Higher and higher, Royce led the way. Hadrian’s hands were sore from gripping the rope and burned from the few times he had slipped. His legs, exhausted and weak, quivered dangerously. The wind was brutal. Gusting in an eddy caused by the chimney they followed, it pushed outward like an invisible hand trying to knock them off. The sun came up and Hadrian was nearing the end of his endurance when they finally reached the bridge. They were slightly more than two-thirds of the way, but thankfully they did not need to reach the top.

What appeared from the ground to be a thin bridge was actually forty feet thick. They scrambled over the edge, hauled up their ropes, ducked into a sheltered archway, and sat in the shadows, catching their breath.

“I’d like to see Derning scale that,” Royce said, looking down.

“I don’t think anyone but you could manage it,” Hadrian replied. “Nor is there anyone crazy enough to try.”

Dozens of men guarded the great gates at the base of the tower, but no one was on the bridge. It was thought to be impossible for intruders to enter from the top, and the cold wind kept the workers inside. Royce gave the tall slender stone doors a push.

“Locked?” Hadrian asked.

Royce nodded. “Let’s hope they haven’t changed the combination.”

Hadrian chuckled. “Took you eighteen hours last time, right after you told me, ‘This will only take a minute.’”

“Remind me again why I brought you?” Royce asked, fanning his hands out across the embossed face of the doors. “Ah, here it is.”

Royce placed his fingers carefully and pushed. A hundred tons of solid stone glided inward as if on a cushion of air, rotating open without a sound. Inside, an enormous cathedral ceiling vaulted hundreds of feet above them. Shafts of morning sunshine entered through distant skylights built into the dome overhead, revealing a complex world of bridges, balconies, archways, and a labyrinth of gears. Some gears lay flat, while others stood upright. Some were as small as a copper coin, and then there were those that were several stories tall and thicker than a house. A few rotated constantly, driven by steam created from the volcanically superheated seawater. The majority of the gears, particularly the big ones, remained motionless, waiting. Aside from the mechanisms, nothing else moved. The only sounds were the regular ratcheting rhythm and the whirl of the great machine.

Royce scanned the interior. “Nobody home,” he said at length.

“Wasn’t last time either. I’m surprised they haven’t tightened security up more.”

“Oh yeah, a single break-in after centuries is something to schedule your guards around.”

“They’ll be kicking themselves tomorrow.”