The Cogsmith's Daughter (Desertera #1)(4)
The guard nodded. He held up his left hand to wave and placed his right thumb and forefinger between his lips. Upon his sharp whistle, the other guards’ heads turned. The guard pointed at Aya, her jug, then down to the bow of the ship. The other guards clapped three times in unison to indicate they understood. Aya smiled at the guard, repositioned the jug higher on her hip, and continued around the side of the palace.
As she walked, Aya admired the smooth seams along the palace walls. The craftsmanship was solid on the outside, and she knew that the inside matched its functionality with luxury, rivet for rivet. She wished she lived back in those days of excess her father used to describe. She would have loved her own shop, where she could build more frogs like Charlie and tinker with the numbered circles. Clocks. Her father told her that they used to tell the time, that people numbered the hours by the hands of clocks instead of the angle of the sun or stars. He’d also told her how, on the inside, clocks were made entirely of cogs and gears, the movement of each one spurring movement in the next. If even one piece got out of place, the entire clock would stop working. He had said their family used to work on these clocks and other devices from the steam and machine era, and that was where their name originated: Cogsmith. Aya’s father had taught her a little craft, enough to fix Charlie and the few other machines in their household. Before he died, her father had been an expert cogsmith, the only one left practicing the dead art in all of Desertera.
Aya did not know everything her father had, but she knew enough to admire the rivets that held together the walls and had, long ago, kept the palace from sinking. Maybe. It was a nice story, but she didn’t know how much of it she believed any more. A few people still held true to the sea myths, especially in Bowtown, but everyone Aya knew was too busy working—or enjoying her work—to care much about bringing back the ocean.
As she made her way to the bow of the ship, the guards watched Aya closely. The final guard held out his arm to stop her. “Will you require return passage?” He licked his lips.
Aya knew she wouldn’t be able to walk alongside the palace again. Not for free.
“No. Thank you.”
She’d have to wait for Lord Derringher’s guards to be on duty to take the shortcut again.
Aya walked straight out from the bow of the ship into Bowtown. The wells were directly in front of the palace, in the very center of the village. Unlike Sternville, which contained only shabby wooden hovels and short fabric tents scattered across the dirt, Bowtown’s houses were arranged in curved rows, as if the ship were the world, and Bowtown’s rows of houses marked the arc of the sun around it. Each house had a little fenced area behind it, where the farmers grew whatever desert crops they could, mostly cacti, grains, and wildflowers. The farmers on the edge of town raised livestock—goats, sheep, chickens, pigs—the descendants of the animals taken aboard the ship during the flood. The ancestors had brought horses, too, but they were all kept in Starboardshire by noble families and used for status over nourishment.
A few Mrs. Farmers bowed their heads to Aya as she passed. They sat in front of their little houses, plucking the needles from cacti and tossing them into tin cans. The older women’s hands were tough and leathery, spotted with calluses earned from needle pricks. The younger women’s hands were soft and pink with little specks of red or scabs where the needles still punctured their flesh. Aya would have taken a million cacti needle pricks over her entire body in place of the ones she received every night. But it couldn’t be that way for her—farmers only married other farmers’ daughters—and unfortunately, when her father died, there had been no other cogsmiths to take her.
Aya smiled and returned the women’s nods. She weaved her way through the rows of houses, finally finding the open square with the wells. It was late enough in the morning that she didn’t have to wait in line. She walked right up to the wellman and held out her jug. He took it and bounced it in his hands.
“Five gallons. Two gold coins.”
Aya held her cloak together with one hand and fished the coins from her corset with the other. The wellman raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t say anything. He uncorked the jug and fastened it to the well’s chain. Turning the crank in even circles, he lowered Aya’s jug down into the well. Every year—almost every week, it seemed—it took longer for her jug to reach the water. Finally, she heard the distinct gurgling sound of water pushing air from her jug. When the sound stopped, the wellman spun the crank in the opposite direction until her jug reappeared. He put the cork back in, and Aya handed over the gold coins. The water inside the jug was a bit murky—a consequence of coming late, after everyone else’s containers had stirred up the sediment at the bottom.
“Thank you.”
The wellman nodded, and Aya turned to head back to Sternville. Instead of returning to the palace, she followed the line of houses extending from the wells back to the Bowtown-Portside border. Even if the anchor and its chain had not been there to mark the border, Aya would have seen it immediately. Portside’s streets were arranged in a rigid grid pattern with every building perfectly parallel to the palace’s western side. She followed the anchor chain to Baker Street and turned.
Not only was Baker Street the most direct way back to her and Dellwyn’s hovel in Sternville, it was also the location of several bread and pastry shops. Aya had been hungry when she awoke, and after lugging the full jug back home, she would be famished. As she strolled past the shops, the aroma of fresh baked goods wafted from the windows, and Aya’s mouth watered. She and Dellwyn didn’t often get such treats, but she hoped that she could milk just a little bit more of Lord Collingwood’s influence today. Aya searched for his crest on the shops’ doors, and about halfway down the street, she saw the familiar red square with the black and white cross. Before entering, she readjusted the jug on her hip and used her cloak to wipe the sweat from her face.