by Perrin Briar
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Book 3
Perrin Briar
Part One
Heists, Traitors and Family
Chapter One
Lady Wythnos poked at her food with her fork, making a path through the vegetables like she was designing her own landscape. The other plates were empty. Gregory had never turned up for dinner and her husband had been called away on urgent business. She put her fork down. It clattered in the large empty space.
Lady Wythnos got up and walked toward the sidedoor, where a serving man left his post and crossed to the dining table to clear up. She felt claustrophobic, trapped, a prisoner in her own home. She went out through the back door.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” a constable all of twenty years said, stepping out in front of her. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going for a walk,” Lady Wythnos said haughtily.
“Please wait a moment and I shall organise a retinue.”
“You shall do no such thing. I intend on going by myself.”
She blustered past the constable before he could reply and stomped down to the bottom of the garden to the fringe of trees at the end. She daren’t look back, or give voice to her weakness at standing up to authority. She got to the tree line, stopped, and then looked back. The constable stood looking down at the end of the garden, at her, but with the darkness of the foliage around her she didn’t believe he could see her. She turned and headed into the forest.
It turned dark quickly with the overhanging branches and thick foliage. An owl hooted, and Lady Wythnos leaped in startlement. She looked back in the direction of her home, but it had vanished.
Something snapped behind her. She peered around, her breath a frozen mist. She kneeled down and pulled out the small knife she kept in a sheath at her ankle. She waited, but nothing came at her. Now she regretted denying the young constable’s retinue, but she continued on, pushing deeper into the forest, keeping her small knife clenched tight in one hand.
She came to a large tree, tall and thick and strong. She returned the knife to its sheath and began to scale the ladder. The wind blew, and her hair fell across her face. Her hand came to the top, her fingers squelching in something slimy. She pulled herself up. Her slippers slid on the surface. She reached up and grabbed a low-hanging branch, steadying herself.
She stared at the pair of tiny child chairs, and the back of her throat stung. She sat down in one, held her head in her hands and wept.
Chapter Two
The birds didn’t sing, and there were no rustles of rodents in the forest’s undergrowth. Grandfather Time, Elian and Jera sat on a log, staring into space. It was like they had failed in their mission and time had already stopped. Jera shivered against the cold as the sun began to rise on a new day. She checked her watch.
“We have two days left,” she said. “We’d best get searching.”
“What’s the point?” Grandfather Time said. “The third piece could be anywhere. We might as well enjoy the last of the time we have left. I’m going to go to the southern isles. I hear the women down there are beautiful.”
“It can’t have gotten far,” Jera said. “It’s obviously a valuable item, especially with it hidden away like this. Someone might still have it.”
Neither of the men reacted, choosing to stare at the ground instead. Jera pressed her lips together and kicked Elian on the shin.
“Ow!” Elian said. “What did you do that for?”
“What’s the difference? We’re going to all die anyway. I might as well do what I’ve wanted to do since I met you.”
She pulled on his hair.
“Ow!” Elian said, getting to his feet. “Will you stop that?”
“Finally, you’re awake! We’ve gone through a lot, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not giving up just yet, so get over this slump you’re in and help me come up with a way out of this.”
“Out of what?” Elian said. “It’s gone! And there’s no clue to tell us where it went.”
“Someone found it and then either kept it or sold it to someone else.”
“So what if they did?” Grandfather Time said. “No one reports stuff they buy.”
There was a pause.
“Actually, they do,” Elian said.
“Excuse me?” Grandfather Time said.
“If someone buys something valuable they can apply for proof of ownership.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“Because anyone could claim ownership of a given object. If I steal something and get my hands on it, who’s to say it isn’t mine? Usually, shortly after buying a rare or expensive item, the owner applies for a Certificate of Ownership.”
“What are you saying?” Jera said. “That there’s a written record somewhere of when these valuable objects get passed from one person to another?”
“Yes,” Elian said.
“Does it say who the buyer was?”
“Of course. That’s the whole point.”
Jera’s breath caught in her throat.
“How do you know this?” she said.
Elian folded his arms.
“You don’t need to sound so surprised,” he said. “I do know some things. Any time I was stuck for a job or needed some income, I would go down to the Artefacts Registry Office, look through the list of recent acquisitions and do my research of where they were and how they’re stored. A lot of the artefacts go to museums, but some of them go to private collectors. Their security systems are a lot easier to break than museums.”
“Where is this registry office?” Jera said.
Elian shared a look of foreboding with Jera.
“In the Capital,” he said.
Grandfather Time didn’t notice, and got to his feet with surprising agility for a man his age.
“Then we’d best get down there, don’t you think?” he said with a grin.
Chapter Three
“I’ve never seen such fine workmanship,” Dr Slyman said to Gregory. “It is made by hands infinitely more deft than my own, and infinitely more creative. I’ve never seen anything like it. And I suspect I never will again. We’ve studied every piece of the clock, and although we can’t explain the purpose of every piece, there is something at work here we don’t quite understand.”
“Yes, yes,” Gregory said. “But how will you fix it?”
“The only way to fix this clock is how you would fix any other timepiece – with replacement parts. But we’ve searched the entire clocktower top to bottom, and there aren’t any here, so we made our own.”
Dr Slyman moved to a table with lumps beneath a white sheet. He pulled it back revealing copies of the cracked pieces on the wall. They were a shiny grey, and not the bright gold of the current pieces, but beautiful in their own way.
“These are made from the strongest material known to man,” Dr Slyman said. “They are perfect replicas of the originals, no more than a hair’s difference.”
“Will they work?”
“We hope so.”
Dr Slyman moved to the table and picked up the new cog. His weedy arm shook under its weight. He nodded to a young assistant with greasy hair and a white coat that almost reached the floor. He pushed the machine forward and inserted the prongs between the cog and chain that wrapped around it. He began to crank the handle. It stopped and his arms shook like he was pushing against a brick wall.
Gregory was about to step forward to help him when the handle began to turn and a burst of air hissed out from around the golden cog. Dr Slyman removed the cog and inserted their grey one.
“Turn it!” Dr Slyman said.
The young assistant pumped the handle again and the chain lowered into place. He removed the apparatus. For a moment there was silence, as everyone watched. But the clock parts didn’t move.
And then they did. The cog turned, just as the gold piece had done. A cheer went up, and Gregory felt relief sink down to his bones.
“It worked,” Dr Slyman said, as if shocked by the revelation. “It works!”
“Congratulations, doctor,” Gregory said.
He reached over to shake Dr Slyman’s hand.
Suddenly, Gregory was patting Dr Slyman on the back. Gregory frowned.
And now Dr Slyman was turning to look at the clock. Gregory was shaking Dr Slyman’s hand. They looked at one another and shared the same expression of fear.
And then time skipped again. Now Dr Slyman was at the table, picking up the removed golden cog.
“-ut it back!” Gregory said.
Dr Slyman stepped toward the clock. Gregory had hold of the machine’s handle. He turned it.
“We must p-” Dr Slyman said.
Gregory skipped forward and seized the apparatus and inserted the prongs around the cog as the assistant had done.
The young assistant was too scared to move.
Gregory turned the handle.
Dr Slyman removed the silver cog and reinserted the golden one.
Gregory and Dr Slyman, panting and out of breath, stood back, staring at the clock.
Gregory spun the handle in the opposite direction, and the golden cog rose into place.
The original golden cog turned, having been put back into place. Everyone stood, arms by their side, eyes wide, peering around themselves, waiting for time to skip again, but it didn’t. Dr Slyman and Gregory stood back, sweat dripping from their bodies.
“Let’s not try that again,” Gregory said.
“Agreed,” Dr Slyman said.
In Gregory’s hand was the world’s strongest metal. It had been crushed beyond recognition.
“I fear the skip we caused may have had an effect on more than just within this clocktower,” Dr Slyman said.
Chapter Four
Elian hugged a tree while Jera lay sprawled on the ground. Grandfather time was on his knees.
“What was that?” Jera said.
“Time is breaking,” Grandfather Time said.
Jera checked her watch.
“But we have forty-eight hours left!” she said.
“Then maybe it’s a different type of skip.”
Elian ever so slowly removed his hands from the tree.
“I think it’s stopped,” he said.
Jera waited a moment before getting to her feet.
“I feel sick,” Jera said, clutching her stomach.
“We need to hurry,” Grandfather Time said. “It’s the clocktower. It’s breaking. If we don’t fix it soon it’s going to get even worse.”
Chapter Five
The walls around the Capital were one hundred feet high with battlements every two hundred metres. Ballistas sat crouched on the walls like bored pigeons. Under their watchful gaze a constant stream of traffic poured in and out of the city at a dozen entrances. The portcullises were up, the gates down, bridging the gap over a moat brimming with fetid green water and miscellaneous rubbish. Jera peered over the bridge’s edge and caught the stench. She covered her face with her hooded robe and crossed the bridge into the city.
The relative calm outside the walls was replaced by the frantic sounds of the marketplace. Merchants hawked their wares from stalls that pinched the traffic down into single file.
“This way,” Elian said, leading them down a quiet road.
Boutique shops and foreign restaurants sat in the shade of the walls. One restaurant boasted of selling genuine centaur meat, another of leafy Goleuni meals straight from the jungle. Prosperous men and women with silk shawls were welcomed into the restaurants and shops by beaming hosts, and outwardly shunning the beggars in the street, whose hands were covered with open sores. One woman had no shoes, and had thick blood blisters on the soles of her feet. A restaurant owner saw Jera’s shocked expression and mistook it for disgust.
“Don’t worry, Madam,” he said. “They’ll be long gone by the time you finish your meal.”
Jera removed a bracelet and handed it to the restaurant owner.
“Please,” she said. “Take this and give them some food.”
The restaurant owner looked perplexed.
“They are not fit to eat my food, Madam,” the owner said.
Elian stepped forward.
“Forgive my wife,” he said. “She’s spent the majority of her life sheltered in the convents of the Dreary Mountains. She thinks she can solve any problem with a bowl of soup! But even food as undoubtedly delicious as yours cannot help these miscreants.”
The restaurant owner smiled. He turned to Jera.
“They’re not worth feeding, Madam,” the restaurant owner said. “Look.”
He bent down and lifted the homeless woman’s arm, revealing dozens of puncture marks dotting her skin.
“A Gap user,” the man said. “Don’t worry, by the time winter comes they’ll all be gone.”
Jera gritted her teeth, her jaw muscles protruding. She opened her mouth to speak. Elian snatched the bracelet out of Jera’s hand and gave it to the restaurant owner.
“Please,” he said, “take this. These lowly devils aren’t worthy of your food, but perhaps if you have any leftovers they might find their way onto the street behind your wonderful restaurant? I would be much obliged.”
The restaurant owner’s smile was tight, but he took the bracelet, bowed perfunctorily and headed back into his restaurant.
“What are you doing?” Jera said.
“What am I doing?” Elian said. “What are you doing? We’re meant to be keeping a low profile!”
“We can’t just let people be treated like this!”
“In the Capital, you can. If you carry on like this we’ll end up getting caught by the Force!”
The anger on Jera’s face deserted her, and her shoulders slumped.
“I just can’t stand by while people are being treated like that,” he said.
“I know,” Elian said, softening his voice. “But we’re in the Capital now. You have to act like they do.”
“Being cruel and selfish?”
Elian sighed.
“Come on,” he said, “we have to get to the Artefact Registration Office before it closes.”
The affluent shops dwindled as they passed into the merchant district and were assaulted by the aromas of a thriving city; the freshly baked bread of the bakeries, the sting of dyes from the wool merchants, the tang of blood at the butchers, the dust clouds and wood varnish of the local builders. Then the shops gave way to a series of small, but well-maintained stone houses. It was outside one of these that Elian came to a stop.
If it wasn’t for the ‘Artefact Registration Office’ sign engraved on a rectangle of copper out front, nothing would have distinguished it from the regular homes around it.
Elian, Jera and Grandfather Time stepped inside the building. A bell rang above their heads.
“I’m sorry,” a thin old lady with half-moon glasses said at the front counter. “I’m just about to close.”
Elian removed his hood and smiled.
“Phillip!” the old woman said. “I was just wondering when you would be back!”
The old woman smiled a smile that lit up her whole face, which was covered with wrinkles, worn and rough like a piece of old parchment. But she was spritely and in good shape for her age. The old woman lifted the table partition and weaved through the stacked boxes in the entrance room. She wrapped her arms around Elian’s neck.
“I am nourished by your very pr
esence,” Elian said. “Stand back and let me look at you. How have you been, Deirdre?”
Jera was startled by the change in Elian. He raised his voice and was more flamboyant with his gestures.
“Not bad,” she said. “People are scared with all these time shifts happening. It hasn’t really affected me. I always manage to skip back to this shop for some reason. But I’ve seen a rise in business. Everyone’s worried about dying, so they’re making sure to leave their possessions behind to their loved ones.”
She turned to Jera and Grandfather Time.
“I see you brought some friends,” she said.
“Yes. These are fellow professors from the university. This is Professor Moody, and this is Professor Whitehead.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Deirdre said with a bow. “It’s always an honour to receive distinguished guests.”
Grandfather Time stepped forward, took Deirdre’s hand and kissed it.
“It is we who are honoured, my lady.”
Deirdre blushed.
“Oh!” she said, smoothing her skirts. “How’s the university?”
“It’s good,” Elian said. “That’s why I came here today, actually. I need to do some research into an old family heirloom. I know you’re about to close up shop, but would you mind staying open for a little longer?”
“For you, Phillip, anything.”
“Thank you. I believe it should be registered under ‘Rare Items’.”
“Well, you know where it is. Can I make any of you a cup of tea?”
“Yes, please,” Elian said. “Green tea all round.”
Deirdre disappeared down a side corridor. Elian led them through a narrow aisle that they could only pass through single file. On either side were row upon row of stacked wooden cabinets.
“‘Professor Moody’?” Jera said, referring to her introduction.
“It was the first thing that came to mind,” Elian said.
