Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(55)

“My bruises say today was plenty violent.”

“No, I mean something more. Something dangerous.” Daphne looked down the street, and only then did Danny think to check their surroundings. Somewhere in Aldgate, maybe. Down the street was a large house that read ST. AGNES’S HOME FOR WOMEN. Why had she taken them here, of all places?

“You didn’t park your auto outside the Affairs building, did you?” she asked.

“No, I took the bus. I’ll take one home.” He put a hand on his aching side where he’d been hit. Beneath the ache was familiar, writhing guilt. “Um … thank you. For getting me out of there.”

She could have left him to be trampled, and would have likely thought good riddance. It’s what he would have done.

No it isn’t, a faint voice whispered. You’re better than that. But the memory of stealing Daphne’s assignments told him different.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled to the curb.

“Don’t be sorry. Just be careful around those people.” She put her helmet back on, but didn’t fasten the strap. “See you.”

He turned to walk to the nearest omnibus stop, but looked over his shoulder. Daphne only rode her motorbike to the end of the street, where she parked outside St. Agnes’s. Danny paused, curious, but made himself turn back. He’d already invaded her life too much.

Don’t think this is finished. Danny had no idea what it meant, but Daphne might be right. If unchecked, there was no telling what these protesters would do. Or what they would set their sights on.



Lucas watched the two mechanics bicker about the clockwork before them and gently prodded the skin near his eye. The bruise was finally gone after Danny Hart had punched him, but he sometimes wondered if the damage lingered, if others could see his humiliation just as clearly as he still felt it.

Danny Hart. The poor, fatherless mechanic. The best way to get back at him for what he’d done was right before Lucas’s eyes. Danny’s father was trapped in Maldon; everyone knew that. And everyone also knew that Lucas, not Danny, had been chosen for this assignment.

Mull on that, you little Mandrake, he thought with vindictive glee. Your father will be indebted to me, and so will you.

It had been difficult to catch up to Danny Hart, the star pupil, the “prodigy.” Lucas had been at the top of his own class, but Danny, a full class lower—both in age and society—had outstripped him with embarrassing ease. Only late nights and overtime training had pushed Lucas slightly ahead.

There were still some who said Danny had more natural talent, whatever that meant. Actions spoke louder, and now Lucas Wakefield, not Danny Hart, stood on the threshold of the most important job in recent history.

“It won’t make a difference if you install the central cog last,” said Tom.

“Fine.” George gestured at the wall of cogs and gears. “Be my guest.”

Lucas watched as Tom limped to the clockwork, his metal leg thumping loudly against the wooden floor, and began to fit the central cog to the frame. The clock room of the new tower was spacious and smelled of oil and iron. The fields around the isolated tower rippled with a strong wind that whistled shrilly through the tall, thin windows.

Lucas peered out. It was common for the London protesters to demonstrate near the tower, kept a safe distance away by guards, but today was oddly silent, not a body in sight. Beyond, he spotted the gray, impenetrable wall that closed in Maldon.

“I’m telling you, something’s off,” George said, shifting on his feet. “I don’t feel anything.”

Lucas didn’t either, but hadn’t wanted to be the first to say it. When he walked into a tower, time was all around him. Even just walking into a town set off the sensation. Here, near the closed-off territory of Maldon, time was stale. There was no life in it.

But today, finally, the central cog was being installed. Maybe that would change things.

Tom, bent over the cog, shook his head. “You’re overthinking it.” He adjusted a couple of things, then stepped back. “There. Let’s get it started.”

All three mechanics placed their hands on the clockwork and closed their eyes. The metal was cool and unresponsive under their hands. Lucas concentrated on the time fibers around him, though they were thin and pale. Frowning, he pulled them forward and attached them to the clockwork, willing it to start. Pulled and attached. Pulled and attached.

The mechanism shuddered, jerked, and slowly began to move.

“Ha!” Tom exclaimed. “There it goes!”

But something was wrong. Lucas could feel it now, and the hairs on his arms stood on end. The clock ran, but it was dead. It wasn’t creating an area of time, but rather feeding off the existing time around them, blocked by the indomitable Maldon barrier.

And then they all heard it: a ticking noise. But not the ticking of a clock.

“Wait,” Tom said as the whistle of the wind grew louder. “I don’t—”

Everything went white as the clockwork exploded.

Lucas must have screamed, but he couldn’t hear himself over the roar. All senses were stripped from him, and there was terror in that unknowing, unfeeling suspension, lost in shuddering white chaos. Sight returned first, and he watched cogs and gears bounce and fly and break apart through the smoke. Gray and black replaced shocking white, his lungs filled with burning ash.