Chapter 8 Baz
BAZ HAD NEVER FELT QUITE as nervous as he did marching, invisible, into the Decrescens library next to his past self.
As promised, Kai had kept silent on everything he’d revealed to him, but Baz knew that look in the Nightmare Weaver’s eyes well enough to know he had something planned.
Tonight, they were going to catch Clover on all his lies.
A look at Cordie had Baz’s heart breaking for what she would soon find out about her brother. Luce, too. The sight of Clover and his past self helping each other unravel the wards to the Vault, of their friends watching them with such confidence, left a sour taste in Baz’s mouth.
To think how much they’d all trusted Clover, believed in him…
He wanted to wipe the hero worship off his own face, force himself to see the dark, rotten truth hidden beneath Clover’s polished exterior.
But he could only watch from the shadows and hope that whatever Kai had planned would achieve just that.
Once the wards were unpicked, he watched as Cordie, then Luce, disappeared down the stairs toward the Vault. As past-Baz followed the two girls, Kai hovered at the top, staring back at Clover.
“Coming?” Kai prompted, an edge to his voice.
Clover was staring at a spot close to where present-Baz stood. “Go on ahead. I’ll join you shortly.”
Kai’s jaw tightened, his eyes darting around the empty space as if looking for invisible Baz. “We finally get past the wards and, what, you need a moment to take it all in?”
Clover’s mouth lifted in a smile. “Something like that. Go with the others, Kai.”
It didn’t register at first, why Kai seemed to bite his tongue, why he so easily did as he was told. But as Kai went down those stairs, as Baz tried to move but found that he couldn’t—he understood.
Clover had Glamoured them both.
Baz felt his hand move of its own volition, turning over so the pocket watch fell from his grasp. There was a clink of metal as it landed at Clover’s feet. As Clover bent to pick it up, his turquoise eyes met Baz’s, the pocket watch’s invisibility having lifted the moment it slipped from his hand.
And Clover didn’t look surprised in the slightest to see him.
A cruel smirk touched his lips. “I knew someone was meddling in my affairs. I didn’t quite expect this, though.” He tilted his head, watching Baz as if he were a puzzle to be solved. “The question is, where, or rather when, did you come from? Why are you here?”
The words left Baz’s mouth without his permission. “From the future—the god’s workshop. I’m here to stop Kai and Luce from going with you through the door.”
You monster, I know what you’ve done, he wanted to add.
“Fascinating,” Clover said, studying the pocket watch. “You won’t mind if I keep this. I’d like to meet this god you speak of.”
With that, Clover stepped through the arch, leaving Baz rooted in place in the dark library, unable to move or speak. Dread weighed him down as he remembered the god telling him not to lose the pocket watch or he would be unable to return to the present-day workshop.
He’d really messed things up.
How had Clover even found out about him?
Baz had been so careful… and now there was nothing he could do except wait here until everything unfurled exactly like it had before.
Clover peddling the same lies, Thames Collapsing.
It wouldn’t matter that Kai knew the truth of it all if Clover was Glamouring him.
He’d be forced to do whatever Clover wanted him to.
Waiting was agony. Waiting was rethinking every single thing he’d done leading up to now and understanding that the god was right. Fate would always win.
There was a distant blast. Thames’s Collapsing, no doubt.
Everything around him shook, yet Baz still could not move.
Cordie came running up the stairs moments later, her eyes going wide with confusion as she saw him, and still Baz could do nothing.
He heard Cordie saying she was getting help, the panic in her voice echoing through him as she left.
And then, all of a sudden, he could move again.
Clover’s compulsion must have slipped. Baz didn’t wait.
He willed time to stop around him as he ran down into the Vault, then the Treasury, and dove through the glowing pool that would lead him into the Belly of the Beast. Clover was here beneath the water, suspended mid-stride on his way to the bottom of the pool, trapped by Baz’s hold on time.
Baz tried to pry the pocket watch from Clover’s frozen hand, but the bastard held it in a death grip.
By the time Baz managed to get it back, triumph singing through him at this small victory, his heart was pounding wildly, his lungs screaming for breath.
He grasped the threads of time around Clover, intending to drag him back to the surface, to stop him from ever reaching the door, because without a Tidecaller it could not open and so Kai and Luce would never go through.
Or he could leave him to drown here in this timeless, breathless state.
As if riled by Baz’s murderous thought, Clover came alive, breaking free of Baz’s hold on time.
The waters around them swirled to life too as Baz lost his focus, pulling him and Clover down toward the Belly of the Beast. Clover shoved Baz back with a wave of power, and Baz felt himself suspended in the water, kept there by some magic or other, as Clover disappeared into the Belly of the Beast.
Baz could feel metal digging into the palm of his hand.
But he was powerless to do anything with the pocket watch he’d won back, powerless to reach for the threads of time, as Clover’s magic kept him frozen underwater.
He felt his lungs fill with water. Felt himself slipping toward unconsciousness or death.
He had failed, and now he would die here in the turquoise pool.
But then, just as darkness closed in, Baz felt in control of himself again, wondering if it meant Clover had already gone through the door.
Desperately he pushed toward the bottom of the pool, hoping he wasn’t too late as the swirling waters dragged him down, and he fell, gasping, into the Belly of the Beast—only to see Kai and his former self slipping through the door, Kai catching his eye as he screamed for him not to go.
His former self got shoved right back out of the Hourglass, and the tide rushed in to swallow them both, drowning them in darkness.
Baz gasped as he awoke in the god’s workshop. His clothes were sopping wet. The clocks and sextants and astrolabes around him winked at him mockingly, glinting pristine in the light, unfazed by the turmoil Baz had just escaped.
The god of balance was perched on the ladder next to the loom, working out a small tangle in the threads. “I told you it wouldn’t change anything,” he said without even looking at Baz.
Baz’s breathing came in quick, short bursts, his lungs feeling like they were full of water still, like he was drowning all over again. He wanted to cry. Wanted to rage at his failure.
Instead, he got to his feet, stormed his way to the ladder, and held out the pocket watch.
“Send me back,” he said. “I want to try again.”
The god finally turned, taking his goggles off to peer at him gravely. “Take a breather first. The past isn’t going anywhere.”
In the snap of a finger, Baz’s clothes were dry again, and appearing on a table next to him was a delicate cup of tea and a plate overflowing with biscuits and scones and sandwiches.
A chair grated behind him, knocking into the back of his knees so he was forced to sit.
Begrudgingly, Baz took a sip of tea and a bite of biscuit.
His stomach grumbled; he hadn’t eaten a thing while he was attempting to change the timeline.
On the table, beneath the generous spread the god had manifested, was a canvas Baz recognized as the sketch the god had been previously engrossed in.
It depicted a complex web of threads with an ornate hourglass caught in the middle.
Sand swirled through both bulbs in a figure eight, a continuous loop.
It had been drawn in such vivid detail that it seemed to leap off the page, and because it was easier to turn his attention to this instead of the ache inside him, Baz asked the god what the drawing was meant to represent.
“Ah, that’s what I like to call fate’s central core.” The god sat opposite Baz, tracing the pattern of threads on the canvas. “It is what sends out the threads of fate to the loom for it to weave into the tapestry. The very heart of fate, the pillar of balance.”
Baz had never hated the words fate and balance as he did now. The hourglass, the loom—these were the instruments responsible for what awaited Kai, and the unfairness of it all sat like a weight on Baz’s chest.
“You know,” the god said mildly, drawing Baz’s attention from the sketch, “I had an apprentice before you who also believed fate could be changed. He tried to meddle with the past just as you are now, and failed every time.”
Baz nearly choked on his tea. The god had never mentioned an apprentice, but he supposed it made sense that he would have had help with all these instruments he cared for.
“Where is he now?” Baz asked, wondering if this apprentice had been another Timespinner like him, or someone from another world perhaps.
The god had a distant look in his eye, as if he were remembering his apprentice, seeing him in this very workshop.
“No longer with me.” He finally gave Baz a sad smile, pulled back to the present.
“It’s the curse of being an immortal god, to see so many mortal lives come and go.
I will again tell you the same thing I did him: you cannot change fate. ”
“Why not? What’s the point of any of it if our lives are set in stone?”
The god gestured for Baz’s cup. “May I?” Holding it delicately, he said, “Think of this cup as fate, holding together life and death, creation and destruction, which all swirl together to make something balanced and”—the god took a curious sip—“quite delicious. What you are trying to do is chipping away at the cup, ineffective in the grand scheme of things.” Tiny chips appeared on the rim of the cup, the handle, marring its surface though never breaking the integrity of the cup or disturbing the tea inside it. “But do it often enough…”
The god let the cup drop—and it shattered at his feet, tea and porcelain spilling between them.
“If fate were to be broken, chaos would ensue,” the god said.
“You see? This is what I am working to prevent. This is why ensuring the threads of fate run smoothly is so important. And this is why you must let this go, Basil. Because what you are trying to change, if you were to change it, would likely lead to a more disastrous outcome than you can imagine.”
Baz stared at the mess at his feet. He understood what the god was saying, but he couldn’t give up—couldn’t accept that this was the end and that Kai’s fate was set in stone.
Maybe he didn’t have to change all of fate just to change Kai’s. He could keep chipping at the cup, so to speak, until the fragment he wanted gone from the pattern fell away, leaving the contents of the cup undisturbed, the larger tapestry of fate intact.
Baz lifted his chin. “You said I could attempt to change things however many times I wanted,” he reminded the god. “Send me back.”
The god sighed. “If you insist.”