Page 34 of Still the Sun

Closing my eyes, I rack the memory for details, but I can’t recall anything definitive. Whose hands? No one in Emgarden has the same pallor as the keepers of the tower. So was it Moseus, or Heartwood? Or someone else entirely?

When, exactly, is this injury supposed to happen?

I trace my finger down my palm. I have many scars. It comes with the work. One on my right hand could match the injury in the vision. But it’s—

I lose my train of thought.

Physically shaking, I storm back to Machine Three, imagining myself bigger and braver than I feel. I glare at the steel girding, the beams and gears.

“Tell me what you are,” I whisper. Beg.

The machine does not answer.

I have to know. Ihaveto know what these machines do. Why the tower was built. There’s an answer here, somewhere. I just need to piece it together. If I can finish the work, these episodes will stop, and I’ll know. Something. Anything.

So I climb up the machine and align the gears. They fit in place. This is right. I pick up the next hunk of mechanics and try to attach it, but it’s wrong. Up there, maybe? But I’m not ready to work that high. I need to get the base done.

So I pick through a few more pieces. Walk around the machine. I bet these roller bearings go here. The only wheel small enough for this chain attaches over there. There’s nowhere to hook the chain, so I just balance it on top. If I move this plate—yes, this three-meter strut couldconnect here with a few screws. Except it’s bent...unless I put it in backward, it’s going to interfere with those coils.

Frowning, I pick up the slender piece of metal and turn it over in my hands. It’s light, despite its length, and shines a dark gray. It’s an odd hook-shape, bending almost in the middle. But none of the other struts match that design, and Ancient tech tends to be symmetrical, more or less. I wonder if—

Pausing, I brush my fingers over the angle where the metal bends. Not smoothly, but in four little waves, each slightly smaller than the next. Honestly, it looks like a...

I pause. Form my hand into a fist and press it into the indentation. My knuckles are too small to fill it, but the shape matches.

Chills form in my fingers and course up my arms. What kind of creature could be strong enough to bend steel?

And more importantly, now I know that this machine wasn’t unfinished. It was broken.

Deliberately.

Chapter 12

I don’t return to the tower, nor to Heartwood’s garden. I will, but I need time to think.

Because I know who did it.

I mull over this for the thousandth time as I sit, butt right on the dirt, in the corner of the forge, working on the rover as Arthen melts and shapes my latest scraps. He saves small, excess fragments and covertly sets them aside, and I know he’s readying some for a new set of darts, but most are being diverted for my pet project. If we can get this rover working, it will help the farmers, which will help all of us.

The rover is a machine I understand. One that doesn’t drill into my head and give me flashes of somethingother. In my hands are pure truth: tools, grit, sweat, metal. I made the ceramic pieces myself. They’ll wear, but they’re supposed to. Something I learned from the tower. A lot of what I’m doing I learned from the tower. I based the motor on a simplified version of the turbine system in Machine One.

I hate these pestering thoughts. They nag and bite like fire ants, and no matter how many times I sweep them away, they return, in numbers, relentless. The earth murmurs beneath me as another gentle quake rolls by, as if to agree with the sentiment.

Hands. I can’t remember enough detail about the hands in that ... vision. But the imprint in the strut is no flight of fancy. Moseus and Heartwood are similar in appearance, yes. But Moseus has a more slenderbuild, more elegant. If that didn’t exonerate him, his utter control of his emotions would.

Heartwood left that mark in the strut. His hands are the right size. The mathematician in me says I should measure to be sure, but I know. Iknow.

But I don’t understandwhy. Which is one of the reasons I haven’t returned to the tower. But that’s fine. Emgarden needs me, too. I have other things to do besides tinkering around with millennia-old apparatus until the mist.

“Here.” Arthen hands me the last piece I commissioned. The one I made him redo twice, because it didn’t fit in the rover. It’s cool and still damp from the quenching bucket as I accept it without looking up. I’m grateful. He knows I’m grateful. I’m just focused.

I remember the cycle when Moseus first came to my door, knocking at the height of the mist. Remember the stir of his cool breath as he leaned close to me in the dark of his room. How insistent he was that I help him. How important it was. The tower was the only means he had for getting past the amaranthine wall. For reuniting with his people.

And Heartwood had single-handedly destroyed it.

Had he done more? I dwell on the very first unwanted image the machines pressed into my thoughts: Machine One, in far more pieces than it had been when I first saw it. Was that something to come? Something from another lifetime? I hate trying to sort this out. I’d truly rather throw my head into the wall until my skull cracked.

“When was the last time you slept?” Arthen asks.

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