Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(4)
Brandon lowered his eyes. Danny looked down as well, ashamed of himself as his frustration began to ebb.
While he struggled to word an apology, Brandon knelt beside him. One of his hands hovered over the tools as Danny looked on. The apprentice tentatively grasped the steel caliper used for measurements and held it up, hopeful as a puppy learning its first trick.
The anger that had seized Danny quickly let go. “Yes, that’s a micrometer,” he said, pleasantly surprised. “Well done.” The apprentice grinned, and blood rushed to Danny’s face.
Danny took the proper measurements and made small marks for the repair, explaining each step. Brandon seemed to have moved on from the outburst, nodding with interest at everything Danny said. Danny had to admit that perhaps his first assessment had been unfair. Here, for once, was an apprentice willing to learn. It eased some of the strain in his limbs.
Tongue poking out between his teeth, Danny focused on the frayed threads attached to the clock tower. He grasped them carefully, using not his hands, but his innate ability as a mechanic to touch time. The fibers were alive and pulsing in his grip, confused and directionless.
This was familiar. This was what he had missed most in the months he’d been away: the thrum of time, the beating of clocks. He used to spend hours in clock rooms before the accident, syncing his heartbeat with that of the clock tower. There was something else, too—a surge of power that felt like sunlight on skin, warming him from the inside out. Time grew stronger all around them, thickening the fibers.
In fact, the power was so strong he faltered. The fibers began slipping away, sensing his uncertainty. Before they fled his grasp, Brandon put his hands on the numeral and something jumped like an auto backfire. Danny jumped with it, eyes wide. Brandon focused only on the numeral, adding his power to Danny’s, to the clock’s. The fibers rushed back, stronger than ever.
Danny attached the broken ends of the fibers to the numeral in his hands, allowing the unremarkable slab of metal to join the connective web of time created by the tower. Then he asked Brandon to hold the power-infused numeral up to the clock face. His pale, thin hands looked even paler next to Brandon’s bronze skin.
Tools in hand, Danny fastened the numeral to the face. At first nothing happened, and he worried it hadn’t worked. Then, gradually, the fibers attached to the numeral filled the hole until it sealed. Time shivered, then relaxed; or maybe that was his own body’s reaction.
The tower bells rang in a sudden frenzy, calling out the hour of two before the hands moved to the correct time on their own. Danny tensed, momentarily deafened by the clamor. When his hearing returned, he could make out the crowd cheering in the street below. He breathed a sigh of relief.
“You’re all right now,” he murmured to the tower, pressing his fingers to its face.
“How long have you been a mechanic?”
Brandon’s voice startled Danny, and his fingers skipped against the glass. The apprentice was looking at him the same way he had in the clock room, except now both eyes were open. They were amber in the daylight, bright and curious. His voice was light and smooth, flowing, like the well-oiled whirring of gears.
“And here I thought you were mute.” Danny’s own voice sounded low and clumsy in his ears. He began to put away his tools. “I was an apprentice at twelve. I’m seventeen now. Became a full mechanic seven months ago.”
“Only seven months?”
Danny wasn’t surprised by Brandon’s disappointment. Most people were convinced that someone so young shouldn’t even touch the clock towers, let alone fix them. But that didn’t change the rule that one could be a full mechanic by seventeen, if you worked hard enough.
Danny glanced up to find the apprentice’s expression hadn’t changed. “My father started teaching me when I was six.”
The small frown disappeared and Brandon’s almost-invisible eyebrows lifted. “He’s also a mechanic?”
“Was,” Danny corrected, the single word heavy in the air between them. Before Brandon could ask anything more, Danny stood and grabbed the cable attached to the scaffolding. “Let’s go up.”
They pulled in silence until they reached the wide door above, right as the clouds broke open and spilled their promised rain. Danny almost fell to his knees to kiss the solid wooden floorboards beneath him, still dizzy from the height and the touch of time.
“I need to head back to London before the rain gets worse,” he said. “What about you?” There were no other autos parked outside, and the Enfield railroad station had been demolished a few years before.
“I’ll be all right.”
Danny reached up to fix his hair. His hands were trembling. Brandon noticed and gave him a sympathetic smile.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he said, putting a secretive finger to his lips.
“Oh. Um …” Of course Brandon must have noticed his fear. Danny looked down. “Thank you. Look, I’m sorry for snapping. I didn’t mean to. I have a lot depending on this assignment, and I didn’t want to ruin it.”
“You didn’t,” Brandon assured him. “I’m sorry for not knowing what a micrometer was.”
“You did well with the numeral. Just study a little more, all right?”
He expected the apprentice to leave before him, but as he shrugged on his coat, Brandon hung back and watched the clock face.