Chainbreaker (Timekeeper)

by Tara Sim

  “That would be us,” Meena replied.

  “The ones going to Meerut?” Amala glanced over her shoulder at the men, then leaned in closer. “Is this about the clocks falling?”

  Danny opened his mouth to reply, but one look from Meena and he shut it again.

  “It’s just that everyone’s so curious,” Amala went on. “First one tower falls, then another, and time not Stopping a tick. I lived in Burma as a child, and one of the clock towers there got fair banged up. Time skittered all over the place, and no one was allowed in or out until the tower was fixed. I wonder why it’s different this time?”

  “We couldn’t say,” said Meena curtly.

  “I’ve crossed a line, I see. Why don’t I make it up to you? I’ll show you how the train starts up.”

  Danny was immensely interested, but Meena declined the offer. Danny said he’d join Amala in the operations room shortly, then turned to Meena. “What’s wrong?”

  “We can’t talk about our mission to just anyone,” she murmured. “It seemed as though she wanted to get something out of us.”

  “She was being nice.”

  “In any case, don’t say anything about Meerut or what you saw in Khurja.”

  “I won’t.” Danny glanced at the conductor, who was now making his way to the other carriages. Captain Harris sat on the opposite bench, staring wistfully out the window.

  Meena noticed Danny staring at the conductor and raised a sleek eyebrow. “They’re half-castes.”

  Danny was hesitant to speak on the subject of castes. From what he had gathered in the books he’d read, it was a sensitive issue and best left unprodded. But now that Meena had raised the topic, he was curious.

  “Half?”

  “Many of your English men have … chosen … Indian women. Some mothers even throw their daughters at the higher officers, hoping to make a good match. The result …” She gestured toward the driver’s carriage, where Amala had disappeared. “Half-castes. Unfortunates on the fringes of society.”

  “That’s a rather rude way of putting it.” Danny was startled by his own words, roughened with unexpected anger as he thought about Daphne and her father.

  Meena shrugged, unruffled. “I take no offense with the people, only with their origins. Truthfully, I feel sorry for them. They do not belong in India, and they do not belong in your England. Many of them have formed their own caste. Most work on the railways.” With a finger, she traced a diamond pattern on her kameez. “Viceroy Lytton does not oversee us well. Under his eyes, society has become unbalanced.”

  “I’m sure he’s a busy man,” Danny said, but Meena only scoffed. A wick of frustration was lit inside him, but he quickly doused it. Meena had every right to criticize his country.

  Even so, it was still his.

  Amala popped her head out and gestured to Danny. Meena’s gaze warned him to be careful. He told Harris that he’d back shortly, but the captain only gave him a vague nod.

  Inside the small carriage, Danny was impressed by the valves, knobs, and levers decorating the wall connected to the boiler tender. Amala explained that she was the support crew to the fireman, who made sure that steam pressure was released from the boiler to the steam chest. It was Amala’s job to check the gauges and fuel levels when the fireman was preoccupied.

  The driver pulled a small red crank and released the brakes. Amala tapped a gauge; the needle slowly arced over the numbers.

  “You have to wait for the brake vacuum to reach twenty-one. Then you give a little throttle …” She pulled the large, red lever in the middle of the wall. “And we’re off!”

  The fireman pulled on a rope to give two sharp whistles. The pistons began pumping, the wheels screeching as the train crawled forward. Danny thought about how much Cassie would love to be here, getting her hands on the train’s controls, asking endless questions about how it all worked.

  When the train was well underway, smoke puffing from the chimney and the pistons making a loud chug chug sound as they sped along, Danny thanked Amala for the tutorial before heading back to his carriage. Meena sat looking out the window as Agra slid by and dissolved into a grassy plain. Captain Harris was already gone.

  “Who’s that Kamir bloke, anyway?” Danny asked Meena, their earlier argument forgotten. “The mechanic you keep insisting is sick.”

  “A senior Agra mechanic. He once told me I had no business with the ghadi wallahs and that I should find myself a husband to wait upon. I knew he was going to be asked to assist you and Daphne, so I may have put something in his chutney that had him running for the outhouse for a few days.”

  Danny grinned and they passed into companionable silence, though it didn’t last long.

  “As long as we’re asking questions … What did you mean, when you told the captain that you understood him?” Meena asked.

  Danny tried not to let surprise show on his face. “Only that it would be unfortunate if people knew. I was helping him.”

  “Daphne said she wasn’t your type.”

  “So?”

  “You didn’t seem very shocked about the captain.”

  “What the hell do you want me to say?” Danny snapped. Meena’s lips thinned, but she said nothing more. Danny sat back, focusing on taking deep breaths. Harris’s fear had somehow infected him, and it still crouched in his chest, waiting for the smallest trigger. When he looked back up at Meena, she only gave him a level stare.

  “All right, fine,” Danny said. “I’m just like him, so I sympathized. You can be disgusted with me now, the way you were disgusted by him.”

  She looked down at her lap. Danny crossed his arms and glared out the window. After a long, uncomfortable moment, she finally spoke.

  “Tell me about him.”

  Danny glanced at her. “What?”

  “Daphne told me you have someone back home. I want to know about him.”

  Danny slumped down farther in his seat, somehow more uncomfortable now than he was a minute ago. “He’s just … He … Why do you want to know?”

  Meena sighed and tugged her braid forward, as if by pulling on it she could summon someone to come and make the situation less awkward. “I’ll warn you, Danny: what you are is not accepted here. I don’t know what goes on in your England, but here, it is not allowed. Please be careful.”

  He could have asked, Why are you saying this? Aren’t you offended? but her words gave him all the answer he needed. “I will.”

  “So? Who is he?”

  “Someone I met on assignment.” Danny reached into his pocket, brushing his fingers against the cog. “We … talked. A lot. It was nice, just having someone listen. Someone who cared.” He blinked a few times, then returned to the window. “I miss him.” Meena had nothing to say to that, so they slipped back into silence.

  Danny dozed on and off, Captain Harris appearing once to check on them. Amala came to visit for a few minutes during her break, and though Meena was polite, she shot Danny a look reminding him not to divulge any details of their work.

  They were halfway to Meerut when Danny sensed something was wrong. The train was quieter; the loud chug chug had dwindled to a less-grating chuh chuh. He wasn’t the only one to notice the change, either. Meena was in the middle of a sentence when Amala frowned and moved toward the rear carriage door.

  When she opened it, she screamed.

  Danny vaulted out of his seat and caught her before she could tumble out the door. They both gaped at the long stretch of empty train tracks before them.

  “They’re gone!” Amala shouted in his ear. “Someone disconnected the carriages!”

  She ran back to the operations room. Meena stared openmouthed at the tracks rushing by, unspooling beneath the carriage like a strand pulled from a skein of yarn.

  “Captain Harris and the others were on those carriages,” Danny said leadenly as a weight sank to the bottom of his stomach.

  It could have been an engineering defect, a weak coupling between the carriages. But Danny knew
better.

  This had been deliberate.

  Meena swayed on her feet. “Close the door and get away from there, Danny.” He didn’t need to be told twice.

  The door to the operations room was locked, and Amala grunted as she threw her weight against it. “It won’t open!” She pounded her fist against the door. “Oy, what’s going on? Let me in!”

  Danny opened one of the windows and stuck his head outside. The train was pumping along at the same speed, but it looked comically small without the rest of its carriages. The tracks stretched endlessly onward.

  If they had no way to brake at the Meerut station …

  “Maybe I can climb through the window in the driver’s carriage,” he called behind him. It didn’t seem plausible, but he had read enough books where the main character ran about on the tops of trains like it was an everyday occurrence.

  As he was turning to ask Amala, someone grabbed him around the neck and sent him crashing to the floor.

  He tried to shout a warning to Meena, but he was breathless under the sudden weight on top of him, crushing him against the vibrating train floor. Danny managed to free his arm and elbowed his attacker in the chest, half-turning with the movement.

  In that brief moment, he saw the man’s dark-tinted goggles and the black kerchief tied around the lower half of his face.

  “No,” Danny gasped, but that was all he had time for before the man wrenched his arms up behind his back. Danny cried out in pain.

  Meena launched herself at the attacker, distracting him just long enough for Danny to roll out of the way. The man backhanded her across the face with a sound like a thunderclap and she went down. He also smacked Danny for good measure, stunning him. Grabbing Danny’s wrists and straddling him so that he couldn’t get away, the man began to tie him up, the rope’s rough fibers biting at his skin.

  “Stop!” Meena shouted, but the man ignored her. Danny heard a click before a shot rang through the carriage. The man grunted in surprise as a bullet grazed his arm, just above Danny’s head.

  Meena stood clenching a small gun in her hands. A trickle of blood fell from her split lower lip.

  “Get away from him, and I won’t shoot you again!” Meena yelled.

  Danny could see where the bullet had torn through the man’s jacket, but there was no blood. In fact, there was no flesh. Underneath the fabric was a glint of metal.

  He opened his mouth to warn Meena, but the man grabbed him around the throat. She wasted no time, firing again and hitting the man’s other side, near his collarbone. This time there was a yelp and a spurt of blood.

  Danny used the distraction to kick the man off of him. Though his head swam and the world tilted dangerously, Danny got on top of his attacker and used his bound hands to get under the man’s chin and hold him in a headlock, just as Matthias had taught him to do in what felt like another life.

  “Don’t move,” Danny panted. The sweat on the man’s neck was warm and slippery against his wrists. “Tell me who you are, and what you want with me.” The man remained silent. “Tell me!”

  Meena pulled back the hammer of her gun a third time. Before she could release another bullet, the man produced a knife from the inside of his sleeve and cut the bindings on Danny’s wrists. He knocked Danny back and rushed for the open window.

  “Stop!” Danny yelled, but it was too late. The man, trailing blood, launched himself outside.

  Meena gasped and Danny swore. But the man hadn’t leapt to his death. He’d caught a rope ladder that dangled from a small aircraft, which had been following alongside the train.

  His attacker clung to the rope as the aircraft carried him away. Even through his dark goggles, Danny felt their eyes connect—a threat and a promise.

  Danny slid back to the floor as Meena moaned something in Hindi. One of his wrists was bleeding, but the wound was superficial. All the same, the shock of crimson and the smell of the man’s blood in the carriage made him dizzier.

  “No!”

  The cry came from the operations room. Danny scrambled back to his feet as Amala ran out. Through the doorway, which Amala had finally managed to open, Danny saw the limp forms of the driver and the fireman.

  “They were knocked out,” Amala said. “No one’s been controlling the water level in the boiler!”

  “What does that mean?” Meena demanded.

  “The steam pressure’s been building all this time. If we release it, the firebox is going to collapse.”

  “And if that happens?”

  Amala mimed an explosion with her hands.

  “Can we detach ourselves from the boiler?” Danny asked.

  “We have to.”

  They helped Amala drag the unconscious yet still breathing bodies out of the operations room. Then Amala unhooked the couplings between the passenger and driver’s carriages, and they watched the front of the train with its boiler trundle onward without them.

  But their carriage was still moving forward at an alarming rate, blasting air through the open hole.

  “How do we stop this thing?” Danny yelled as the wind whipped his hair and stung his eyes.

  Amala searched for the brake cylinder. When she pulled it, the carriage shuddered and Danny and Meena fell onto the burgundy benches. The piston and wheels screamed and sparks flew from the tracks. They continued forward for another couple hundred yards before the carriage came to an exhausted halt.

  A minute later, the chassis on the boiler farther down the tracks blasted apart, sending flames in all directions.

  “Oh, God,” Danny whispered.

  They watched the flames gradually recede, leaving an unnatural quiet in their wake. The three of them shifted, taking stock of the situation. Danny had a lump on his head and a nick on his wrist. Meena had a split lip and the beginnings of a bruise on her cheek.

  “I messaged for help when I got the door open,” Amala said. “Someone from the city should be here soon.”

  Danny looked out the rear door. “I hope the others are all right.” He hadn’t seen the large airship that had attacked the Notus, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be out there, picking off Captain Harris and his men. Or maybe it was after Daphne.

  The shock hit then, and he slumped to the floor. Meena put her hands on his shoulders and whispered something that sounded soothing, though he couldn’t make out the words past the ringing in his ears.

  About an hour later, the group spotted a caravan of autos heading in their direction. Danny had spent the entire time gazing at the sky, so worried about another aerial attack that he hadn’t considered one from the ground.

  But it wasn’t an attack, it was a rescue. British officers from Meerut ushered them into their autos, warming them with blankets and the promise of tea.

  Danny accepted the aid without speaking. A medic said he might have a concussion as he bandaged Danny’s wrist.

  Seated next to Meena as they were whisked away to the city, he couldn’t focus on anything beyond breathing and blinking. Meena was all too happy to keep quiet.

  As they approached the city perimeter, though, she asked him if he would be all right.

  He took a deep breath and muttered, “I should have taken your brother’s stupid plane.”

  Captain Harris greeted them when they were shown to their accommodations.

  “Thank goodness! We felt the carriage break off, but we couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Are you two all right? What happened?”

  Danny told the captain about the man with the tinted goggles. Harris listened with an anxious frown.

  “We’ve been on the lookout for that rebel airship. They must have known we would be searching, so they tried a different method.” He put a warm hand on Danny’s shoulder. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, don’t you worry. In the meantime, I’ll set up a guard. Don’t go anywhere without consulting me first. Is that clear?” They both nodded. “Good. I’ll send a cable to the major and tell him the news.”

  When he was gone, Danny sank into
an armchair and closed his eyes. He couldn’t stop the loop in his mind: the smell of the man’s blood, the sound of gunfire, Colton’s face as he heard the news that Danny was dead or had been taken.

  We’ll be watching.

  Danny’s eyes shot open.

  First the threatening note. Now someone was following him, attempting abduction.

  He was an idiot for not linking them sooner.

  Meena hesitated when a guard asked to escort her to her room. “You shouldn’t sleep with a concussion,” she said to Danny. She asked the guard in Urdu for some tea. “I have to keep watch over you for a few hours, at least.” Danny was too tired to argue, and the sound of tea was tempting. He needed something to clear his head.

  As she crossed the room, he heard the swish of fabric and remembered what she concealed in the folds of her salwar. Watching her, he added another person to the list of those he needed to keep an eye on.

  The airship made a loud whirring sound as it cut through the air. The initial liftoff had sent an odd blend of fear and excitement through Colton as he looked out a small, round window, watching in awe as the earth fell away. He wasn’t afraid of heights like Danny was, but he’d never been so far from the ground before. He liked it.

  According to Brandon’s brother, David, the journey to India would take at least ten hours. He’d snuck Colton inside the cargo hold and promised to sneak him back out when they landed in a place called Jaipur. Danny had never mentioned the name, so Colton didn’t know anything about it. All he knew was that it was not Agra, which meant it wasn’t where Danny would be. But he would figure out how to get to him.

  He hoped.

  I’ll bet no clock spirit has done this before, he thought with a hint of pride. It vanished as he reminded himself why he was making the journey in the first place.

  “I’ll save you, Danny,” he whispered to his upraised knees. “Wait for me.”