta warn me wood burns.”
“I said it worries me. I did not say you had never met fire.”
“A near thing.”
Alric let out a breath, half laugh and half apology.
Stromni looked back at the wall, muttering now. “Not plain wood then. Metal face. Big sheet. Hoops through it. Guides top and bottom. Might need two leaves rather than one unless ye want five men cursing every time ye need air.”
Alric nodded at the sensible changes. They moved to deeper into the room while the heat built.
It was not a retreat. Alric had decided that. It was an observation distance. There was dignity in the phrase observation distance, provided no one asked why it was the exact same place a sensible man stood when he did not want to be near a hot experimental still.
From there, Maggie looked complete in a way she did not from close up. The flaws remained, but the shape gathered them and made them part of itself. The broad copper belly sat over the stone cradle. The neck lifted toward the top arm. The temporary thumper stood on its braced support, a barrel pretending to be part of a much more respectable machine. The worm waited inside its stacked cooling barrels, ugly and valuable.
The room warmed.
At first the change was small. Alric felt it on his face more than anywhere else. Then the copper began making its tiny sounds. A tick from the lower body. A softer shift higher up. A dull knock from somewhere near the arm that made Stromni tilt his head and listen.
Alric glanced at him.
Stromni did not look alarmed. He also did not look relaxed.
“Bad?” Alric asked.
“No,” Stromni said. “But I’m writing that knock down in my head.”
They waited. Normally they would have had a few beers while waiting but the thought did not occur.
A faint sound came from the thumper. Not a proper glug yet. More of a warning that vapour had begun reaching places where it expected to be taken seriously.
Stromni’s gaze moved to the upper arm.
Alric followed it. Then the first leak appeared.
It was not dramatic. That annoyed Alric a little, because after all the money and labour involved, some part of him expected failure to at least make an effort. Instead, there was a thin sound from the upper belly. A small hiss. A narrow white thread of steam showed along a seam, vanished, then showed again.
“Upper plate pulled away there,” Stromni said pointing. “Not much. Enough.”
“Thumper’s taking it,” Stromni said.
“For now.”
“Aye, ‘for now’ is sumin we say alot.”
The first leak held steady. The room grew hotter. Alric felt sweat begin under his collar and glanced toward the outer wall again. The future sliding doors were no longer an improvement but survival.
A second hiss came from the upper arm. Stromni heard it before Alric did. His head turned sharply.
“That one’s small,” he said, glancing up.
“Small still counts.”
“Aye, it counts. I didn’t say I liked it.”
They let Maggie run longer.
That was the important part. Stopping at the first leak would tell them where the first problem had appeared. Letting her heat further told them whether the problem stayed a problem or became a warning. There was a difference. Warnings spread.
The room became unpleasant in a way that made Alric imagine summer, more stones, a longer run, a full charge, and the doors still closed. He felt the heat at his temples. The air near the ceiling shimmered faintly. The platforms above would be worse.
Stromni looked up and saw it too.
“Vents,” he said. “Bigger than I was thinking. I hate when buildings wait till after we build them ta explain how they should’ve been built.”
“We haven’t finished building it. This is why we doing this.”
The thumper settled into a slow rhythm. The first leak held. The second leak did not worsen.
Stromni eventually crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels.
“We gonna do this a few times ya say?” Stromni said looking at it.
“That we are, when she runs three times without a leak, I’d say we can trust her.” Alric said as they heard the third leak pop.
Both looked at each other and shrugged. There would be six leaks by the end of the run.