Illya’s heart felt light as a feather rising on a draft as he jogged to the field to watch the water flooding out.
It poured and poured. For a while, it soaked into the thirsty ground, but after some time it began to pool.
The wheel was too efficient. They would have to leave it out of the river much of the time or the field would become a swamp.
It was a slight setback, but Illya could not help feeling delighted. He hadn’t needed to worry if it would work or not: it was working too well. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and watched as Ban bustled around excitedly, pointing at parts of his construction and making a new drawing in the dirt.
“I think we could build those parts higher,” Ban said, indicating the tops of the stone columns.
“We need platforms that a few men can stand on. Then they can raise it out of the water when it needs to stop.”
Illya and the workmen looked over the drawing then spread out to collect more stones.
Any remaining vestiges of doubt left among the villagers were gone with the sprouts and the success of the wheel. Illya no longer hesitated before giving a new edict, and he started feeling like he had been meant to be the Leader all along.
“That book is something, isn’t it?” Samuel’s voice interrupted his thoughts one morning as he sat outside his hut reading. Illya looked up, squinting to make out the Healer’s face from the bright sunlight that surrounded his head. He grunted in response.
“People have been talking. They’re calling you a prophet,” he said.
“So?”
“Are you?” Samuel asked.
“Maybe I am,” Illya said. He believed it at that moment. Everything was changing. Everything was getting better, and it was all because of him and because of the book. Samuel laughed.
“Maybe you are, but perhaps you are not.”
“I’m the only one who can read,” Illya said.
“And what do you read?” Samuel asked. “It’s just a book. We might not have anything else like it, but, still, it’s just a book.”
“It has the wisdom of the Olders.”
“And they were just people.”
“At least they knew how to live,” Illya snapped.
“Fine. You are a prophet,” Samuel said. “Just make sure that when you save us all, you don’t destroy what we have in the process.” He frowned, his eyebrows drawn together. Illya met his gaze without flinching, his eyes hard like stones and his insides boiling.
“I know what I’m doing,” he said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A THUMPING SOUND interrupted a particularly good dream involving a sun-lit raspberry patch. Illya blinked himself awake. The sun was not even up yet, was Ban working in the dark? He shook his head. That couldn’t be right; they had finished the wheel and hadn’t started any new projects. Ban had been working to refine the operation of the wheel. Maybe he was devising a lifting system. Still, even if there had been work to be done, he couldn’t think of any reason why Ban would do it alone, in the dark.
Illya lay quiet, wondering if he was imagining the sound. The gates were still closed.
No one could be out there.
Nearby, his mother and Molly continued to sleep undisturbed. He shook his head, but the sound did not disappear. It was real, and it was coming from the direction of the river. Illya crawled out of bed and pulled himself to his feet.
Easing the door open so as not to disturb his family, he tiptoed outside. The village slept. Dawn was not far away, but no promise of light was visible yet on the horizon. The clanging continued, regular and unrelenting. It sounded like a rock slamming against something.
He ran towards the sound, his heart lurching, not bothering to stay quiet now that he was outside. The gates were open.
He hesitated. Making a split-second decision, he turned, not back but along the north path. Most of the huts on this side of the village were abandoned. Conna and Aaro had moved away from their father, into one of the most intact ones, the night after Illya had become the Leader. A few of his Enforcers had since settled in the huts nearby. A little distance away from the rest of the village, the Enforcers’ camp had taken on a kind of glamor.
Illya had not yet decided whether he should join them out there. So many things had changed in his life that he was reluctant to give up that last vestige of normalcy: home with his family.
He rapped on Conna’s door. After a few moments, it was opened by a bleary-eyed Aaro.
“Whaz goin’ on?” Aaro mumbled, blinking. Then he frowned, his eyes sharpening.
“Hear that?” Illya asked. “It’s coming from the wheel. I need backup.” Conna pushed past Aaro, his hair rumpled and eyes bloodshot.
“Get some of the others,” he said over his shoulder to his brother.
“Let’s go,” he said to Illya and took off up the path towards the gate.
Illya sprinted after Conna through the open gates. If any Terrors were out in the dark, they could be prowling through the entire village by now. He shuddered.
The wheel was still safely up on the riverbank. Two figures stood over it, working on something. Neither of them was Ban.
Conna broke into a new burst of speed. One of the figures dropped something on the ground and ran. The other either had not noticed them coming or didn’t care. When they got close enough, Illya saw that he was wielding a large rock, repeatedly smashing it into the wooden joints of the wheel.
Conna reached the man first and tackled him. They fought, a blur of hair and limbs, until Conna had him pinned. He grasped him by the shoulder and flipped him over so that Illya could see his face.
It was Piers Malkin, Jimmer Duncan’s friend. His face contorted with hate.
“Sabotage,” Illya said, almost disbelieving the word as he said it. If he hadn’t seen it himself, he wouldn’t have thought it possible. Everyone had seemed so content lately and so impressed by the book. Besides that, weeks of work had gone into this wheel. Who in his right mind would try to undo it?
“What of it?” Piers spat at him.
“You won’t get away with this,” Conna said, breathing heavily. There were shouts behind them. Aaro had rounded up the rest of the Enforcers, and they were streaming out of the gates towards the river. Dawn was coming now. The sky had begun to lighten over the flats to the east.
“We will lock you up until we figure out what to do,” Conna was saying. Already he had bound Piers’ hands and feet.
“What happened?” Julian gasped, slowing to a jog as he reached them.
“He was trying to break the wheel,” Illya said, still stunned. He crouched down and examined the wood. For all the banging, they had only managed to separate two joints. Some of them had been dented but held. Ban had done well when he had designed the fittings.
“There were two,” Conna said, finishing off his knots at Piers’ wrists. He pointed towards the forest. “The other one went that way.”
“Right,” Julian said and took off. Aaro and the other Enforcers followed him.
By the time the sun was fully over the horizon, they had given up the search for the second man. He’d had a solid head start, and there was no sign of him. With Conna pushing a bound Piers before him, they returned to the village.
“He was short, maybe thin,” Illya said. There were one or two men who could have matched that description. He did not think it had been a woman. Something about the way the figure had lumbered made him sure.
“There are only a few people it could be,” he said. Conna grunted in response.