Chapter 179: Sovereign Engine

Below the ocean floor, the Sunken Kiln ignited.

Before they reached it, the water began to change.

It turned pitch black and hot around the ship’s hull. Steam rose up from beneath the ice, carrying a mix of salt, coal, and something that smelled like rotting flesh. In the distance, a bright red glow pulsed beneath the water like a furnace. No one on the crew spoke a word. Even the boiler seemed to burn lower, as if it knew better.

The dockworkers slowed the ship.

"We can always turn around," the captain said. "We have plenty of people at Glasswake who can keep up the count. We don’t need your deaths."

Austin Veyron glanced at the crew. They were all dockworkers. Their ship had been delivering food to the north for years, long before he had ever arrived, and it would go on doing so after he left, assuming they lived.

"You can decide what risk you want to take," Austin Veyron said. "The waters out here are treacherous. Drop us at the platform, and you can head back."

The captain looked at the water, then at the route cases stacked near the boiler.

"We’ll drop you off at the platform," she said. "After that, it’s up to my crew."

Ysara stood near the front of the ship, holding one of the clean debt record cases. She wasn’t wearing her cracked ice crown. She looked older without it, less like a ruler and more like someone who had spent too many winters out here. Her hands gripped the case tightly, and she hadn’t spoken to anyone since they left Glasswake.

"The debt fragments in the north are responding to the Kiln," Ysara said. "It’s not only stealing from the food routes. It’s summoning every hunger that was ever tied to a crown."

Tessa held the map case up against the wind. "There’s a forge network under the drowned volcanic shelf. The platform we’re heading to should be right on top of it."

Ceryn looked over the old route maps. "If Vordessa can combine the debt chime’s imprint with the Caldera’s fire, she can use any emergency record as a source."

Nyra held a boundary field around both the debt chime and the pale splinter. They gave off a blue-black light, and they seemed to be straining toward the black water.

"They’re trying to merge with each other," Nyra said. "The Kiln is pulling them in."

Austin Veyron felt his wrist mark start to burn.

He didn’t only feel the debt chime and the splinter. The Sunken Kiln was reaching out to every source he had ever broken: the Hunger Emperor’s road, the Maw Core, the Cinder Citadel, the Caldera, the Ice Crown, and Glasswake. To the Kiln, they were all fragments of one bigger mouth. Austin Veyron could almost picture it, every route he had taken and every engine he had broken being pieced together into one enormous creature.

DEVOUR responded.

Veyra could hear his breathing grow heavier.

"Tell me."

"I’m scared of the Kiln."

"Go on."

"A part of me wants it more because I’m scared."

Sable lifted her broken crown. "That’s good. Once you admit your fear, it can’t control you."

Austin Veyron took a deep breath and felt the hunger loosen its grip on him, at least a little. It would never go away, but every time he said it out loud to someone, its hold seemed to weaken, as if it were being dragged out of the darkness.

The sun was beginning to set when they reached the outer platform.

It was made of iron pillars that circled a large vent. Chains hung from each pillar with different things attached to them: forge bells, debt records, and shards of frozen glass that clanked together in the hot wind. Fire glowed in the water beneath the platform. Whenever the waves struck it, the whole structure shook.

The crew lowered a rope.

"We’ll wait one hour," the captain said. "After that, it’s up to the sea."

"Sounds fair," Veyra said.

Austin Veyron, Veyra, Rin, Orena, Sable, Nyra, Tessa, Ceryn, and Ysara climbed onto the outer platform. It was hot beneath their feet, and the heat rising from below made the air shimmer. Orena tested each board before she stepped on it, pressing down with the butt of her spear and listening to the metal groan.

The water parted.

Soot divers climbed over the rails of the platform.

They wore old masks and armor that looked like it had been made from debt records. Seaweed was draped over their shoulders, and water poured off of them. Each of them carried a hook on a chain with a source emblem at the end.

RETURN ALL HUNGER TO THE KILN.

One of them hurled its chain at Nyra’s boundary fields.

Rin’s arrow knocked the hook out of the air, but the chain still wrapped around the field that held the splinter and began dragging it toward the water.

Nyra held her ground, but the boundaries were shaking.

Orena slammed her spear through the platform and pinned the chain down. Veyra sliced through it with her sword, and red sparks rained into the water.

Another diver came at Austin Veyron.

Its source emblem lit up, and his wrist mark pulled at him. DEVOUR wanted all the hunger the diver had stored and all the power from the drowned forges inside it.

"Target," Austin Veyron said. "The return-all-hunger-to-the-Kiln clause. Not the diver. Not the sources it carries. Not the ocean."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

"Witnessed," Sable said.

Austin Veyron placed his white root chain against the diver’s breastplate.

DEVOUR opened. The clause tasted like a pile of empty bowls falling into one big furnace.

RETURN ALL HUNGER TO THE KILN.

He consumed return.

The diver stopped.

Its mask turned toward the vents in the water, then away from them. The commands faded from its armor. It dropped its hook and backed away from the edge of the platform.

The other soot divers weren’t sure what to do now. Without the command, they were just tired people wearing old forge armor. Some of them dove back into the water, while others stayed on the platform, confused. One took off its mask, and beneath it was a person who was barely alive. They looked at Austin Veyron, blinking in the red light. Then they slumped down against the railing and didn’t move again.

The platform shook.

A hidden hatch opened, revealing stairs that led down into the red steam.

"This is the entrance to the outer Kiln," Tessa said, reading from the forge map. "The actual engine must be below us."

The waves were growing bigger and bigger, slamming into the side of the icebreaker. The captain had already run out of patience with the ocean.

"Fifteen minutes!" she called out.

"We don’t have fifteen minutes," Nyra said.

They all headed down the stairs.

Veyra took point with her sword drawn. Austin Veyron was right behind her, and Nyra followed him so both boundary fields would stay protected. The deeper they went into the Kiln, the thicker the air became. It was hard to breathe, and each breath felt like drinking hot water. They could hear metal groaning far below, the sound echoing up the stairwell like the cry of something enormous waking from a long sleep.

The Sunken Kiln was a massive engine submerged in water. Iron bridges crossed over the black water. Huge wheels spun beneath the surface, and pipes along the walls carried different kinds of source fire: red for command, white for winter debt routes, blue for routes, and black for hunger.

It was scorching hot down there. Sweat ran down Austin Veyron’s face and stung his eyes. Ceryn covered their mouth with a rag, and Tessa held the map case tight. The water beneath the bridges bubbled, and every so often a bright red flash came from somewhere beneath it.

In the middle, a massive engine rose out of the water.

It had no distinct shape. It was a mixture of a furnace, a debt record wheel, and an open mouth. Around its rim were teeth made of ice, iron, and bone. Above the mouth hung the imprint of the debt chime, even though Nyra was still holding the real one.

Vordessa stood on a bridge above the mouth.

Her body was more fully forged together than it had been before. Her arms were cracked, and the cracks glowed red. Around her neck hung source fragments she had taken from the routes. She looked down at Austin Veyron and his team with a calm expression.

The broker was chained to the railing beside her.

His smile was split in half, and red veins ran from his chest down into the engine below.

"You said you’d give me a market," the broker said.

"I said I would give you value," Vordessa said. "Your debt logic will be very valuable."

"It’s consuming me," the broker said, looking down at the mouth.

"It’s studying you," Vordessa said.

The broker slumped over, and there wasn’t a hint of a smile left on his face. Austin Veyron didn’t feel sorry for him. After what he had done at the auction, and after the debt eels and the blue tokens, he didn’t deserve sympathy. But Vordessa was doing to him exactly what he had tried to do to everyone else.

Ysara stood up straighter. "You’re using the chime’s imprint without actually having the chime."

"Crowns don’t need the actual bell if everyone knows it exists," Vordessa said.

The engine started to spin.

Routes began to appear along the rim of the mouth: Hunger Road, Winter Share, Famine Ledger, Caldera Route, and Glasswake Debt.

Every system Austin Veyron had broken was being brought back as a source inside the mouth. He could feel each one as it was added to the engine, and each one felt like a weight on his chest.

Nyra’s boundary fields were shaking, and she clenched her teeth as both the debt chime and the splinter were pulled toward the mouth.

"It’s bringing them back by memory," she said. "If it can fuse all the sources together, it can control every engine we’ve destroyed."

His wrist mark burst open with red and black light.

The engine knew who Austin Veyron was.

It didn’t offer him a small target.

It offered him sovereignty.

Take this mouth, it said in his mind. Devour the source before Vordessa can, and you will become sovereign. Only you are strong enough to control all these sources.

Veyra put a hand on Austin Veyron’s shoulder. Her touch felt warmer than the furnace around them.

"Tell me."

"I want to take the engine."

"What would you gain from it?"

"I would become a sovereign engine."

Sable raised her broken crown.

"Then that’s what we’re here to stop."

Vordessa laughed from the bridge above the mouth.

"Yes. Now you know why I wanted you here."

She placed both of her hands on the controls.

The mouth opened.

The entire structure began to shake, and water flooded across the bridges. The pipes carried their source fire toward the mouth, and it glowed red. Across the walls, a countdown appeared, marking the time until the engine fused the sources together.

THREE HUNDRED HEARTBEATS UNTIL FUSION.

The mouth turned toward a white route on the wall map.

Grand Meridian.

Austin Veyron’s heart stopped for a second. Marcus and Nahlia were at the end of that route. So was the Freehold, and every person he had ever promised to protect.