Page 9 of Still the Sun

She sighs. “I hope you know how ironic it is that you of all people fail to stay hydrated.” Standing, Salki waves to a small woman a few furrows over. She brings a bucket and ladle. I deeply drink from it first, then Salki has her fill. Then me, again.

I wipe my mouth on my forearm. Salki thanks the water bearer before returning to work.

I don’t trust myself to keep secrets while meeting Salki’s eyes, so I focus on bugs. “I’m not guaranteeing anything, so I won’t give any details, but I think in a dozen cycles or so, I might have something.”

If I can fix the machines. Their make ... it’s above what I understand. And yet IfeelI can do it, if given enough time. A gear can only turn so many ways.

“All right, then.” Salki speaks as though I made a joke, but I don’t mind.

We work down the row in comfortable silence, the sun heating the back of my hair. “How’s Casnia taking it?”

“She says nothing,” Salki murmurs, glancing toward Casnia in the shade of the tree. “But she slept in Entisa’s bed last mist and refused to eat at first sun.”

“We all mourn in our own ways.” I clap my hand on Salki’s shoulder. “Do you need anything?Really, Sal. Do you need anything?”

She glances at me, eyelids heavy. “Company, sometimes. Quiet, others. I’ll let you know.”

I squeeze her shoulder before heading back to get my own affairs in order, and to anxiously watch the ball bearing in my clock worm past the ticks and drop.

I find the right door unlocked when I return to the tower. The cool brush of mist kisses the skin of my hands and face, coaxing my cropped hair into uneven waves. I suppose I’d expected Moseus to be waiting for me, but only emptiness greets me. No one lingers outside the tower, nor in this first chamber. It’s dark, save for the trickle of light shining down the spiraling stairway, and quiet. The sound of the door dragging shut feels like it should shatter the tower, but everything holds. Nothing could break this fortress.

Pulling away from the entrance, I notice two hooks for holding a bar across the doors, further barricading this place from the outside world. No wonder Arthen and I could never get in. I wonder for the millionth time what the Ancients used it for. I’ve wondered so much I’ve started to hate the questions. I merely want to get to work.

I take one slow lap around the first floor, perhaps expecting Moseus to pop out of the shadows. The room seems bigger than I remember. There are two other doors here, one behind the stairs, opposite the entrance, and one opposite Machine One, to the right of the entrance. I don’t test my luck with either and return to Machine One. My lanternsare where I left them, so I light them and crawl back inside the machine, picking up precisely where I left off. I know the next ten steps. I’ve reworked them in my mind constantly, and each proceeds as it should, except for step eight, which requires a different entry angle for this thread feed than I had remembered. A lot of the pieces operate with cables and wires, some made of metal, others—like complex pulleys—made of gods-know-what. If this part connects to that part, they’ll move together, or in sequence, depending on how the tendons, so to speak, are connected.

Another quake rolls beneath the tower, vibrating the delicate machinery. I wait for it to pass before refocusing.

Thesewires, though. I can see where several of them anchor, but the rest will be a headache. And yet I’m excited to follow and guess at their paths. I wonder if mothers feel this way with disobedient children, drowning in frustration while loving every moment of it.

I shift the light to figure out my next move. A smaller lantern would helpa lot, but no one is around for me to ask, so I make do. Trace another carved symbol in what Ithinkis a flywheel, or something that stores or adjusts power. The symbol is the same half circle and unfinished triangle as before.Tell me your secrets,I ask the symbol, pressing the pad of my thumb into it.Tell me how you made this. Tell me how to fix it.

The machine doesn’t answer. Intuition whispers that the souls of the Ancients have long since abandoned this place, following the World Serpent through space and time to rebuild on some other world. If there’s a godly being whose purpose is to create worlds, then surely there must be more worlds out there, however little I understand them. Maybe the great beast created one with more water and more metal. Morepeople.

Yet, as I squirm away from the flywheel, I notice something I hadn’t before. It’s the angle, and the shadow, of a spine against the stone floor. Looping my foot through the lantern on the stone, I swing it closer, and the shadow doesn’t move. Which means it’s not a shadow, but a hole.

But why would part of this machine go through the floor? Its steady foundation balances it perfectly. But there it is.

After a minute of acrobatics, the lantern hangs off a strut and I am nearly upside-down, balanced halfway between a protective plate and a long metal support beam. There’s a larger metal plate down here, secured with those fancy screws the Ancients were fond of using. It takes me longer than it should to loosen them with a ratchet, and I have to sit up and let the blood drain from my head before lifting the plate off.

It reveals a much bigger hole than I’d expected.

Several beams, shafts, and other Ancient nonsense pour through a hole nearly a meter wide and almost perfectly circular, but shallow. Definitely intentional. The machine disappears beneath concrete, and I’m positive it doesn’t end there. Why take the time to cut a big hole in unyielding stone just to gain a few centimeters? Any smart engineer would just make the machine a few centimeters taller, or reconfigure it to function on its side, orsomething. Whatever thatsomethingis, it goes under the tower. Which means it’s time to do what I do best.

Untangling myself from loops and bearings, I wipe black grease off my palms with the sides of my slacks and hold my hands to my mouth. “Moseus!” I call. “Mose—”

“Yes?”

I start and spin around. Moseus appears behind me from the first of those two shadowed doorways, which looks like it leads into an equally dark room. Taking a steadying breath, I say, “I need a shovel. And some bracing. I need to dig a really big hole on the other side of this wall. Part of Machine One”—I point to the machine in question—“goes beneath the tower. I want to see if I can reach it. It’s close enough to the side that there shouldn’t be an issue with—”

“You don’t need to bother with that.” Moseus observes the machine with an unreadable expression. “It would be a fruitless endeavor.”

“But any endeavor that helps me understand the machine is fruitful.”

Moseus shakes his head. “I believe it will be a waste of your time.”

“Well, it’s my time, isn’t it?” A little voice in the back of my head that sounds remarkably like Salki warns me to even my tone. I don’t want to lose what I have when I’ve only just gotten my hands on it. Forcing my tight shoulders to relax, I amend, “Just let me look. I need to know.”

Moseus frowns, and after several seconds, he acquiesces. “That room, there.” He points to the second doorway, directly across from the exit on the other side of the stairs. “See if there’s something you can use.”

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