The scent of cedar shavings was sweeter than any incense ever burned in a royal temple.
Cider Hill rose four gentle miles south of the Capital Basin. A sunlit, rolling knoll crowned by twenty acres of heirloom apple trees, wild blackberries, and weathered dry-stone field walls.
At the highest point of the knoll sat a modest two-story cottage built from dressed fieldstone, its chimney made of river rock, its roof shingled in split wooden roof shingles.
From the front yard, looking north, a man could see the entire sweep of the continent.
In the far distance, twenty miles away, the World-Engine rose into the cloudless blue sky, a gleaming needle of silver steel and golden light that anchored the high sky.
But here on Cider Hill, there were no high-voltage power bars, no ice-cold pumps, and no twenty-ton high-pressure jacks.
There was only the soft rustle of autumn leaves, the hum of honeybees in the orchard. The steady, rhythmic rasp of a hand-saw cutting through dry timber.
Giles Croft stood in his shirtsleeves behind a pair of wooden sawbucks, his sleeves rolled past his forearms, a flat carpenter’s pencil tucked behind his ear.
