Firestarter

by Tara Sim

  Zavier and the others had spread out; to stay in a group would be to attract attention. But Danny still needed an escort, and today that duty had fallen to Edmund. Though Danny was prickly about the previous night, Edmund acted as if nothing had happened.

  The wind whipped through the square, and Danny huddled deeper into his coat. Zavier had managed to get him dark trousers, a white shirt, a dark waistcoat, a long black coat, and a gray scarf. Only his boots were his own, the only piece left from his life before.

  “It’s not very impressive,” Danny remarked of the tower.

  “You haven’t seen it all,” Edmund replied with a smirk. “Come here.”

  Danny followed, watching the metal rod at Edmund’s hip sway with each step. Dae had made the device, which the Prometheus crew called tasers. Zavier had used one on Danny before, sending painful electrical currents through his body. His fingers twitched with the memory. He knew that if he tried to run, Edmund would use the rod without hesitation.

  They walked around to the tower’s left side. Danny gasped.

  It was beautiful.

  He had never seen anything like it. There were two large faces unlike the one above their heads, the top one black with golden numerals and astrological symbols; there was even a face within the face with oddly shaped hands. The one below consisted of golden pictures framing a castle or a church at its center.

  They were both framed with black iron molding, flocked on either side with statues of angels and apostles and a dark-boned skeleton. Family crests adorned the brick wall leading around to the front of the tower. High above the black and gold faces, a gilded rooster perched in a niche.

  “God,” Danny breathed. It was the most breathtaking clock he’d ever seen.

  “I’d only seen drawings before,” Edmund said beside him. His eyes, too, were wide with wonder. “The real thing is … It can’t even compare.”

  Danny curled his cold hands into fists. Zavier wanted to destroy this tower, this beautiful creation.

  Edmund, sensing his sudden hostility, sighed. “I don’t like it either, you know. It doesn’t seem fair, but I know what Zavier’s going through, and he’s desperate. I wager you’d have done anything to help your father.”

  “What do you mean, you know what he’s going through?”

  Edmund breathed into his hands to warm them, then said, very softly, “He saved me.”

  Danny frowned, not sure he’d heard right.

  “We grew up in Exeter together, us and Liddy. The two of them were clock mechanic apprentices, but I don’t have the, ah, gift.” From the way Edmund was gazing up at the astronomical clock, Danny wondered if he wished he did. “Z lived close by and we became friends. I was allowed at his aunt’s house whenever my father …” He shrugged. “Then dear old Dad got himself stabbed down at the pub, and my mum died a little later of consumption. Jo, Zavier, and Sally took me in.”

  Danny chewed on the inside of his cheek, feeling guilty for the less-than-kind thoughts he’d had toward Edmund. “I’m sorry.”

  Edmund shrugged again. “Wouldn’t have got through it without Z. When he asked me to help him free his mum, of course I said yes. Only seemed fair.” Edmund jerked his chin up to the face within a face, where a hand shaped like a sun pointed to an astrological symbol. “You know the thing above is called an astrolabe? It tells the positions of the sun, planets, stars. Can’t read a wink of it myself, but isn’t that something?”

  “You know an awful lot about clocks for someone who isn’t a mechanic.”

  Edmund flushed. Before he could respond, a young woman with dark hair in two long braids stopped to admire the clock. She clutched a rose-colored shawl around her shoulders. When she caught Danny looking at her, she smiled and said something in Czech.

  “Sorry, English,” Edmund replied.

  “I was asking if you knew the story of the clock,” she said with a throaty accent. “You look as if you are seeing it for the first time.”

  “We are, indeed,” Edmund said as Danny’s stomach writhed. The story of the clock? Did she know? How could she possibly—?

  “The counselors of Prague wanted the best,” the young woman explained, “so they hired clockmaker Hanuš to design it many, many years ago. They didn’t just want a structure to measure time, but to measure the stars’ passing. Hanuš designed exactly that.”

  She gestured to the astronomical faces. “It was perfect in every way, but the counselors were frightened of Hanuš’s talent. They did not want him to make a tower more impressive than Prague’s for another city. So in the night, they had him blinded with a piece of hot iron.”

  Edmund inhaled through his teeth. Danny winced.

  “Hanuš, after healing, took his best pupil and went to the heart of the clock.” Her dark eyes trailed upward. “The pupil, following his master’s instructions, stopped the clock. And since Hanuš was the only one who knew how his particular clock worked, no one could restart it. Prague was trapped in time for a hundred years because of Hanuš’s revenge.”

  Danny had heard a variant of this story before; mechanics whispered of the mysterious hundred years Prague had lost to time. It was no wonder the city felt so old, its citizens running an entire century behind most of the rest of the world. Danny wondered when the young woman beside them had been born.

  “Of course, someone—perhaps Hanuš, perhaps his pupil, perhaps another clockmaker—made it run again,” the young woman said. “And thank goodness for that.”

  “There haven’t been any other problems with the tower since then?” Edmund asked.

  “No, we care for it well. It’s said that the ghost of Hanuš haunts this tower. Anyone who tries to disrupt the clock suffers a tragic death or goes insane.”

  “Lovely,” Danny muttered low enough that the young woman wouldn’t hear. “Think Zavier knows?”

  Edmund rolled his eyes. “Like that would stop him.”

  He was getting tired of Edmund being right all the time.

  At noon they crossed paths with Daphne and Liddy near the Gothic church across the square. Liddy carried another of Dae’s taser devices. Daphne seemed to have recovered well enough, but dark circles still shadowed her eyes. She was dressed in trousers and a long, thick tunic, over which she wore a fitted dark blue coat.

  “How are you?” Danny asked her as Liddy and Edmund exchanged a word.

  “Liddy farts in her sleep. How do you think I am?”

  Danny snorted around a laugh. “Felix isn’t much better. His snores could tear down the walls of Prague.”

  “Maybe combined they can take down the tower before Zavier can even come near it.”

  They shouldn’t have been laughing, and they both knew it. But seeing Daphne and talking to her after his lonely night was a tiny lifeboat in a sea of doubt.

  “Danny,” she whispered when they’d calmed down, “do you think Zavier will find out about the blood from the Builders? Would it be better if he finds out from us instead?

  “We can’t do that!”

  “I know, it’s just …” She looked around the square, lost. “I don’t know what else to do.”

  “We’ll think of something.”

  “All right, enough chitchat,” Liddy said, breaking them apart. “Ed, you and Danny go back and jot down what you’ve learned. Daphne, we have more scouting to do.”

  Daphne shot Danny a quick “kill me” look before following Liddy.

  At the apartment they shared a meal of pork, dumplings, and sauerkraut, then passed the afternoon hours sketching and making notes. By the time Zavier and Felix returned, Danny was reading the last of Prometheus Unbound.

  There was one passage he kept returning to. Asia, whom Prometheus loved, says that Zeus is to blame for all the problems of the world. Prometheus, on the other hand, gave the humans fire, and therefore advanced their civilization. Between the two of them, Prometheus was the greatest asset to humans.

  In the same passage, the character Demogorgon says, “All things are s
ubject to eternal Love.”

  He was fairly certain Zavier hadn’t intended him to find any meaning in this, but it made him pause nonetheless. Zavier thought the spirits were evil, manipulative … but they still had thoughts, emotions, even memories.

  Colton was right. They deserved better.

  Danny lay wide awake that night as thin moonlight slanted through the window, projecting a beam of silver over his stomach.

  There was another quote from the book that kept twisting inside him: Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.

  He ran his fingers over his own lips, remembering all too well the feeling of Colton’s mouth, the warmth of his lips, the shape of his soul.

  Danny sat up. He quietly crawled to the end of the bed, where he had left his boots. He could tiptoe out of the room and go back to the clock, study it more thoroughly. Maybe even go inside, though he’d told Zavier he refused to, in order to warn the spirit as he had in Lyallpur.

  Reaching down for his boots, he froze. Zavier sat against the wall directly between him and the door.

  But he wasn’t looking at Danny. His head rested on his arms, the metal one glinting in the moonlight.

  Danny hesitated. He leaned back, thinking to return to bed, but the mattress creaked and Zavier looked up. Their eyes met, and Danny knew he’d intruded on a private moment. Zavier’s face was no longer stiff and cold; it was soft and vulnerable. Young.

  All things are subject to love.

  Danny tried to read those eyes, but Zavier looked away, embarrassed, wrapping himself in his blankets and pretending to go back to sleep. Danny waited a moment, then did the same. Pulling the blanket over his shoulders, he wondered if Zavier suffered the same nightmares he did.

  As luck would have it, Danny was paired with Zavier the next day. He knew in a heartbeat that it was no coincidence.

  As they wandered the square, Zavier jotted down notes and drew details and blueprints, the connecting streets of an alleyway or the white crosses in the ground before Town Hall. The crosses were said to memorialize the executions of leaders of the Rebellion of the Czech Estates against the Habsburgs. Danny didn’t know a lick of Czech history, so listening to Zavier was akin to browsing a textbook.

  “A bunch of men were killed here,” Danny said as he tapped his toe against one of the crosses, “and the clockmaker haunts the tower. This is the most morbid town square I’ve ever set foot in.”

  Zavier made a small choking sound; Danny later realized he’d been stifling a laugh.

  Around noon, they sat on a bench by the fountain in the middle of the square where they watched people running errands, or holding hands as they strolled, or stopping to gaze at the astronomical clock.

  “Does it bother you?” Zavier asked suddenly, hunched over his notebook.

  “Does what bother me?”

  “Your wound.”

  “Oh.” Danny touched his left shoulder. “A little. Right now it’s only a dull ache I’ve learned to ignore.”

  A humorless smile flashed across Zavier’s face. “You’ve had to put up with plenty of those, haven’t you?”

  There he was, being metaphorical again. “Does it bother you, then?” Danny asked, gesturing at Zavier’s arm.

  Zavier glanced at it, surprised, before returning to his notes. “It did at first. But as I’ve come to learn, given enough time, you can get used to any pain.”

  Danny shifted on the bench. “I finished Prometheus Unbound, but I’m not sure what you wanted me to take away from it, to be honest.”

  Zavier raised his gaze to the clock tower radiating its stable power across all of Prague. “Aetas’s story closely resembles that of Prometheus’s in the myth. Chronos made him to oversee time, but was displeased with his efforts, especially after he gave some of that power to humans, just like Prometheus gave humans fire.

  “There are arguments that humanity no longer has need of Zeus, but Prometheus remains necessary. If Aetas were freed, would he have more to offer humanity than Chronos? We wouldn’t need to rely on clock towers. We’d live off what Aetas has given us.”

  “So, what, you fancy yourself some sort of Heracles?” Danny snorted. “You think you’re going to free Aetas all on your own?”

  “If it has to come to that. Hopefully by then I’ll know how.”

  Danny turned away. He didn’t want to remember the sight or smell of blood.

  “You know that anyone who tries to tamper with that clock dies or goes insane, don’t you?” Danny asked.

  “Seems like someone’s been listening to the local legends. They also say that if the skeleton on the clock nods, the country is in peril. Superstition, Danny. It goes a long way.”

  “You’re going to hurt these people,” Danny whispered. “They love this clock. Hell, I’ve been here a day and I love it, too.”

  “Danny …” Zavier closed his notebook. “This isn’t just about a vendetta, or showing you what we’re capable of. This is making our message clearer. These Builders”—his face twisted—“and anyone who tries to oppose us are going to learn a hard lesson. They can’t rebuild this clock, not as the original clockmaker did. I doubt the Prague citizens would even let them try. This plan isn’t a feeble attempt to bring you around or to free time. This is a declaration of war.”

  Danny shook his head and watched a small girl run after her parents, clutching at her father’s coattails. The father laughed as he leaned down to whisk her up, her curls bouncing. The mother tickled her leg, making her laugh.

  “And,” Zavier added softly, watching them, “one step closer to my mother.”

  In the afternoon, Zavier passed Danny off to Liddy so that he could plan with Felix. Walking Prague’s streets, Danny was amazed by just how old this city was. London was old, too, of course, but its roots had been partially hidden by technology; Prague’s were still visible under its foundation. The city’s ancient history had seeped into the cobblestones and crooked streets and aged buildings.

  “You miss your bloke?” Liddy asked as she twirled the taser in her hand like a baton. Danny had never been particularly fond of her, but she wasn’t exactly malicious. Just annoying.

  “Why did you join Zavier?” Danny countered. “Edmund told me you’re both from Exeter, but there has to be another reason.”

  She paused. “I was a mechanic with him, sure. Couple years younger than he is, but we were in a lot of the same classes. He helped me with the coursework, sometimes. When he asked if I would help him with all this, I said sure.”

  “Just like that? If you’re a clock mechanic, doesn’t that … I don’t know … didn’t that seem wrong to you?”

  A faint blush touched her face. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.” But when Danny kept staring at her, she sighed. “I was sacked, all right?”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s not about what I did. I just … couldn’t keep up. I didn’t learn like the others, yeah? Mum and Gran hadn’t taught me to read, I barely knew my numbers. The others called me out on it all the bleeding time, made me into a joke. The Lead couldn’t let me continue since I was so far behind, so—” She made a scissor-like motion with her fingers.

  “That’s ridiculous. They should have let you retake the courses, given you a tutor.”

  Liddy snorted. “Our little branch isn’t like yours in London. Not the same funding, staff, resources. Zavier tried, but … it wasn’t enough.” She narrowed her blue eyes at Danny. “I’m not even sure why I’m telling you this, other than to make you understand that I’ve no ties with the Mechanics Union anymore. And anyway, they’ll be out of commission soon enough.”

  “So this is just revenge to you?”

  “’Course not. When Zavier first told me what he’d planned, I called him a nutter.” She started to swing her taser in circles again. “But he and Ed talked me ’round. And I want to free his and Sally’s mum, too.” She gave his shoulder a good-natured shove; he nearly stumbled into passersby. “We’ll keep your bloke safe. Za
vier’ll find a way.”

  He rubbed his arm. “How long is this mission going to last, anyway?”

  “Oh, not much longer. They should be setting everything up tonight.”

  Danny stopped in his tracks. “Tonight?”

  “Thought you were impatient to get back to the ship.”

  He needed more time to devise a plan if he had any chance of saving the clock. He’d tried before in Lyallpur, and that had blown up in his face. Literally.

  Danny noticed a shop on their left. Bottles of every color filled the window, along with dried herbs dangling from strings and small figurines of stars and suns. The table was covered with a pale lavender cloth, a stack of long cards positioned at its center.

  A woman was seated at the table, her long dark hair tied back with a blue kerchief. She watched Danny with curious eyes, but said or did nothing to call him over. Still, he felt the urge to approach her, like a moth inextricably drawn to light.

  “Hey,” Liddy called. “Danny. Oy!”

  He ignored her, stopping before the woman and her table. The woman stared back at him, one eyebrow quirked ever so slightly upward.

  Eventually, she touched the cards with a slim, pale finger. “I read the cards for you?” she asked.

  “Danny,” Liddy growled at his side, “this is just a bunch of nonsense. You don’t believe in this stuff, do you?”

  “Not really,” he murmured. But he nodded to the woman anyway. She began shuffling her deck, then asked him to cut the cards into three piles. Touching the cards seemed strangely intimate, as if giving them permission to peruse his soul.

  The woman pointed to the stack on his right. “This is past. The middle is present. This one, future.” She collected the cards again with the present deck on top. After more fiddling, she looked up at him with an enigmatic smile.

  She put one card on the table. Then two. When five cards had been laid out before him, she returned to the first and turned it over. It showed a man with a golden crown sitting on a throne holding a scepter.

  “This, your past—the Hierophant. You have struggled between what is right and what is wrong. The answer will come. The answer is within you.”