Chainbreaker

by Tara Sim

  Partha bowed his head. “A vile time for your countrymen, sahib.”

  “Too right.”

  Daphne remained silent. She was painfully aware of standing between these two men—two sides of a war, two sides of her birth. There was a strangeness to her skin just then, as if it weren’t actually hers. She wanted to scratch at it, see if it would flake off and reveal something truer. Something in-between, something like a mark, that would determine what to say, what to think, what she was.

  In streets clogged with both people and animals, vendors hawked eggs and chickens and milk. Soldiers wearing hats or turbans meandered through the crowds, their hands on rifles and swords. They passed impressive mosques and shrines, the products of both Indian and European architecture. Urchins ran up to the tonga with palms held flat, begging for money. Daphne tried not to meet their eyes.

  In a more deserted area of the city, they came upon a structure of red sandstone in what Crosby called the British quarter. Although Daphne saw laundry lines stretching between buildings and chimney smoke rising from roofs, the place felt abandoned.

  Again, Crosby attempted to help her down, and again she ignored his hand. He moved his jaw like he was chewing his bad mood and pointed at the building before them. “These are our residences for the next several days. You are not to leave unless escorted by at least one soldier, and you must seek my permission first.”

  She tried to mask her irritation. “Is Mr. Kapoor staying here as well?”

  “Who?”

  “The pilot.”

  “Who knows.” Crosby waved away the question. “Though the city has undergone quite the transformation since the Mutiny, there have been incidents in the past few months. Hostility toward our soldiers, a brief altercation at a mosque, what have you. This is why you need an escort, Miss Richards. The city may look inviting, but even behind a well-adorned wall you may still find mold. Partha, take her to her rooms.”

  The sepoy made to take her pack, but she shook her head. “I can carry it,” she insisted.

  He blinked at her, but silently allowed her to follow him into the building. Inside, the soldiers had carelessly left their doors open. Daphne saw men arguing, laughing, eating, sleeping. They passed an open sitting area where soldiers’ wives drank tea near a balcony. A few noticed her and gave her outfit a disapproving glare.

  Partha spoke to a servant in Urdu, who pointed him in the right direction. A minute later, they stopped before a red door. “This is your room, Miss Richards. Do you require anything?”

  “I’m fine, thank you. I’ll just wait until the lieutenant comes.”

  Inside she found a plain room with off-white walls and a chair so pouffed it looked like it was making up for the rigidness of the bed. A window faced the street, offering a view of flat rooftops. A shirtless boy crouched on one of them, whittling a block of wood as a monkey watched nearby.

  Daphne stood at the window, unaware she was tapping her fingers against her thigh until she looked down. It was a habit she hadn’t fallen into for some time, but she knew what it meant.

  She opened the door and peered outside, starting when she saw Partha standing guard at the door. He seemed equally startled, his brown eyes large and almost doe-like.

  “Yes, Miss Richards?”

  “I, um. Never mind.”

  She made to draw back inside when he took a step forward. “Do you need something?”

  Daphne studied his face. There was a sadness in his eyes, in the set of his mouth, that felt familiar. It reminded her of the way Danny looked when he thought he went unnoticed, when his gaze turned west, toward the boy he was missing.

  “Do you … happen to have a cigarette on you?” she asked.

  If he thought this was an odd request, he did a good job of hiding it. He darted a glance down the hall in both directions, then slipped a metal cigarette holder from his breast pocket. “Please do not tell anyone,” he murmured. “I’d hate to be on the receiving end of those new words you learned.”

  So he’d overheard Akash teaching her swears in Hindi. Her face heated as she said, “I won’t. Thank you.”

  She plucked a thinly rolled cigarette from the holder and silently handed it back to him. In the privacy of her room, she struck a match—she always carried them with her, on the off chance—and lit the end. The first inhalation made her cough, but the second was smoother and, almost at once, settled her nerves.

  Daphne did not smoke often, but she’d taken it up shortly after her father’s death. Her mother had screeched about the smoke and the smell, making it a rare indulgence. But every once in a while she felt the need, like when she was stranded in an unfamiliar city, the threat of a riot or kidnapping around every corner.

  By the time Crosby came to her door with supper, the sun was completely hidden beyond the horizon. She had opened the window to let the air inside, hoping it would carry away some of the lingering scent of smoke.

  “We’ve been planning out an itinerary,” Crosby said. “We have all your visits to the clock tower scheduled. The first one is tomorrow morning, so mind you get some sleep.”

  “Excuse me,” she said when Crosby turned to leave, “but what am I to do when I’m not at the tower?”

  He looked vaguely uncomfortable, and she wondered if he had a wife, or even sisters. Her guess was probably not. Female company seemed a foreign concept to him.

  “You’ll be here, I imagine.”

  “Does that mean I’m confined to my quarters?”

  “You may certainly leave with an escort if you wish, but as I said before, you must inform me first.” At her frown, his voice grew colder. “Is that clear, Miss Richards?”

  “Yes.”

  He left her to a lonely meal of rice, beans, and some potato dish in a brown broth. She only picked at it. Her mind was back on the Silver Hawk with Akash, in that open space between earth and sky where she didn’t have to hide.

  When they arrived at the clock tower midmorning the next day, Daphne found it disappointingly unimpressive. She’d spent the tonga ride searching for the tower above the rooftops, but the structure barely peeked above the buildings surrounding the circular clearing where it stood. The tower was mostly built of the same reddish sandstone as the officers’ billet, with a wooden frame and a brick base. There was only one clock face at the top, the glass dusty and the numerals almost too small to read. Above the face was a simple spire that ended in a prong-like symbol. The clock tower seemed inadequate for a grand city like Lucknow.

  “Dinky thing, isn’t it?” Crosby muttered at her side. “I hear they want to rebuild it in the English style, but don’t have the funds. What with all this strangeness of towers falling, maybe they won’t have to.”

  Perhaps it was the casualness of his remark, but Daphne suddenly felt nauseated.

  A groom helped her out of the tonga—she didn’t mind offending Crosby, but didn’t want to be rude to the Indian man—and she looked up at the building. She didn’t know what the tower in Khurja had looked like, but if it was anything like this one, she wondered why it had been targeted. Did the terrorists have a strategy? Why not hit the largest cities first? Of course, everyone kept saying Delhi might be attacked, but not until New Year’s.

  Daphne’s boots thudded against dark gray cobblestone as she circled the tower. Crosby had brought along Partha and another sepoy, but apart from their small contingent and the sepoys who stood at every entrance to deter anyone from coming near, the clearing was empty.

  “What exactly are you looking for, Miss Richards?” Crosby asked after several minutes.

  “Water.”

  “Ah. We did hear that the ground around the Rath and Khurja towers was damp after the attacks. Do you know what it means?”

  “No clue.”

  There were no pipes or wells or pumps nearby. No grates, no sewers … no water. Bone-dry.

  “Could you tell me what happened that made Major Dryden think Lucknow is being targeted?” she asked Crosby.

 
Frowning, the man scratched under his chin. “We usually have a guard around the tower, as you can see. They caught a few loiterers trying to get inside. Ran off before the guards were able to catch them, but no one knows how they got into the clearing in the first place.”

  Daphne pointed upward. “There are roofs just there. They could have rappelled down.”

  Crosby’s mouth twisted into a sneer as he eyed the guards. “I’m sure they would have spotted something as obvious as that. Then again, they could have been drunk or asleep for all I know.”

  Anger flared inside her, but she tamped it down. This man wasn’t worth a reaction. “Have there been any more sightings of trespassers?”

  “I’ll ask.” He left her near the tower’s entrance, flanked on either side by sepoys. Partha stood on her right, his eyes slightly swollen, perhaps from lack of sleep. Kept awake by the heat and nerves, it had taken Daphne a few hours to nod off the night before.

  Partha caught her staring. “Yes, Miss Richards?”

  “I was wondering if you were all right. You seem unwell.”

  He looked at her thoughtfully. Before he could respond, the tower entrance opened and two Indian men dressed in rough-spun white tunics and carrying bags over their shoulders walked out, stepping into the slippers they’d left outside.

  “Yeh kyaa hai?” one of them asked.

  Partha replied, but Daphne only caught the word tower.

  They switched to English. “The tower has already been inspected.”

  Partha nodded in Daphne’s direction. “She needs to inspect it as well.”

  The Indian clock mechanics narrowed their eyes, and she fought the urge to fidget. She met their gazes directly, but knew at once she’d made a mistake. They began to mutter in Hindi, too fast for her to follow.

  “This is Major Dryden’s order,” Partha snapped at them. “We are looking at the tower, nothing more.”

  “She cannot go in by herself,” one of the mechanics said. “We must go with her.”

  “Major Dryden’s orders,” Partha repeated firmly, placing a hand on his rifle. “She is to go in alone.”

  The mechanics muttered more until one rudely pointed at her. “Take off your shoes before entering,” he commanded. “This is a sacred place. You bring bad luck already.”

  “What’s all this?” Crosby had returned. “What’s the holdup?”

  “I was just going inside,” Daphne said. She knelt to undo the laces of her boots. The mechanics eyed her for another moment, then wandered to one side.

  “You don’t need to take off your blasted shoes,” Crosby snapped. “Just get inside and do whatever it is you’re supposed to.”

  “I’d like to be respectful, sir.” She carefully placed her boots beside the door and stood. When she met Partha’s eye, he gave her the hint of an appreciative smile. She gave him one in return.

  Once she was across the threshold, she closed the door behind her. Angry mechanics or no, she wanted to be alone.

  Except that she wasn’t alone.

  And that was the whole point.

  Up a short flight of stairs, she stopped on a wooden platform with a guardrail. It was part of a square-shaped walkway around the open space in which the pendulum swung lazily through the air, stirring the small hairs on her forehead as it passed.

  Sunshine filtered through the glass clock face, illuminating the cables and pulleys and rope that extended far up into the rafters. Daphne took a flight of stairs leading to a higher platform, which gave her access to the iron-cast gears and cogs that turned in perfect synchronicity, powering the clock.

  And Lucknow’s time.

  Although the tower was not what she’d call aesthetically impressive, she still felt the familiar awe of its presence sweeping over her body, up her arms, down her back. It aged her, reminding her of her past even as it planted her firmly in the here and now, even as the world evolved around her, without her. Putting a hand on the clockwork, her eyes watered until she had to close them.

  “Something is happening,” she said quietly, to herself or the clock, she wasn’t sure. “I need to know what.”

  Daphne took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “Please, will you come out? I would like to speak with you. I’m worried that your tower is in danger, and if it is, I need to find a way to stop it. If you know anything, I’d like to help. Please, may I speak to you?”

  Daphne tried to ignore the peculiarity of her words as she spoke them. As far as she was aware, she had only seen two spirits: Colton and the little girl in Dover. Before last year, she’d thought that clock spirits were nothing more than legend. Even after the disaster in Maldon, Daphne had never even considered that a spirit had been involved. Not until she had gotten tangled up in the drama of Danny Hart, anyway.

  She allowed some of her power to trickle into the clockwork, checking the movement of the gears, the flow of time around the tower, whether or not any part was catching. All seemed well here. Time’s fibers crisscrossed each other in pristine order, not a single thread out of place.

  “I promise I won’t hurt you,” Daphne tried again. “I only wish to speak with you. Just for a moment.”

  Another minute passed, and then another. She sighed. At least she’d tried.

  Turning back to the entrance, she jumped back with a small gasp. A young man stood at the top of the stairs leading down to the platform. He looked Indian, but his hair was a hazy silver, his skin bronze. Amber-yellow eyes stared at her, bright and wary. He wore a long white tunic with baggy trousers, and he was barefoot.

  Although his features were not golden—maybe the type of metal used for the clockwork had something to do with that—his eyes were the same shade as Colton’s and those of the spirit in the Dover tower.

  Daphne licked dry lips, wondering what to say. She supposed there was only one thing to say. “Hello.”

  The spirit cocked his head to one side. “Kyaa mein aapki madad kar satkaa hoon?”

  Of course the clock spirit spoke Hindi. Daphne racked her brain for the proper phrase, hoping she didn’t mangle it.

  “Do you speak English?”

  He looked vaguely confused, then raised his hand in a so-so gesture, bobbing his head side to side. “English … little.”

  “Fascinating.” She would have to tell Danny about this as soon as they were back in Agra. “What’s your name?”

  “Narayan. Aap kahaan sey hain?” Where are you from?

  “I’m from England. I’m here to look at your tower and—” But he seemed confused again, unable to follow her English. She began tapping her fingers against her thigh. “My name is Daphne. I am a ghadi wallah.” He nodded. “Is your clock …” Since she didn’t know how to express it in Hindi or Urdu, she used her hands to convey something breaking apart. “Trouble?”

  Narayan shook his head. He rambled in Hindi, but she only caught a few words: time, city, and clock mechanics.

  “Nothing is wrong here? You haven’t seen anything?” She pointed to her eyes, then to the clock face above.

  “Nahi.”

  Daphne swore softly. If the clock spirit hadn’t seen anything suspicious, then what was she doing here? Crosby had mentioned people skulking about the tower, but if they hadn’t actually done anything to the tower, what was the point?

  “I …” Narayan paused, thinking hard as he chose his words. “I see, here?” He touched his forehead.

  “You saw something? In—your head?” He nodded. “What does that mean?” He began to speak in Hindi again, but she waved her arms. “No, stop! Bas. I’m sorry, but I can’t understand you.”

  She made an aggravated noise and walked in a circle. Narayan watched her, as if fascinated by her behavior. She wished she had a translator, but the only ones allowed inside were the ghadi wallahs, and there was no way in hell she would ask for their help, not after how they’d treated her.

  If they knew what she was … No, that might only make it worse.

  Desperate, she tried to talk to Narayan again,
but their words passed without meeting. Daphne finally had to admit defeat.

  “I want to know what you mean, though, about seeing things in your head.”

  Narayan asked another question she didn’t understand. Frustrated, he pointed down at the floorboards, then at the door. At first she thought he was ordering her to leave, but then he said, “You here, come back?”

  Her lips relaxed into a smile. “Yes, I can come back tomorrow, if you like. Subah ko? In the morning?” He nodded eagerly. She wondered just how lonely he was here, reluctant to speak to the other clock mechanics, with no windows but the clock face to look out from.

  “I’ll come back,” she promised. “You can teach me more Hindi.”

  He seemed pleased, but she couldn’t help but be disappointed. Aside from seeing strange people in the clearing, there was nothing to indicate an attack was coming.

  If that’s true, she thought, then why was I brought here?

  With arrangements made—her head spun at the idea of having a tutoring session with a clock spirit—Daphne left the tower and carefully retied her boots. Crosby descended on her within seconds.

  “And? What happened? What did you find?”

  “Nothing,” she said truthfully as she stood. “If someone’s planning on bombing the tower, they haven’t acted yet. I would like to come back tomorrow, though, just to be certain.”

  “Yes, all right. Best to be sure.”

  They returned to the billet. Crosby instructed her to ask Partha if she needed anything, as he would be in meetings the rest of the afternoon.

  She did want something—a way to learn more Hindi. She didn’t trust the soldiers enough to bring them inside the tower, but she needed to know what Narayan was saying. A wasp of unexpected anger stung her. If only she’d learned from her father … though he hadn’t known much of the language either, come to think of it.