Chapter 29
“It’s over.”
I had my head in my hands, elbows resting on the three-legged table, trying to come to terms with everything we’d gone through already, and everything Kohen was telling us now.
“They’re everywhere,” he said—repeated it, like he needed to hear himself say it again. “The soldiers are searching everywhere.”
Which was exactly what I didn’t expect to happen.
The queens, doing what they were doing, should have wanted to keep our disappearance a secret until they found us, shouldn’t they?
Except apparently the pressure became too much.
According to Kohen, our families were demanding answers, and they were spreading the word that we’d disappeared, and now the queens had put out another royal decree that said something along the lines of: the Hands were kidnapped, and it was the duty of every single person in the Clockrealm to search their property and notify the crown of any suspicious activity, and also open their doors to the search parties that the queens had formed—soldiers going door to door, looking for us.
“It’s only a matter of time before they find us here,” Kohen said, shaking his head, as Master Talik paced around in a circle.
“It wouldn’t be too far off to assume that someone saw you in the Court of Hearts, too, and followed you, or-or-or notified the crown already.
All it would take is for them to know we’re underground.
” A pause. My stomach twisted. “Nobody saw you, Talik…right? You’re sure of it? ”
Master Talik stopped. His eyes fell on me, then March.
I was going to throw up.
“We can’t be certain of that, of course.”
But people had seen us. In the Garden of Memories, and while we went there on the back of that cart.
People had seen us, even if they hadn’t seen our faces, and we could have doomed ourselves and everyone else—yet there I was, sitting at that table and trying to find a single hint of remorse or regret.
Failing.
I wouldn’t trade our trip to the Garden of Memories for anything—and wasn’t that just plain wrong?
“Does it even matter?” Russ said. “We failed. The Heart woman couldn’t give us our memories back. What else is there to do except leave, anyhour?”
And that was plain wrong, too.
A long moment of silence stretched in the room. Even Master Talik was no longer pacing. March sat beside me, a little farther back, his elbows over his knees, his eyes closed as his jaw clenched.
Everyone was feeling miserable, it was clear to see. We’d all hoped. We’d all expected Vesta to give us our memories back.
Hope was such a powerful, wonderful—terrible thing.
“We tried,” the Timekeeper Kohen said after a tick, his voice defeated. “We…we tried. And we found the boy.” His eyes fell on Silas. “There really isn’t much more we can do.”
Wrong, wrong, rotten seconds.
“So, that’s it? We just let the queens…continue?
We go back, and pretend none of it ever happened?
” The words came out of me, and it was like I was listening to them for the first time, too.
Like another part of me thought this, while the other was stuck in that panic loop.
“We just accept that our memories are gone forever, and that the queens will continue to steal and we can’t do anything about it? ”
“Except we can’t just…leave, can we?” Mimi asked.
“But they’re coming.” Anika.
“If they find us here—what would happen?” Cook.
“Will they put us in jail—”
“Will they question us—”
“And what would we say—”
“How would we lie—”
“We leave this place behind like nothing happened, and there will be questions—”
“I am not going anywhere.” Silas.
My eyes opened—I hadn’t even realized they’d closed—and I looked at him as he stared at his hands over the table, his shaking hands.
“I’m not leaving. They’re welcome to come for me.”
And I knew why. We all knew why he wouldn’t leave. Reggie was in that game still.
No, Silas wasn’t going anywhere, and how could I when I made that unfulfillable promise?
I reached for the pocket of my coat and touched the petals of the rose to try to get my thoughts in order—and it did help a little.
“We tried—”
“We haven’t tried everything.” Silas’s voice shot through the air like an arrow, cutting Kohen off.
All eyes in the room were on him now. Even March had stopped popping his teeth.
Then Silas raised his head and looked at me. “We had a talk, you and I one morning, Ora. Before. About a dream,” he whispered, and it was like he ripped my very bones out of my body, broke them, and put them back inside me like that.
Dream-talk. We had a dream-talk.
“In my dream, you asked questions, and when you didn’t like the answers, you decided to look at numbers next because numbers never lie.”
Numbers never lie. The words just kept echoing in my head, over and over again. I wrapped my fingers around the step of the rose…
“You asked about who sees the Great Clock while it works, too,” Silas said.
“Careful, boy…” Master Talik said from where he stood on the other side of the table.
But Silas was still looking at me. “You asked a lot of questions in the dream, Ora.”
“And did you answer me, Silas?” I breathed. “In the dream.”
My heart beat and beat and beat so frantically, so out of rhythm.
“No. But you decided where to go looking next.” His every word fell on me as if from the ceiling.
“The Great Clock,” I breathed, like the words had been there under my tongue all along, just waiting for that moment to come out, reveal themselves to the world.
The Great Clock—and at first, I didn’t even realize why I would say that myself, but a tick later, it clicked. Numbers. Records. That’s where they were all kept, and—
“No.”
The word was so final, falling from Master Talik’s lips.
“No, what?” March asked, but he was looking at me. “What about the Great Clock?”
My mouth opened, but I didn’t have the answer he was looking for.
Silas did. “All records of where every second of time from the Great Clock goes are kept inside it. In the tower, just—” he said, but Master Talik cut him off.
“No. No, a million times no—it is insane that you would even consider—”
“What’s insane is that you won’t—” Silas said, but Master Talik kept on going.
“The most dangerous thing—and not only because of anyone at all—it’s insanity!
” He slammed both hands on the edge of the table, and most of us jumped from the sudden sound, but all that did for Silas was make him stand up so fast that the back of his knees pushed the chair right to the floor with a deafening sound.
“It’s the only option—” Silas shouted, but Master Talik kept talking at the same time.
“That it would even occur to you that such a thing can be done—”
“We’ve cowered back for long enough and I refuse to let them—”
“…that you would hope to survive long enough to get to the top—”
“If you want to keep your eyes and ears closed, that is on you, but I refuse—”
“How dare you assume that I haven’t tried—”
“You haven’t!”
“…everything in my power, that I haven’t given so much of myself to remain here for so many years, knowing what I know—”
“Then DO SOMETHING!” Silas shouted, and I had both hands over my ears now because I couldn’t stand the shouting.
But March was on his feet, too, by then, and Damon and Kohen were right next to the table, and another two Timekeepers whose names I didn’t know were by the doorway, watching.
March shouted, “Enough!”
Master Talik and Silas both had their mouths open, prepared to continue screaming at one another, but they stopped. Looked at March, at Russ and Anika and Mimi who had all stood up around the table, watching them with wide, angry eyes.
“That’s enough, Talik,” Kohen said. “Both of you—have some respect for the rest of us. Sit down.”
His voice was so final, so dark, like someone else was speaking through Kohen’s body for a second. Silas leaned back and grabbed his chair, and Master Talik sat down, too, on the other side of the table.
A deep sigh.
“I apologize,” the old Timekeeper said. “I got…carried away.”
“And neither of us understood a single thing,” said March, and he and Mimi remained standing while the rest of us sat. My heart kept hammering in my chest and I doubted I’d be able to stand for long if I tried, so I just stayed put and…
“There are records of time in the tower of the Great Clock,” I said in half a voice, and there was a part of me that wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the idea, and part of me was convinced that I’d misunderstood the whole thing, too.
“And there is no way to get to them,” said Master Talik through gritted teeth.
“But there is.” Silas didn’t hesitate. “There is a way—a simple way. The tower has a door, and it has stairs to climb it. It has—”
“You can’t even begin understand what every hour that leaves the Great Clock looks like in the tower,” Master Talik cut him off.
Silas opened his mouth to speak, always ready, but Kohen beat him to it.
“He’s right, boy,” he said. “It wouldn’t only kill anyone close—it would completely unmake every second that ever made them.”
Sweat on my brow.
Silas swallowed hard. “But that’s only the pulse of the hour as it leaves the Great Clock. Timekeepers get up there to fix gears all the time, don’t they?”
“Of course,” said Kohen, and my heart skipped a beat. “That’s the most skilled Timekeepers who’ve had years and years of training to do this.”
“But it can be done,” Silas insisted.
“By Timekeepers who know how to do it,” Master Talik spat, his eyes bloodshot now. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is the Great Clock.”
“Exactly,” Silas said. “The Great Clock that irons time for the whole realm equally. The Great Clock that the queens are stealing from daily, and you refuse to do anything—because it’s hard? Because it’s dangerous?!”
“Because it’s impossible!” said Master Talik.
“Nothing is impossible,” I said absentmindedly, and Silas pointed a finger at me without ever looking away from the Timekeeper.
“Exactly.”
For a moment, Master Talik closed his eyes, pressed both hands flat on the table.