Chapter 6

 

Serah blinked against the drooping of her eyelids. Warmth from the teacup cradled between her hands made it difficult not to yawn. Light from the lanterns intermittently swelled and faded. She’d almost given in to sleep when the white glow flickered and brightened.

The door groaned as it opened, inch by inch. A man carried the scent of the outdoors and the evening’s chill inside with him. Serah stood from her seat and poked her head through the archway, noting the goggles wrapped around his eyes. He tied a fist-sized pouch to his belt before warming his hands at the furnace.

“Good to see you have arrived, Serah Kettel.” He turned to face her. “Are you ready to begin?”

Serah shook the tension from her fingers and lifted her head to meet his gaze. Her heart pounded against her ribs. “Yes, Master Machin.”

His lips stretched across a set of graying but perfectly intact teeth. He hung his coat on a peg before motioning for Serah to follow. She looked back at Gelsey, who issued an encouraging nod.

Serah squared her shoulders and followed, her steps ceasing where Machin stopped before a table filled with globes of glass. He’d turned his attention to the ceiling. Wisps of gray hair brushed the back of his shirt collar as he considered the lanterns above him. He adjusted his goggles and focused magnified eyes on her.

“Most of these,” he said, pointing to the glass globes, “will be framed and sold by the shopkeeper in town. New owners will light the globes with candles or fill them with wicks and oil.”

Serah nodded, thinking about the candle lanterns and oil lamps she’d seen in Havenbrim and in her parents’ home.

“But, there is one globe at this table that will become one of those.” Machin raised a finger to the lanterns that hung from the ceiling. Their globes glowed and sparkled without wicks or candles. The lanterns were filled with light from no discernable source.

Serah’s breath hitched. During my interview, Machin said he’d reveal the source of the light to his apprentice. She waited, hoping he’d continue on the subject.

Machin slowly bent forward until his nose touched the table, and then he disappeared behind it. When he emerged, his hands were filled with a gilded casing that shined copper.

“While you’ve been away,” he said, “I’ve been crafting this.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

He lifted a round, crystal clear globe from the table and slid it inside the casing. It fit snugly between the gilded edges of the frame, allowing the bottom of the globe to stay suspended without a bottom. Serah’s breathing shallowed as Machin untied the pouch from his belt and shook its contents onto the table: a domed lid that matched the casing’s copper gleam.

He twisted the cap into the hollowed end of the globe. A sharp hiss drowned the clinking of metal to glass. The cap’s lower ridge glowed red.

Serah reached out, pausing when she felt a warm, dry heat, not unlike fire from the furnace. She snapped her hand away.

“How is this possible without fire?” she said.

“The metal reacted with the Celestial Glass to form a seal,” said Machin. He rubbed his hands together and smiled. “An impenetrable seal.”

Serah had difficulty returning his smile. Her brows pinched together. “Master Machin, if the globe is sealed, how are we to light the lantern?”

“That, Serah Kettel, will be one of your tasks. You must figure out how to open it again.”

Uncertainty pressed upon her lips and deepened into a frown. When the lantern cooled to room temperature, she held down its base and grasped the lid—she dug her fingers into the lid’s lower ridge, pulling and twisting until her fingers were creased with pink. But it wouldn’t budge from the globe.

An interesting puzzle, she thought. And, yet, something about that globe seems familiar.

She sat staring at the lantern, with her chin wedged in her hand, long after Machin had left the table.

Gelsey set her palm on Serah’s shoulder. “Dear, it’s time to rest. Machin has gone to bed.”

“Oh!” Serah blinked and searched for an open window, but they were shuttered for the night.

She rubbed her eyes. The candles in Mother’s lamps lasted only a few hours before needing to be replaced.

“Gelsey, will the lanterns stay lit all night?”

“Yes, which is why the bedrooms are in the cellar, underground.”

“But isn’t it cold?”

“You needn’t worry,” Gelsey tittered.

Serah shadowed the round woman’s featherlight steps to where she pulled a hatch—a trapdoor—from the floor’s surface. The opening uncovered a stair ladder that descended into the darkness. After waiting for her hostess, Serah took small, careful steps down the stairs. When her head dipped beneath floor level, something from below clicked three times. A long scratching sound followed.

She looked down and over her shoulder to where Gelsey held a torch, much like the one Machin had given Graham. Blue light flickered and spread until it illuminated the underground space.

Serah covered her nose with one hand and tried not to gag as she continued downward. “The smell is terrible, enclosed like this.”

“I know.” Gelsey’s voice, now thick and nasal, had lost some of its sparkle. “Which is why I devised this.” She held out a clamp with jaws no bigger than a toddler’s fingers. She wore an identical clamp on her nose.

Serah’s pout stretched into a wide grin. She slid the clamp over her nose and twisted screws on both sides until its wooden jaws pinched her nostrils shut. “Are you an inventor too?”

“Me? No. Though, I suppose I haven’t escaped Machin’s influence. Sometimes I create tools to make his eccentricities more bearable.” She winked and pointed the torch at a tunnel.

Serah followed, trailing fingertips across tubing that ran along walls of earth and stone. “What are these? They’re warm!”

“Ah, that’s Machin’s idea of a heating system. Air from the furnace blows through the pipes, throughout this passageway, and into bundles of coils installed in our rooms.”

If Serah had a reply, she didn’t get a chance to share it. Gelsey placed a round hand on a door handle and pushed.

“And here we are. Your room, the apprentice’s room. It’s nearest the stair ladder to the floor level. We’ll keep the hatch open until you adjust to the cellar’s lack of light.”

Serah poked her head through the doorway. The torch’s glow cast shades of blue on a bed with a pillow and blanket, a table, a bench, and an empty shelf. Instead of a fireplace, a system of small tubes coiled together and crisscrossed back and forth along one of the walls. Serah pressed her fingers against the tubing and smiled.

“Thank you, Gelsey.”

“We hope you’ll be comfortable. If you need anything, I’m down that way.” Gelsey pointed a finger toward the darker, deeper end of the tunnel. “Your torch is on the table.”

Gelsey waited for Serah’s torch to spark blue before she yawned and slipped away.

Serah sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the soft rattle of heating coils as bursts of air passed through them. Jumping at the soft sucking sound above her, she lifted the torch for a better view of the ceiling. Row after row, ends of pipes lined the top of the room like a slice of honeycomb. After another minute or two it happened again—an intake of air, soft but determined, as if something at the other end of the pipes was inhaling the room.

With nothing to unpack and nothing else to do, Serah removed her shoes and outer frock, and crawled into bed. Despite the gassy smell of rotten eggs, she removed her nose clamp soon after extinguishing her torch. With a sigh, she pulled the blanket to her chin. For the first night in weeks, she smiled as she closed her eyes.