The Fire Opal Mechanism

by Fran Wilde

  “Sonoria—” Ania caught her breath. Seeing her had been a blow. Losing her again was almost unbearable, despite how she’d changed. “She said the gem could not go anywhere or when it hadn’t been before.”

  “So the valley.”

  “And the library.”

  “And Quadril.”

  “Possibly others, but if we want to get somewhere new, we’re going to have to travel the old-fashioned way. And perhaps the other gem—the emerald—made the same trip—at least the valley and Quadril and here. ”

  In order for them to make the same journey, Ania realized, she would need to accept the fact of the fire opal. The whispers. That she could hear them. She shivered, then pretended to look in her satchel, hiding her confusion from Jorit. She was a librarian. Not a lapidary.

  And Jorit? What was Jorit? She’d been more than a thief, once. Ania lifted the shawl and counted the books she carried. The Book of Gems. The Visitors’ Guide to the Jeweled Valley. A Dictionary of Riverward. She’d been carrying her past with her the whole time.

  The innkeeper came to their room then, carrying bread and tea, looking frazzled. “I am a bit short staffed,” he apologized.

  Ania swallowed hard and handed him a coin from the handful Sonoria had given her. Jorit waited until he left to speak.

  “We don’t know much, then. The clock has moved to protect us, and itself, each time. Sonoria told us how we might guide it, but we don’t know how to fix it.” Jorit’s voice was tinged with sadness. “What if we could go back to a specific time and place?”

  “You lost your brother in the Eastern Shores?” Ania’s voice was level, but she paid attention to how Jorit answered. She felt her own losses sharply. Tried to imagine how much Jorit’s had cost her.

  Jorit sighed. “If I could help him now? Make him well before we fled?” She busied her hands, making a last adjustment on the modified clock. Bending back a gear. Hoping the crack in the gem didn’t mean terrible things. Then she wrapped her hands around the clay tea mug. “I understand your sadness. Losing someone twice.”

  Ania gripped Jorit’s fingers and her tea mug. The warmth returned to her own hands. She closed her eyes and they both grieved for a moment.

  The clock had saved them. But to what end?

  Ania sniffled again. She reached inside her bag again and lifted the books out. “Copies.”

  “What?”

  “We can make copies. Of the books. Like Sonoria did. She said there were only two copies of The Book of Gems left. If we scatter many of that book, and others, they will not be lost as quickly. We can keep them in circulation.”

  “Isn’t that altering something here?”

  Ania shook her head slowly. “Not if we don’t change anything in the texts, I think. We’re not altering. Just copying.” She grinned. “Maybe it will work. Until the clock is fixed, anyway.”

  Jorit shook her head, trying to understand.

  As they rested and regained their strength at the inn, the timepiece remained quiet, the gem, pale within its bent setting. Unable to move them any farther, no matter how many different combinations of “get us out of here” the pair tried.

  They were stuck.

  The inn—despite lacking modern conveniences—wait. Ania stopped herself. For its time, it was very modern. Indoor plumbing, gas lanterns. Light to work by and no need to deal with bedpans. Only a long walk down a cold passage to the washroom in the evening, in the dark of the creaky inn. The inn was very comfortable for its period. At least for the three nights they’d been able to pay in advance.

  It was more that she and Jorit were not comfortable in this time.

  * * *

  When Ania rose in the middle of the night, Jorit remained curled up on the far side of the cot, snoring. She briefly considered asking the thief to accompany her to the washroom, but decided that waking her was too much to ask, even if their friendship felt stronger now.

  Ania slipped on her gown and put the clock in her pocket out of habit.

  The clock ticked unevenly. The restless, cracked gem whispered. As it had all night, beneath her pillow. Ania’s relief that the gem was all right was tinged with the need to sleep. Still, the whispers came: Listen, lapidary.

  She stepped from her room and instantly regretted that decision. A floorboard creaked loudly, and she heard a door open.

  “What have we here?” The innkeeper stepped suddenly from the staircase.

  “What indeed but a patron wishing to relieve herself?” Ania said. Her voice was calm, but her heart raced. The innkeeper had seemed nice enough downstairs. Now, in the waiting darkness, she wondered if that had been a ruse.

  Ania felt the timepiece begin to tick irregularly and decidedly faster as the man moved closer. He put a hand out to touch her arm.

  The clock’s ticking grew louder. No, not here. Don’t jump time here, without Jorit.

  Ania backed quickly into her room and locked the door, without waking her travel companion from sleep. She pulled the timepiece from her pocket—the ticks had slowed again. “We nearly left her here!”

  That couldn’t happen. She thought of the professors in the square, Sonoria.

  She wouldn’t abandon anyone again.

  It won’t happen again, whispered the clock. I promise.

  “Who are you? What are you?”

  When the clock didn’t answer, Ania buried herself in her side of the bed, blankets over her head, and tried to drown out the clock’s ticks.

  She heard Jorit settle again, muttering something to herself, but then she was quiet.

  Beneath Ania’s pillow, the clock kept a more regular pace, though the gem had still looked pale when she peered behind the latch. It did not whisper again.

  Finally, as sunlight edged the windowpane, Ania slept.

  Testimony of Former Pressman Xachar OubliantBefore the Commission on Knowledge and LoyaltyInterim Report

  Special attention should be paid by future histories of recent events to the following excerpts of one exchange between the commission and the student-turned-Pressman Xachar Oubliant:

  Commissioner Varr: “Young man, you claim to have become overpowered by circumstance.”

  The former student shifts in his chair so much that the metal seat creaks. “It’s the truth. I didn’t intend—”

  Commissioner Andol: Intentions are not actions. Intentions don’t leave a mark on history. What was your role with the Pressmen? Did you collaborate with the librarian and the thief? What will you do now?

  Xachar Oubliant plays with a small chip of pale green glass hung from a cord around his neck. He shrugs.

  Commissioner Varr: “That is no answer.”

  He raises his green eyes to the three commissioners. Speaks so simply that the commission is compelled to believe he means it when he says, “Sirs, I will do what is useful. That’s what I’ve always done.”

  Commissioners’ Note: Among those we’ve questioned, young Oubliant is by far the most willing to cooperate with our work. This is admirable.

  8.

  Xachar

  By his fifth day as the assistant Presskeeper, Xachar was in love.

  If one can be said to love a machine.

  Whispers followed him into the Pressmen’s mess hall. He paid no mind. He’d made no friends in the barracks. He wouldn’t need any. He had the press itself. No one else had that. Not even those who’d tended the machine before him, now manning the lesser presses. They’d been broken by the Midnight Emerald, Xachar knew. But he was stronger. His mind was clearer after a workday than it had been the day before.

  He felt their gazes like the sun on the back of his neck. Watched when others spread their packs across chairs so he could not sit near them. He was marked. He knew that too. With his ink-lined fingernails, he could trace any jar or menu and the words would begin to disappear. By the end of his second week, they made him wear gloves to the mess hall. And everywhere else.

  The ink dust that he pulled from the press’s scuppers glowed a lit
tle, but only on the darkest nights. It was nearly impossible to wash it all off. Xachar, as he walked back to the pressroom from the mess hall that evening of no stars and no moon, gleamed like the gem at the heart of the press.

  Instead of going to the barracks to sleep, he returned to the room, to the always-running press. The ink dust scuppers were full again. The gem was a dark, oily color.

  “You’ve been busy,” he murmured. He didn’t expect the gem to reply, and it did not.

  Down the hall, shouts erupted. Pressmen stood to see what the commotion was. Xachar stuck his head out of the room and watched as the First Leader, who had been in office for only eleven months, was clamped at the elbows and sides and carried unceremoniously from her office.

  They marched past Xachar’s door. “Careful,” the leader hissed. “You’ll be next.”

  More men streamed past. Xachar stopped one of them. “What did the leader do?”

  “Former leader. Failure to unify knowledge, I believe.” He sounded happy. “The second captain will address the corps.” They walked out of Xachar’s line of sight, the former First Leader still struggling.

  When they returned, they collected Xachar too, in the same manner.

  They lifted him high, fingers bunching the fabric of his Pressmen’s blue uniform, bruising the skin beneath. They took him down a long set of stairs and into the basement, where they put him in a room alone and locked the door.

  “Why do you do this?” Xachar asked over and over. “All I want—” He paused. This far from the press, his mind clouded with doubts. He began to feel an edge of fear. He’d been important, above, before the leadership change. What was he now?

  By the ink-dusted, fading glow of his skin, Xachar watched a rat run across the opposite wall. It clutched a shred of blank paper in its teeth. A damp stain spread across the dark, uneven ceiling. He smelled something rank and heard a mad laugh echo down the basement hallway from another room. His ears caught a mechanical sound—but it was only the edge of a lock turning metal against metal.

  And as the hours turned into one long night, Xachar’s dust-layered glow began to fade. Darkness gathered around him.

  Then footsteps. A lock’s turn. Xachar shook himself awake.

  The figure who knelt beside him was none other than the lead officer from the Far Reaches campaign. He recognized the man’s voice from speeches at Gladulous Hall.

  “You have fixed the Great Press before, have you not?”

  Xachar nodded. He cleared his throat, trying to find his voice.

  The officer didn’t wait. “What is your loyalty to the First Leader? To the Pressmen? To Knowledge?”

  Xachar looked up at him, confused. They were obviously no longer all the same thing. He thought for a moment. A lie could be the end of him. Choosing wrong also. “My loyalty is to the Great Press,” he finally acknowledged, using the officer’s name for it.

  “That is a better answer than most.” The man lifted Xachar up by his shirt. “You are still needed.”

  On the stairs, the officer made him swear to another First Leader—the third such in two years. “You’ll be guarded night and day,” the man added—but did not tell him anything more until they reached the pressroom hallway.

  “I understand,” Xachar said. Although he didn’t. Not yet.

  Along the wide hallway, the former Pressmen’s chairs sat empty. The printing presses of Knowledge had ground to a halt. The officer saw Xachar glance twice at the empty chairs and shook his head.

  The silence from the pressroom felt as thick as storm clouds. “What did you do?” Xachar whispered. How long had he been in the basement?

  “Yesterday, while you were . . . occupied, the former First Leader tried to reassemble part of the press, to make it work faster. She . . . failed.” The officer shrugged. “The Pressmen are now governed by a ruling committee of fifteen, who advise the first leader and will all make decisions regarding how the press is run. Our first decision was to have the original functions restored. It’s only been a few days. You will be able to fix it quickly.”

  He opened the door, and Xachar stepped through. The room was dark. He knew the gem would be ice-pale before he checked. “Get me all the remaining books with print on them still in storage. Even those with Knowledge if you have to.”

  “But—”

  “Do you want the press running? Do you want to be able to continue to distribute Knowledge?”

  It was enough. The officer backed away, and soon a cart full of books arrived.

  Xachar busied himself with sorting out what had happened. There was another bent gear, two more wheels added. And the ghost of a gem at the press’s center, he reminded himself. He needed to prepare to see that. He removed the unnecessary parts from the press and laid them carefully nearby, in case he required them later.

  The press was clogged with ink. No one had cleaned out the scupper. A wad of paper had worked its way in between the gear shaft around where the emerald was hidden, like a cocoon. Xachar’s teeth clenched in anger.

  He found the Pressmen’s tools where he’d left them—they’d been shoving books into the feeder without any tune-ups. Xachar muttered and shook his head. He pulled the paper away from the emerald’s setting. And gaped.

  The Midnight Emerald had grown quickly. Had the Pressmen had been overfeeding it, trying to make it work faster? During the time that Xachar had spent in the basement, it had nearly doubled in size. Its facets had the oil sheen of a polished gem, but parts of it looked new and raw. It was ghost-pale, starved of ink, but it had grown. Up and around the press frame.

  The cart arrived, the officer pushing it himself. “We’ve scoured the barracks and the town. Unless there are books secreted away, no one in Quadril has any more.”

  Will this be enough for now? Xachar wondered.

  The officer seemed to read his mind. “It has to be enough. If we stop distributing Knowledge, there will be insurrection, and then who knows what will happen to the Great Press.”

  From within the pressworks, Xachar heard something, or thought he did. A voicelike rustling. He’d heard it in his dreams too. His jaw tightened at the thought of the press being destroyed. What would the Midnight Emerald suffer, without ink? A vision came: the hallway, emptied of blank-eyed Pressmen. What would become of Quadril?

  He had to protect it all—Quadril and the Midnight Emerald, both.

  The whispering continued. “Yes,” Xachar heard himself saying. “Yes, I think I can help you find the hidden books. Let me get a pen.”

  The gem, it turned out, remembered every ounce of ink it had sucked from the now-blank books, the shapes letters took when they were laid on the page, and the words’ sounds. It remembered the smell of other books besides those it had wiped clean. And where those books had been. The books those books had been shelved next to. All it had to do was whisper to Xachar, and the remaining books—thousands of them, hundreds of thousands—could be revealed from their hiding places.

  Xachar stayed in the press room for a full week writing the list by hand. When he gave it to the new leader, it was a hundred pages long.

  “We’ll find them for the mighty press,” the Pressmen’s leader said.

  Xachar smiled. The emerald would be pleased to have more ink as it grew.

  9.

  Jorit

  While Ania slept, her pillow muffling the damaged timepiece, Jorit made mental lists of Where, When, and What.

  Four locations: the library, the valley, the Pressmen’s parade, the market. Four eras: their present, hers and Ania’s; their ancestors’ lost past; and two with possible connections to the fire opal and its surviving mate, the Midnight Emerald. If Sonoria’s story was true.

  No time to guess at that. Assume it true.

  Jorit tiptoed to the other side of the cot and slipped the clock from beneath Ania’s pillowed head. “Where else have you been, you lovely creature?”

  A normal gem could not answer. And Jorit knew she couldn’t possibly hear one of th
e mythical gems.

  She laughed at herself for trying.

  But Ania turned over in her sleep and began to murmur again.

  Soon, Jorit could hear distinct words. She bent close and listened as sunrise turned the room’s edges golden.

  “A thousand places, a thousand years. Not much time.” It was Ania speaking, but not Ania’s cadence, not her accent. It sounded like the accent Jorit had heard from the other day. Jorit jumped and nearly dropped the clock again.

  “You asked, I will answer,” the voice continued, through Ania. “The watchmaker who made me is a good man. But gems change a person. He’s a tinkerer. And I am many gems, and more than that. I survived.” There was a long pause. “I haven’t spoken in so long. Exhausting.”

  And then nothing.

  “Please speak again,” Jorit said.

  No more words came from Ania’s lips. The clock ticked unevenly.

  Jorit nestled the clock beneath the pillow again so Ania would not know. The puzzle was getting more strange, not less. And now she couldn’t sleep either.

  On the only shelf in the room, three books were piled one on top of the other. When she lifted them up, they came away with a small tug, their cloth covers sticky with dust. The shelf beneath the books was two shades darker than the rest of the wood. The book pile hadn’t been moved for some time.

  She opened the top book, listening to the spine crackle. A Dictionary of the Riverward. Handwritten.

  The next book was mostly blank; a few pages had very faded, illegible text.

  The third, like the others, and like the banners and signs around the marketplace and the banners in the Eastern Shores, had been handwritten. The Visitors’ Guide to the Jeweled Valley, it read.

  Jorit looked closer. She’d seen it before in the library, but now she realized that the byline was a familiar Far Reaches surname—S. Vos. The handwriting had a modern tilt, closer to her own and Ania’s.

  She thought for a moment and smiled sadly. Copies.

  She left Ania sleeping and went downstairs, to where the inn and tearoom had boasted a small library. The books there were well dusted; the spines were illegible.