4. Bolts, Gears and Sheer Brilliance
Bolts, Gears and Sheer Brilliance
“You go nowhere until I’m gone.”
My temper flared behind my ribs again as I glared at the knife-wielder’s retreating form and the overly dramatic sweep of his black overcoat. Yes, sir, Big Scary Man. Would you like me to fetch you some refreshments while I wait?
Self-preservation and the sputter of my anger receding again were the only things squashing my urge to give him a piece of my mind. That, and the very real possibility he’d use that knife to give me several new breathing holes.
I took a few breaths to calm the pulse knocking against my ribs.
What were my options here? Did I run back up the stairs to the Citadel and risk him coming after me?
I would never make it up all those steps before he stabbed me in the back.
And wouldn’t that be a fitting end—murdered while fleeing up approximately one thousand steps.
They’d find my body somewhere around step fourteen.
Glancing through the archway, I found him moving around the circular main chamber.
His hood slipped down as he turned, revealing a shock of flaxen-blond waves.
Who was this man? Why was he here? How could he have known about the catacombs?
Curiosity, my eternal downfall, tugged me forward through the archway.
After deciding that following the stranger with the dangerous cutlery was the intelligent choice here, I kept my back against the wall and slid into the room.
He stalked around, past the illuminated words scrawled across the wall, and to the other side of the space.
Like the shard of lumin rock hanging from the cord around my neck and the speckles in the walls around us, the large letters glowed.
The writing, in ink made from lumin dust, circled half the room.
When the astral vault rends asunder, the sky will fall, and the kingdom shall be reborn in starlight.
The first time I ventured into this place and read those words, I got a prickly sense of recognition. I was sure I’d heard them before, but couldn’t remember where. Probably a cheerful bedtime story about apocalyptic prophesies.
He approached the massive table that dominated the cavernous room; its carved wood was dusty and darkened with age. It was large enough to seat at least twenty people if there were chairs to sit down on. Though it wasn’t that type of table.
A map of the continent covered the surface, the changing elevations carved into the wood creating a three-dimensional image.
The bas-relief depicted every detail, every bump and ridge of the landscape.
Every mountain and valley, every cliff and shoreline scaled to perfection.
Place names identified mountain ranges, waterways, towns, and fortresses—some place names long gone.
It even called the kingdom taking up the entire continent ‘Siderum’.
There hasn’t been a kingdom named Siderum for over two centuries. The continent was now carved up into three. Volantia, the kingdom we were standing in, was the largest and encompassed the center of the continent. Solis bordered us to the south and Lunae to the north.
The man scanned the map as if to get his bearings. His broad shoulders bent over the carving, causing curls to fall over his brow. He straightened and approached the only other thing in the room.
The object was a mechanical work of art. A triumph of design. Beauty in motion. The fusion of metal, bolts, gears, and sheer brilliance. I spent every night for months learning every dial, every possible outcome, and marveling at the pure genius of the device.
The orrery contained gears of all different sizes—many more gears than the armillary sphere in the Celestial Library.
This apparatus, however, was hand-powered, moving only when the operator set the many dials and spun the crank.
With this many dials combining endless variables, this thing could probably predict the end of the world.
It was also much more compact than the massive instrument predicting the alignment on the top floor, its footprint only about a meter square and stood only slightly taller than the man.
Even more unique to this mechanism was the large lumin rock and convex lens on the top of the device, shining a small but strong beam of white light in whatever direction the gears positioned it.
If done correctly, this resulted in the additional function of directing that beam of light to any chosen location on the continental map.
The man stood facing the panel, studying the dials and deciphering the labels. I slid my foot across the dusty floor. His eyebrow rose. Wonderful. Excellent peripheral vision to go along with the threatening demeanor and the pointy weaponry.
He adjusted a dial, then another. The mechanism clicked, a gear moved, and then clicked again. He turned another. This time, nothing moved. The device instead protested with the distressing, repetitive crunching of grinding cogs.
I cringed at the dreadful noise. Stars above, what was he doing?
He tried another dial. A resounding click echoed, and a long, drawn out high-pitched scraping sound followed. A muscle along his sharp jawline tensed in frustration as he rolled his shoulders.
“You’re doing it wrong.”
The words caused me to startle, even though they came out of my own mouth.
Brilliant. Let’s antagonize the man with the knife.
And considering where that knife had been only moments ago, I should really let him struggle for much longer.
Weeks seemed appropriate. But curiosity ate me up from the inside and apparently caused me to do monumentally stupid things.
Big Scary Man turned to face me. His green eyes were bright even in the lumin light. I sucked in a breath, so sure a man with so much malice would have dark eyes. As if he needed another unfair advantage besides size, strength, and weaponry. Let’s add ‘unsettlingly handsome’ to that list.
He exhaled with a huff. “Do you care to enlighten me?” The deep rumble was tinged with annoyance.
The man—who was asking so politely—was a striking mix of youthful skin, rough edges, and flinty, jaded eyes.
A pale scar split his right eyebrow, catching the lumin light like a flaw in an otherwise careful design.
I would be tempted to say he was attractive if it wasn’t for the promise of violence in his stare.
Well, and the fact that he’d literally just threatened to kill me.
Call me picky, but that’s usually a deal-breaker.
His hostility was permanent, etched into the angles of his face: a straight nose, defined cheekbones, a wide, stubbled jaw. The look alone should have made me run, and yet I stepped toward him anyway.
Those vivid eyes followed me across the room. I stopped in front of him and had to look up—way up—to meet his icy gaze. Dangerous and brooding never seemed to come in convenient, eye-level packages.
I lifted my chin with all the dignity a girl who’d just stammered out her introduction could muster. “You’ll have to move,” I drawled.
Seconds ticked by. Either he was surprised or considering how best to maim me without getting blood on his coat. Finally, he took a step back.
Huh. Point to me, I suppose. Small victories.
My eyes swept over the panel to reacquaint myself with the mechanism.
Embossed across the top of the panel was the word Antikythera and spaced across the surface of the metal plate were a variety of dials of different sizes.
His looming presence hovered just behind me, but my curiosity eclipsed the unease as if ancient astronomical instruments were more interesting than my continued survival.
I took a deep breath. “What are you trying to input?”
“The vernal equinox.”
“Just the output? No prediction?”
“Just the output.”
Well, that’s easy. Almost disappointingly so.
“The vernal equinox is typically the seventy-ninth day of the solar calendar.” I began adjusting the dials.
“If you set the correct solar time in days on this dial, it will adjust the current lunar month on that dial, with the resolution to within a week or so, of course. And then you’ll want to set the metonic cycle dial into the horizontal position, because I’m assuming you don’t care what the lunar phase will be?
” I paused and turned my head in question.
“No.”
A man of many words, this one.
I rotated the dial. “Did you know that this mechanism actually accounts for Alauda’s unstable, eccentric orbit?
” Because now, of course, was the appropriate time to deliver a lecture.
I rattled on, “The epicyclic gearing can account for the acceleration and deceleration within its orbit around the sun. It’s a masterpiece of astronomical engineering. ” The last gear clicked into place.
It was quiet behind me. I chanced a look over my shoulder.
He was closer than I realized, so I had to look up again to see his cold, unreadable expression.
The image of his pointy little problem solver pressed to my throat flashed in my mind and made me pause.
Right. Murderous stranger. I really needed to stop treating armed intruders as if they were here for academic discussion.
“Okay…well, that’s it. We just have to turn the crank now that the gears are set.”
The beam of light traveled across the continent, sliding over the mountains and valleys of the map as I spun the crank. It stopped on the floor to the left of the table. We both stared at the light in confusion.
“Well, that doesn’t seem right.” Unless he was looking for a very specific dust bunny. Or perhaps the location of my dignity, which had clearly landed somewhere around here. I checked to be sure the crank wasn’t stuck. Nope, it finished rotating.
The man raised an eyebrow. “Apparently, I’m not the only one doing it wrong.”
I glared at him. Oh, now he finds his sense of humor. I should let him try it again so he can break the mechanism properly this time.
“Give me a second.”