A Question in Pieces

One broken fitting should have ended with a simple repair.

When a vent high in the Glass Atrium fails, Iris Rowan turns to Owen Ellis and his Equipment Yard for a replacement. The part they find works-but nearby, a crate of carefully made brass pieces raises a much larger question.

A grooved wheel. A delicate measuring arm. A water valve that moves. A recording drum no one remembers.

With Jinx padding ahead of them, Iris and Owen follow the clues across Allele & Ink, from a cold research wing and an old greenhouse to the Archive's turret room. Each discovery changes what they think the forgotten machine was built to do, while the gaps in the record force them to rely on observation, evidence, and the pieces themselves.

To make the apparatus work again, they will need to test their assumptions, solve one stubborn problem after another, and find a place still enough to measure a change too slow for the eye to see.

Richly illustrated and grounded in real scientific ideas, A Question in Pieces is a story about curiosity, collaboration, historic instruments, and the value of recognizing what the past still has to teach us.