Thief of Time

The result would have been successful beyond the Auditors' wildest dreams, had they ever dreamed. Now that they had their stalking horse, their reliable human, anything was possible. They were learning fast, or at least collecting data, which they considered to be the same as learning.

So was Lady LeJean. She had been a human for two weeks, two astonishing, shocking weeks. Whoever would have guessed that a brain operated like this? Or that colours had a meaning that went way, way beyond spectral analysis? How could she even begin to describe the blueness of blue? Or how much thinking the brain did all by itself? It was terrifying. Half the time her thoughts seemed not to be her own.

She had been quite surprised to find that she did not want to tell the other Auditors this. She did not want to tell them a lot of things. And she didn't have to!

She had power. Oh, over Jeremy, that was not in question and was now, she had to admit, rather worrying. It was causing her body to do things by itself, like blush. But she had power over the other Auditors, too. She made them nervous.

Of course, she wanted the project to work. It was their goal. A tidy and predictable universe, where everything stayed in its place. If Auditors dreamed, this would be another dream.

Except… except…

The young man had smiled at her in a nervous, worrying way, and the universe was turning out to be a lot more chaotic than even the Auditors had ever suspected.

A lot of the chaos was happening inside Lady LeJean's head.

Tick

Lu-Tze and Lobsang passed through Bong Phut and Long Nap like ghosts in twilight. People and animals were blueish statues and were not, said Lu-Tze, to be touched in any circumstances.

Lu-Tze restocked his travel bag with food from some of the houses, making sure to leave little copper tokens in their place.

“It means we're obliged to them,” he said, filling Lobsang's bag as well. “The next monk through here might have to give someone a minute or two.”

“A minute or two isn't much.”

“For a dying woman to say goodbye to her children, it's a lifetime,” said Lu-Tze. “Is it not written, ‘Every second counts’? Let's go.”

“I'm tired, Sweeper.”

“I did say every second counts.”

“But everybody has to sleep!”

“Yes, but not yet,” Lu-Tze insisted. “We can rest in the caves down at Songset. Can't fold time while you're asleep, see?”

“Can't we use the spinners?”

“In theory, yes.”

“In theory? They could wind out time for us. We'd only sleep for a few seconds—”

“They're for emergencies only,” said Lu-Tze bluntly.

“How do you define an emergency, Sweeper?”

“An emergency is when I decide it's time to use a clockwork spinner designed by Qu, wonder boy. A lifebelt's for saving your life. That's when I'll trust an uncalibrated, unblessed spinner powered by springs. When I have to. I know Qu says—”

Lobsang blinked and shook his head. Lu-Tze grabbed his arm.

“You felt something again?”

“Ugh… like having a tooth out in my brain,” said Lobsang, rubbing his head. He pointed. “It came from over there.”

“A pain came from over there?” said Lu-Tze. He glared at the boy. “But we've never found a way of detecting which way–”

He stopped and rummaged in his sack. Then he used the sack to sweep snow off a flat boulder.

“We'll see what—”

Glass house.

This time Lobsang could concentrate on the tones that filled the air. Wet finger on a wineglass? Well, you could start there. But the finger would have to be the finger of a god, on the glass of some celestial sphere. And the wonderful, complex, shifting tones did not simply fill the air, they were the air.

The moving blur beyond the walls was getting closer now. It was just beyond the closest wall, then it found the open doorway… and vanished.

Something was behind Lobsang.

He turned. There was nothing there that he could see, but he felt movement and, for just a moment, something warm brushed his cheek…

“—the sand says,” said Lu-Tze, tipping the contents of a small bag onto the rock.

The coloured grains bounced and spread. They did not have the sensitivity of the Mandala itself, but there was a blue bloom in the chaos.

He gave Lobsang a sharp look.

“It's been proved that no one can do what you just did,” he said. “We've never found any way of detecting where a disturbance in time is actually being caused.”

“Er, sorry.” Lobsang raised a hand to his cheek. It was damp. “Er, what did I do?”