Emberwork parts (items)

A block of copper and crystal that holds a spark the way a bell holds a note. Warm it and the spark leaps into any water or metal it touches, and through anything standing in it.

Stone with a thread of ember fired through it. It looks like any wall, and passes warmth like a wire.

Up is warm, down is cold. The oldest argument in the Deep, settled with a stick.

Pull it and it rings warm for a moment, then lets go. Doorbells, mostly. Sometimes worse.

A board that knows when it is stood on. It does not ask who.

A plate the Home Stone taught to tell its own from strangers. Under the feet it knows it stays cold.

Spun so thin you see it only when the light is wrong. Whatever walks through it, the thread remembers for a moment.

A stone with a pulse. Delvers swear it slows down when you are sad.

It hears warmth at its back and passes it on, a little late and whole again.

Contrary by nature: warm when nothing warms it, cold when something does.

Every warm knock turns it over, and it remembers which way up it is.

Glass, a coal and a pinch of dust. It burns as bright as the warmth that reaches it.

It sings one note on every warm pulse. Stone under it makes a bell of it, wood a marimba, metal a chime, glass a flute.

A stone with a glass eye, and it never blinks. Whatever changes in front of it, it mentions at its back.

Bone notches in a stone, an ember for a thumbnail. It counts to its number, says so once, and starts again.

Two copper pans and an iron beam. It weighs one warmth against another, which is more than most merchants manage honestly.

A copper bell with a crystal clapper, tuned to one of sixteen tunes. Ring it and every ear that knows the tune hears it, a long way off.

A copper ear with a crystal in it. It hears only its own tune, only from bells on its own ground, and it is always listening.

An iron pin in a stone. Warm its back and it holds; warm a side and it lets go. It remembers which, whatever the weather.

Glass over copper, a needle and a number. It tells you how warm a thing is, which saves licking the wire.

Ember sand, slow glass. Turn it with a pulse and it counts out its minutes, then nudges the next thing along.

Half of it is the sun and half the moon, and it knows which is in the sky over Aldhearth, even at the bottom of the Deep.

A bone die set in stone. Every warm knock rolls it, and the warmth goes out of whichever side comes up. Nobody has ever cheated it.

An ember lamp with a crystal in its glass. Eight colours, one at a time: enough for a sign, a banner, or a picture of your enemy.

An iron fist in a stone sleeve. Warm it and it shoves; it has never once asked what it was shoving.

A ram with glowcap paste on its knuckles. What it pushes away it brings back, which is more than most neighbours manage.

Planks on an iron hinge, and a pin of ember that lets go when it warms. Delvers call it the polite trapdoor: it only opens when asked.

Home brick round a heart of crystal, made in pairs. Each one remembers the other, and the Home Stone carries you between them the way it carries you home.

A stone throat that breathes fire three strides long while it is warm. It singes the Grown down to the bone and no further: the last blow is always yours.

Set it in the floor. Warm, it grips the first Grown that steps on it for three heartbeats, then lets go as if it had never meant it.

An iron cage round a glowcap the Grown cannot leave alone. Warm, it calls the ones nobody is watching, a dozen at most, and they come.

Iron rollers in a stone frame, turning while it is cold. Drops ride it, Grown ride it; a person steps on it and it politely does nothing.

A copper box with a hungry mouth. Cold, it gathers what lies on the ground within three strides, if its owner could pick it up, and keeps it like a chest.

An item chute with a memory: show it a thing and it lets that kind through, five kinds at most. Show it an empty hand and it forgets.

Planks and hide that breathe on a furnace while they are warm. The fire eats twice as fast and smelts twice as fast. Only your own furnace listens.

An iron sickle on an ember arm. Each warm pulse it reaps the ripe crops in front of it, drops the harvest in the chest behind it, and plants a seed in each furrow it emptied.

Blast powder packed in iron and wrapped in ember dust. Warm it, or let fire touch it, and two seconds later it digs what your own pick could dig, all at once and none too carefully.

A stone mouth with an iron throat. Warm it and it spits out whatever you fed it: a loaf, a bolt, or a bucket of the Ember Sea.

A copper trough that passes things along one at a time, from the chest behind it to the one in front, all day and all night. Warm it and it holds its breath.

A copper needle that reads a chest the way a cook reads a pot: by how full it is. The fuller, the warmer.

Bone set in stone, with a grain of ember for an eye. It wakes when the Grown come within six strides, and it is never wrong about them.

Wick’s idea: a chest that gives a little to whoever reaches it, once a day, for as long as its owner keeps it filled. The lock is the easy part. The reaching is the trial.