"We’re here," Hedrigall whispered. "Those are Dreer Samher vessels. That’s Machinery Beach."

The ships were galleons, ornately picked out in gold, surrounded, enclosed by cosseting rocks that jutted into the sea and curled around the natural harbor. Bellis realized she was holding her breath.

The sand and shale of the inlet’s beach was a dark red, dirty like old blood. It was broken by weirdly shaped boulders the size of torsos and houses. Bellis’ eyes skittered over the dark surface, and she saw trails, pathways scored in the matter of the shoreline. Beyond the boundary of stringy boscage that edged the beach, the trails became more defined. They entered rocky elevations that rose slowly from the earth to overlook the sea. The air was broken by heat waves where the sun baked the stone, and trees like olives and dwarf jungle species specked the slopes.

Bellis followed the trails winding up the scorched hillsides until (her breath stopping again) her eyes came to rest on a scattering of light-bleached houses, dwellings that extruded from the rocks like organic growth-the anophelii township.

There was no wind in the bay. There was a tiny grouping of clouds like paint dots around the sun, but heat blasted through them and reverberated around the enclosed rock walls.

There were no sounds of life. The tedious repetition of the sea seemed to underline the silence rather than break it. The dirigible hung quietly, its engines powered down. The Samheri boats creaked and shifted nearby. They were empty. No one had come to greet the airship.

Scabmettler guards in their bloodclot armor kept watch with cactacae as the passengers descended. Bellis touched land, crouching beside the rope ladder, and ran her fingers through the sand. Her breathing was quick and very loud in her head.

At first she was conscious of nothing but the novelty of being on ground that did not sway. She remembered her land-legs delightedly, only realizing at that moment that she had forgotten them. Then she became aware of her surroundings again, and felt the beach beneath her closely, and for the first time registered its strangeness.

She remembered the naÏve woodcuts in Aum’s book. The stylized monochrome of the man in profile on the beach, broken mechanisms around him.

Machinery Beach,she thought, and looked out across the dirty-red sand and scree.

Some way off were the shapes she had taken to be boulders- huge things the size of rooms, breaking up the shoreline. They were engines. Squat and enormous and coated with rust and verdigris, long-forgotten appliances for unknown purposes, their pistons seized by age and salt.

There were smaller rocks, too, and Bellis saw that these were shards of the larger machines, bolts and pipework junctions; or finer, more intricate, and complete pieces; gauges and glasswork and compact steam-power engines. The pebbles were gears, cogs, flywheels, bolts, and screws.