Chapter 27
Iwoke up not forty minutes later to a knock on the door—Lida, coming to tell me that breakfast was served, and that I needed to eat if I wanted to sleep properly through the night.
The next night was going to start early, she said, because a surprise was coming—and no matter how many times I asked her what it was, she refused to say.
The thought of it made me anxious on my way to the eating hall. A surprise in a place like the Labyrinth? Yeah, I was pretty sure I didn’t want any part of it.
Most of the Hands were already there when I made it—and so was Elida.
She’d taken a chair at the very end of the table, a spot that was usually empty, and she was eating while she scribbled in her pad furiously.
I tried to see what it was she was writing as I passed by her to get to my seat, but it was impossible to read her handwriting. It looked like rubbish.
March wasn’t there, and neither was Mimi or Levana. The rest were quiet, exchanging sneaky looks Elida’s way every now and then. We all knew now not to speak in front of her, after the dinner with the White Queen earlier in the night.
They all looked at me more often than they ever had before, though.
I could have sworn Russ was even widening his eyes at me every now and again, and Anika was nodding her head in a strange way, too, like maybe she wanted to signal me about something.
I didn’t understand any of it, and that made me anxious, too.
That’s why I barely ate, and when Erith stood up to leave, so did I, as casually as I could.
But when I was halfway to the door—
“Guys?” Erith was still by her chair, holding onto the back of it, slightly bent over. “I think…I think I’m going to be sick.”
In a second, she turned, bent over all the way, and threw up all over the floor.
All my instincts crashed against one another.
Others stood up, chairs slammed to the floor. Erith fell on her side, too, holding her stomach, throwing up like she had a hose in her mouth, and she couldn’t even breathe.
My gut turned. My mind screamed. My body was torn in half—a part of me demanded that I go to her, help her, pull her to sit up at least like the others were doing, and the other part, the stronger part, demanded, why?
! Why would I do such a thing—she was only vomiting.
Why would I do such a thing—the others were already there. Why would I—why should I care?
Then I was running.
I had no idea when I started, just that I could barely see where I was going. My muscles screamed, tired from the trial and the workouts, and the tears kept on coming, more pooling in my eyes as old ones slid down my cheeks, always more, and I didn’t know why.
Why did my body behave the way it did?
Why did it feel like I wasn’t me at all?
Finally, I slammed onto a wall, and I stopped. Deliberately, I think. A hundred blinks, maybe more, and the tears allowed me to see for a second—the wall I’d slammed against was the one right next to the door of Master Talik’s workshop.
Time’s Teeth, I was exhausted. Not just from training and running—but from being at war with myself. How was I to live like this, when I was a stranger under my skin?
What had happened to me? Or had I always been like this?
Because I couldn’t remember.
With my eyes closed, I slid down the very wall I’d slammed against. I’d stopped, all right, but now I couldn’t bring myself to move again. The door would be closed, Master Talik would be gone, that much I knew. I had to go back to my room, lock the door, try to sleep again, try to forget.
But for a while, all I could do was sit there and breathe.
So many things rushed through my mind at once. My own stomach was turning, but I wasn’t sure whether I was going to be sick, too, and throw up all over this hallway, or if I was just overwhelmed by all that I felt, and all that I didn’t feel—as well as the physical exhaustion.
I was trying to calm down by sitting very still and holding my breath when I heard the sound.
Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock—and it was definitely coming from behind the door next to me. From Master Talik’s workshop.
I stood up so fast I would have lost balance had I not grabbed the handle already. I pulled the door open the very same second.
It gave.
The door opened, and there was light inside the workshop, and Master Talik was in there, hunched over his desk, working on a clock the size of a suitcase.
Once more, I stopped. Strained my ears, my eyes to make sure that this was real, not just a figment of my imagination.
Master Talik moved. Reached for a box of tools on the other side of the table. Sighed deeply like a man who was beyond exhaustion would.
Real.
I stepped inside the workshop and closed the door behind me.
The metal benches and tables were against the wall again.
There were things all over the wooden floor, scattered, like someone had thrown them without looking—which made me wonder about what Master Talik did here after we were gone.
During lectures, the floor was clean, and there were all kinds of devices everywhere in the room, but not scattered like this.
I slammed my feet a little as I went closer to the main table, just to make sure he’d heard me, that he knew I was there.
“Good morning, Master Talik,” I said for good measure before I stopped a couple feet to his side.
He turned his head to look at me then, and I sucked in a deep breath, fear locking my limbs for a split second. His eye behind the loupe looked enormous, and his gray hair was all over the place, and he looked terrifyingly pale, too.
“It’s not tomorrow yet, is it?” Master Talik said.
“No, no, I just…” I just what?! How exactly was I going to ask him something when I didn’t know what to ask him at all?
“Make yourself useful then and bring me that box over there.” He waved his pliers toward the left side of the workshop, toward the metal boxes full of tools and parts on the racks.
A little stunned that he wasn’t kicking me out, I went for them without even thinking. They all looked identical. Six boxes, exactly the same size.
“Which one?” I asked because he could have been looking at any of them.
But Master Talik didn’t answer. Didn’t look up at me at all.
I grabbed the box in the middle of the top shelf and took it to him, expecting him to tell me it was the wrong one. He didn’t. He only pulled it closer and went through the parts to find a wheel the size of my hand to put inside the large clock he was working on.
The clock’s hands were moving, ticking, except they went four seconds forward and two seconds back.
For a while there, I watched him work. He didn’t have music on this time, but the ticking of those seconds, and the sounds he made while working, followed by his grunts and his sighs, became its own melody.
I didn’t interrupt him at all—it was kind of calming to watch his hands move the way they did, with such precision.
“Lend me your ear, young one,” he said all of a sudden. “Do you hear the ticking underneath?”
I was actually surprised again to find his eyes on me—the way he worked, you’d think he believed he was all alone.
“Oh.” I stepped closer. “The-the clock?” I pointed at the clock he was working on, just to make sure.
“Yes,” he said. “The clock. Go ahead. Give it your ear.” And he tapped the glass over the clock face with his fingertips, blackened with oil.
I leaned closer, holding my hair back, and pressed my ear to the cold glass.
“Yes.” My eyes closed and I focused. “It’s…it’s coming from the inside.” I straightened up again, cleared my throat. “There’s definitely another ticking underneath.”
“Hmpf.” He scratched the gray stubble that covered his chin, then got to work again, opening another compartment on the side of the square clock.
“Master Talik,” I said slowly, licking my dry lips.
My head hurt a little, and my eyes felt swollen from all the crying—must have cried more than I’d realized at first—but my voice worked.
“Remember last time I was here, you told me to reach in the dark, first and always?” He didn’t raise his head, didn’t answer, just continued to work.
“Well, I did. And I found…” I reached for the pocket of my tunic for Silas’s portrait.
If the paper hadn’t been so thick, I’d have torn it by now.
I kept needing it close to me, so I was always stuffing it in my pocket when I left my room.
“I found this.” I unfolded the piece of paper, and Master Talik did not look up once.
A second ticked by, and when he didn’t react still, I put the drawing right over the glass of the clock face.
Not sure why I held my breath as I watched his eyes and waited and waited…and they finally moved from the gears and to the drawing.
Master Talik stopped. His hands froze, each holding tools, hovering over the open parts of the clock. He didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, either, as he looked at the drawing of Silas’s face, and for a good moment, the entire room seemed to have frozen in time.
Then the Timekeeper simply continued to work.
I took the drawing back, confused. “Did you…did you know him, by any chance? Did you know Silas?”
No answer. Not sure why I kept going.
“The White Queen said he was one of you. Half Timekeeper, half Spade, so I thought maybe…you knew him.”
He worked and worked and worked.
The last time I was here, he’d been awfully chatty. Had said all those things to me, though some of it had been senseless. He spoke about burdens and being incomplete—and that’s why I’d come back every night, trying to find him here again. Hoping he’d say more. Hoping I’d understand something.