Timekeeper

by Tara Sim

  “How could you tell?” He tried to get off the seat, but his sore legs wouldn’t cooperate and he ended up nearly falling on his backside. Daphne looked on, unimpressed.

  “What the hell was that back there?” she asked. “I was passing by the square and saw them go at one another.”

  Danny explained what had happened, only then realizing he still held his scarf in a white-knuckled grip. He tied it around his neck. The ride had completely chilled him.

  “They can’t keep doing this,” Daphne mumbled. Her blue eyes were sharp with concern. “It’s only a matter of time until those idiots do something violent.”

  “My bruises say today was plenty violent.”

  “No, I mean something more. Something dangerous.” Daphne looked down the street, and only then did Danny think to check their surroundings. Somewhere in Aldgate, maybe. Down the street was a large house that read ST. AGNES’S HOME FOR WOMEN. Why had she taken them here, of all places?

  “You didn’t park your auto outside the Affairs building, did you?” she asked.

  “No, I took the bus. I’ll take one home.” He put a hand on his aching side where he’d been hit. Beneath the ache was familiar, writhing guilt. “Um … thank you. For getting me out of there.”

  She could have left him to be trampled, and would have likely thought good riddance. It’s what he would have done.

  No it isn’t, a faint voice whispered. You’re better than that. But the memory of stealing Daphne’s assignments told him different.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled to the curb.

  “Don’t be sorry. Just be careful around those people.” She put her helmet back on, but didn’t fasten the strap. “See you.”

  He turned to walk to the nearest omnibus stop, but looked over his shoulder. Daphne only rode her motorbike to the end of the street, where she parked outside St. Agnes’s. Danny paused, curious, but made himself turn back. He’d already invaded her life too much.

  Don’t think this is finished. Danny had no idea what it meant, but Daphne might be right. If unchecked, there was no telling what these protesters would do. Or what they would set their sights on.

  Lucas watched the two mechanics bicker about the clockwork before them and gently prodded the skin near his eye. The bruise was finally gone after Danny Hart had punched him, but he sometimes wondered if the damage lingered, if others could see his humiliation just as clearly as he still felt it.

  Danny Hart. The poor, fatherless mechanic. The best way to get back at him for what he’d done was right before Lucas’s eyes. Danny’s father was trapped in Maldon; everyone knew that. And everyone also knew that Lucas, not Danny, had been chosen for this assignment.

  Mull on that, you little Mandrake, he thought with vindictive glee. Your father will be indebted to me, and so will you.

  It had been difficult to catch up to Danny Hart, the star pupil, the “prodigy.” Lucas had been at the top of his own class, but Danny, a full class lower—both in age and society—had outstripped him with embarrassing ease. Only late nights and overtime training had pushed Lucas slightly ahead.

  There were still some who said Danny had more natural talent, whatever that meant. Actions spoke louder, and now Lucas Wakefield, not Danny Hart, stood on the threshold of the most important job in recent history.

  “It won’t make a difference if you install the central cog last,” said Tom.

  “Fine.” George gestured at the wall of cogs and gears. “Be my guest.”

  Lucas watched as Tom limped to the clockwork, his metal leg thumping loudly against the wooden floor, and began to fit the central cog to the frame. The clock room of the new tower was spacious and smelled of oil and iron. The fields around the isolated tower rippled with a strong wind that whistled shrilly through the tall, thin windows.

  Lucas peered out. It was common for the London protesters to demonstrate near the tower, kept a safe distance away by guards, but today was oddly silent, not a body in sight. Beyond, he spotted the gray, impenetrable wall that closed in Maldon.

  “I’m telling you, something’s off,” George said, shifting on his feet. “I don’t feel anything.”

  Lucas didn’t either, but hadn’t wanted to be the first to say it. When he walked into a tower, time was all around him. Even just walking into a town set off the sensation. Here, near the closed-off territory of Maldon, time was stale. There was no life in it.

  But today, finally, the central cog was being installed. Maybe that would change things.

  Tom, bent over the cog, shook his head. “You’re overthinking it.” He adjusted a couple of things, then stepped back. “There. Let’s get it started.”

  All three mechanics placed their hands on the clockwork and closed their eyes. The metal was cool and unresponsive under their hands. Lucas concentrated on the time fibers around him, though they were thin and pale. Frowning, he pulled them forward and attached them to the clockwork, willing it to start. Pulled and attached. Pulled and attached.

  The mechanism shuddered, jerked, and slowly began to move.

  “Ha!” Tom exclaimed. “There it goes!”

  But something was wrong. Lucas could feel it now, and the hairs on his arms stood on end. The clock ran, but it was dead. It wasn’t creating an area of time, but rather feeding off the existing time around them, blocked by the indomitable Maldon barrier.

  And then they all heard it: a ticking noise. But not the ticking of a clock.

  “Wait,” Tom said as the whistle of the wind grew louder. “I don’t—”

  Everything went white as the clockwork exploded.

  Lucas must have screamed, but he couldn’t hear himself over the roar. All senses were stripped from him, and there was terror in that unknowing, unfeeling suspension, lost in shuddering white chaos. Sight returned first, and he watched cogs and gears bounce and fly and break apart through the smoke. Gray and black replaced shocking white, his lungs filled with burning ash.

  Then, as if using the eyes of another person, he looked down at the gear embedded in his chest.

  He inhaled brokenly, gurgling over the coppery blood that rose in his throat. As it dribbled from his slack mouth, a rumble grew beneath him, and the tower trembled.

  For a moment, time started. It flickered into existence like a guttering candle. But just as quickly as it had ignited, it blew out, the light extinguished for good.

  The tower began to fall.

  Danny was relieved to see no protesters outside the Mechanics Affairs building the next morning. He hid a yawn behind his hand; it was early, but he had to check Daphne’s folder.

  He hoped he wouldn’t run into Matthias. Danny was still upset with him for what he’d done, and for all the trouble it had caused him. But it wasn’t Matthias he found in the hall. In a small alcove by a window, a girl sat sobbing into a linen handkerchief. A group of mechanics and apprentices surrounded her, murmuring among themselves.

  Danny cautiously moved forward and realized the girl was the one who’d been attached to Lucas’s arm at the social. The one who had sneered at Cassie.

  So he’s cut her loose, has he? But that didn’t explain why everyone looked so grim.

  Someone noticed him and gasped. The small crowd drew back. Their gazes were wary, surprised, pitying. The crying girl looked up and screeched.

  “You!” She staggered to her feet, her eyes red and blotchy as hectic color stained her cheeks. Her friends tried to keep her back as she struggled to fly at him. “Get away from here!”

  Danny took a step back. He opened his mouth, but no words came.

  “Danny.” An apprentice materialized at his side. Brandon. “You should probably go, mate.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “He’s dead!” the girl screamed. “Lucas is dead because of that clock tower! Are you happy now? As if hitting him wasn’t enough for you! I wish you’d gone instead of him, that you were the one to—that you were—” She collapsed back into sobs.

  People were mutterin
g, some trying to pull her away. Someone tugged on his arm and he obediently followed, too numb to resist.

  “Bloody hell,” Brandon muttered. “It can’t get any worse.”

  He led Danny to an unused classroom and closed the door behind them. Danny sank into one of the desks and stared blankly at its surface.

  “What was she talking about?” Danny rasped.

  “Thought someone would’ve told you by now,” Brandon said. “The new tower was destroyed. The older mechanics got out, but they’re fair banged up. Lucas …” Only a shift of his shoulders told Danny he was steeling himself for the next blow. “A gear struck him in the chest and he was crushed by debris.”

  At first, Danny thought he’d heard incorrectly. That this was a test or a joke of some sort. But the boy’s eyes didn’t flinch, his face as grim as the ones in the hall.

  Danny’s stomach rose into his throat at an alarming speed. He shot out of the desk, fell to his knees beside the rubbish bin, and heaved.

  Everything came rushing back in cruel, relentless detail. The sharp gear slicing his chin open. Blood on his skin, hot and slick. Bitter ash in his mouth, the hair-raising scream of grinding cogs. The smell of burning oil, smoke, sweat, terror. The shudder of time crawling to a standstill, the way the fibers had woven around him, squeezing, as if wanting to stop his heart. Danny whimpered, his body wracked with spasms.

  I was in an accident. I got out. I’m safe now.

  Was he really?

  As the attack slowly passed, he shoved the rubbish bin away and coughed, eyes watering. He gasped for air, unable to stop shaking. Unable to stop expecting a death sentence to strike him down.

  “The tower …” His voice came out raw. “It fell?”

  Brandon nodded. Danny ran his hands through his hair and gripped tightly. He could barely feel the pain along his scalp.

  “They found bombs hidden throughout the tower and behind the parts they’d already installed. Tom and George are going to be questioned. Lucas’s funeral is in a few days.”

  Danny hid his face in his knees. He thought of Lucas’s body being stuffed into a coffin. He saw himself in that coffin, a gear buried in his chest.

  “They don’t blame you,” Brandon assured him. “Not really. You wouldn’t blast apart a tower that could’ve saved your dad. But you did hit Lucas, mate.”

  Danny stared at his apprentice until his words made sense. “You think I would kill Lucas?”

  “No, frankly, I don’t. The Lead’s saying it’s far more likely the protesters had something to do with it, and anyone that’s been seen outside the office is to be found and interrogated. That’s all I know.”

  Brandon opened the door. “All the mechanics and apprentices are invited to the funeral. You’d best come.” He lingered in the doorway. “D’you need anything?”

  Nothing you can give me.

  “No,” Danny whispered. “Thank you for telling me.” And for not looking at him the way the others had.

  Brandon nodded once and left.

  Danny wanted to stay tucked away in this corner forever. If he didn’t move, nothing would happen to him. His mother would go about her life, his father would stay trapped, Enfield’s clock tower would go on ticking, and no one else would blame him for anything. A lifetime of regrets and fears ended. His thread uncut, his destiny unfulfilled.

  The light in the room faded into the blue and gray bruise of dusk by the time he could stand. He thought he might retch again, but his stomach was hard and hollow.

  Lucas was dead. The new Maldon tower—all of their hard work—destroyed. Bombs planted, but by whom?

  He touched the scar on his chin. The shape and promise of a nightmare.

  The funeral was held two days later in Highgate Cemetery, a sprawling place overcrowded with trees and ferns. It looked more like a forest than a graveyard.

  He hadn’t wanted to come, but he wanted to get away from his mother. The fragile hope she insisted on carrying had shattered when he told her about the tower. He had heard her sobbing long into the night, and in the morning, he couldn’t convince her to leave her bed. He’d made her tea, but it had gone untouched.

  “Mum, you have to eat something,” he had told her in the dim light of her bedroom.

  But she had just stared at him as if he were the ghost of a bad dream, as if this were somehow also his fault.

  He had to escape that look, had to stop the sharp stone of guilt from reforming in his stomach.

  So here he was, in his best suit and standing with his eyes lowered. He tried not to pay attention to the people around him, but someone came and stood on his right.

  “I didn’t think you’d come,” Matthias said.

  A flare of anger licked up Danny’s ribs at the sight of Matthias, but it was weak and dissipated quickly. Danny watched mourners congregate around the recently dug grave. Lucas’s parents stood at the front, their faces pale and expressionless as though carved from stone, like the weeping angels throughout the cemetery.

  “Didn’t think I’d come, either,” Danny said, looking away. A mechanical raven was perched on a tombstone nearby. Come nighttime, it would be alert for grave robbers.

  Danny swallowed painfully. “Matthias … who would do this? If it was the protesters, how did they do this? They—They killed someone.”

  Matthias’s breath caught, and when Danny turned, the man’s eyes were brimming with tears. Danny had never seen Matthias cry, and it made him avert his eyes again.

  “I don’t know.” Matthias swallowed hard. “The Lead might try to build another tower.”

  “After this? Unlikely. Besides, you heard what they said. The tower didn’t work.”

  “The towers are a lost art,” Matthias agreed. “I wonder …”

  He trailed off, and Danny glanced at him. But the man now had his eyes fixed on the coffin being carried by pallbearers to the grave, and they said nothing more.

  The dark wooden coffin was lowered. Lucas’s mother sobbed loudly as she watched what was left of her son disappear under the earth. Each sound tore a new hole in Danny’s chest. He wondered if the clocks in their house were all stopped at Lucas’s time of death, the time the tower had fallen, the exact moment a dream had ended.

  Lucas was in an accident. He didn’t get out. He’s dead now.

  “Be careful, Danny,” Matthias whispered as the priest uttered words of blessing and tossed the first handful of dirt into the grave. “Until these people are caught, no clock tower is safe.”

  People.

  “Matthias,” he said slowly, softly, “what sorts of bombs were found at the tower?”

  Danny wasn’t sure where the question came from, but Matthias’s knowing expression told him he’d been waiting for it.

  “Pipe bombs.”

  Those two words possessed him.

  Danny stood in the hospital entrance, blocking foot traffic. Those who passed shot him dirty looks and jostled him to get by.

  Maybe this was a bad idea.

  But he needed answers.

  It had been months since he’d been to the hospital, and he remembered the smell immediately: chemicals and urine. It made his nose itch and his stomach hurt.

  His stay here had almost been worse than the explosion itself. The way his mother and Matthias treated him like a china doll, the sympathy in everyone’s eyes, the way the doctor approached his side as if he were unstable.

  Then again, Danny’s nightmares had tended to wake the entire ward. And he’d tried to escape. Twice.

  “May I help you?” a nurse asked at the front desk. Thankfully, he didn’t recognize her.

  “Yes. I was looking for my, er, uncle. Tom Hawthorne?”

  She checked the files and directed Danny to a room on the second story. He walked up the stairs, his heart pounding. The floors creaked under his boots, and he felt as if just by looking at him people would know what he was up to. But he went largely ignored, the staff far too busy with their own concerns.

  When he reac
hed the right room, he braced himself before entering. It was worse than he thought. Legs and arms were splinted, George’s head bandaged and bloody, Tom’s face bruised. At the sight of Danny, they tensed.

  “What are you doing here?” Tom growled. Even his voice sounded bruised.

  Danny tried to swallow past his dry tongue. “I know what’s going on.”

  The two men exchanged a look.

  “About the clock towers,” Danny clarified.

  “Then would you do us a favor and tell us?” George said.

  “You two are in on it. Together.”

  Tom managed to croak out a laugh. “Lad, the hospital fumes must have gotten to you.”

  “He’s always been like this,” George muttered.

  Danny came closer, trying to make himself taller. “You were at Shere before I was. You had access to the tower blueprints. There were pipes in your office, and pipe bombs destroyed the new Maldon tower. I bet Lucas saw something while he was in Rotherfield, and you two killed him at Maldon to keep him quiet. I don’t know why you’re doing this, if maybe you sympathize with the protesters, but it stops now.”

  “Danny,” George said slowly, “you’re not making sense.”

  “After Rotherfield, you said that something needed to be done.”

  “I was talking about finishing the Maldon tower. Tom was upset. His sister lives in Rotherfield, and when the bomb went off, he was terrified of the town being Stopped. And as for the pipes,” George said, glancing at Tom, who was pale under his bruises, “Tom was re-plumbing his house.”

  Danny hesitated, his limbs buzzing with warning, with the need to do something. George could easily be lying.

  “Those are convenient excuses,” he said at last. “I don’t know why you two are doing this, but I’m going to tell the Lead. I’ll tell the police if I have to.”

  “You’re out of your mind.” Tom called for the nurse, who came to the doorway. “This young man is bothering us. Please escort him out.”

  “No!” Danny started forward. “I know you have something to do with it!”