![]() “It’s not like the clocks you made, Krina,” he said over a burst of laughter from the dancers. Many high-heels clopped on the tiles, and a wine-soaked nonet struck up a song that was either a reel or a staggering waltz. The blank, featureless face shined at Krina like a little moon, and she thought of the ominous warning her lookout had whispered to her regarding this clock. But you’ve never seen a clock like this.” He sounded chary, as if he expected a reprimand or contradiction. The apprentice glanced at her wine-stained teeth. ![]() The clock’s feet kicked and tail lashed as she turned it upside down. “What kind of clock are you?” she said, lifting it. The clock lifted one paw to her gratefully, and she smiled down into its face, which, oddly, was merely a round disc with hashmarks and numbers as if to represent actual features that would be added later. Krina, with the care of a gardener removing aphids from a favorite rose bush, brushed a fine file of the ubiquitous red dust from a nautilus curve in the clock’s scrollwork. Nearby, in the wide-open space of his workshop, drunker guests were flailing hilariously through an impromptu reel. The apprentice was a square-faced and sincere looking youth in old work boots who immediately stopped talking to his colleague and faced Krina when he saw her from the corner of his eye. The beginning of the end,” whispered the lookout with a nip at her ear, as Krina looked down the row of dally maple clocks. Krina accepted a drink from her confidante and they walked to the tables where his clocks were displayed. There was an eagerness to become a throng. The large coterie in attendance for the young man’s debut drifted from the tables of clocks to the tables holding bottles of wine and back. ![]() The apprentice’s workshop was a lovely corner of the salon, near what had once been Krina’s own shop. With heavy, hand-hewn beams of brandy-colored wood overhead, buttery lantern light pooled on the floor, and the room smelled of wood fire, yam griddlecakes, and the scent of spilled wine turning to vinegar. Krina led the way, lookout hissing and slithering along her shoulder, and in their deep pockets, the confidante’s hands said, You are an ungrateful, rebellious confidante. “You needn’t scold.” Krina snatched her hand back. Assassinating based on whispers from lookouts? Tragic. The confidante took Krina’s left hand and pressed handsigns against Krina’s palm in a series of pats, the equivalent of whispering to a handslanger. “I’d save everyone if I did it now with his clocks unmade. “We clockmakers are the engines of the ziggurat,” said Krina, turning and climbing the stairs. The apprentice will be safe, yes? said the confidante in handslang. Then she lifted the hem of her cloak and walked up the steps. Shadows from a dove flock zigzagged up the Ascent, the moment passed, and Krina shook her head. He had no idea what the pomelo meant in Krina’s caste or he might not have said, “Only half a crona.” “Fancying a sweet-tart, duchess?” he said from behind his bandana, which was wet and dusty at the mouth. The fruit-monger caressed the round brow of a pomelo, flicking dust from its green rind. The confidante watched Krina staring at the stack of spongy pomelos, light fingertips resting on her lips as if the tight line of locking rings might not be enough to prevent her from cautioning her mistress from buying one. A tool, that apprentice will call the thing he’s created. “People will all see the same time together, the apprentice will say to you, Krina. The lookout whispered the futures into her ear, when she raised her hand to her shoulder: Instinctively, she touched the small, spiny back of her other clock, a lookout wrapped about her right thumb and the sibling to the one lit upon her neck. Krina stopped and stared at the big orbs of yellow-green pomelos, considering. Up and down the great flight, fruit sellers stacked their wares for climbers to buy, making the Avenue of Ascent a cascade of color. Today the Avenue of Ascent was a vast flight of stairs beneath a sky of ceiling windows, and a regiment of urbanishment troops inclined upon the steps in a cove of sunlight, their stiff shirt collars sprung open like traps. “The salon is located up there this afternoon,” the clock whispered to Krina. She kept close to Krina, whose inventions always found the right way, no matter how the ziggurat changed, and the skirts of their cloaks stirred swirls of the maroon dust that seemed to gasp from the mortar and paving stones. “Forward.”īehind Krina walked the confidante, a spider-limbed girl with lip rings to seal her mouth. Krina nudged her clock, and it crept up her long neck, closer to her ear, tiny claws tickling.
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