The Sieve and the Vault

The market woke before sun rose, not with birds but with the rattle of shutters and the soft metallic cough of the Sieve. Below a ribcage of concrete and twisted rails, wooden stalls leaned on steel columns like ships beached in a dry sea. Smoke pooled in the hollows of the old overpass and something sweet — overcooked root and canned fruit — clung to the air. Mara moved through that half-light with a crate balanced on her hip, feet finding the same hollow between boards she had worn smooth in three winterless years.

When she reached the Sieve, it was a small crowd already, faces grey in the lamp glow, eyes bright with the small desperate hope people save for machines. The Sieve was older than most of them: a patchwork of pipes and sun-panels, a lesson in engineering scavenged from a time that still believed in maintenance. Today it wheezed like an animal with a thorn.

Her hands found the panel by muscle memory and grime. The readouts blinked a slow red. Water output had dropped ten percent overnight. A line of mothers with tin cups formed without being told. A child with a scrap of a blanket clutched a broken toy, and his name was Tess. Mara felt the hollowness under her ribs — not a dramatic feeling, just a small constant ache that the Sieve's cough made louder. Tess was small for his age; winter had chewed at his belly and left its teeth marks. She thought of him because he always stood near the Sieve, watching the thin silver thread of water like a miracle.

"It's the membrane," Old Edda said, appearing like a shadow from between two stalls. Her voice was rusty wire; her hands were stained with oil. The crowd quieted. Edda's eyes were milky, but when she put a hand to the Sieve's casing she could read heat like Braille.

Mara felt the urge to argue. Fix another part, call the barterers, trade three tins for a patch. But she had been a greenhouse technician before the bridges fell, before the rivers lost their salt and the sky learned to bruise. She knew membranes. She had held them under lamps and coaxed seedlings through the worst of the years. "Where do we get a new membrane?" she asked, voice steady enough to not fracture in front of the line.

Edda's laugh was small. "There's a thing called a vault. West glass quarter. They used to keep seeds and water tech there. Story has a lock and a storm of dust. Stories don't help much when people thirst." Her gaze traveled the line, resting on each face like an inventory. "But Corvin took a map. Or someone who works for Corvin did. He keeps it in a pocket and drops promises like dice. I can sense the membrane's problem, but I can't make new polymer from the dust of this market. You can go, Mara. You're the one who still remembers how to read old schematics. You have grit in one pocket and shame in the other. Either will help."

Nobody moved at first. The market's life depended on the Sieve in small ways: a child growing, a nurse boiling bandages, a teacher keeping seedlings alive in a bookshelf-window. They had not thought of looking west in earnest since the last raider note. Corvin's name stirred knives behind breaths. Mara felt the room narrow to the size of her chest. She looked at Tess. He pressed his face to his mother's arm and watched the falling water with the same reverence you give a lantern flame.

She surprised herself by answering. "Then I'll go." It was not a proclamation so much as an accepting of a fact. When she spoke, the line shifted as if pulled by an invisible hand. Old Edda's lips thinned, and a young man who had been leaning against a crate straightened as if he had been waiting for this to happen all along. He said nothing yet, but his boots scraped like a second heartbeat.