Tavi's words seemed to deepen the room around them.

It goes down farther than Vespera is supposed to exist.

For several seconds, nobody spoke.

Nessa looked from her brother's bloodied temple to the black-stone disk hidden beneath the displaced gears of his chronometer. The graphite-rubbed archive card was still clenched in her hand, exactly where it had been when Tavi came through the door.

"Start at the beginning," she said.

Tavi gave her a tired look. "You usually hate the beginning."

"Tonight I am making an exception."

Ilya shut and bolted the underground door through which Tavi had entered. Rhydian remained beside the table of stolen records, his attention fixed on the disk.

"Do not remove it yet," he said.

Tavi's hand stopped above the chronometer.

Nessa glanced at Rhydian. "Why?"

"Because we do not know what it is."

"Excellent. I was worried the evening might become reassuring."

Her contract mark remained cold.

Rhydian leaned closer without touching the chronometer.

The disk was no larger than two joined coins, impossibly dark except where the twelve-pointed star caught the lamplight in thin silver grooves.

"I've seen stone like this," Nessa said.

Tavi looked at her. "Where?"

"In a preserved memory. The old Anchor structures were made of black stone."

Ilya's expression sharpened. "Preserved memory?"

"Another long story."

"You appear to have accumulated several."

"I am talented."

Tavi pressed a cloth against his temple.

Nessa immediately took it from him and inspected the wound herself. The cut was shallow, though blood had tracked into his eyebrow.

"Who hit you?"

"I don't know."

"Describe them."

"I never saw them clearly."

He sat on the edge of the archive table while Nessa cleaned the cut with water from Ilya's bottle.

"I found the old maintenance station beneath the western Anchor service road," Tavi said. "The public entrance was sealed after the support inspections five years ago, but one of the clockworkers' tunnels still connects to it."

"And naturally," Nessa said, "you decided sealed meant inviting."

"You make fake memories for rich people."

"That is legitimate entrepreneurial initiative."

"It is illegal."

"Only because legislators lack imagination."

Ilya coughed into one hand. It might have been amusement.

Tavi continued. "There was a lower chamber beneath the station. Someone had removed part of the modern flooring. Underneath it was older stone. Black stone. The eye-and-clock symbol was carved beside a door."

Nessa placed the archive card she had been holding onto the table beside Tavi's chronometer. Tavi's note, all six altered crystals and Mirelle's silver debt-stay card remained in her fastened inner pocket.

"Same symbol as this?"

"Exactly."

"Who made the rubbing?"

Tavi frowned. "What rubbing?"

Nessa turned the card to show him the graphite trace.

He shook his head.

"Not me. Ilya gave me that card two days ago."

All eyes turned toward Ilya.

Ilya looked offended by the attention.

"I found it in a bundle of rejected archive requests after my dismissal. I never noticed the rubbing."

"So somebody pressed it against the Bellglass carving before you had it," Nessa said.

"Apparently."

Another thread remained stubbornly unhelpful.

Rhydian gestured toward Tavi's chronometer.

"The disk."

Tavi nodded.

"It was lying in a circular recess beside the door. I thought it might be a key, so I picked it up."

"Did anything happen?" Rhydian asked.

"The door opened."

Nessa stopped cleaning Tavi's cut.

"You said somebody had already opened it."

"They had. The locking mechanism was broken before I got there. The door was already a few inches open. When I lifted the disk, it opened farther by itself."

Rhydian's face became very still.

"Without you touching the door?"

"Yes."

"And then?"

"I looked inside."

Nessa closed her eyes briefly.

"Of course you did."

"There were stairs. Black stone at first, then something silver farther down. I went maybe thirty steps."

"Thirty?"

"Possibly forty."

"Tavi."

"I was counting badly."

He lowered the bloodstained cloth.

"Then I heard voices below me."

The room changed.

Rhydian said, "How many?"

"At least two. One man. One woman. Maybe more. The staircase curved, so I couldn't see them."

"What did they say?"

Tavi hesitated.

"The man said, 'The first Anchor is open.'"

Nobody moved.

"Open," Ilya repeated.

Tavi nodded.

"Then the woman said, 'The bloodline responded at the auction.'"

Nessa felt every muscle in her body lock.

Her wrist did not warm.

The heart contract had nothing to do with the fear that moved through her.

Rhydian's gaze went briefly to her contract mark anyway.

"Anything else?"

"The man asked whether 'the Keeper' understood what had happened."

Tavi looked at Rhydian.

"The woman said no. She said you were still looking in the wrong century."

Silence settled over the archive.

Nessa looked at Rhydian.

His expression revealed almost nothing, but his right hand had tightened beside his coat.

"They knew you would be involved," she said.

"Apparently."

"They knew about the auction."

"Yes."

"And my bloodline."

"Yes."

Tavi looked between them.

"Will someone explain what bloodline means? And why you said something about heart theft?"

Nessa exhaled.

There was no graceful version.

"At the Midnight Auction, I broke in intending to steal a memory crystal valuable enough to cover your debt."

Tavi stared at her.

"You broke into a private auction?"

"Yes."

"You were criticizing me for entering a sealed maintenance station."

"I dressed better."

"Nessa."

"This is still not the alarming part."

"That is extremely alarming."

"I accidentally activated an ancient lunar contract and bid my heart-spark."

Tavi's expression emptied.

Nessa pointed at Rhydian.

"He currently owns it."

Tavi stood so quickly that the archive table rattled.

"He what?"

Rhydian did not move.

"I did not knowingly purchase it."

"That sentence is not helping you."

Tavi reached instinctively toward the small clockmaker's knife at his belt.

Nessa stepped between them.

"No."

"Nessa—"

"He did not do it deliberately. The contract was hidden inside the auction. Someone engineered the entire situation."

"And you trust him?"

Nessa opened her mouth.

The question was more complicated than it deserved to be.

"I trust him not to use the contract against me," she said finally.

Rhydian's eyes shifted toward her.

The mark on her wrist stayed cold.

Good.

That answer, at least, belonged entirely to her.

Tavi noticed the pause.

"What does the contract actually do?"

Rhydian answered.

"It cannot compel her obedience, actions, trust, friendship or consent. It can redirect romantic attachment she develops toward me."

Tavi's expression went from furious to appalled.

"And you are just walking around with this?"

"I am seeking a way to dissolve it."

"By walking around with my sister?"

"Tavi," Nessa warned.

Rhydian's voice remained level.

"Her presence has also triggered ancient lunar records that did not respond to us before. Her bloodline, the contract resonance, or both appear to be involved. We do not yet know the exact mechanism."

That answer cooled some of Nessa's irritation. He had not turned uncertainty into fact merely because facts were more convenient.

Tavi looked at her again.

"What records?"

Nessa removed one altered memory crystal from her fastened pocket.

The other five, Mirelle's stay and Tavi's note remained inside.

"These used to be forged memories. When Lot Seven activated at the auction, they caught fragments from a real preserved hour."

She held the crystal between two fingers.

"That hour showed Vespera before it floated."

Tavi's anger faltered.

Ilya said quietly, "Before?"

"On solid ground," Nessa said. "Beside a silver sea. The Moon Anchors already existed. The Founding Houses did not create them. Soldiers with the twelve-pointed star took them."

Ilya lowered himself slowly into a chair.

For perhaps the first time since meeting him, he had no dry remark ready.

Tavi looked down at the black disk.

"This star."

"Same one," Nessa said.

Rhydian added, "The ancient memory also showed stairs descending beneath the silver sea."

Tavi's face lost color.

"The stairs I found?"

"Possibly," Rhydian said. "We do not have enough evidence to call them the same staircase."

"Vespera is thousands of feet above the cloud sea."

"Yes," Nessa said.

"So how can ancient stairs beneath a sea still be beneath us?"

Nobody answered.

Because the only available answers were absurd.

Ilya recovered first.

"Show me the disk."

Tavi lifted the chronometer onto the table rather than removing the stone.

Ilya fetched a magnifying lens.

Under it, markings became visible between the twelve points of the engraved star.

Not letters.

Tiny crescent shapes.

Nessa leaned closer.

One of the crystals still inside her pocket suddenly grew warm.

She froze.

Rhydian noticed immediately.

"One of the others?"

"Yes."

Nessa set the crystal already in her hand on an empty cloth beside the chronometer. Then she carefully unfastened her pocket and removed the remaining five crystals one at a time, arranging all six where everyone could see them. Mirelle's silver stay card and Tavi's folded note remained inside the pocket.

The first crystal stayed dark.

The second did nothing.

The third emitted a pale blue pulse.

"That one," Nessa said.

All six crystals were now accounted for on the cloth.

The third did not project a memory.

Instead, a narrow beam of silver-blue light extended from it toward the black disk.

Tavi jerked his hands away from the chronometer.

The light touched the twelve-pointed star.

Every engraved point illuminated.

Then the chronometer began ticking.

Once.

Twice.

The mechanism should not have worked. Its gears were still partially lifted from their mounting.

Yet the hands beneath the cracked glass moved backward.

Ilya whispered, "That is not clockwork."

Rhydian reached toward the crystal, then stopped before touching it.

"Nessa, does it feel like the previous activations?"

She concentrated.

"No projection. No pull on the contract mark."

Her wrist remained cold.

The backward-moving hands accelerated.

Midnight.

Eleven.

Ten.

Then they stopped at an hour that had never been engraved on the dial.

A thirteenth mark appeared between twelve and one.

The black-stone disk clicked inside the chronometer.

A voice emerged from it.

Not loud.

Not entirely human.

"First seal breached."

Nessa's blood went cold.

The voice continued.

"Lunar lineage confirmed."

Tavi stared at his chronometer.

"That thing knows you're here."

The blue beam strengthened.

A second voice followed, this one a woman's voice preserved through impossible years.

"If you hear this, they have lifted the city."

Nessa stopped breathing.

The voice continued.

"Do not descend through the opened gate."

Rhydian's expression sharpened.

The recording continued without responding to him.

"The Anchors were not built to hold the city above the world. They were built to hold the world below it."

The crystal went dark.

The chronometer stopped ticking.

For one heartbeat, nobody spoke.

Then every lamp in Ilya's hidden archive extinguished at once.

From somewhere far beneath Bellglass Square came a sound like an enormous lock turning open.