Chapter 25
Chapter 25
I am the worst friend.
We wait until the mist falls again. Fewer witnesses, fewer questions. Salki comes with me, because she claimed Entisa as her mother and Entisa claimed her in return, and if anyone does stumble upon us, she’ll be able to turn them away. I won’t. Salki left Casnia and her artwork with Maglon at the alehouse and followed me, wordless, out here.
It feels wrong, that first shovelful of dirt. I apologize to Salki again, but she just clicks her tongue, annoyed at the repetition of my regret. It’s easier to be annoyed than hurt. I’m hurting her. I’m hurting everyone. And yet they let me, again and again and again.
But I have to know. Something is missing, and I have to find it. This necklace is a literal key to that.
“Why didn’t you keep it?” I asked.
“Because it was hers,” Salki replies. “She never took it off, even when she bathed. It felt wrong to separate them.”
And yet here we are.
I’m a few decimeters down when the guilt suffocates me. I pause. “We don’t have to do this. There has to be another way.”
“Just do it, Pell. Quickly. You can make it up to me by explaining it all.”
Not while I dig. At the pace I’m setting, I’m too breathless to talk much. “Do you remember where I pulled out that machine?”
She hesitates. “The floor in your kitchen?”
I nod, and dig.
It’s not a pretty job. I don’t measure out my perimeter or shore up the sides. I just dig, straight down to where Entisa’s head should be, my fingers cold vises around the shovel handle. I know I’m getting close by the smell. I grit my teeth and bear it, but Salki moves away, facing the road, her back to me.
I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.
I dig carefully, not wanting to skewer the decomposing body beneath its white wrap, which the earth has turned sepia. The moment I uncover the burial shroud, I pull out Arthen’s knife and cut into it. It takes me a long moment to figure out which part of the rotted corpse I’ve found—the shoulder. Turning as far away as I can, I get a few cleaner breaths of air before digging further, revealing more of the burial cloth. I cut it away, nicking one of my fingers and then uncovering a cluster of maggots.
My stomach seizes. Swallowing bile, I rip the cloth back, finding more beneath it ... her dress ... and—
A silvery chain.
I grab it. I’m not gentle. I’m bathed in the stench of death, and if I don’t pass out, I’ll surely be sick. So I yank and twist the chain up. The pendant gets stuck under the burial cloth. I hack away at it, desperate to finish, and the tin medallion comes loose, just like Salki’s but with a green edging like rust.
Pulling a turnscrew from my belt, I shove its narrow end into a link and twist, breaking the chain and freeing the pendant. Then I rebury Entisa as quickly as possible. I’m a third done before I have to scrabble out of the grave and vomit behind the headstone. Salki, ever generous, steps over and pats my back, then crouches and starts filling the hole with her hands. Wiping my mouth, I grab the shovel and help her, glad I was at least able to hide the body before Salki had to see it.
It’s a filthy job, but we finish before the mist lifts. Anyone bothering to look will see that the soil has been disturbed. We retreat to Salki’s home and scrub filth from our hands—me from my entire body—then set out rosemary and dill to purge the scent of decay from our noses. There are emilies blooming right outside Salki’s door, but they don’t carry a scent. Only that soft, eerie light.
“I’ll tell you everything,” I promise once I’m dressed, Entisa’s pendant biting into my closed fist. “I promise.”
“Okay,” she whispers sadly, but without judgment. And I leave her there alone, without her mother or Casnia, hoping to make it back to the tower before the mists lift, knowing I’ll have so much to make up for when they do.
The mist has cleared by the time I arrive at the tower, Entisa’s pendant pressing red lines into my fingers and palm. Heartwood watches from one of the windows, and in a flash he’s downstairs, pulling open the doors. I half collide with him when I arrive.
“I have it.” I heave for breath and blow sweat-stuck hair from my forehead. It hurts to open my hand, but I show him the flat tin piece, with its square body and curious corners.
Three fine lines form between his drawn eyebrows. “I thought you were returning it.”
“Not this.” I squeeze his arm before pushing past him, grabbing the hem of his shirt to pull him with me. “This is different. The other was a copy.”
My legs protest every step of that winding staircase, but my heart pumps hard, enticing them forward. Machine Two remains pulled away from the wall. I wipe perspiration from my eyes and race to it, crouching again before that door. A new set of hurried footsteps sounds on the stairs; Moseus has overheard the commotion and come to see. I’m so focused I hardly think twice about him. This is it. I feel it in my bones, in that hollow chasm punched through my core.
With the tower keepers looking on, I press Entisa’s pendant into the subtle indentation of the wall.
A sudden hiss of air from the hairline cracks startles me. I whip my hands back, but the pendant sticks to the stone like it’s been suctioned there. The stone door pushes outward. A mechanism behind it groans as it slides the heavy stone to the right, revealing a doorway one meter tall and one meter wide. Soft pink light radiates from within.
A laugh escapes me. Heartwood whispers my name like a prayer, and Moseus exclaims something in a language I don’t recognize. I crawl through. The revealed chamber is small, just large enough for two adults to stand side by side. A tall, rose-colored crystal takes up the rest.
I gape at it. It’s as tall as I am, narrow at the base and flowering out at the top, cut in clean, symmetrical lines. Translucent, dull, quiet. I press a hand to its surface. Room temperature.
Heartwood remembers my request not to leave me alone with Moseus and enters before the older man. His eyes and mouth are round, his movements reverent. “Is that ...?”
Swallowing against a dry throat, I pull my hand away. “It ... it looks like the wall.”
Just like the wall. The great amaranthine wall that spans as far as the eye can see, an insurmountable construct without beginning or purpose, other than to separate two peoples who never knew one another.
“It is.” Heartwood’s breath stirs my hair. “This is amaranthine.” He, too, presses a hand to it, closes his eyes, and says something in his godly tongue—words far more lyrical than whatever vernacular Moseus had uttered. I recognize a word that means an expression of relief or wonder, but I don’t catch the rest.
When had Heartwood taught me that word?
Moseus elbows his way in, and I press back toward the door, not wanting to touch him. He stares at the crystal, cheeks sucked tight to his teeth.
“But how did they get amaranthine for power?” Heartwood asks.
“Maybe it was mined?” I squat. “Look.”
There are raised conduits stemming from the base of the crystal, matching the stone of the walls and floor around it, jutting off in straight lines and right angles into the surrounding walls, disappearing where we can’t reach. But they go to the other machines. I’m sure of it.
Keeping a wary eye on Moseus’s stiff back, I say, “I’ll have to study it. Understand how it works. It might react to emilies.”
Heartwood turns to me. “Emilies?”
“The flowers that grow here. I haven’t had the opportunity to investigate them, but they function in a circuit. They provide power, for machines built to take it.” I raise empty hands. “Perhaps this will react to them. It’s worth a shot. I have some here, from the cording I made, but they’re old, and ... I don’t think they’ll be enough.”
Heartwood says, “I don’t think—”
“Yes.” Moseus’s response is breathy but firm. “Yes, that might work. Can you get more now, Pell?”
Heartwood shifts between the crystal and me. “If we could—”
“No, it’s incomplete.” Sweat beads on Moseus’s brow. “It needs to be repaired. The emilies are a good idea.”
Heartwood’s uncertain eyes flick between Moseus and me. “Then let me. Pell needs to rest.”
“I can do it.” I touch his hip reassuringly where Moseus can’t see, though Moseus’s attention remains locked on the crystal. I could strip naked and sing, and he wouldn’t notice. Still, I lower my voice so only Heartwood can hear me. “I couldn’t sleep now if I tried.” I chew on the inside of my lip. “Heartwood, Ether is so close. We’re so close.”
His countenance warms. The pad of his thumb brushes my jaw, but he lowers it, glancing at Moseus. “I’ll help you.”
“We’ll both help.” Moseus finally steps back from the crystal—my cue to slide out the door to avoid being crushed by bodies. “We don’t know how many emilies it will take. But first, Heartwood, I need your assistance upstairs.”
“I passed a few clusters of them on my way,” I offer as Heartwood, followed by Moseus, climbs out of the hidden room. “One had over a dozen.”
Moseus nods, his dark eyes distracted. “We may need hundreds. Fresh, not the corpses you left here.”
“We can get hundreds,” I assure him. And then the door will open, and Moseus will leave, and my dream will be just a dream and nothing more. And Heartwood—
I can’t think about Heartwood yet. I can’t let myself crack when we’re so close.
Knitting my ring and pinky finger with his, I say, “I’ll start. I’ll pick them in Emgarden, and you can harvest them farther out.”
Hope dances in the whites of his eyes and across his full lips. It’s only a brief goodbye, but I want to kiss him. I want to hold him for as long as I can, to make up for our time apart, and to steel myself against our unknown future. But this discovery trumps everything else.
Something is missing.
I push the sensation down. “I’ll be back,” I promise, and hurry down the stairs, through the shadowed first floor and out into the stark sunlight. I passed the first cluster of emilies about two hundred meters back, not far from the road. I really should rest, or at least get some food into me, but I coax enough energy from my limbs to move at a light jog. Eagerness and anxiety provide my fuel.
I find a bed of ten flowers, their glow only evident when my shadow falls across them. I kneel and, using a turnscrew to loosen the soil, dig down several decimeters before cutting through the tough root and lifting the flower whole from its bed. I set it aside and cut a second, a third, a fourth. When all ten are free, I loop their stems together and hang them off my belt, then hurry toward Emgarden, to the other cluster I passed earlier.
I’ve nearly reached them when the ground shakes so hard it sweeps my feet from under me. I fall hard onto my right knee, skinning it. A curse tangles on my tongue as I wait for the quake to abate, but it doesn’t. It grows stronger, bucking the earth beneath me, throwing dust into my face. Spitting, I squeeze my eyes shut, my pulse racing through my veins as my body shakes back and forth in uneven intervals. It’s never been this bad before.
When the quake slows to a rumble, I pick myself up and look ahead. People are milling about in the streets of Emgarden. Alarmed shouts pock the air. Then, glancing over my shoulder, I nearly lose my balance a second time.
Steam rises from the tower windows, and the giant protrusion at the top turns.