The gold-plated pressure gauge on the High-Sector Overlook gave a sharp, predatory vibration. It was a high-frequency rattle that set the junior engineers' teeth on edge.

  ?"Pressure is nominal," Chief Wright Hallowell declared. His voice came through the brass resonator of his mask with a metallic rasp. He pointed a silk-gloved finger toward the viewing pane. "The Gilded District needs more steam. If those fountains stay dry, the Governor will have my head. Open the bypass."

  ?A muffled voice spoke from the back of the deck.

  ?Hallowell stiffened. He hated interruptions, especially from the charcoal-grey canvas of the Audit Bureau.

  ?The Auditor was young, his eyes already bloodshot from soot-fever. He held a roll of parchment tight in his hand. "Pylon 04 just failed its structural check. The base-plate moved three millimeters this morning. If you dump the bypass steam now, the thermal expansion will force the pylon off its tracks."

  ?"Three millimeters?" Hallowell’s laugh was a dry, grating sound. "We are building an empire, boy. Three millimeters is a fingernail’s width. That’s 'Dead-Weight' math. Ignore it."

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  ?The Auditor looked at the gauge, then out at the massive iron limb of the city hanging over the clouds. "At this mass, that shift is a slow-motion catastrophe. The shear force will be—"

  ?"Open the valve," Hallowell commanded.

  ?The wheel turned.

  ?A mile below the silk carpets of the deck, a brass gate groaned. Superheated steam, pressurized into a liquid-metal plasma, flooded the bypass pipes.

  ?The reaction was immediate.

  ?Heat distorted the air around the Gilded District. A sound followed—a sharp, clear tink. It was the sound of a single bolt-head snapping.

  ?Then the horizon shifted.

  ?Three millimeters of error met ten thousand tons of expanding iron. The pylon exploded. The steel sheared like dry wood. The eastern wing of the district—the mansions, the fountains, the stone gardens—slid into the green Vitriol-mist below.

  ?Silence hit the observation deck. The engineers stared at the empty space where a billion credits of architecture had just vanished.

  ?The Auditor didn't look away. He pulled a small, notched stamp from his pocket and hammered it onto the bottom of his report.

  ?[STATUS: COLLAPSED]

  [CAUSE: IGNORED INTEGRITY VARIANCE]

  [NOTE: MARGIN OF ERROR EXCEEDED.]

  ?He walked out, his heavy boots loud on the polished floor. The alarms finally started to scream, but they were useless now. The math had already finished its work.