Page 39 of Still the Sun

I ogle it as I approach. The walls inside are smooth, but ... there’s nothing else. No artifacts, no writing, no knobs or levers. Just a closet, hidden away. But why?

“What is that?”

Moseus’s voice startles me. “I don’t know. It opened when I replaced a gear in the machine.” I step inside, running my hands over the walls. Turn and see two things at once: Moseus marveling, far more expressive than I’ve ever beheld him, and a handle attached to a cord just inside the lip of the closet, within easy reach. I touch it, glance overhead to more cording, and laugh.

“What?” Moseus hurries over, pressing his hands to the smooth edges of the doorway.

“It’s a lift.” My words are all breath. I wave him inside, pressing myself hard to one wall to make room. We haven’t been this close since meditating in his room. Stiff, I pull the handle, and thecapsule, not a closet, shifts upward, taking us past the third floor of the tower to the fourth, and no farther.

Machine Four steals my breath away.

She’s enormous, occupying two-thirds of the chamber and stretching diagonally from the floor just outside the lift to the opposite wall, nearly to the ceiling, long and lithe, like how I imagine Machine Three will be. She cuts through the room, a great cylinder of a million components, dark silver and slate gray. There are no broken pieces scattered across the ground, no hanging bits, no breaks that I can see.

Yet my gut tells me she’s incomplete.

“Pell, this is astonishing.” Moseus steps forward and rests a hand on the machine as I walk under it, suffocating on my own awe. Long pistons like organ pipes stretch across her center. She has cable assemblies, gearboxes, and flywheels similar to those on the other machines, but here they’re bigger. Heavier. Peering between her support beams, I see the thickest chain I’ve ever beheld stretched taut in her center. I reach for it, but Machine Four is too dense, too tightly constructed.

Her togetherness will help me understand the others. I know it.

The lift recalls, but I doubt the Ancients meant to trap us up here.

“The windows.” Moseus crosses to them, and it’s only then that I realize the floor is well lit, though when I climbed the exterior of the tower, the windows were closed off. Pulling away from Machine Four, I approach the window next to Moseus. It’s covered by a strange material. It’s not metal, it’s not stone, it’s not wood, but something else entirely. Light but solid. So solid I don’t know if I could break it. While I can’t see through it, and from the exterior of the tower it’s as opaque as stone, the sunlight filters through, offering much-needed illumination. I find no latches, hinges, or fittings that would otherwise facilitate motion. These panels are not meant to be moved.

“Another mystery,” I murmur, and return to Machine Four just as the lift reappears, this time carrying Heartwood. That heaviness of his presence, the one I thought I’d gotten used to, washes over me, drowning me. I force air into my lungs just to prove to myself that I can.

He doesn’t notice me at first. The moment he arrives, his face opens like a child’s, taking in the room and the new leviathan it holds.

“It’s ... There’s more.” Heartwood fumbles over his words. “There’s ... more.”

“We knew there had to be,” Moseus responds.

Heartwood draws his gaze down the machine until it lands on me. He swiftly looks away.

It took you away from me,he said. That tangle of emotion and questions re-forms in my chest, bubbling up so abruptly I fear I’ll puke. So I refocus on the machine. Climb onto her lowest end and carefully scale upward, not wanting to break her. But she’s sturdy. She’s stronger than the others, having been protected up here.

Pain pulses behind my forehead. Gripping a beam, I hold my breath as my vision blurs.

I whip my hand back. Blood pools in my palm and trickles down my wrist. Damn it, I should have been more careful.

I hold the hand up as I untangle myself from the machine, trying not to get blood on it. Great, this will make work the next few cycles real fun. I know I shouldn’t press a dirty rag to it, but that’s what I have, so that’s what it gets.

I’m choking on curses in the back of my throat when two pale hands gently take my own injured one. Remove the rag, clean the wound, expertly wind dark bandages around my palm.

“I’m fine,” I protest, though I can feel my pulse from wrist to fingertips.

“I believe you.” Heartwood secures the bandages with a small knot, cheek twitching as he masks his amusement. “But we can’t have you bleeding on the equipment, now can we?”

The present rushes at me like I’ve fallen down a well and plummeted into the water. Sweat forms on my temples. I’m too warm. My fingers hurt from gripping the beam; my skin’s turned white at the knuckles. Acid churns up my esophagus, but I swallow it back down.

“Pelnophe?”

Heartwood notices me first. Of course he does. Shaking myself, I say, “I’m just eager to get started.” I mechanically pick my way backdown, not meeting either of the keepers’ eyes as I pass to the lift. “I need my tools.”

I wait for them to leave before throwing myself into the work.

There are answers in these machines.

That thought stirs over and over again as I examine every centimeter of Machine Four, taking note where anything appears crooked, broken, or missing.

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