Page 89 of Still the Sun

“I can’t lift what I need by myself.” There’sbarelyenough room for the two of us. “If we slow down at the mountains, you’ll need to get off, but we’ll see what happens.”

Balfid gapes. “You’re going toridethat thing?”

I ignore him. “Arthen, get on.”

He holds out the crescent-shaped piece he made, the new chamber plate. “Don’t you need to attach this?”

“It’s not for the rover. Get on.” To the others, I say, “I want you to wait halfway down the road to the tower. With ladders.Do notapproach the tower, do you understand me?”

“I’ll make sure,” Salki assures me.

I pass her a grateful look as Arthen gingerly straddles the water rover. I shove his shoulder to seat him, wind the motor, pull a cord, and jump on just as the vehicle pops and bolts forward. I nearly collide into a barrel as we take off down the road at an alarming but intensely satisfying rate. Hopefully my slapdash work holds up long enough.

Arthen yelps as we take a sharp turn out of Emgarden, grabbing my shoulder for balance, his other arm wrapped around the chamber plate. The ground between Tampere’s random rock protrusions is mostly flat, so the rover holds steady, kicking up a monumental dust cloud in our wake. Without the mist, the thing would be visible for kilometers. Regardless, I don’t care if Moseus is watching. There’s nothing he can do to stop me. Not until nightfall, and I intend to beat him to it.

My pulse counts down the seconds.Gods let this work. Let this work.I pray my memory of the machines proves correct. It’s been a long time, but with so much of my past having been safely stored away, maybe it didn’t have the opportunity to decay like everything else.

The earth inclines as we reach the mountains. I know the path, and it’s barely wide enough for the rover, but not entirely smooth, and the machine bucks over rocks and dips. Arthen yelps; I hold my breath. The incline builds, and the machine slows.

“Come on, come on,” I murmur, stroking its hot sides like I would a horse. “You can do it.”

“How much farther?” Arthen yells.

I look up the path as the rover climbs and shakes. “Not ... too far.”Come on!

“I’m going to jump off.”

I whip around and look at him, only to force my attention forward and lean hard to avoid a rock. “What?”

“You said it’ll go faster, right? I can run. It’s just up this path, right?” He swallows, and his nerves carry on his breath, tangling in my hair. “I can follow the tracks.”

I nod. “Yes, thank you. Quickly.”

The rover whines up a turn, and Arthen jumps. With roughly two-thirds of its load gone, the vehicle lurches forward with renewed life. I glance back to ensure that Arthen hasn’t injured himself before the rover zips behind a natural stone wall, ever climbing.

The path forks. A twist of my steering stick and a lean to the right takes me up to a ridge. The rover slows again, struggling in loose dirt. When the machine moves slower than I can run, I reach down and shut it off. Grab my tools and hike up the rest of the way, pausing for a few seconds atop the ridge, giving my lungs a chance to catch up with me.

It’s here, behind a short outcropping, settled in a depression in the rock. This is the fourth of six fog machines—the one I saw near Heartwood’s garden is six of six. It consists of a brassy set of pipes connected to a giant metal belly. There’s a pump system under all of it, pulling water from underground, pressurizing it, and spitting it out over our chunk of land. The mist thins here, standing beneath the pipes.

I slide down to it, quickly refamiliarizing myself. I shut off the timer first thing. The pump halts, though the air will take a while to clear.

Next, I gauge the pipes, select the one I’ll have to redirect the least, and close off the others. The farthest one’s stopper is stuck open, so I slam a hammer into it until the aperture pinches shut.

Three hours, nine minutes.I check the clock too often; my own circadian rhythm has been askew for ... I don’t even know how long. And I don’t have time to dwell on it.

Loosening the fixture holding my selected pipe in place, I twist the thing northward, then leave it there, waiting for the mist to clear. Heavy huffing comes over the ridge.

“Perfect.” I run up to meet Arthen.

Sweat marks the front of his shirt and underarms. He holds the chamber plate to his chest like a newborn, uttering no complaint when I relieve him of it.

“Follow me,” I direct, and he does, panting and wordless. I set the plate aside. After climbing the body of the machine, I loosen the upper half of the pipe. This piece alone measures two meters long. “Can you reach this from where you are?”

Arthen wearily stretches up his hands. To my relief, he can.

“Hold it,” I instruct. “I’m going to lift it up and out. Don’t dent it.”

On the count of three, we both heave, though the angle drops the bulk of the pipe’s weight onto Arthen. Exhausted as he is, he has the arms of a blacksmith, and with a stifled grunt he manages to pull the thing loose and set it ungracefully on the ground. Scaling the remaining portion of the pipe, I grab a ruler and peer in, sighing as I confirm my measurements.

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