Tahki stood, braced against the boat, heart rapping violently. All that progress he’d made with Rye, gone in an instant. He’d never seen Rye act so frantic. At Zinc’s, Rye had been angry, but his anger had still been contained. This Rye tonight was new. A person Tahki never knew existed.
And Tahki had been the one to bring that person out.
He paced the room and slammed his fist on Rye’s worktable. His knuckles throbbed. He kicked the chair, shoved a pile of books to the floor, sent the newspapers fluttering. Why had Hona told him? Why hadn’t Dyraien stopped her? Maybe it wasn’t Hona who’d truly done the damage. Sornjia had said Dyraien liked to control people. Had he planned this? Set up these events knowing Tahki would tell Rye, knowing Rye would hate him for it, so Dyraien could have Rye all to himself? Or had the restless nights made Tahki paranoid?
He fell to the floor and leaned against the wall. Something crinkled beneath him. He peeked down. Black words stared back at him: the newspaper Rye had been reading. It was dated the day after he left the fair. The headline read: Disaster: Steaming Chaos at the World Fair.
Tahki frowned. He spun the paper around to read.
Thomisan Corrine is being held in contempt after his Steam Locomotive exploded during a demonstration, killing seventeen and injuring over fifty. A third of the Innovation Hall has been destroyed.
A series of speculative interviews followed. They determined the tragedy to be the result of negligence. An expert—someone he didn’t recognize—claimed the coal source had been accidentally swapped for a similar black mineral that released a toxic gas when heated. The pressure had built inside the steam chamber and it had burst. Investigations were being held at the capital, and no one was allowed to leave the country until they ruled out foul play.
Tahki marveled in horror at the tremendous power that a seemingly small mechanism had. The power of machines was extraordinary. The locomotive sounded more effective than most modern weapons. If the steam machine had been larger, it might have leveled half the city.
Rain streamed down the window. His eyes followed the wet lines. Explosion. Power. A machine.
After weeks of muddled thoughts, Tahki saw the design in his mind with greater clarity than anything he’d seen before. He’d studied the locomotive in person at the fair and knew the basic components.
He hardly felt his feet carrying him to his room or his hands as they cracked all the lighting roots he could find. He yanked out a sheet of paper, gripped his mother’s pencil, and then sketched rapid lines. He worked in a fevered rush. All other thoughts faded.
Steam was the solution.
Dyraien had been right all along. The river was a power source. All Tahki had to do was convert the water to steam.
Nothing mattered but this. He forgot about Hona, about Dyraien, and even about Rye. He saw only black lines and hard edges. Architecture filled his mind more completely than it had in weeks, in months. More fully than it ever had. He couldn’t just see the design in his mind. He could feel it. Every part of it, a grand, functioning thing, and as he drew, it was as though he breathed life into it. It came alive before his eyes.
Outside, thunder rumbled. A hard sleet roared against the roof. The world cried, flashing brightly, forcing itself over the castle like it meant to bring it down.
Tahki didn’t stop. Not when his hand cramped, not when he felt nauseated from the wine, not when his head pounded so badly he felt his eyes might bleed. He ignored the pain and worked until his blisters popped and exhaustion forced his head to the desk in a dreamless sleep.
Chapter 12
HE WOKE in a puddle of drool and charcoal. Warm light trickled on his face, and for a moment he forgot where he was. As he squinted into the light, he realized the sun had broken through the fog.
Tahki sat up. A paper stuck to his cheek. He gently tore it away. His head throbbed and his hand cramped. For a moment he’d forgotten why his rulers and pens and papers were scattered all over the place. Then his eyes found the design, and with shaky hands, he looked over his work. He’d never designed anything like it before. No one had. It was a product of pure ingenuity, and he knew then that if Dyraien didn’t like it, he’d be finished here, because this design had pushed his architectural abilities to their limit.
He stumbled out of his chair, eager to find Rye, when the events from last night treaded into his mind. His hand held him steady in the doorway. Though his fight with Rye still stung, there were other more concerning matters that plagued him.
Tahki took a breath and thought. So far, he’d lumped everything that had happened to him over the weeks as a series of unrelated events, but what did he really know? One, there was something strange about this castle. He’d hallucinated twice, and then a dead cat—a nonhallucinated dead cat—had come back to life and tried to kill him. Two, Dyraien had attempted to scam Gale, or it seemed that way, and might be hiding his true intentions for this castle. But he had no reason to believe the strange occurrences and Dyraien’s suspicious behavior were connected. In fact, last night Dyraien had been angered by Zinc’s treatment of Tahki. Even if Dyraien wasn’t honest about what he planned to do with the castle, he looked out for Tahki’s well-being. Why he tried to scam Gale wasn’t clear, but there could be a number of explanations. Gale was an admitted alcoholic as well as a washed-up judge. Maybe she
