Gears of the Aurelian Sky

El Hartwell's hands smelled like tomorrow—sharp lamp oil braided with the softer, older scent of brass. She listened to the rhythm of the workshop the way other people listened to clocks: a measured chorus of ticks, the low sigh of the boiler, the distant thump of the Great Engine that steadied Gearhaven's breath. Sunlight found its way through grime-streaked panes and painted copper ribbons across her workbench. A strip of leather lay folded beside a half-assembled atmospheric regulator; a dozen tiny cogs, each like a tooth out of a sun, waited in a line. 'Brass,' she said without looking, and the automaton cat on the windowsill rotated its head with a small, contented whirr.

The cat's name fit: a body of hammered plates and soft, clockwork rumble, eyes of polished mica. It moved the way a living thing might—too quick for its weight, always balancing on the wrong side of friction. When El ran a file along a gear, Brass leaned into the vibration until the whole bench hummed. She liked the hum. It made the city feel less like a monster and more like a thing with joints you could ease back into place.

Outside, Gearhaven climbed and spilled. Chimneys rose like brass teeth; trams clattered on cables strung between towers. Dirigibles lay moored like whales, netted and sleeping. The Great Clock at the Piazza Spire marked noon with a sonorous gong; the sound traveled through metal and marrow alike. The news-boards along Market Row flashed a single headline in the fat, angular type the Council favored: 'AETHER IMBALANCE—URGENT MAINTENANCE REQUIRED.' Someone had scrawled beneath it in rushed charcoal: 'NIMBUS COG MISSING.'

El smoothed the scroll of blueprints she had been sketching and tried not to let her hands tremble. The Nimbus Cog was not a myth you heard at taverns. It was a component of the city's Aurelian Array—the teeth inside the Great Engine that tuned the currents beneath the skies. Without that tuning, the air lost its patience; sky-lanes sagged; the docks felt heavier with every sunrise. They had been talking about shortages for weeks. Now the city had a name for its sickness.

Master Garran arrived exactly when the noon bell chimed. He moved with the feeble precision of age—one hand braced on a cane of brass and walnut, the other clenched around a mug of bitter tea. Garran was a man who had once carved clouds with steam and phrase: now he smelled of steam and the dust of books. He peered at El's workbench, then over at the notice on Market Row that Brass had cocked its head toward.

'You always work like you're stealing time back from someone,' Garran said in a voice that scraped pleasant things into place. He set the mug down and let steam curl into the shop like a stray cat. 'El, if the Array is out of balance…' He did not finish. He didn't have to. El folded the blueprint, pushed it into a drawer, and watched him collect the crumbs of his own thought. The city sighed—an engine hiccup, a far-off clunk—and El felt the ground shift the way one senses a hand sliding away from theirs at the edge of a bridge.