Regulator of Ether

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Mira Calder measured the world by ticks. In her narrow workshop, hung like a throat between the factory row and the high canal, time arrived in a chorus: the soft inhale of the steam pumps downstairs, the thin rat-tat of gear teeth, the long, antique tick of a mantel escapement that had kept her mother's afternoons in order when the rest of the household had been given up to the city. Her fingers had the memory of springs; she could tell the temper of a balance wheel by touch and the temperament of a lathe by ear. Today her hands smelled of brass filings, sweet oil, and something colder—coal smoke from the great regulator, a scent that carried on the wind like a promise and like a threat.

The morning light fell in filigree through the workshop’s small, convex window, catching on a dozen little miracles: a pocket-chronometer rimmed with filigree, a slender governor wheel that whistled when Mira wound it, a pile of chips shaped like tiny moons. She was finishing an escapement, making the last pinion sit true against its pallet, when the stair creaked and her brother's shoes announced him in his usual rush. Thomas—Tom—Calder had already lost that soft sort of caution that belonged to apprentices who feared spoiling the only machine they'd ever touch; he moved like someone pricked by aerostat dreams.

He came in with the unlatched grin of a boy who'd been handed a ticket to the sky.

"They signed me this morning," he said, voice high. "Five months’ indenture with the Syndicate. They say I can learn to climb the rigging of the workships. I might ride up on a mast yet, Mira. Imagine—above the canals, above the smoke, looking down on the whole city like a brass map." He sputtered, a hand on the doorframe, and behind him the lane was already beginning its day: carts clumping in the grit, an announcer shouting the schedules for the dirigible slips.

Mira did not join his imagining. She let the final tooth drop into place and listened to the new balance; it breathed even, true. "Promise me you won't go into the Regulator proper without permission," she said. The Syndicate meant steady coins, but to her it meant the central machinery, the hulking Regulator that kept the city's lungs pumping. Her mother had been among the hands that fitted the first coils; the edge of that memory was a brass emblem Mira had kept under her bench. "They have rules, Tom. You know folks lose themselves where the gears sing too loud."

Tom's eyes softened. He had the city's gull-fed optimism: everything was a horizon until it touched his skin. "I'll be careful," he promised, and meant it. He produced from his satchel a flyer—a stamped notice from the Syndicate—one line in bold: Apprenticeships commence at the Regulator Yard. The stamp was the shape of a cogwheel threaded through a star.

They shared a small breakfast—bread dry as shavings and a pot of tea that Mira brewed to the exact measure her mother had taught her—and Tom kissed the back of her hand before he left, fingers sticky with pastry. When the stair shut, the workshop felt larger in the sudden quiet, as if a spring had been released behind the walls.