Chương 99: Chapter 96 - Prototype one

Alric had been standing there long enough just staring at it. The still occupied the center of the space. Copper caught the forge light in uneven glows, some sections polished by handling, others still holding the duller tone of recent work. It rose from its base in a rounded swell before narrowing into a neck that leaned just slightly off what Alric suspected had once been the intended line. He stepped closer. Not quickly or cautiously. Just enough that he could reach out without leaning.

His fingers brushed along one of the seams. Not perfectly smooth, not invisible, but solid in the way that mattered. He followed the curve upward, eyes narrowing slightly as he traced the line where two plates met and then didn't quite agree with each other about it.

"… hm." It wasn't disapproval. He moved around it, slow, circling. The pipe leading out of the neck was thick. Thicker than it needed to be, if he was being honest, but he understood why. It fed into the cask that had been repurposed as a thumper, the wood reinforced in places where Stromni had decided that caution was better than rebuilding the floor.

From there the line continued, dipping down into a coiled run that disappeared into a water-filled barrel before emerging again, thinner now, into the final receiving cask. He stopped at that point and looked back along the path. Pot. Neck. Arm. Thumper. Worm. Condenser. Collection.

"…it'll run." He didn't say it loudly. Behind him, something shifted. Stromni had been leaning against a post with the kind of stillness that wasn't actually still at all. It was the stillness of someone waiting to be told something they already believed but would very much like confirmed.

"That blasted worm as you call it," Stromni said immediately, pushing himself upright as though the word itself had been sitting on his tongue for some time, "was a bigger pain in me arse than anything ya ever brought me." Alric glanced over at him.

"I can imagine."

"No, you bleeding can't," Stromni said, already moving, already gesturing toward the coiled section with a level of offense that suggested the thing had stolen his lunch.

"You said wind the plate. Wind it, you said. Simple, you said."

"Did I say simple?" Alric said avoiding eye contact, glancing at the worm instead. The worm was a hollow tube, coiled like a spring. The coil sat in a cask of cool water to maximize distance and surface area in a short space.

"Ya didn't, but ya came close enough," Stromni snapped, which in itself was an admission that the memory had been revisited more than once. He crouched slightly, knocking his knuckles against the outer casing of the condenser with a sharp, metallic note.

"Getting it ta hold shape was one thing. Getting it not ta leak?" Stromni added with a shudder. Alric stepped closer, crouching beside him, peering at the section where the copper met itself again and again in a tight spiral hidden beneath the outer plating.

"It held though." He said checking that water wasn't coming out the end. Stromni gave a grunt that might have meant pride, annoyance, or simple refusal to let the worm have the last word. Alric nodded, agreeing with the grunt, still crouched, peering at the seam.

"It's pretty good though." Stromni cut him a look from the side, the sort usually reserved for suspicious merchants and tools that had broken once already.

"Aye, it should work," he said, which in this forge was as close to affection as most objects could reasonably hope for. Alric rose more slowly, his eyes still on the still.

"It should." He let the words sit for a moment. Not because they needed saying again, but because the thing deserved the pause. It had shape to it. Presence. The sort of solid, ugly confidence that only appeared when enough metal had put up a brave fight but lost in the end. Then his gaze dropped lower. The heating stone was set beneath the belly of the pot, glowing with that calm, contained light magic liked to wear just before it became inconvenient or got charged. Alric looked at it for a moment.

Then a little longer. Stromni followed his gaze, and because he knew him at least moderately well by now, his expression tightened before Alric had even opened his mouth. Alric pointed at the heating stone. Stromni folded his arms.

"Aye, and?" Alric tipped his head slightly.

"It's going to be a problem."

"Well ya gave it ta me, what was I meant ta do?" Stromni said flexing his arms and raising an eyebrow. There was a short silence while Stromni looked at the stone, then at the still, then back at the stone again, as if expecting one of them to explain themselves without involving him. Stolen story; please report.

"This whole thing isn't big enough for it, I think" he explained at last. Stromni looked offended on behalf of scale itself.

"It's one stone. How do I use less than one lad?" Stromni stared at him. Then he looked back at the heating stone with the expression of a man reconsidering several earlier choices, most of which had involved optimism.

"…right," he said, in the tone of someone who did not think it was right at all. Alric let that hang between them for a few beats, then patted the side of the still once, lightly.

"We should run it. Where I come from, we call this a prototype, we find the problems this way." That earned him a long look.

"Aye bugger it, let's run this thing," Stromni muttered. They moved without much more discussion after that, because there were only so many ways to begin before one reached the stage where one simply had to put hot things under other things and see whether the idea had been worth the bruises. The mash had already been prepared. Nothing precious, though not so worthless that either of them wanted it sprayed across the forge walls. Stromni checked the joints again out of principle.

Alric checked them because principle occasionally needed supervision. The heating stone was settled in place. The pot sealed. The line to the thumper checked, then checked again, which did nothing measurable for the copper but helped both men maintain the useful fiction that disasters only happened to people who had been careless. The pair nodded at each other before Alric reached a finger under the stone and charged it. Then they stepped back.

The forge went quieter around the edges, or perhaps Alric simply stopped hearing it. Both retreated to a much further distance than previous still attempts.

"So here's the issue with …" Alric began but Stromni shook his head.

"Lad, explain this ta me like I'm a wee one. Think o me like a pretty child or something." He said glancing between the still and Alric. Heat built slowly at first. The still took its time receiving it, like some large copper beast deciding whether it respected the effort enough to wake up for it. A warmth began to creep through the pot. The smell changed. Wet grain. Sweetness. The thick, slightly sour heaviness of mash coming alive under pressure.

"Alright, so you know when you heat water, you get steam?" Alric began Stromni stared at him for a long moment, "Ya takin this seriously, aye lad, think I saw that at your brewery jus the one time though."

"Right, so the stuff we want, the whisky or alcohol? We get that when its just below boiling. If it gets too hot, it's gonna get ugly." Alric said folding his arms to watch. Not the way an anxious man watches. The way a brewer watches, which looked similar to outsiders but contained less emotion and more listening. Beside him, Stromni was pretending to watch the apparatus and was in fact watching Alric's face for signs of betrayal.

"So, that's the issue. We need something that we can control, stones, can't do it with fire. Too many hot spots, we need something that can get up to how hot we want it, then remove and add stones to keep it where we want." Alric explained pointing. Alric's ears picked the first sound of bubbles from the thumper cask. There was a pause there, just enough to let doubt stretch its legs, then a low hollow glug came back from inside the wood. Stromni's chin lifted a fraction.

"Well," he said, in a tone carefully arranged to suggest he had never doubted anything in his life. The thumper began to work properly after that. Not violently. Just enough motion to show it had understood its role and intended, for the moment at least, to play along. The bubbling was gentle. The line held. A faint trickle began to thread its way onward through the condenser.

"So, how big are we talking 'ere?" Stromni asked glancing sideways at Alric. His mind drifted to when he had visited Scotland with his uncle, they had visited many distilleries, those stills were absolute behemoths standing well over four metres tall but that was just want it took. Alric's gaze looked upward, Stromni's forge wasn't a full double volume.

"Wont fit in here." He said with a shrug and pointing upward. Then, after another few breaths, the first clear drop fell into the receiving cask. It landed with a tiny, precise sound. Plink. A ridiculous little sound. Far too small for the amount of labor that had gone into producing it. Alric smiled anyway.

"There." Stromni did not smile at first. He waited for two more drops, perhaps out of caution, perhaps superstition. Then his face split into a grin broad enough to make his beard shift.

"There," Stromni agreed.

"But lad, there ain't a forge big enough in tha city for it." Alric just shrugged. For a little while, everything behaved. Which, Alric had found, was often the most dangerous phase of any new process. It encouraged hope. Hope led to confidence. Confidence led to explanations to other people. Then the equipment exploded and made a liar out of everyone. The rhythm held. Vapor moved. The thumper bubbled in a steady, reassuring way that suggested a modest, hardworking competence. Nothing flashy or dramatic.

Alric leaned in slightly, listening. Then he frowned. It was not dramatic at first. No sudden lurch. No metallic scream. Just a change in the sound so slight another man might have missed it. The bubbling had gotten more aggressive. That was the only word for it. A moment ago the thumper had sounded relaxed. Now it sounded focused. The sort of focused that never led anywhere pleasant. Alric's eyes narrowed.

"…ah." Stromni heard the sound in his voice more than the word itself.

"What?" The thumper answered for him. The bubbling surged, lost its rhythm, then abandoned the idea of rhythm entirely. Something inside it decided force was a perfectly reasonable substitute for patience. The cask began knocking back harder. The line shuddered once. Then again. Alric took one step forward.

"There it is."

"What does that mean, 'there it is'?" Stromni demanded, already moving beside him. The still, not wishing to be left out of the conversation, made a wet, ugly coughing sound. Then it puked mash. Not enough to be a catastrophe. Enough to be insulting. The spit hit the inside of the pipe first, then pushed through in a hot, foul spray that carried both liquid and all its thoughts on their current design. Stromni swore. Alric was already reaching for the gloves.

The stone came out fast, lifted from its housing and set aside near the forge with the kind of abruptness usually associated with venomous animals and plates one has suddenly remembered are still hot. The glow of it remained steady.

The still carried on complaining for a few moments after the heat source had been removed, because copper liked to hold grudges in the form of temperature, then gradually settled into a sullen series of noises that suggested it had no immediate intention of getting worse, but felt no obligation to become useful again either.

"Yes, the stones ta much?" Stromni glanced at it.

"In. Out. In. Out. Keep it hot but not ta hot?" Alric considered that. He actually considered it. Long enough that Stromni straightened a little, as though expecting resistance and preparing to argue with it.

"It would work. Think something to adjust the distance would be better but…" Alric trailed thinking about it Stromni snorted.

"That 'but' were suspicious."

"It would work badly."

"There it is," Stromni said, pointing at him.

"Knew it were coming." Alric straightened, not realising he'd bent to look at the bottom of the pot. The stones would hold at a constant temperature, the best solution would be one where they could simply control the number of stones.

"Think we need it bigger, then we just take stones out when we want." He said rubbing his chin.

"Aye, en I explained, ain't a way ta make summin that big lad." Stromni said shaking his head.

"If we made a lot of plates? Maybe we uh.. stitch them?" Alric said trying to find the word rivet.

"Aint a bleeding seamstress lad, ya wanna rivet en solder it. It'll look like a seamstress made it though." Stromni said running his fingers through his beard.

"Dun even think about it till we get proper whisky lad."

"I'm with you there. For now, we need to make some changes." Alric said grabbing some nearby paper. If they were going to build a prototype Scottish still, they may as well copy it as closely as he could remember it.