What they did not know was the thing that made Timha sweat at night, that made him lightheaded and anxious nearly every moment of the day. They were spared this knowledge because it would do no good for any of them to know.
"Morning, Timha," said Giaco, one of the Elements experts, leader of the group who were working on improving the outer shell. "How are things in the heart of the beast?" Giaco and his team were close with one another; several of them had taught together at a university in one of the flag cities. They were working on the project of their lifetimes, with access to only the best supplies and research materials, a limitless budget, and an army of apprentices who would gladly do anything they asked. Moreover, they were doing all this in Mab's own Secret City, one of the most hallowed locations in all of the empire. This was Mab's redoubt. This was where she had come to have her children, where she mourned the loss of her husbands. This was where Beozho wrote his Works. Giaco and his friends were in paradise.
Timha hated them for it.
"Things are progressing very well, thanks," said Timha primly. He sat at a table by himself, took tea from an apprentice without looking up, and tried to ignore the dance that twirled in his mind. The cruel irony of his position struck him now as it often did, that he was suffering not because he was a poor worker or because he was intellectually inferior to his fellows, but rather because he was their better. Master Valmin had taken Timha under his wing early on, brought him into the core team, gone over the more esoteric and taboo portions of the Project with him. At the beginning, they had all been excited, and none more so than Timha. It was the position of a lifetime. And while he certainly had reservations about the use of the Black Art, Valmin had assured him that it was for a noble cause, that evil could indeed be harnessed for good.
For the sake of the empire, Valmin had said, an encouraging smile on his face. Think of the soldiers who gutted their enemies on the battlefield, of the generals who sent their troops into the fray knowing that not all of them would return. All great enterprises, Valmin had told him, have some element of darkness at their heart. Better to name it and know it, to contain it so that it did only the harm it was intended to do.
What Valmin had not told Timha, or perhaps had not known himself, was that working the Black Art was not something one did lightly. It was powerful but draining, both mentally and emotionally, and the feeling of ... Timha could only describe it as sinfulness never left him, though Timha believed in neither Aba nor the Chthonics, nor anything else for that matter. The Black Art wormed its way into your bones. Its harsh workings yielded impressive results, but each day Timha had felt as though a part of his soul were draining away.
And that was before all the trouble had begun.
It started with a realization that Timha himself had made, reviewing an extremely complex passage in the notes of Hy Pezho, the Project's original creator. Timha had read the passage over and over again, trying to deduce its meaning and finding himself unable. He'd brought it to Valmin, who had retired to his own quarters with it for most of a day. When Valmin had emerged, it had been with a dour face. Their task was going to be much more difficult than they had at first believed.
Valmin had been given the most prestigious portion of the work, and he had shared it with Timha and a few select others because they had proven themselves the best of the best in their respective fields of study. And now they were the ones who would have their throats cut by the Bel Zheret if they failed. The others would be sent home, perhaps with a bit of disgrace, or more likely with no comment at all, and Valmin and Timha and a few others would be gutted like fish and left to rot in the stinking basements of the Secret City where the raw materials for the Black Art were kept.
Timha shuddered at the thought. The basements were the only things that bothered him more than the sky.
Nothing was what it was supposed to be.
Timha lingered over breakfast, but it still ended too quickly. He made his way down a twisting corridor to Master Valmin's chambers. The doors were manned by a pair of armed guards who opened the door for Timha, waving a deglamouring wand over him, relaxing their grips on their weapons only when they determined that Timha was indeed Timha.
Valmin's office smelled of burnt tea, chalk, and bitter herbs. Valmin was already at his desk when Timha entered. The room was filled with stacks and stacks of books, most of which were unavailable to the general populace. Some were proscribed by Mab, forbidden even to Master Valmin himself, and the fact that these books were currently resting open in front of Valmin was as good a sign as any that the Project was in deep trouble.
The walls and floor of the spacious chamber were surfaced in smooth slate, installed by journeyer Elementalists who no doubt had been annoyed at the task but had done an excellent job nonetheless. Nearly every free bit of space on the walls was filled with arcane sigils, mathematical equations, apothecarian symbols, and diagrams of the dance at the heart of the Project, drawn in white chalk.
During the night, Timha noticed, Valmin had erased some of the equations relating to the stored energy bindings. For a moment Timha's heart rose in hope, but then he realized that Valmin had simply replaced yesterday's unworkable mathematics with those from the day before. Every light they shone on some aspect of the Project seemed to cast some other part more deeply into shadow.
"Good morning, journeyer," said Valmin, not looking up from his text. This was the Red Book, so called from the color of its binding; books on the Black Art were required to be nameless. Valmin had been spending more and more time studying this particular volume. Was he on to something?
"Anything, master?" said Timha. His voice came out thin and reedy, almost rasping.
Valmin looked up briefly from his book. "Trust me, Timha, if I have glad tidings in the middle of the night I will drag you out of bed myself."
Timha suddenly felt like crying. How shameful would it be to burst into tears in front of Master Valmin? The thought of it chilled Timha enough to let the tears subside. But it wasn't fair! It wasn't fair!
The Project simply ought to have yielded up its secrets to them by now. After all the work they'd put in, the long hours poring over the plans, the detailed instructions, the philosophical notes that Hy Pezho had left. Every separate part of the thing made sense, if an esoteric and abstract sense. But when put together in the way described in the plans, the interaction of alchemy, bindings, and the essence of the raw materials, the totality of it became so complex that no one could hope to understand it all. It was simply impossible for a Fae mind to hold together all at once.
Valmin and Timha had been forced to admit that Hy Pezho was a genius, perhaps the greatest thaumaturge of his age, if these plans were to be believed. But there was nothing in Hy Pezho's history that indicated where he might have come across such knowledge. The son of the great Black Artist Pezho, he had spent his early years wandering from city to city, squandering his father's small fortune and giving the world no reason to afford him any regard whatsoever. Then he'd disappeared for several years, and the next thing anyone knew he'd become one of Mab's inner circle. And the next thing anyone knew after that, he was gone, the mention of his name forbidden at court. His only legacy, as far as Timha knew, was the Project. The Einswrath. Citykiller. But what a legacy it was. A thing of such elegance and power, such might.