They went back the next morning with a second winch line, two iron wedges, and Orra’s brass diving suit.
Brask eyed the suit as she checked its seals. “You expecting to swim?”
“I’m expecting to breathe whatever’s down there.” Orra tightened the collar ring. “You can stay out of it if that’s your preference.”
“I’ve breathed worse than old island air.” He leaned close to the helmet’s inspection glass. “Usually by accident.”
Vey brought the *Morrowfin* to the same notch in the ridge and set the mooring lines himself. The twin-spire marker stood in the mist behind them, still and unlit. Nima checked her astrolabe twice before she put it away.
“No pulse,” she said. “No response from the marker. Just the same faint line beneath us.”
“Then we don’t give it a reason to get louder,” Vey said.
Orra attached her harness to the main winch. Brask fixed the backup line to a separate cleat, then tested both connections with his full weight. Orra tested them again. The last time she’d seen the bronze ring, it had shifted under her boots. She didn’t intend to stand over it while it did that a second time.
The ring’s broken section had moved another finger’s width overnight. Dirt had sifted into the gap. Orra cleared it, finding a narrow groove beneath the bronze lip. She ran a hook along its edge and felt the metal catch at regular intervals.
“Teeth,” she said. “It turns.”
“Like a hatch?” Nima asked.
“Maybe. Or a wheel. We’ll know when it tries to take our fingers.”
Brask passed her a short length of chain. “For the part where we regret touching it.”
They looped the chain through the gap and connected it to the spare winch drum. Brask took the handle. Orra braced one wedge against the ring, while Vey stood by the main line, ready to pull her back. Nima kept her astrolabe angled toward the stone, watching for any change.
“Quarter turn,” Orra said. “Slow.”
The winch chain tightened. The ring resisted, then shifted with a grating scrape that traveled through the ground. Orra felt it in her knees. Nima’s instrument ticked once.
“Stop,” Orra said.
Brask let the drum hold. The bronze ring settled. No knock followed.
They tried again. This time the ring turned another inch, and a seam opened across the stone inside it. A breath of stale air came up from below, dusty and metallic. Orra waited while Nima checked her gauge.
Next
The windlass is secured for now, but the chain vanishes into the Aethersea, and the crew still doesn’t know what it holds below.
“Nothing in the aether,” Nima said. “I can’t tell you the air’s safe.”
“Good thing I brought the suit.”
The ring rose enough to expose a dark shaft and the top rung of a ladder. It wasn’t a hatch set over a room. It was a cover over a vertical passage cut into the island’s rock.
Orra checked her suit’s pressure needle, then clipped her signal cord to the harness. “I go down to the first landing. If the line jerks twice, pull me up. If it jerks three times, pull whether I like it or not.”
“Four times?” Brask asked.
“I’ll be dead.”
“Right. Just making sure we had a system.”
Orra lowered herself into the shaft. The ladder was old but sound under her boots, its iron rungs fixed into the stone. Her lamp found a circular landing several yards down. A second opening continued beneath it, wider and edged in bronze. The knocks had come from there.
She touched the wall with one gloved hand and leaned over the opening. The space below was a chamber, not another shaft. A wheel as wide as a room sat in the center, its spokes thick with green-black corrosion. A chain ran over it and down through a slot in the floor. Every few seconds, the chain struck a bronze guide with a heavy, measured knock.
Orra tugged the signal cord once. Brask lowered her another few feet.
The chamber had a narrow viewing slit in the outer wall. Orra wiped grime from it with her sleeve. Beyond the slit, the island’s underside fell away. A chain as thick as a mast descended from the windlass into open air, disappearing into cloud. Lower still, the cloud thinned enough to show the Aethersea’s aurora-bright glow, distant and immense.
The chain went down toward it.
Orra stared until the winch line pulled taut against her harness. Then she looked at the windlass again. One of its spokes held a shallow groove shaped like the keel-instrument at her belt.
She didn’t touch it yet.
The brass point trembled through the leather pouch. Above her, Nima’s voice came down the shaft, muffled by Orra’s helmet.
“Your instrument’s active. I’m seeing the pulse rise.”
“Can you tell what it’s doing?”
“Not yet.” A pause. “Orra, the pattern is changing.”
The keel-instrument’s point tapped against its case. Orra took it out and held it near the windlass. The wheel gave a soft shudder. Chain rattled through the floor slot, then struck the guide with a knock loud enough to vibrate through her suit.
She drew the instrument back.
The wheel turned one spoke.
The chain pulled tight. The entire island shifted beneath her boots. Dust poured from the chamber ceiling. The winch line snapped taut, and her harness yanked hard against her ribs.
“Pull me up!” she shouted.
The line dragged her sideways. The windlass kept turning, hauling chain up through the floor. Somewhere above, metal screamed.
“Brask, hold the spare drum!” Vey called from the ridge.
“I’ve got it!”
Orra saw the main line slide across a sharp edge near the landing. It would cut through. The backup line ran beside it, anchored to the other side of the ring. She could climb to it, but the chain had dragged the wheel another notch. The whole chamber bucked.
“Stop the wheel!” she shouted. “There’s a pawl on the left—iron bar, near the floor!”
A flash of blue light flared through the shaft. Nima was weaving a brief barrier around the ring above, keeping the shifting stone from crushing the opening shut. Orra’s main line scraped hard across the edge.
Brask’s voice came through the cord. “I can’t hold both drums!”
“Cut the spare!” Vey ordered. “Let the ship take the load.”
The line sheared free. Orra dropped half a yard before the main winch caught her. The sound of the severed cable clanged down the shaft and struck stone below.
She grabbed the pawl with both hands and shoved it toward the turning wheel. The iron bar slipped off the first spoke. She reset it, boots braced against the floor, and pushed again. The wheel resisted. Her suit’s joints groaned.
Then the pawl caught.
The chain slammed against the guide. One last knock rattled through the chamber, and the wheel stopped.
“Orra!” Vey shouted.
“Still here.” She made herself check the instrument. Its point had stopped trembling. “Bring me up. Slowly.”
Brask hauled. Nima kept the barrier up until Orra reached the landing, then the ring’s stone seam settled with a low grinding scrape. Vey and Brask pulled her the rest of the way. The *Morrowfin*’s mooring lines strained, but the ship held its place.
On the ridge, Orra unsealed her helmet. Her hands shook as she tried to unfasten the harness. She stopped, set both palms flat on the stone, and waited until they steadied.
Brask looked down at the cut end of the spare line. “That was a good cable.”
“I know.”
Vey gave the open ring a long, wary look. “We have what we came for.”
Orra turned the keel-instrument over in her hands. Its point was still. She’d wanted the thing below to answer. Wanted it badly enough that, for one breath, she’d nearly let it keep pulling.
“I thought I could make it explain itself,” she said.
Vey didn’t soften his voice. “It answered. That’s not the same thing.”
“I know.” She closed her fingers around the brass. “I still wanted more.”
Nobody argued with her. Brask coiled the surviving line. Nima wrote down the windlass pattern and the pulse change, her pencil moving fast even while she watched the ring.
They secured the opening with the iron wedges and marked it on the chart as a windlass, not a route marker. Beneath the hidden island, the chain continued into the Aethersea. They had no way to tell what held its far end.
Orra stood at the ridge while the *Morrowfin* lifted from its notch. The luminous depths showed through a break in the clouds, impossibly far below. The chain vanished into them without a glint or a sound.