Chapter 31
Everything still felt like a dream when March woke me a few hours later. Especially when all of us left the Hollow at two fifteen sharp.
There were no conduits involved this time, just old tunnels, almost identical to the ones we’d used to get to the Labyrinth.
Master Talik led the way with a bright hand-lantern, his tools jingling softly on his belt, and Kohen walked beside him.
The rest of us followed in single file, silent, our chronobanks (though mine was empty of Sparetime; not sure why I still carried it with me) in our pockets and our hearts in our throats, even if we didn’t want to admit it. For one another’s sake, I thought.
Master Kohen was kind enough to put a spell on my rose when I asked him, some sort of preservation spell he said would keep it in excellent condition for years.
I left it right there in March’s bedroom, and the Timekeeper promised me that that’s where I find it. I only needed to come back to get it.
I planned to. I would do everything in my power to come back.
Silas walked on his own. He no longer needed his cane to keep his balance. He look more…alive than ever, but I did catch him grabbing the wall twice as we went, and it worried me. Whatever the Timekeepers had done to heal him, it was definitely holding—but for how long?
The tunnels branched and twisted beneath Neverwhen. The pipes hummed and the air grew warmer the farther we went, and the amber glow in the walls brightened until it was almost like walking in daylight.
Nobody said a single word. March was right behind me, his hand in mine, reassuring me that he was there.
Then Master Talik suddenly stopped.
“Above us is the eastern plaza,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “The tower entrance is sixty feet to the north. There are two guards on the main door at all times—crown soldiers, not Timekeepers. They rotate every three hours. The current pair started their shift at midnight.”
“But that’s only two hours,” said Russ. “They’ll be tired but most likely not asleep.” And he sounded a little panicked, too.
“Correct.” But Master Talik only looked at Kohen. “You’re sure about Damon?”
Kohen nodded, opened his mouth to speak, when I found myself speaking first. “What about Damon?” They hadn’t told us anything about Damon. We’d only seen that he’d remained behind in the Hollow, and that was that.
Kohen looked at me over the heads of a few others like he was surprised to find me there.
“He and Fenn will cause a distraction to give us a bit of time,” the Timekeeper said.
I imagined Fenn was one of the others we hadn’t been introduced to.
“They’re already in position. They’ll trigger it at two forty-five exactly, which gives you a twelve-minute window between it and the three m.b. burst.”
“What kind of distraction?” March asked, and he sounded just as suspicious as I felt.
Kohen looked almost irritated. “Just a conduit malfunction. They will manually trigger a pressure spike in the eastern distribution pipe—close enough to the tower that the guards will feel the vibration, hear the alarms, and see steam venting from the street grates. Standard emergency protocol requires all nearby personnel to evacuate the immediate area and report to the maintenance hub for assessment.”
Clever, I thought.
“And if they don’t evacuate?” Levana asked.
“They will. A conduit malfunction near the Great Clock is every soldier’s worst nightmare.
The last real one was thirty years ago and blew a crater in the plaza the size of a house.
” Kohen pressed his lips into a smile that wasn’t entirely pleasant.
“Nobody stands around when the pipes start screaming, young lady.”
Levana rolled her eyes as she muttered young lady under her breath, and made sure he saw it, but Kohen turned to Master Talik again, who was checking his tools—probably for the seventh time.
He pulled each one from his belt, inspected it, put it back in place.
Almost like a ritual—like how I sharpened my pencils obsessively before a drawing I found particularly difficult.
“The timeline,” he then said, his voice thick and heavy.
You could just see how much he didn’t want to be here, doing this—and I suspected it wasn’t because of himself at all, but because of us.
“Two forty-five is the distraction. The guards evacuate. We have approximately two minutes to cross the plaza and enter the tower through the maintenance door on the eastern wall. I have the key.” He held up a brass key, tarnished and old.
“Our first goal is to climb to the seventh floor,” he said, and it didn’t sound that high.
“How long to climb?” Mimi said.
“Ten minutes if we move fast. Twelve if we don’t.”
“We’d get there in seven if you were all Clubs,” Seth muttered, but we ignored him.
“That puts us on the seventh floor by two fifty-seven,” Silas calculated. “Three minutes before the burst fires and resets the cycle.”
Master Talik nodded without looking at him. The pressure in the air when they exchanged words grew.
“We wait for the burst,” said the Timekeeper. “Then we continue up to the top while the Distributor resets. The room will be safe for exactly fifty-seven minutes.”
“And the vault?” Russ asked.
“The vault is in the Distributor’s base. I’ll need a few minutes to open it. It’s a nine-step sequence lock on a very old mechanism.” Master Talik looked at all of us for a second, his eyes moving from one set of eyes to the next.
“Then we grab the plaques and run,” Seth said.
“Then we grab the plaques and walk,” Master Talik said. “Quickly, but we walk.”
“Why not run? It’s surely fast—” Mimi started, but…
“No,” he cut her off. “We always walk and we always watch our step.” He paused, looked at all of us. “It’s very, very important that you watch the floor and watch your step at all times. Do you understand?”
“Why, though?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Stillward,” Silas said. “Right, Master Talik?”
“What in Time’s Trousers is stillward?” Levana.
Master Talik looked at Silas like he wanted to slap the Time out of him just now. Instead, he clenched his jaws and said, “A gap in time. There’s plenty that exist in the tower, but going stillward is the most dangerous of all. Time has no domain there.”
Shivers ran down my spine, ice cold.
“And how do we—” Seth said, but Master Talik didn’t let him finish.
“It’s nothing you need to concern yourself with if you only watch the floor. I said—do you understand me, Hands?”
Another round of nods—we definitely understood.
“And when it’s done? When we reach the bottom?” Anika asked—when, not if. As if she was certain that we would.
“Kohen will be waiting at the maintenance door. The distraction will have drawn attention away from this side of the tower. We slip out the same way we slipped in, cross the plaza, and disappear underground before anyone knows we were there.”
Master Talik, too, spoke like he actually believed we’d see that moment.
“And if the guards come back early?” Erith asked.
Master Talik and Kohen looked at each other.
“They won’t,” Kohen said. “The malfunction will keep the emergency teams busy for at least an hour. By the time anyone thinks to check the tower, you’ll be long gone.”
Was it just me or did he really not sound as convincing as he should have?
“And if something goes wrong inside?” Mimi asked next, and I swallowed hard.
We waited—a heartbeat and three and five.
Nobody answered.
I supposed nobody needed to. The answer was obvious, and none of us wanted to say it or hear it said out loud.
Master Talik checked his clock. “Two thirty-eight. It’s time.”
It was time, indeed.
A strange sensation spread in my chest, one that was almost familiar—which didn’t surprise me at this point.
Without a word, we climbed through the maintenance hatch, out into the cold night air of the eastern plaza.
Buildings surrounded us, one and two stories tall, mostly shops with red and white signs on the windows and golden locks on their doors, dim lights shining inside.
The Great Clock tower was just to our left, looming above us—massive, dark, its face glowing faintly against the sky like a second moon. The sight of it took my breath away, this time more than all the others.
I’d seen it from a distance plenty of times, but from up close, it was something else entirely.
The stone was old and dark and carved with lines that could have been symbols or warnings, and I couldn’t have read them either way.
The tower itself seemed to vibrate—a low, constant hum that came up through the cobblestones and into the soles of my shoes.
Kohen guided us along the edge of the plaza, keeping to the shadows of the buildings. From here, we could just make out two guards standing at the main entrance in their silver armor that shone under the moonlight, their hands resting on the belts that held their swords and daggers.
With Kohen’s wave, we pressed against the wall of a shuttered shop, and the door and sign must have been on the other side because I couldn’t see it.
I was looking for it—looking for a distraction before my heart beat all the way out of my chest for real.
I was looking for anything to take my mind off what we were doing, but there was nothing but shadows, and the numbers turning in my head.
…forty-two, forty-three, forty-four…
March’s hand found mine in the dark. I held onto it with all my strength.
Forty-six, forty-seven, forty—
The ground shuddered, wiping my mind clean. Not violently—just a vibration that rose through the cobblestones and rattled the shop windows behind us.
We all stopped moving, breathing, blinking.
Then came another sound, this a deep, metallic groan from somewhere beneath our feet, followed by a high-pitched whistle that grew louder and louder…
Time’s Teeth, it was working.
Right before our eyes, massive plumes of steam were shooting up from the street grates just thirty feet away, the smoke white and so thick it swallowed the light of the lantern nearby.