I sputtered at how matter-of-fact she was about the whole thing, jerking from her reach. “I … my … That’s really none of your business, Bethina.”
“Just so, miss.”
In the entry, I found my schoolbag where Cal had flung it when we made our frantic entry into Graystone. I dug through my possessions—now largely mildewed and mud-spattered—and found my toolkit. Straightening my spine, I went to the library again and, just as before, the double doors slid open at my approach. Ice danced up my skin, into my blood like electricity and aether.
Hearing a curse from the rear parlor, I backed away gratefully and retraced my steps down the portrait hall. I wasn’t ready to brave the library again just yet.
In the parlor, Cal was poking a desultory fire. I watched him for a moment, his long limbs bunched up like a new foal’s, cursing and red-faced as the twists of paper under the worm-eaten wood sputtered and refused to light.
“Thought you’d be halfway home by now,” I said at last. Cal leaped up.
“Aoife.” He eyed the full length of my body, for a good few seconds, eyes darkening. “You look … different. Those aren’t your clothes.”
“My uniform is a lost cause,” I said. “This was in the wardrobe.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea?” Cal worried the poker. “I’ve heard it’s bad luck to wear other people’s clothes.”
I touched the comb in my hair. “What would your professors say, they heard you taking stock in superstition like that? Besides, I like these and that’s a stupid rumor.”
“It’s, well. The dress is very bright. Red, like a Crimson Guard flag.” Cal struck another match and cursed when the flame came too close to his fingers.
“I’ll be in the library,” I sighed. “And for future reference, girls might not be flattered to have you compare their attire to the symbol of a national enemy.”
“Aoife, I wanted to say I’m sorry …,” Cal rushed, and then sighed, composing his face and standing. “I’m sorry about what I said to you last night. I don’t believe that you’re naive.”
“But you do think I’m wrong about Conrad?” I should simply accept Cal’s apology and let things be right between us. The space where I’d kept Cal’s friendship was bruised and smarting this morning, after the shouting match we’d endured, but I wouldn’t abandon my brother either. Not even in words.
“I don’t want us to fight,” Cal said. “Can’t we just agree that we’ll go home tomorrow? He’s not here, Aoife.”
I drew myself up, the dress falling about my legs making me feel older, taller. “Then I suppose I’ll just have to find where he’s gone.”
“Aoife, be reasonable …,” Cal started, but I walked away from his words. Cal and I had been friends ever since we’d both been without a partner for our first tour of the School of Engines, but lately we sat at odds over everything, our conversations going in unfamiliar directions that twisted them into something angry with jagged edges.
Losing my only friend over my family sat poorly, like something rotten and too large in my gut. If I had no Cal, then right now I’d have no one.
To distract myself from my thoughts, which were swirling off in a black direction indeed, I went back to the library, brushing past the doors like I had nothing to worry over.
Conrad had told me to fix the clock, and I would use machines and math to soothe my troubles.
The clock waited at the far end of the long high room, pendulum twitching at random like a rat’s tail. I knelt before it and opened the case, staring into the wicked, sharpened gears.
“I’ll fix you,” I said. “If you’ll let me.”
For a moment, nothing happened and then the gears turned faster, pendulum lashing like the shoggoth’s tentacles.
“I’m not going to break anything,” I promised the clock. “Please. I have to fix you.” Was this the first sign of madness? Talking to inanimate machines? Perhaps I was only mad if I got a reply.
I reached slowly toward the clock’s case, even though sticking my hand inside the whirl of gears with the way they spun would result in me losing a crop of fingers. “Conrad told me,” I whispered. “I have to fix it. I have to fix you.”
My fingertips tingled, and my head echoed as the clock began to chime; I felt as if a pipe fire had sparked to life in my chest. My entire body ran fever-hot, and dampness broke out under the silk of my dress. The dancing snare of static spread up my arm, all through me, and the tolling of the clock became a single reverberation, splitting my skull in half.
I shrieked. “Stop!”
Quickly as it had ramped up at my appearance, every gear within the clockwork ground to a halt, fine metal shavings raining to the bottom of the case as gears fouled themselves against one another’s filed teeth.
I waited for a moment, the idea that the clock had stopped on my command ludicrous even to my mind, but the mechanism was still. As if it were waiting.
I reached into the case, mindful of my cut thumb and bruised knuckles. Every sharp edge of the clock’s innards was hungry, and I exhaled shakily as I felt edges and ridges catch on my skin. If the clock started again it would take my fingers off, but Conrad had told me to fix it, and I didn’t see another way to do it.
Trying to recall what I knew about clockwork from our basic class in gearworking the previous year, I loosened and reset each gear that had slipped out of sync, and tugged on the clock’s weight to start it ticking again. It groaned in protest and still ticked out of time.
Dean stopped in the double doorway, shrugging into his leather jacket. “I’m going out for a smoke, miss. You want to tag along, or …” He came closer, crouching to unzip my toolkit and examine it. “Looks like you’re busy.”
“The ticking,” I lied. “It keeps me awake at night.”
“I dunno, princess,” Dean said as I tugged at a stuck gear. “Can you really fix this old thing?”
“The timing is fouled,” I said, finding a useless lump where the master gears should be. “It looks like I need to strip and recalibrate the entire assembly to get it working properly.”
Dean grinned. “Need any help?”
I laid out the first gear and its bolt on the carpet, and noted its position in the clock case. “What happened to your smoke?”
Dean handed me a wrench as I fumbled for it, body half in the clock case. “Smoke’ll keep.”
The job of recalibrating a large and complex assembly like the one in the library would be a thing even for a skilled clockmaker, and Dean and I were both cursing and grease-covered by the time we’d emptied the case of gears, bolts and rods. Gutless and silent, the clock appeared as a skeleton rather than a beast, and I felt a flush of shame that I’d ever been afraid of it.
Cleaning and reassembling the clock took a bit less time than getting it apart, though only a bit, and Dean and I were tired enough to work in silence. It was companionable in its own way, he carefully cleaning the gears and handing them to me, me placing them back into the clock. The clock itself was far more complex than any I’d encountered, even the scientific chronometer in the School of Engines that had six faces and kept times for the whole of the world at once. This had any number of gear parings that attached to rods planted far back in the wall, which were attached to other assemblies that I couldn’t see. This had to be why doors opened by themselves and why I could hear the clock ticking even on the other side of the house.
“You and your brother,” Dean said at length, breaking the silence. “Thick as thieves, I take it.”
“We took care of each other,” I allowed. “He’s … he was my only family.” Lying on my side and tilting my head backward into the case to reach the last gear, I put it in place and twisted the bolt to hold it steady, before gently pressing it into place with its companions. “There,” I said. “Let’s wind it and see what we’ve got.”
“Pretty boss scar you got there.” I jumped when Dean’s fingers brushed my neck. “Didn’t see it till now. You’re always looking at your feet.”