Chapter 21
Chapter 21
I’m a little buzzed when I head home. We’d had a good game of dice going until Frantess opened her big mouth and ruined everything. Now everyone feels awkward, Gethnen especially. But it’s probably for the best—I might have gotten carried away and had one or two glasses too many, and then I’d get lost in the mist and have a massive headache by late sun. I’m too old to drink more than a glass or two at a time, unless Maglon waters it down. Which he does, sometimes, especially when the harvest wasn’t great. We all act like we don’t notice.
I’m five paces from my door when I see a shadow in the mist. It nears, revealing too-white skin and too-white hair; a wraith clothed in black. When it moves toward me, I scream. Only a chirp of the sound makes it past my lips before the wraith’s large hand covers my mouth and presses me against the house, barring both my arms with one of his. Not my legs, though, and I get in a swift kick on his upper thigh before he grapples me again and maneuvers out of harm’s way.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” he hisses, an unfamiliar accent clipping his words.
Ruin’s hell he isn’t there to hurt me! I kick again. Writhe, but the guy is strong. Incredibly strong.
“Are you the artifact collector?” he rushes.
That pacifies me for a moment. I blink away the fog, trying to get a better look at the stranger’s face. He has abnormally long hair, whiter than Entisa’s, pulled back in a braid. Several pieces have come loose and hang over his neck and face, making him look wild. His eyes ... no one in Emgarden has eyes like that. Skin like that, strength like that. My mind can’t wrap itself around his existence, let alone the predicament I’ve found myself in.
Where did he come from? There’s no one else—
He repeats the question.
I nod as well as I can with his hand—it smells like flowers, of all things—pressed under my nose. How does he know about the artifacts?
He visibly relaxes. “Good.” Then, “What’s your name?”
“I can’t say it with your hand on my mouth, half-wit,” I mutter against his skin, completely unintelligible. He carefully removes his hand and lets up on my shoulders, but he stays in proximity, ready to strike if I try to run. I’m fast, but I don’t think I can outrun those legs. So instead, I answer, “Pell.”
He searches my face. “That doesn’t linguistically match the people here—”
“Pelnophe. Who in Ruin’s hell are you?”
He sets his jaw. “I am someone in need of your help. My comrade and I live in the tower, and—”
“Wait, what?” I push off the house. The stranger glances down the road, ensuring we’re alone. “That tower?” I point in its direction. “No one lives in that tower.”
“It’s recent,” he explains, sounding now more like a man dying than one about to abduct me. “We need it operating again, but we ... we don’t understand the mechanics of this world. You seem to.”
I gape for a moment. “What mechanics could a tower possibly have?” My insides squirm at the possibility.
“The machines,” he answers, and my stomach drops. “Machines built by creatures of old. They’re in incredible disrepair.”
“The ... Ancients?”
He nods.
My mind can’t picture it. All the artifacts I’ve been able to scavenge are small, and none are whole. What could an entire, impenetrable fortress hold? Far more than I’ve ever seen, surely. The very thought of beholding true Ancient tech, let alone touching it, sends shivers down my spine. My fingers twitch at my sides.
“I ...” I try to find words, wishing I was just a smidgen more sober. “I ... You want me to fix them?”
“Please. You can see them now, if possible. We ... we don’t want to be seen by the others.”
“There’s more of you?”
“One more,” he states, and I recall him saying as much earlier.
I shake my head. “Who are you? What’s your name?”
“My name is Heartwood.” He steps back, giving me some breathing room. “Please, Pelnophe.”
He says my name strangely, elongating the vowels. “PEL-nuh-fee,” I correct. “Pell is fine. Preferred. And ... how many machines?”
“Two.” He again checks the road. “But we’ve nearly reached a third.”
“Nearly reached?”
“I will show you, if you swear secrecy.”
He has the wrong person. There’s no way I’m capable of ... but who else around here would be? And ... I have to see for myself. Bring a kitchen knife and a hammer, in case things get ugly. I can fight myself out of a corner if I need to, especially if there are only two of them. Maybe.
“How do you know about me?” I ask.
“Not many venture out into the desert,” he says. “We’ve seen you coming and going, with Ancient tech in your hands. You’re our best hope at fixing the tower.”
I digest this. “And ... what do the machines do?”
He considers me for a long moment. “I will explain on the way.”
Then, probably because I am a little drunk, I agree, and let this “Heartwood” escort me to a long-forgotten, impenetrable tower.
He doesn’t touch me again.
The machines are ... broken. Badly broken.
The first has most of a foundation, but the rest lies in pieces on the floor. The second is similar. The third ... they’re still burrowing through the ceiling to reach a third. They’ve made enough of a hole in the nearly impenetrable barrier to look through. A machine lingers there.
I wonder who attempted to build such an incredible network of technology, only to abandon it. And fear I can never possibly fix it.
“Heartwood is a strange name,” I quip, hanging nearly upside-down in Machine One to attach some wires. “A deer made out of wood? Who names their kid that?”
He scoffs. “It’s the center of a tree.”
“Trees barely have centers.” The wickwoods make up ninety percent of the trees around here, and they don’t grow any thicker than my thigh. “Moseus has ... well”—I grunt and turn a nut—“a more normal name. Can you hold that thing higher?”
Heartwood obliges, casting light over my work. Strands of hair stick to my eyelashes, and the blood rushing to my face makes it feel thick.
“Moseus’s name is in a very old tongue,” Heartwood replies. “It does not translate well.”
“And yours does?”
I guess he nods, but I can’t see it. A beat later, he says, “Yes.”
“Well, what’s your actual name then?”
He chuckles, more to himself than at me. “You would never be able to pronounce it.”
“Try me.”
He hesitates, suddenly sober. In soft tones, he confesses, “I have not heard my true name for a long time, even from my own lips.”
Grabbing a beam, I right myself. Several uncomfortable seconds pass. “You don’t have to ... if you don’t want to. I’m just goading you.” Though I’m sincerely curious now.
The barest smile curves his mouth. “Ytton’allanejrou. That is my name in Thestean.”
It’s so elegantly lyrical on his lips, I don’t dare try to repeat it.
I rest my shovel on the ground, wiping sweat before it streams into my eyes. We’ve dug a sizeable hole outside the tower, yet we’re getting nowhere. The root of Machine One just keeps going, going, going.
“Why,” I pant, “is Moseus ... not helping?”
Heartwood swings the pickaxe once more before wiping sweat from his brow. He stripped off his leathers to his waist and coiled his thick braid atop his head. How he got it to stay there, I don’t know. “He is of weak constitution.”
“Well”—I stab my shovel down, moments from giving up—“if he dies, I have a great place to bury him.”
Moseus has been working on something for a while, keeping to himself while he builds it, looking a little sicker every day. He doesn’t give me any warning when he hammers something pink into cracks and dents that he and Heartwood chipped into the ceiling opposite Machine Two. I look away when he ignites it.
The boom deafens me. It reverberates through the tower and my entire body, shaking my bones and rattling my teeth, ten times stronger than any passing earthquake. Shock knocks me off my heels and onto my hip. Bits of pebble-sized debris fly past me, and I cover my head, afraid of more. Someone presses into my back, and I glance up to see Heartwood there, shielding me. He was helping me organize screws by size a moment ago. Now he’s a wall between me and the other keeper’s madness.
When the dust clears, he pulls away. “Moseus ...,” he starts, but doesn’t finish.
Lowering my arms, I stand and look at the wreckage. Stone and sand cover the floor. A slow-settling layer of dust coats everything, myself included. But before the hard words climbing up my throat reveal themselves, I notice what Moseus has done.
There’s a hole in the ceiling. Blown right through the stone. Moseus sets a ladder against it and climbs up. For the first time, I see him grin.
“It’s all here,” he announces triumphantly. “I knew it.”
Heartwood steps onto the second floor and pauses. “What is this?”
“It’s a party.” I sit on a blanket on the stone floor to protect myself from the cold. My trousers are never enough, and these sleeping shorts are certainly no better. Hefting the bottle, I shake it so the ale inside splashes.
Frowning, Heartwood glances down the stairs, but Moseus is resting. I’ve already checked. “I do not think this is a good idea,” he says.
“Why?”
He has no answer for that. I pat a cushion next to me—stolen from his room—and pour him a cup.
Had I tried this, oh, thirty cycles ago, Heartwood would have shaken his head at me, retrieved the cushion, and retired to his room. But he’s been spending a lot more time with me lately. I catch him watching me from the corner of my eye. He catches me watching him. I can’t ignore the little spark in my chest when he accepts the invitation and sits beside me. It makes me feel a little guilty that I have an agenda.
I’m going to figure out, once and for all, what I find so off about him. Why he’s so different. Why he speaks the way he does. Why he and Moseus keep so many ... secrets.
It takes less ale than I’d planned.
“A god?” I reply, laughing. “That is absurd.”
He cocks an eyebrow at me, which gives me the impression he isn’t as inebriated as I’ve supposed. In fact, his expression looks entirely sober.
I reel back. “That’s not funny.”
“I wasn’t jesting.”
I study his face, waiting for him to break, but he merely holds my gaze. Almost to the point that his irises do that weird forest-thing again, and—
“Perhaps do not tell Moseus I mentioned it,” he says offhandedly, glancing toward the stairs.
I curse inwardly, still unable to grasp the idea. “Can you ... I don’t know. Demonstrate?”
“Demonstrate how?”
“I ...” I genuinely try to think of a suggestion, but two straight cycles of work have turned my mind to mush, and I’m not as well-versed in our lore as Amlynn is. “Like ... smite someone?”
His lip ticks up, yet the expression is somehow equally sad. “I am not what I once was.”
I look away. I have to. He gives me time to sort my thoughts. After a solid five minutes, all I can manage is “I’d say you were being blasphemous, but I’ve never been particularly religious.”
“That surprises me.”
I lift my gaze. His smile fuller, he mimics, “World Serpent this, gods that, Ruin this—”
I hit his leg. Not hard, just enough to protest. Is it bad to smack a god? Not that I believe he is ...
Heartwood takes my hand. Holds it firmly in his own. “You need to rest. You can sleep in my room.”
“But—”
“I don’t mind.” He leans forward, filling my nose with scents of earth and sage. “I will tell you more later.” He rises to his feet and starts for the stairs. “And Pelnophe? You didn’t have to intoxicate me. I would have told you, regardless.” He must misread my face, because his expression darkens. “Do you fear me now?” His voice registers barely more than a slip of mist.
“No,” I admit, both to him and myself. “I don’t.”
And that is what concerns me.
“I had to!” I bark at Heartwood, gesturing to the gutted corpse of Machine Two. “It was wrong! How many times do I have to say it?”
Moseus looms, silent as a shadow, across the room, but Heartwood looks ready to rip his braid out. “That is not a reason. It was functional!”
“But it wasn’t!” I counter, kicking a wrench. “It looked functional, but it wasn’t.”
“You’ve failed to explain how.”
“I just ...” Anger boils so hot in me it’s giving me indigestion. “It’s just wrong. I feel it in my bones. I meditated like Moseus said, and it just ... isn’t right. I can fix it. I’m sure I can.”
“But without a logical explanation—”
“And if it doesn’t work, I’ll put it back how it was.”
Heartwood shakes his head, color rising in his pale cheeks. “That will set us back days.”
“What the hell is a ‘day’? Stop using that word!”
He flings his hands out. “It doesn’t matter. Moseus and I are in agreement—”
“And I’m the engineer.” I strike my chest hard enough to hurt. “It won’t operate the way it’s supposed to unless I reverse all this.” I gesture to the bits and pieces strewn between us.
Heartwood seethes. “You are young, and you are foolish.”
My anger burns white. “All right, omnipotent one, you can do whatever you want with it.” I kick several springs out of my way.
He growls. “What are you doing?”
“Kiss my mortal ass, Heartwood.” I gesture crudely to him and storm toward the stairs.
“You don’t know what it could do!” he barks.
I whirl toward him. “You’d better walk before I show you what I can do.”
Throwing his hands into the air, Heartwood storms off, but I reach the base of the stairs before he reaches his room. All the while Moseus “keeps the peace” in his own stupid, tranquil way.
“I came to apologize,” Heartwood says.
I sit on the protrusion from the top tier of the tower, looking up at the late sun. The mists have begun to gather across the Brume Mountains. I don’t answer. It’s childish of me, but I don’t.
A full minute passes. He sighs. “I hate it when you sit out here.”
Glad he can’t see my smirk, I reply, “I know.”
An oddly comfortable silence filters between us. After several minutes, Heartwood climbs out on the protrusion and sits behind me, letting his legs dangle over the curved edge as mine do. Unspoken apologies weave between us until we both breathe a little easier. I allow him to coax me inside when that gentle, one-note tone announces oncoming fog.
Seven cycles later, he kisses me in the height of the mists.
“Can I ... touch it?”
Heartwood sits by Machine Three, his back to me, his shirt pulled down to his elbows, his hair pulled over one shoulder. First sun breaks through the mists outside, illuminating the raised scars on his back, forking out like the branches of the trees I’ve seen in his eyes.
The subtlest dip of his head grants me permission. Gingerly, with one finger, then two, I touch one of the slimmer branches near his shoulders. It doesn’t feel like a scar, merely healthy, raised flesh. Like the Well of Creation simply made him this way, just as it made me with two arms and two legs and a dimple on my left cheek.
I trace the branch down to the tip of his shoulder blade, where it merges with others. I run my hand down the length of another, to the center of his back. He shudders.
Pulling back, I ask, “Does it ... hurt?”
He shakes his head. So I follow another branch up to his opposite shoulder where, reaching back, he grasps my hand, knitting his fingers together with mine.
I tighten the belt, hoping that will help the rest of the mechanism turn a little better. I’m pulling back from Machine Three when I hear the ladder shift against the hole in the floor. I wait for a white head to pop up, but whether it will be Heartwood or Moseus—
Heartwood.
I ease myself down from the machine. He’s gone hunting again, knowing I like meat (and Salki likes meat, though he’s yet to meet her), and has been gone four full cycles. If he caught anything, he must have left it on the first floor.
He grins as I untangle myself from the machine and mutter chastisements at him. I told him it doesn’t matter, and Moseus won’t like it, but Heartwood is who he is, and I love him for it. I find my way into his arms and stay there a long moment, debating whether or not to apologize for the grease I’m undoubtedly smearing on his fancy-god leathers.
He’s about to say something, but I hear Moseus approaching from below, so, interrupting as I do, I whisper, “Do you think you could come to Emgarden again? When the mists are high?”
His brow furrows. “Why?” He smooths a loose lock of hair from my face, only to have it fall right back. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong,” I promise, splaying my hands over his chest. “I just need to see you. Away from here. Away from him.”
He runs the pad of his thumb over my cheekbone, then kisses me chastely. “I will always come when you ask, Nophe. Always.”
My lungs empty as I arch into him, desperate to be closer. My hands run down his bare shoulders and over the prints of his godhood, memorizing every dip and facet as he murmurs my name into my hair. Together we are everything, heaven and creation and hell, and I know in the deepest recesses of my mind, heart, and body that I will never be the same.