“Okay.” I’d find warmer blankets, at least. I wanted to hold him, share heat, but I couldn’t forget what he’d asked me on the doorstep. Did I want to leave? “Everything in the library and workroom is fine, including construction notes. I’ll start cleaning, but is there anything you need me to save to help you rebuild?”
“Build new instruments?” He made it sound like the most horrible thing.
“I assumed you’d want to.”
“Yeah. I guess. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” His breath came raspy, and I couldn’t imagine rebuilding lifetimes of instruments, either. But I didn’t want to just leave everything where it was, in case he came downstairs. “The ivory,” he said at last. “It’s from far away, and it’s hard to get more. But only if the pieces look like they’re worth gluing together.”
He told me a few more things, then let me help him lie down. I stacked blankets on top of him, wool and silk and bison fur, and went downstairs to heat soup and tea. When I brought them up on a tray, I forced several good sips into him before leaving the room. If I had just lost a thousand years of work, I would want to be alone, not awkwardly trying to accept someone’s comfort when there was no way they could understand the chasm inside.
In the parlor, I picked up a few pieces of ivory, but most looked useless. Little was salvageable. Either the intruder knew exactly what to destroy, or had just decided to smash anything that looked important. Even the steel frame had been heated and melted so it would never be useful again.
Sam’s flute was a wreck of silver. I hugged the remains to my chest, and blue petals floated out of the tube. Whoever had destroyed it had thought it was my new one. They couldn’t tell the difference.
It was likely the instruments had been distractions, which was even more upsetting. But the books and diaries were gone. How long until they discovered Menehem’s lab? How long until they discovered I’d been there?
The Council had suspected I’d been given Menehem’s research, but no one should have known about the temple books.
No one should have known, but someone did.
I worked until my muscles clenched and sleep threatened every time I blinked. Since I couldn’t move things outside right now, I set them by the door, a blanket beneath to keep from further damaging the floor.
Too worn to go upstairs, I dropped myself onto the sofa and woke when dawn speared my eyes from a crack in the shutters.
Outside, the snow was piled as high as my knees, and though the sun shone, more clouds huddled over the horizon, barely visible around trees and the immense city wall.
My lungs ached as I lugged broken instruments outside; when the snow thawed, maybe Armande or Orrin would help me separate materials for recycling. But now, I just needed them out of the house. If the sight of them hurt my heart, Sam’s must be shattered.
To keep him busy for a while, I brought up more tea and soup. The other mug and bowl were only half-empty, but that was better than nothing.
“You should shower.” I sat next to him on the bed. “You stink.” As if I didn’t smell like sweat, too.
“Doesn’t matter.” That wasn’t Sam’s voice. At least not the Sam I knew. Too rough, shredded into black ribbons. “It’s all gone.”
I wanted to touch him, hug him close, but my muscles wouldn’t budge when I tried. “Finish your food and shower. I’ll come back up in a little while.”
Though Stef’s house was usually only a five-minute walk, it took longer in the snow, and I was shivering when I arrived. Her place had the same outbuildings and snow-frosted fruit trees as Sam’s, but was sparser, as she didn’t garden or keep animals herself but helped tend Sam’s in exchange for a share.
I took the steps two at a time and banged on the door.
Wind rattled evergreens, making a loose board on a shed bang in a staccato tempo. Otherwise, the place was silent, waiting for more snow.
Either she wasn’t home, or she was avoiding me after the fight she’d had with Sam. I bit my lip and tried the doorknob. It turned.
I’d only been in her house a few times. When it was her turn for giving me lessons, she hadn’t wanted to lug over the equipment for teaching basic machine repair; we’d started with water pumps and ended with solar panels. Mostly she went to Sam’s if they wanted to visit.
Before I lost my nerve, I pulled open the door and stepped inside and stomped snow from my boots. Sunlight streamed through the parlor windows, glowing across the hardwood floor, landing on the small piano pressed against one wall. While Sam’s walls were delicate shelves, most of Stef’s were made of bookcases stuffed with notes and diagrams on fascinating subjects like automatic recycling machines.