It wasn’t as loud as she’d expected, although there were plenty of noises everywhere. Steam hissed, gears locked and parted, and voices shouted loud over the songs sung by the machines.
“Over here,” called Silas, tugging her along with him. “My office...just up here...”
She found herself on one side of the Forge, where niches had been cleverly incised into the rock, and shaped into small rooms. Several were occupied, but he led her to the largest one at the end. It was, oddly, quieter than she would have expected. But she knew that sound could be both unpredictable and manipulated. Questions flew helter-skelter through her mind, but before she could ask them, reality intruded.
“I’m off,” said Hiram. “You want me to have them bring over that coggleblasted clock-sick Mistletoe machine on my way?”
Silas shook his head. “We’ll go to it, I think. Get the overall picture first.”
“Right then. I’ll see you both later.” He nodded to Dorothea. “Be careful now. Some of these things bite.”
She laughed. “I’ll watch my fingers. Bye, Hiram.”
Silas beckoned her to a massive table. “This is the layout of the Forge,” he gestured to a map on one side. “But what we’re going to be doing today is trying to repair this...”
The blueprint was huge, no doubt about it. But instead of astounding her, it entranced her. It took no time at all for her to remove her jacket, hang it absently beside another, and then hurry back to the table. Fascinated by the Mistletoe machine’s blueprint, she found a footstool and promptly jumped up onto it to get a better view.
Her heart thundered. This, she knew, this was what she had always wanted, and what she knew she was born to do.
“D’you have a blueprint-rover?” She called out to Silas, not moving from her spot.
“Coming up.” Within moments he was beside her, passing her a large circle of magnifying glass that had small wheels rotating freely around the edge. She could slide it wherever she needed a closer look.
“Ah,” she sighed, nudging it across the vellum. Its little wheels whispered as the lens sailed over the inked lines. “Wonderful.”
Silas shook his head with a laugh. He’d never imagined a woman like her down here, and couldn’t ever have envisioned her bent over his huge table, lost in the minutiae of a complicated blueprint.
But then again, he’d never in his wildest dreams imagined someone like Thea.
“This machine is astounding,” she said, tossing the words over her shoulder with a glance at Silas. “And it’s old too, isn’t it? Some of the fittings and connections look as if they were created a hundred years ago.”
“You’re right,” he confirmed. “It’s one of the first designs for creating something that was simply for pleasure. Stories abound, some say it was a whim, others that it was a wager between two engineers, and still others say it grew by itself. But as soon as the materials were fed in? Mistletoe appeared. And you’ve seen the results every single year.”
“I have,” she nodded, still leaning over the slightly wrinkled blueprint. “Everything I’m looking at seems impossible, almost as if it absolutely shouldn’t work at all, and came to exist from an assortment of gears, wheels, tubes, steam pumps...whatever...just thrown into a forge and mixed with a magic potion.”
Silas had to laugh. “You’re not wrong.” He leaned over next to her and pointed to the very top of the aging vellum. “See this?”
“I can barely read it,” she said, squinting at the faint writing.
“It’s the crest of the Arcvale Clockworks and Foundry.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “The company that made the massive Arcvale clock? The one on the sixth-level obelisk?”
“That’s the one.”
“It dominates the entire city,” she said, shaking her head. “And to think it all started here...oh, look, beneath the crest it says The Mistletoe Engine.” She carefully touched the crest. “This is a piece of history, as well as a blueprint. And it makes it all the more important that we repair that machine.”
Straightening, she squared her shoulders. “Lead me to it, Silas. I want to touch history, as well as see if it can be brought back to life.”
“This way.” He led her toward a passage that took them away from the central Forge. She walked beside him, and he could almost see her quivering with excitement. He wondered if she’d realised that her words about the clock had provided one more confirmation of where she was from. The Renslows would know about the Arcvale wonder and the obelisk.
Not many folks on the sixth level even knew it was there.
Chapter Eight
This, decided Dorothea, was her idea of Heaven.
Not the polite hush of drawing rooms and galleries, where admiration was measured in murmurs and everything dangerous had been varnished into obedience—but this. Heat that kissed her cheeks the moment she stepped in. Light that lived low to the ground in molten pools and flaring mouths of flame. And above it all, the immense, relentless music of industry.
