Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3)(10)

Ullus swallowed. "I see."

"I thought you would," the man said.

Ullus picked up the list and read it. He winced. "Captain," he said, his tone cautious, "you'll get a better price for these farther east."

"I do not sail east," the man said.

Ehren sighed and dipped his quill, focusing on looking bored, miserable, and surly in order to disguise his sudden excitement and interest. Westmiston was the westernmost human settlement in the Sunset Isles. The only civilization west of here all belonged to the Canim. Their main trade port was ten days sailing from Westmiston, and at this time of year, about eleven days back.

Three weeks.

Captain Demos was carrying something to the Canim.

"Come," Captain Demos said. "Bring your slave and a cart. I sail within the hour."

Tavi pulled on the rope until he thought his spine would snap from the strain. "Hurry!" he said through gritted teeth.

"You can't rush true learning, my boy," said the old man from where he knelt at the mechanism's release pin. Magnus fussed and grunted over the device for a moment, then crudely forged metal scraped on metal. "Research is the essence of academia."

Sweat broke out over Tavi's whole body. "If you don't get that pin in soon, the arm is going to slip and throw you halfway across the Vale," Tavi growled.

"Nonsense, my boy. I'm well out of the way. It will shatter like the last one." He grunted. "There, it's in. Easy does it."

Tavi slowly relaxed his hold on the rope, though his hands and arms screamed for relief. The long wooden arm of the device quivered, but remained bent back, locked into place and ready to be released. The haul rope, hooked up to several of the spinning wheels Magnus had manufactured, sagged to the ground.

"There, you see?" he said proudly. "You managed it all by yourself."

Tavi shook his head, panting. "I still don't understand how the wheels work."

"By condensing your strength into a smaller area," Magnus said. "You hauled forty feet of rope to move the arm back only five feet."

"I can do the math," Tavi said. "I'm just... it's almost unreal. My uncle would have trouble bending that thing back, and he's a strong earthcrafter."

"Our forefathers knew their arts," Magnus cackled. "If only Larus could see this. He'd start frothing at the mouth. Here, lad. Help me with the ammunition."

Together, Tavi and Magnus grunted and lifted a stone weighing better than fifty pounds into place in the cup at the end of the engine's arm, then they both stood back from it. "Maybe we should have used some professionally manufactured parts."

"Never, never," Magnus muttered. "If we'd used crafted parts, we'd just have to do the whole thing again without them, or else Larus and his kind would discredit us based on that fact alone. No, my boy, it had to be done just as the Romans did it, just like Appia itself."

Tavi grunted. The ruins of the city of his forefathers stood all around them. They had been built upon the crown of an ancient mountain worn down to the size of an imposing hill, and everything had been made of stone. The walls of dozens and dozens of buildings, now reduced to jagged stone by time and the elements, surrounded them. Grass and trees grew among the ruined houses and old city walls. Wind sighed among the stones, a constant, gentle, and sad song of regret. Deer paced silently on streets so faded they could only be seen to be man-made if viewed from a distance, and sheltered among the walls during infrequent storms. Birds nested upon the remains of statues ground to feature-lessness by time.