Timekeeper (Timekeeper #1)(58)

“He’s always been like this,” George muttered.

Danny came closer, trying to make himself taller. “You were at Shere before I was. You had access to the tower blueprints. There were pipes in your office, and pipe bombs destroyed the new Maldon tower. I bet Lucas saw something while he was in Rotherfield, and you two killed him at Maldon to keep him quiet. I don’t know why you’re doing this, if maybe you sympathize with the protesters, but it stops now.”

“Danny,” George said slowly, “you’re not making sense.”

“After Rotherfield, you said that something needed to be done.”

“I was talking about finishing the Maldon tower. Tom was upset. His sister lives in Rotherfield, and when the bomb went off, he was terrified of the town being Stopped. And as for the pipes,” George said, glancing at Tom, who was pale under his bruises, “Tom was re-plumbing his house.”

Danny hesitated, his limbs buzzing with warning, with the need to do something. George could easily be lying.

“Those are convenient excuses,” he said at last. “I don’t know why you two are doing this, but I’m going to tell the Lead. I’ll tell the police if I have to.”

“You’re out of your mind.” Tom called for the nurse, who came to the doorway. “This young man is bothering us. Please escort him out.”

“No!” Danny started forward. “I know you have something to do with it!”

The nurse yelled for help. George was yelling, too, but Danny couldn’t hear the words above the roaring of his blood.

“Stop lying to me!” Danny screamed. “Just tell me that you did it!”

“Danny!” Tom shouted over him. “Let it go. The Maldon tower is gone.” His face shuttered with grief, with regret. “I’m sorry.”

Someone dragged him from the room, hauled him down the stairs, and shoved him into the street. A stocky man with a beard warned him not to come back.

Danny ran down the street and around the corner. He kept running until he smacked into a brick wall. Danny pressed his forehead to the gritty surface and pushed down a scream. He punched the wall over and over until his knuckles split and bled. Until he could convince himself the tears on his face were from pain.



AETAS AND THE SEA GODDESS


The sea churned and frothed the more Oceana paced before her brother. Her hair rose and floated like seaweed, waving slowly through the water and then touching the broad slope of her gray shoulders. Her dress of kelp and cockles rustled when she moved, and occasionally a small cardinal fish swam from one of the many folds.

“You must consult with Chronos first,” Oceana told her brother. He had just admitted to how poor his grasp on time had become.

It had begun the day he journeyed to the sky with Caelum. Since then, time kept thinning, unraveling, until Aetas struggled daily to rein the threads in. Mornings flickered and nights wavered. Humans found themselves in the same spots they had inhabited twelve minutes before. Animals went missing. Crops grew too fast and withered prematurely.

“I have a plan to help control time,” said Aetas. For he was learning more and more that it was a wild thing without cause or patience. Of all the elements he and his brother and sisters maintained, time, it seemed, was the most unruly.

“But it will anger Chronos. You know this. Speak with him instead. Perhaps he will end his long rest to assist you.”

“No. I must do this myself.”

Oceana’s anger battered against the shore, waves rising and crashing above their heads. “Brother—”

But the shadow of a ship passed over them, and her sea foam gaze lifted. The ship was being knocked between waves like a plaything.

Oceana rose from the ocean floor and Aetas followed. She spread out her hands, attempting to smooth the waves she had created in her agitation. Aetas broke the surface and watched the men aboard their ship fumble for lines and call out helpless orders. The waves were too strong; Oceana would need time to calm them.

Aetas drew in the time threads around himself, the ones that dove into the water and wrapped around the ship like golden twine. A sailor fell into the angry waters below. Aetas plucked a thread, and the man shot back onto the ship’s deck as if he had never left it.

Oceana joined her brother. “Aetas,” she warned, but he ignored her and continued to weave the threads into a new pattern.

At first, the pattern appeared to work. The ship began to right itself. The waves grew smaller. But then Aetas slipped, just a fraction of a fraction, and time pulsed around him.

Suddenly, the ship was gone.

“Brother, what have you done?” Oceana regarded him as if watching the end of the world. “Where have they disappeared to?”

Aetas did not know. The sailors could be anywhere in time, or perhaps they no longer existed.

Sick and weak, Aetas dove back into the cool, dark waters. Oceana followed.

“The power is too strong,” said Aetas. “I must do this.”

And perhaps his sister knew a fraction of a fraction of Chronos’s wrath, for she dipped her head and spread her hands. “Do what you think is best, Brother. I will assist in what ways I can.”





A week passed. Danny wanted to see Colton, to warn him about what had happened to the new Maldon tower, but he couldn’t find the strength to leave the house. There were more guards around Big Ben than ever, and the Lead was tearing his hair out.