Terry had promised to employ resources to ask questions around town. They needed to know if there were any other children who had gone missing, specifically ones with metalmancy powers. They would also need to know what ships had come and gone since the harbor ice had melted.
"It will take time," Terry said. "And you two have had a very long day. You should get some rest."
Carl and Val walked back to the inn in silence. Val hadn't noticed earlier with everything that was going on, but the front door had been busted open at the lock.
"All the work she did on these," Carl said, inspecting the damage. "Completely pointless."
The two entered the front foyer. The inn seemed different now. It was no longer a safe haven, but a busted shell.
"Carl... I'm..." Val began.
The large man turned and looked at her. He placed a large hand on her shoulder. "Don't apologise. You did your best. This is my fault."
Val began to protest, "How?"
"After the attempt last fall, I should've done more. Sent Claire away until I knew it was safe. Hired guards. I'm the adult here Val, this all falls on me."
"But that's unfair."
"That's the world."
Carl motioned to the kitchen. "I need to get this door patched up. Would you mind making us some supper while I do that?"
"I could help."
The big man shook his head, "It's a short simple job. I'll have to replace the door. Luckily with all the renovations we do, I should have a spare one kicking around somewhere. I just have to find it."
Val nodded. It was a somewhat flimsy excuse, but she thought that it was his way of telling her that he needed a little bit of space right now.
Carl clomped off down the hallway, leaving Val alone in the empty foyer. Sighing, she headed for the dining room.
Things remained undisturbed since the last time she was here. The chair that the woman had flipped around still sat in the center of the room. The two chairs that the sisters had been forced to sit in still sat orphaned from their table. A tablecloth lay strewn on the ground.
Val picked up the cloth and tugged on it. Why hadn't she been able to get herself loose? Despite what they all said, there had to have been something that she could have done.
She began to put the room back in order. As she did so, she vowed that something like this would never happen to her or her sister again. She would get stronger, she would get smarter, and the next time, she would not lose.
After the room had been tidied, she went through the swinging doors to the kitchen.
The kitchen was dark, its only window was a frosted pane that sat facing an alleyway. There was a door that opened into the alley which the kitchen staff would use for deliveries when the inn was in operation.
Val began to poke around, searching for something that she could make for herself and Carl. Mand had done most of the cooking on their travels, leaving Val somewhat lacking in that department.
"Yet another thing that I relied on her for," Val thought. "She was doing most of the work. I was just gliding along in her wake."
She found a lot of ingredients, but nothing she could fathom putting together for a meal. She then remembered the large basket of preserves that the farmer had given them a few days prior. There had been a few bottles of moose meat in the mix. All she would have to do is empty one of those into a pan and heat it up.
She left the kitchen and made her way back to the room that she and her sister had been staying in.
She opened the door and stepped inside. It felt very, very empty.
The last time that Val had been here, she had awoken to an empty bed on the other side of the room. Back then, even if they weren't in the same room, Val knew her sister would have been somewhere nearby - she always was. Now, Val was truly alone.
The basket sat on the floor at front foot of her bed. Next to it, she had placed her backpack. She began sorting through the bottles, which mainly consisted of varying vegetables. While pulling her prize of preserved meat from the basket, her elbow hit the side of the backpack, sending it tumbling over on one side and scattering a variety of items on the floor.
"Shit."
She started grabbing some of the errant items and stuffing them back into her pack.
Her hands then fell on her book.
"Mechanical Anatomy of the World," she said to no-one, reading the title.
She picked it up and brought it over to her bed. She sat down, staring at the cover. The book had been a gift from her father.
Shortly after she turned ten, Val had been watching her sister using their hand cranked egg beater to scramble eggs. After her sister had set the object down, Val had imagined it operating by itself. Much to her sister's, and even to her own surprise, the beater began floating and cranking with nobody at the handle.
Val was a metalmancer. Word soon began spreading around town. Many had told her father how lucky he was.
Her father shortly afterwards presented her with the book. It was a pre-war volume, written by a rich eccentric who had been fascinated with clockwork machinery. He had apparently built every animal in the book piece by piece. Unfortunately, there was no practical way for him to power his mechanical menagerie, so his collection sat unmoving. Val often wondered if the creatures he made were still out there somewhere, sitting in a crumbling mansion. Mand told her that if they survived the war, they had probably been melted down by some scavenger by now.
As she flipped through the book, the charcoal picture of the gorilla fell out.
Val picked it up and studied it. She then looked back to the book. If she was going to rescue her sister, the book would be the key.