Melli Dorn let her fingers uncurl from the wooden hand-grips of the broken-sun governor wheel.
The skin across her palms was black, glazed with a smooth, shiny coat of scorched animal fat and caramelized grease where the heat from the friction drums had burned through her canvas working gloves. She pulled her hands away. Then, strips of charred cloth remained stuck to the oak spokes, peeling away with a dry, papery tear that made her stomach turn. She stood swaying on the wet iron footplate, her breath whistling through teeth clenched against the throbbing heat in her arms.
Beside her, Urel slid down the curved casing of the water jacket until he was sitting flat on the deck plates, his boots splayed out in the warm, scummy runoff. His wool tunic was soaked through with sulfur-water, smelling like rotten eggs and hot iron.
“The tension is off,” Urel whispered, his voice nothing more than a dry croak. He reached out with an unsteady knuckle and tapped the high-tension return spring that sat in the bronze guide-frame. The heavy steel coil, four inches thick and coiled like an angry serpent, was dead. It lay loose within its mounts, separated from the release lever by a three-inch gap. “The balance weight bottomed out in the shaft. It didn’t bounce.”
