Page 25 of Still the Sun

Arthen must agree, as he tries to pry more information from me. I might be bad at lying, but I can be just as tight-lipped as Maglon.

Or Heartwood.

New emilies have sprouted randomly throughout the road when I leave at late sun, one already crushed by a passing foot. Crouching, I pick a blue bloom at the base. The flowers are large, about the size of a man’s cupped hands, and grow close to the ground. Its faint shimmer dulls as I carry it home, but its color stays true. Inside, I pour a little water from a jar onto a plate and set the emily in it. Something about the action itches the back of my mind, but I can’t sort out why. It’s not the first time I’ve saved one of Tampere’s beauties, but it’s been a while.

The tone of the mist reaches my ear through the window. When I turn and cock my head to listen, my elbow hits my little jar of water and knocks it off the table. Cursing inwardly, I grab the nearest cloth—a shirt I need to launder—and start wiping it up. That was the last of the water I had, and I’m not in the mood to trek out to the nearest well. Though I suppose it’s my fault there isn’t one closer.

As I soak up the water, I notice it dwindling—not into my shirt, but into a crack between the floorboards. Wood and stone, packed tightly against the hard earth beneath, make up my floor. The ground shouldn’t absorb so much so quickly.

Setting the shirt aside, I crouch closer to the gap, which looks just a little wider than it should be. Curious, I knock against the wood, getting a dull thud in return. But when I knock on the panel on the other side of the crack, it sounds—

“Hollow.” I dig my short nails into the side of the floorboard. Try to lift, with no luck. I run my hands over the boards. Ignore the bite of a sliver. Moving the table, I find where a cut has been made across a board, breaking the pattern.

I dig my nails in there, and it lifts. I gape as a panel about six decimeters wide and three decimeters long loosens from the ground, bringing soil and debris with it. Below rests a cool, neat hole with sharp corners, about three decimeters deep.

And within it lies an Ancient artifact I’ve never laid eyes on.

Chapter 8

The panel sits snug in the floor. The table in its place. The mist, rolling in.

I lean back in a chair, my arms folded, staring at the artifact on the table before me.

It’s ... I don’t know what it is. It has a rectangular frame with filleted corners, made ofthreedifferent metal alloys, artlessly hammered in some places to make the pieces fit. The frame supports a translucent spherical core in the center made of some kind of acrylic, with a weighted bottom that always faces down. Perfectly balanced. A few other doodads and coils connect to it. It’s the most complete artifact I’ve ever seen of this size.

And I have no idea how it got into my house.

It’s not like other Ancient work I’ve seen. The gyroscopic elements and the build of the frame don’t resemble anything from the tower. And it’s very piecemeal. Enough so that I don’t think itisAncient work, but Ancient scraps someone conglomerated into ... whatever this is.

It makes absolutely no sense, but ...I’mthe only person who could have made this. No one else in Emgarden takes an interest in this sort of thing, and they certainly wouldn’t have cut up my floor and dug out a cavity to hold it without my knowledge. Moseus might know, but I’m not sure how far his knowledge extends.

Machine One in pieces at my feet, strewn across the stone floor, sprockets and gears and coils, bent and misshapen and—

I close my eyes as a sharp pain lances through my skull. I’m in over my head. I have always prided myself on simplicity—simple work, simple life. These ...things... I see are complicated.Thisis complicated. And nothing makes me more angry than needing answers to questions I don’t understand.

Sighing, I push the artifact away and grab the edges of the table, shifting it off the panel in the floor. If it’s supposed to be hidden, I might as well keep it hidden until—

The door snicks shut. His feet pad across the floor—

Every hair on my body stands on end as I whip my hands from the table and turn around, heart racing. But the house is empty. It’s a one-room house; I can see every nook of it from where I stand. My lungs collapse on themselves with every strained exhale. No.No.I heard someone in this house. Ijust heard it, just now. Someone was here.

Mouth dry, I march to the door and rip it open. No one loiters in the street. Slam that shut and check the windows. No one. I can see every corner, but I physically walk to each one, listening to my footsteps on the floorboards for the sound of other hollow compartments. There are none.

Chills course over my arms.I’m losing my mind.A bird must have landed on the roof. Thamton must have closed his door across the way, and it’s so quiet, it sounded like mine. That’s the most plausible explanation.

Crouching down, I force more air into my chest. They’ve never followed me. All these weird lapses I’m having ... they’ve only ever happened in the tower. Not here. I’m losing it.

No, it was just Thamton. My mind strains and my body tenses and Thamton lives too far—

No, he doesn’t. He closed his door hard. That’s all.

I shove the table aside, pull up the weird panel, and snatch the fake artifact, wanting it out of my sight, only to notice something that freezes me to the floor. There, engraved on its metal edge, small and precise, glints a rhombus with one line cutting through the top, and two smaller, parallel lines in the center. It’s not an Ancient symbol. It’s the same one I scrawled on the bottom of my plans for the water rover.

It’s mine.

Heartwood is sick again.

I arrive at the tower a little early, eager to get my mind off the machine in my house. My attention latches on to him, desperate to focus on anything besides my discovery. Heartwood withdraws when I arrive, but the hunch in his shoulders and the straining of his breaths give him away. After he’s gone, I ask Moseus, “What’s wrong with him?”

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