Gerard looked up. The room had gone suspiciously quiet. The Cupral Spiro-equilibrator had been running almost constantly for the best part of the last two weeks. He"d become so used to the sound of the tiny copper discs whirring that its absence had become notable. With great care, he levered himself from his chair and walked around to the narrow plinth that held the equilibrator, wary of dislodging anything.
This was the fourth time in three days that the discs had gone quiet. The first time he had naturally assumed it was some kind of malfunction – magical apparatus being quite prone to that kind of thing. On inspection, he had found that all twelve of the copper disks had fallen from their tiny bone spindles and were lying in a near-perfect circle on the pewter tray at the bottom of th
