A Star Shall Fall

Far, far above; the dwarves and Ktistes had altered this chamber, raising its ceiling to make room for the clock. And there was something in the stone now, not quite an entrance, more like a hatch, that would permit only one thing through.

Moonlight.

The quarter moon hung low in the sky above. Its light struck a lens placed at the top of the Monument to the Great Fire, then a mirror behind; the silvered metal reflected it downward, through the hollow shaft of that great pillar, into the chamber at its base—and then still farther. Obedient to Lune’s call, the light passed through, and shone down into the chamber of the clock.

Onto the second stone waiting on the floor, just in front of the Queen.

As the pocket-watch’s hands reached midnight, and the regulator outside struck the hour, the dwarves dragged the wooden supports free. The pendulum bob, a sarsen stolen from Stonehenge, hung in midair, suspended by only a beam of moonlight.

And then it began to move.

Idris had let go of his crank, releasing the driving weight to begin its imperceptible drop. Lune stepped back, hands dropping to her sides. Hamilton watched, breath held tight in his chest.

When the regulator began tolling, it was September second in the world outside this room. When it struck the final chime, the date was September fourteenth.

And all the days in between, the dates never lived by a single soul in Britain, came flooding into this room. Hamilton felt them come, slipping past like the wasted days of his youth, scented with the experiences that might have been. An enormity of time, and none at all, shivering him to the core of his soul.

When the last of them had passed, Niklas von das Ticken hauled the sundial door shut, and spun its inner face to lock the mechanism.

Leaving the five of them alone with the clock.

“Vell,” his brother Wilhas said, “ve have eleven days, before ve may open it for the first time. Who vould like to play chess?”

ROSE HOUSE, ISLINGTON

23 January 1758

For the most part the economy of the St. Clair household was the province of Galen’s mother, who did her best to reduce expenditures while still presenting a respectable face to the outside world. There were a few points, however, upon which his father had strong opinions, and one of them was the greater expense of a hired carriage over a sedan chair. But Islington was a miserable distance to go on such a cold day, and so Galen paid for the greater shelter of a carriage, riding with foot-warmer and heavy cloak past the grasping edges of the city and through the still-green fields to the village north of London.

He came this way every month to spend an afternoon in the company of the two people he trusted to teach him what he needed to know, without censure for his ignorance.

The driver deposited him on the icy ground in front of the Angel Inn. After paying the man, Galen deposited his foot-warmer in the inn; then it was back out into the cold, ostensibly to do business with someone in town.

His path, however, took him away from the houses, to the back of the coaching inn, and the winter-dead rosebush that stood behind it.

Rubbing his hands together in a vain attempt to restore circulation, Galen said to the bush, “I don’t suppose a lost and freezing traveller could beg for a hot drink?”

The rosebush didn’t answer him. After a moment, though, the branches shifted and wove themselves into an ice-gilded arch, over steps that beckoned him inside.

The warmth of the chamber below enveloped him like a loving embrace. Galen let his breath out in a moan of pure pleasure. “Ladies, I would steal you for my father’s house if I could. Or, better yet, make my home here, and never leave.”

Galen’s fashionable friends would have dismissed this place as “rustic,” and so it was. Fashion had never touched the furnishings here. Bare wooden beams held up the ceiling, and the furniture was heavy oak, its primary decoration being the years of oil rubbed into its surfaces. The chairs were ridiculous things, their upholstery stuffed with far too much padding, but Galen doubted more comfortable seats existed in all of Britain. Flowers bloomed here and there, despite the cold above, and the smell was of all good things: fresh-baked bread, gentle woodsmoke, and the sweet honey of the sisters’ excellent mead.

The sisters themselves looked like a pair of poetic country housewives, rendered in three-foot miniature. At least until Gertrude Goodemeade advanced on him with the demeanour of an overwhelmingly friendly army sergeant. Then Galen laughed and fumbled with numb fingers at the neck of his cloak, surrendering it with a bow.

Her sister Rosamund, almost Gertrude’s twin save for the embroidery of their aprons, handed him a cup of mead once his gloves were gone. “Drink that up, Lord Galen, and come sit by the fire. You look frozen through.”