Chapter 21 #3
“Looks aren’t everything,” Silas said, but he didn’t seem offended. “And yes—my mother did look exactly like a Timekeeper. Her hair was a bright ginger, fell all the way down her back. Blue eyes, orange freckles.”
“Must have been easy for your father to lose his head then,” said Seth with a cheeky grin.
“Actually, he said he fell in love with her hands before he even saw her face. Said he watched her sew a button back onto a coat once and knew right then he was done for,” Silas said.
We smiled. Laughed.
March squeezed my hand and looked at me, but for once, I had no idea what the look meant.
I just knew the thoughts that went through my head as I tried to imagine falling in love with someone so…easily. So quickly. To just…know.
Silas continued, “Anyhour—they had me, and then my mother died when I was seven.”
My eyes closed. Nobody spoke. The words hung in the air, and I could feel the others holding their breath around me.
For a long time, the room was very quiet. Even the clock on the floor seemed to tick softer.
Then Anika asked, “Then how did you end up in the Court of Spades?”
“I remember you, I think.” We all turned to Cook, who sat on the table next to ours on the right.
“We lived in the same neighborhood for a while, yes,” said Silas, nodding his head. “We actually talked about this…before.”
Before we lost our memories, he meant.
“I remember your mother. Your grandmother,” Cook said with a flinch. “They were…they were Spades.”
“That was not my real mother or my grandmother.” How was it possible to hurt so much for a person I didn’t even remember knowing?
“After the death of my real mother, my father wasn’t the same.
He’d always been intense, very focused on his work, but then he threw himself into it with his everything.
” He sighed, threw his head back for a moment.
“He was actually one of the first people who started noticing things.”
“What things?” March asked from beside me.
“Discrepancies. Time allocations. The hours the Great Clock distributes to the four courts. He noticed that they weren’t equal. He noticed that some hours were weaker than others. Small things—a minute here, an hour there. Barely enough to register.”
A pause—and then it was like curiosity had set me on fire from within. So, I said, “And?”
“And he kept his eyes open over the months and years until the pattern became clear. He realized someone was stealing time, channeling more toward the center.
“He started talking about it, and he found other Timekeepers who’d noticed things, too.
Who’d tried to report it and been silenced, had lost their homes and positions, had lost families.
Together they formed this group of people who wanted to make a change.
Called themselves the Underclock, and they tried to record things, gather evidence. ”
I tried to picture this in my mind, too. I tried, but all I could see was an older-looking Silas who’d gone mad from loss.
“Then he sent me away to live in the Court of Spades, to keep me far away from himself, from the dangers of what he was doing. Harriet and Olivia were friends of the Underclock and they agreed to take me in, to pose as my mother and grandmother.”
The way his voice changed. The way you could hear his pain made me almost regret asking him anything.
“I never knew,” Cook whispered, more to himself.
“What happened then?” said Seth. “To the Underclock. To your father.” He, as well as all the others, were just as invested and as heartbroken as I was.
“He died before he could prove anything,” Silas said, his voice dry, heavy. “They deemed it an accident—a malfunction in a machine he was working on—an engine for a harvesting factory.” He closed his eyes. “Doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“Because it wasn’t an accident?” March said reluctantly—and we all thought it.
The clock on the floor ticked. The pieces clicked. Nobody breathed.
“No, I don’t think it was.”
Mimi was crying again—silently, tears running down her cheeks unchecked. Anika had her hand over her mouth. Even Levana had gone quiet, her sharpness set aside, her eyes on Silas with something that looked dangerously close to respect.
“Anyhour, that’s why I came to the trials,” Silas continued. “Not to win or to play games. Just to cast a curse I’ve been working on for years.”
“To avenge him.” The words stumbled out of my lips by accident.
“Yes. And to stop them.” Silas closed his eyes, breathed deeply. “It was a mistake. A stupid, desperate, reckless mistake that nearly killed me and hurt all of you in ways I’ll never stop being sorry for.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said again, but I already knew that Silas wouldn’t hear it. He’d already made up his mind on the matter.
“You were trying to…do something,” Cook said.
“You were…you were trying.” Seth.
Silas didn’t say anything else, only kept his eyes closed and breathed. Even so, we could all feel his guilt spreading about the room. We could all feel it as clearly as if it was our own.
And for a while, we sat with it.
The clock spun. The hand above the door inched past nine. The mechanical pieces clicked and assembled beneath us, patient and indifferent to the story that had ripped us all to pieces, and we had no idea what to do with it, but…
“Silas,” I said again.
He opened his eyes.
“Why?”
He looked at me. Blinked. “Why, what?”
“Why was your father raised by Timekeepers? Where did he come from?” He must have been from the Court of Spades, if he was a Spade.
But then there were plenty of Spades who lived in Neverwhen, too, so…
To my surprise, Silas was quiet for a long time. His gray eyes drifted from my face to the floor, to the spinning mechanism, to his own hands resting on the cane.
He turned the question over in his head—I could see it happening, could see the gears turning in his mind. I’d even say he was a little surprised, as if the question had never occurred to him before.
Then he shrugged his shoulders, just a small, almost helpless gesture.
“I don’t know.”