Chapter 26
Chapter 26
It’s working. The machine is working.
Yet blood drains from my face, neck, arms, dragging me toward the now-still earth, leaving me feeling empty and small and scared. Why? Why does my heart beat so hard, and so shallowly?
Abandoning the emilies, I race back for the tower. The space between my lungs burns and my thighs ache, but I hurry until I reach its doors, knotted emilies hanging from my hip. Leaning against the right door, I push—
It doesn’t give. I lean into it again. Dig in my heels and push with both hands, but the door stands resolute. I switch to the left door and heave with all my might, but the doors are locked. Barred. Impenetrable, as they were before Moseus first came to my door. Before Heartwood did.
I stumble away from the tower. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Something is wrong. Why is it locked? Why is the tower moving? Moseus knew how to use that crystal. He recognized it, didn’t he? But then what are the emilies for?
Pounding a fist on the door, I yell, “Moseus! Open up! Heartwood!”
No answer.
Holding my breath, I press my ear to the door, listening. The protrusion stops turning, and the ensuing silence pierces.
I back away and cup my hands around my mouth. “Heartwood!” I call, then scream. “Heartwood!”
No answer. No movement. Nothing.
I retreat a little more, checking the windows. The second- and third-floor windows have no covering, but I see nothing. The fortress is impenetrable. I tried so many times before its keepers opened its doors. If I could get another rope, tie it to a wrench like before, maybe I could get it through a window and pull myself up, but I won’t be able to get in—
Fingers trembling with panic, I return to the doors and bang on them again. “Moseus! Let me—”
Be quiet. Don’t let them hear you.
I choke on my own voice, chest heaving for air. That ... I know that thought. I’ve had it before. Here? In a doorway—
And yet the more I try to pin it down, the more ethereal it becomes, until I lose it completely. I’m forgetting something. Something important. I crouch down, pressing my hands to either side of my head. Think, Pell. What is it?
That dream comes up again. The dream that’s haunted me since I reunited with Heartwood. His cold hands on me. I was waiting for Heartwood. I needed to tell him something important. What was it?
She’s dead, either way.
Lowering my hands, I stand, vertebra by vertebra. That sinking sensation in my gut sours and tightens.
Someone was hurt. Someone was—is?—in danger.
Swallowing, I retreat from the tower, desperately searching its windows one more time. Heartwood wouldn’t leave me. He is stubborn and frustrating but entirely loyal. Perhaps to a fault. This isn’t his doing. Oh gods, please don’t let Moseus hurt him. I only just got him back.
Heartwood said Moseus has no power over him. But how true was that? Moseus was supposed to be a peacekeeper. There isn’t a shred of peace alive in me. But I can’t help Heartwood. I can’t get into the tower. Not yet.
Skin pebbling with an internal chill, I turn from the tower and bolt back for Emgarden, fear my only fuel. She’s dead, either way.
I sprint for Salki’s home.
People are still in the streets, looking at the tower, murmuring to one another. “I’m sure it was turning,” one says. Another, “It’s never shaken that hard. Look how it broke my shutter!”
“Pell, do you know?” Frantess asks as I pass.
I shake my head and keep running, searching faces, sidestepping Amlynn and nearly colliding with Maglon. No Salki. My shirt sticks to my back by the time I reach her home. I don’t bother knocking.
“Salki?” I push the door open.
She’s not here, but Casnia is, sitting at their little table, drawing furiously. I step in, as though Salki might suddenly appear from behind a cot or within a cupboard, but there’s no trace of her.
“Cas.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “Where’s Salki? Is she in the fields?” I used to know her schedule to the minute.
Cas shakes her head back and forth, scribbling so hard that her chalk breaks. She’s drawing me and Salki again, the colors off as usual, as are our proportions. I’m nearly a head taller in this rendition.
“Okay, I’m going to find her.” Releasing Casnia, I head to the door. “Stay here.”
Casnia ignores me and continues coloring with a nub of yellow.
I shut the door, turn for the road—
Be quiet. Don’t let him hear you.
I freeze, my hand on the door handle. This. Something before ... It was like this. No ... like this, and I lean into the doorjamb. Bend my knees, trying to trace the memory the way I did with Heartwood’s. Like ... this. I didn’t want to be seen.
It’s slipping away again. I feel it slipping. This wasn’t right. This—
Lifting my eyes, I notice the corner of Ramdinee’s house across the street—not directly, but askew, set back from the road. It’s still empty; Emgarden is so small, and no one’s needed the building. But in the moment my eyes glimpse the edge of the roof, my skin tingles with electricity.
There.
I don’t blink. Barely dare to breathe. Cross the street, nearly running into Balfid. He says something to me, but I ignore him. Concentrate. It was there. I know it was.
Reaching the small house, I press my hand to its stonework. Mist. I was here during the mist. The high mist. Came around to the only door.
Entisa’s been so sick and so demanding. Salki’s wearing herself thin. It’s the least I can do.
Cakes.I came here for cakes, for Salki. Ramdinee made the softest, sweetest cakes—
I approach the front door. Touch the handle. Lean back against the doorjamb. This is right. I was hoping she wasn’t asleep, because it was dark inside. But I heard a shuffle. I didn’t knock, did I? I thought she’d fallen.
Depressing the latch, I push the door open a few millimeters.
It’s so dark, I can barely see. Darker than the mist could ever make it. Blacker than any shadows the closed shutters could afford. If not for the shock of white hair, I would have missed him. I would have walked right in—
Ramdinee’s feet don’t touch the ground. Her knees curl in, her hands clasped around his wrists, her eyes wide, her mouth open in a silent scream. There’s a pit in his torso, a dark and empty vacuity, spiraling, growing larger as Ramdinee’s skin turns ashen. As her grip weakens.
Whatever Moseus is doing to her, I can’t stop it. I can’t fight him. I release the handle and tiptoe away on shaky legs. Rush back to the tower. This proves my fears in the worst of ways.
He is no peacekeeper. He is a sucking pit of darkness.
I’m wrong. I have to be. But all of Heartwood’s stories make me think of it, until I can’t shake the idea from my mind.
I whip my hand back from the door and press it to my mouth. Bile burns my gut. I slide down the jamb until I sit on my backside, staring into nothing, shaking as though struck with fever. Sick, like Ramdinee had been a year ago. So suddenly, and then she was gone, just like that. Sick, because I couldn’t remember otherwise.
I’d gone right to the tower, but Heartwood wasn’t there. I thought Moseus hadn’t followed me, hadn’t heard me, but I was wrong. He’d suspected me, just as I’d suspected him. For so many cycles I’d suspected him. The obsession with the tower, the craving for darkness, little comments he’d make that tickled at lore. But I never shared it. Thought I was losing my mind then, too.
A shudder courses up my spine. He took my memories, just like he took Ramdinee’s soul. Sucked them into himself like some kind of inhuman vacuum. Like some kind of void.
I don’t dare say the name out loud, though I’ve cursed by it more times than I can count. Heartwood came to Tampere in search of his sister, who had joined the war against Ruin. The god created by the inversion of the Well of Creation. A creature that could only take.
Moseus is Ruin. I knew it then, and I know it now. He made me forget. I can’t be wrong, because why would he take false knowledge from me? He took it all from me, discarded me, until realizing he needed me for his tower.
Leaning heavily against Ramdinee’s empty house, I manage to put my legs under me. But ... what on Tampere does the tower do?
I blink. I hid that cog. The one missing from Machine Two, the one I found in Heartwood’s garden. I remember it like it just happened. I’d been skeptical of Moseus’s motivations. Off things he said, his sickness, his behavior. I’d seen through the windows the first time I climbed to the protrusion. Seen that dark pit in his center. I’d feared, but I had no proof, and I had to be careful, for Heartwood’s sake—
I had just discovered the lift. Then I found Moseus with Ramdinee ... I went to the garden to tell Heartwood, but he wasn’t there. He was hunting the scarce deer again. For me. I couldn’t let Moseus access the rest of the machine. I still didn’t understand it, but I felt in my bones I couldn’t let him use it. I hid the cog in that tree. Came back to Emgarden and borrowed Arthen’s knife. Thought I could defend myself, if needed. I took it, and I lost it, and Heartwood kept it after Moseus pulled us apart—
“Serpent save me,” I whisper, pushing hair out of my face with quivering fingers. “I know why I made that machine.”
And I know why I hid it under my floorboards, too. I never voiced my fears about Moseus, but if I was right ...
I built the machine and hid it under my floorboards so even Heartwood wouldn’t see it. So Moseus could never know. Just in case. A few cycles later ... Ramdinee, and then Moseus took it all from me. But I got it back. I remember, now. How?
Because he’s sick,I think, and shudder. Diminished. They both are. His magic isn’t holding.
I sit on Ramdinee’s porch for a long time, trying to sort my thoughts, trying to breathe beneath the weight of them. When I finally stumble away, I barely see the street in front of me. Run into Arthen. Mutter an apology and distantly wonder why people are still in the street. The earthquake passed. The tower sits inert.
“Look at it, Pell.” Arthen squints skyward, one hand shadowing his eyes. “What does that mean?”
Numb, I follow his gaze. Shield my face from the sunlight—
Wait.
Cycle after cycle, the sun has beaten down on Emgarden. I know the sun like I know my own hands. Even in the mist, one can make out its distant orb. Never has it moved.
But now it’s moved. Only by a fraction, but it’s moved, beaming from straight overhead. And if that sundial Salki found is any indication, it will continue to move. My gut clenches and my eyes water, forcing me to look away and blink spots from my vision. I see the edge of the tower over the squat homes of Emgarden.
Heartwood is in that tower.
One thing at a time. Find Salki.
I push past the crowd and slip into her home. Casnia throws a piece of chalk and marches over to me, her latest piece of art, colored edge to edge, wrinkled in her tight hand.
“I’m going to the fields to find Salki.” Salki never goes to work without Casnia. At the very least, she leaves her in the care of another. “Stay here.”
“Member!” Casnia shouts at me.
“Stay here,” I repeat, and turn for the door.
Casnia’s feet pound on the floorboards. She grabs my shirt and huffs, jerking me back. “No! You! You!” She shoves the drawing into my chest.
Gritting my teeth and begging the gods for patience, I inspect the drawing. It’s supposed to be me and Salki, but I’m tall and lithe with choppy yellow hair, and Salki boasts locks of flowing red and a white dress. I’ve never seen Salki wear a dress in my life. Around us are scribbles of green, and above, long lines of black with random blue dots in it.
“It’s very nice, Cas.”
“Sal!” She stabs her finger at the page, screeches from deep in her throat, and grabs fistfuls of her hair.
Sighing, I set the artwork aside and gently cup her elbows. “Calm down, Cas. Big breaths.”
“No!” she shouts at me, so loud I freeze. She snatches back the picture and shoves it at me. “Member, Pell!”
“Member?” I ask. “Remember?”
Casnia slaps her hand against the picture, each thud reverberating through my chest.
“I already have,” I whisper, though Casnia knows nothing of the tower. “I’ve already remembered. I need to find Salki.”
I start to turn, but Casnia grips my wrist and yanks me back. Her bright violet eyes lock with mine. She snarls at me.
“No. Remember,” she snaps, jerking me off balance. As I topple forward, she presses her palm to my forehead. Heat like the moving sun shoots through skin, muscles, and bone.
And I remember.