Coldmaker(78)

I was working on my Decoy Box when Leroi cleared his throat softly behind me.

I spun around and found a different man than the one who’d left.

His cheeks had filled out again, and his arms didn’t seem so frail. His clothes were free of oil stains, his goatee was groomed, and his eyes were alive. He had sunburns all over his face and neck, his light skin baked crisp and red, although it was nothing next to the pain.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

I got up from my chair and went to the vial cabinet, picking out one of the few that I recognized. ‘You don’t have to be sorry for anything.’

Leroi took the groan salve with a little nod, uncorking it and spreading a layer over his burns. ‘At least it’s over with.’

I watched him cover his burns, wanting to flinch as he pressed against some of the spots. Matty and I could have had a heck of a game of whatsit looking over all that red. ‘Where did you go?’

Leroi kept spreading the salve.

I nodded, deciding not to pry any further.

‘I see you’ve been working on something,’ Leroi said, gesturing to my boxes and putting the stopper back on the salve.

‘I think it’s pretty good.’

‘We’ll see about that.’ He smiled. ‘Has the Crier told you anything else?’

‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘Maybe He’s forgotten about me.’

Leroi sat down in a chair, looking over the designs on my parchment. I’d never seen anyone’s eyes move so fast, study so intently. Finally, he gave a nod. ‘Well then, let’s build something to make Him remember.’





Chapter Twenty-Six


‘It’s called a Cold Charge,’ Leroi said, dumping another scoop of the salt into the water tub. ‘And it’s the most important discovery about Cold you can learn. If you’re even going to figure out the secret to flying, then I would suggest this is the best place to start.’

My heart thundered as I watched him work. Over the past few days the man had proven himself to be every bit the genius I was hoping for when Cam had first introduced him to me. Since his return, he’d finished teaching me the basics, and we’d moved on to the more complicated stuff: the beauty of Golem Gears, how to decode a Belisk Puzzle-Box, Esaw’s Descent technique when soldering metals, and how to tell the difference between Hacock’s Sleeping Powder from Hacock’s Purging Powder; but this Cold display was what I’d been yearning to see most.

‘If we are going to figure it out,’ I corrected. I was having trouble sitting still, the excitement hard to contain. I’d made it a habit of pointing out that we were a team as much as I could, hoping that if I could make him see me as his assistant, he’d want to keep me around for as long as possible. At this stage, I had no intention of ever leaving.

Leroi dipped a finger into the water and tasted it, shaking his head. ‘This needs more salt.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because it doesn’t hurt yet,’ he said simply, scooping in more salt. Eventually he seemed satisfied, taking another taste and grimacing.

‘Okay,’ he said, picking up one of the Drafts he had placed on the nearby table. ‘Let’s talk about Cold. What do you know about it?’

I shifted in my seat, impatient for him to toss in the Draft and make something exciting happen. ‘Falls from the sky. It’s the enemy of the Sun. There are five different kinds. It’s sort of important.’

Leroi chuckled. ‘Think about your invention,’ he prodded. ‘The Saffir. What did you call it again?’

‘Cold Wrap,’ I replied with a sheepish grin.

‘Promise me one thing?’

‘Sure.’

‘If you figure out a machine that lets you scoop Cold out of the sky, you’ll try to be a little less literal in the name.’

Since he had returned from delivering the anklets, he had slowly begun to open up, and I’d met a whole different man.

‘Noted. It will not be called the Sky Scoop.’ I wiggled my fingers under the table, itching to know more. ‘And to answer your first question, Cold also seems to be more potent in air than in water.’

Leroi rolled the Draft around in his palm, admiring the sheen. ‘That’s because water has a lot more of Sun in it. Sun’s light passes through air with ease, so air can get cooler quickly and easily, but Sun gets caught in water’ – his fingers clenched around the Draft – ‘sucked in and hoarded.’

‘That makes sense I guess.’

‘And salt has the most Sun in it,’ Leroi said, rapping his knuckles against the wooden barrel, ‘since salt is what happens when the growlands get left at Sun’s mercy for too long. Salt doesn’t take to Cold at all.’

I looked deep into the Draft’s surface. I hadn’t thought much about the properties of Cold so far. I wondered if that made me a bad Inventor, but then I remembered this was the first time I’d ever been in the position to experiment with something as precious as Cold.

Leroi manoeuvred the Draft over the tub and let it fall in. I knew what to expect, but I still couldn’t help my mouth from dropping open in awe.

Instead of dissolving or dropping to the bottom as nature usually demanded, the Draft hung on the surface of the water, submerged halfway in, bobbing gently.