“The Enforcers are so called because they enforce the empire’s laws.”

“But what do they do?”

“Well, as you can see here, they patrol with Inspectors, keep order, that sort of thing. They watch and report everything and anything deemed suspicious, looking for anti-empire agitators and the like.”

“I do not like them.”

“As you should not, my dear. You should know, and never forget, that they are armed and do not hesitate to use their weapons. They have no capacity for compassion or mercy and will shed blood based on suspicion alone, without regard to possible innocence. They are made to protect the empire, and not its citizens, no matter what the propaganda says.”

Karigan liked this future she found herself in less and less.

As the carriage moved along, they turned, leaving the business district behind, and entered a section walled by mill buildings with a narrow canal running in front of them, up against their foundations and . . . through them? There were arches in the foundations, of which she could only see the tops, the rest submerged in the canal. The water reflected in ripples in the tall windows of the mills.

The professor followed her gaze. “Ah, yes. We’ve entered the heart of industry. This is Canal Street.”

“Canals—” Karigan began.

“They power the industry. They deliver water to turbines, which set the machines in motion. Water power, my dear. Certainly you had mills in your . . .” He hesitated, then whispered, “in your time.”

Karigan nodded, though she didn’t know what a turbine was. She knew water wheels, knew them on the outsides of wooden barnlike structures situated along streams and rivers. Not these imposing brick buildings.

“The Amber River feeds the canal,” the professor continued. “You, er, would not know the river. The final battle that marked the ascension of the empire altered the topography around the Old City. It was the force of . . . the force of those unknown weapons I mentioned before. Anyway, the Amber River runs down from the north and splits north and west of the city. So the canal you see right here flows beneath the mills and empties out behind into the north branch of the Amber. Remarkable engineering, really.”

Karigan didn’t care about the engineering. The professor had gripped her with the idea of the river and how the force of battle had changed the landscape, had caused a river to flow where there had not been one before. A stream, yes. But not a river, here, in Sacor City. It spoke of magic to her, of vast power. She shuddered. These weapons of Mornhavon’s had been magic, or something magical. No wonder the Sacoridians had been overcome.

“Closer to the Capital,” the professor continued, oblivious to her disquiet, “they’ve other means of powering machines, but in a blighted backwater such as this, we rely on old technology. Water, I think, is elegant in its simplicity. Perfectly suitable. Men like Silk do not appreciate that line of thinking. For them, it is always what and who they can twist and destroy for their own benefit.”

The professor seemed to forget Karigan as the identical brick facades rolled past the carriage’s window. Lost in some reverie, he brushed his long mustache with his forefinger. Karigan felt just plain lost, not liking the future her land and its people had found themselves in. Inside those impersonal brick walls, slaves labored over machines. She could not see them, but she knew they were in there. And, while she did not know what their labor was like or what the conditions inside the mills were, she could not imagine any of it was pleasant. As for the transformation of the countryside into this city? It was not an improvement. From all that she could tell, the empire was not about its people, but about the machines and what they produced. She sighed, feeling homesick and alien.

A pall settled over the interior of the carriage, Karigan with her own grim thoughts, and the professor gazing out his window, chin resting on his hand. Karigan followed his gaze and saw that the scene had changed from orderly brick buildings to burned out mills, a grouping of them with a central courtyard scattered with debris and choked with weeds. Remnants of blackened brick walls looked like jagged teeth. Only one building in the grouping stood unburned, yet forlorn, its windows boarded up.

“Do you know that cotton is very flammable?” the professor asked.

Karigan nodded. She was the daughter of a textile merchant, after all.

“All those fibers clouding the air inside the mills. The dryness, a spark. Who knows how the fire truly started, but that’s all it would have taken.”

A rusted wrought iron gate guarded the bridge that crossed the canal to the ruins. Arching above the gate in scrolling ironwork were the words, “Josston Mills Complex 4.” The sun glinted on flecks of gold as though the letters had once been painted in gilt.

“Complex number four,” Karigan said with a start. “This is where—”

“Yes,” he replied, cutting her off. “This is where the one building you visited stands. Miraculously. The fire was terrible, ferocious, and consumed the others in the complex without mercy. I could see the flames from the house.”

The professor had hidden his secret cache of historical artifacts in plain sight, in this one remaining mill building. And she had accessed it from underground. She gazed at the floor of the carriage as if she could see into the passages of lost Sacor City.

The professor guessed her thoughts. “Yes, the house is about two blocks that way.” He pointed at the opposite window, away from the mill complex. “This street runs parallel to the neighborhood. The whole city is set up on a grid pattern.”