The Cogsmith's Daughter (Desertera #1)(2)
Strictly speaking, Aya didn’t have to walk all the way to the other side of the palace for water. Each of Desertera’s four towns had their own wells. Sternville, her village at the rear of the palace, had one not five minutes’ walk from her hovel. The water was a bit muddy, but it wasn’t any worse than what she would find in Bowtown. However, the neighborhood children liked to stand over the Sternville well and spit in it, racing to see whose saliva could reach the water first. Instead of stopping them, the wellmen simply turned the children’s game into a gambling one, and when they were drunk enough, they imitated it with piss.
To the west of the palace, Portside also had wells. The village was home to the merchants and traders of Desertera, and they had a crude filtration system to clean the water for cooking and other crafts. However, they weren’t too polite to the wellmen’s wives and ladies of the Rudder from Sternville, and they made a point to charge Sternville residents an unfair price to use the well. Likewise, Starboardshire, the eastern village and home to the lesser nobles, had several wells. Aya would never have dreamed of seeking water in Starboardshire. Even if she could have afforded it, the guards would have never let her across the border—even when her father, the only cogsmith in Desertera, had been alive.
Therefore, Bowtown, all the way to the northern side of the palace, was her best option. Bowtown housed the agricultural district’s farmers and gardeners. Like Sternville, it was a poor neighborhood, but they at least respected their water and other people, no matter what village they came from. And of course, the Bowtown wells were the only other ones Aya could afford.
As Aya walked through Sternville’s crooked streets, a few children poked their heads out of their doors. Aya glared at each of them, hugging her jug tighter to her chest. Near the Sternville-Portside border, six children tumbled out of their tent. Aya recognized them instantly. They belonged to Mrs. Jack Wellman, and they were the most ill-behaved litter in all of Sternville. Aya picked up her pace, but the oldest rushed toward her, waving his arms to get her attention. He was about thirteen, just old enough to begin understanding what Aya was and that he would like to be a part of it in a few years.
“Miss Cogsmith! Won’t you stop and say hello?”
The boy motioned to his five younger siblings, and they all swarmed Aya’s legs. The three girls tugged at her skirts, while the two boys reached into her pockets.
“Where are you going?”
“Why are you walking so fast?”
“Miss Cogsmith, will you play with us?”
“Why is your jug so big?”
“Miss Cogsmith, why are your pockets empty?”
Aya did not answer—to answer was to encourage. Instead, she raised her eyes to the palace and trudged onward. When she reached the anchor line between Sternville and Portside, the children released her skirts and ran back to their tent.
As Aya approached the palace, she felt her mouth go dry with thirst, and she wondered if the structure shared her longing for water. It had been created as a ship, but it now sat buried up to its propellers in sand. Over the years, the metal itself stayed intact, while its color slowly oxidized from black to brown in the sun. The name of the ship, Queen Hildegard, had faded as well, leaving only the letters H-I-D-E on the palace’s port side. Beyond the letters, the side of the ship only contained rows of windows, meant to let sunlight wash over the top floors and glimpses of sea life sneak in the bottom ones, and a large door and drawbridge, meant to release weary travelers into a safe port on land.
Aya let her eyes wander from the railing at the top of the palace, all the way down the chain to the anchor at the edge of the village. The borders were all marked by the chains of the anchors, one at each corner of the palace, cast down when the water level first began to drop, back when the people on the ship had hope for finding a fertile new home.
As a child, Aya used to start at the Portside-Bowtown anchor, placing her hand on the chain and running as far as she could before her fingertips could no longer reach the links. She’d imagine that she could climb up the anchor lines and swing herself nimbly onto the palace’s deck, ready to guide the ship on its next adventure, like Queen Hildegard in the stories her father used to tell her. His tales about the palace were far better than those espoused by any of the street preachers and, as Aya had learned, much more romantic than the palace itself.
*
“Our people didn’t always live in Desertera, Aya.” Papa pulled her onto his lap. “Once, hundreds of years ago, our ancestors lived in a beautiful, lush land—a land filled with grass and trees and lakes and rivers. There were rolling hills, open meadows, and flowers, all kinds of colorful flowers.”
“Was there still sand?” Aya brushed a few grains from the hem of her skirt.
“There was but only at the edge of the ocean and in lands far away from ours. Our land was full of nature and cities. Oh, the cities, Aya! They were full of metal and stone with buildings as tall as the sky. All the machines ran by gears and cogs, like the gizmos in my shop, and there was enough water and steam to power every single one. More than that, there was enough water and steam to power entire cities, whole countries.” Papa swept his hand in the air, pointing at all the gadgets and beyond the ceiling.
“What happened to it all?”
Papa sighed. “Do you remember what I told you about the Gods?”