Page 8 of Still the Sun

I retrieve my personal tools—I only used one of them—and reach into the machine to grab my smallest wrench, which measures just longer than my index finger. As I pull away, however, my head spins. Iblink, andI see the machine in pieces at my feet, strewn across the stone floor, sprockets and gears and coils, bent and misshapen and—

And ... then it’s just as it was before. A broken but intact machine, standing twice my height before me, alloy pieces shimmering in the lantern light.

I ...

I really need to sleep.

“First sun,” I offer, pocketing the wrench and backing away from the machine, ignoring the uneasy squirming in my stomach.

“First sun,” Moseus agrees.

And then I depart, into the mists.

Chapter 3

It’s only by utter exhaustion that I sleep.

The walk back into Emgarden helped. The tower neighbors the town, but not comfortably so. During the first hour home, my mind obsesses over the machines. I sketch out everything I can remember of Machine One and promise to do the same for the others—surely I can learn something by drawing them. I’ve done this for every Ancient gadget I’ve come across, speculating on what their missing pieces might look like. If nothing else, my fluttering mind needs an outlet.

Eventually my thoughts are no longer new, merely recycled, driving me mad with thinking and rethinking. Some bitter mitemeal tea I traded Amlynn for helps settle me and grants my body several hours of rest.

I wake close to mid sun, eager to resume work but realizing it might not be best to break Moseus’s mist rule on my first solo journey to the tower. So putting my own desires aside, I trek across town, slowing at Entisa’s fresh grave, and out into the farmland that hugs the east wall of the village. The crops extend for about a hundred meters out, bending more or less to fit the shape of Emgarden and the locations of the wells. There are three wells in the farmlands, only one of which has the windlass I built to help pull up water. The farther the plants grow from a well, the harder they are to care for. The hardiest crops are planted farther out, with the more delicate close to the wells. I’d love to build something to make the endless process of watering easier, especiallysince farmers constitute more than half of Emgarden. Even I tend crops when things are slow for me. Something to pump water up through tubes and irrigate, or to carry heavy buckets of water to save us a few trips ... I drew up plans for an irrigation rover once, but there are no resources with which to build it, and no guarantee it would work, so I abandoned them. Limited resources likewise mean no experimentation with other methods. Tampere’s climate is livable, but it isn’t always kind.

Hopefully this deal with Moseus changes things. A lot of things.

I find Salki out in the millet, kneeling and pinching hungry beetles in half with her fingers. Casnia lingers nearby, under a scraggly tree someone’s thrown a blanket over for better shade. Balfid and a few others are there, too, eating lunch.

It takes everything in me not to screech,There are other people here. I’ve met them. In the tower. We’re not alone.But Moseus’s deal will make life so much better for us, so I can keep my mouth shut for a little while.

“You can take another few cycles,” I say instead as my shadow falls over Salki. Time off to mourn, I mean, but she understands me.

Salki pushes up the brim of her hat. “Or I can be useful.” She shrugs. “It was her time.”

“Doesn’t make it easy.”

“Doesn’t make it easy,” she retorts, knocking a half-formed egg sac off a knee-high plant with a rusted trowel.

My tongue curls in my mouth, desperate to share my optimism about the tower, but I swallow that hope down. Maybe when things are more solidified, when I’ve earned a little more of Moseus’s trust, I can let it slip. Salki wouldn’t hurt a fly, and any secret I gave her would die with her, but I did agree to the keeper’s terms, and I need those machines. We need that metal. So the story stays buzzing at the front of my mind, distracting and heady.

I crouch down and start pinching beetles myself. The adults are a shiny dark blue, and their guts spray a dark amber. They’re too bitter to eat.

“Gross.” Salki laughs. She’s wearing gloves.

I reach over to wipe my hand on her trousers; she smacks me with the flat of her well-worn trowel.

Smiling, I pinch off a few more bugs. “I think I can get you some better tools.”

Salki sighs. “There’s no point sacrificing one trade’s tools for another—”

A sharp pain stabs through my skull. A gasp catches halfway up my throat as my hands fly up to my forehead instinctually.Gods’ piss,it hurts.

“Pell?”

Gritting my teeth, I push on the side of my head, beetle guts on my fingers, as though I could counterbalance the pain. The strange ache takes its sweet time abating, but gradually it crawls away, receding one stab at a time, like my brain is trying to square out its own grave’s corners.

The trowel falls. Salki’s hand rests on my shoulder.

“Without melting down what I have,” I say, continuing the conversation. “I’m fine. Need some water.”

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