Clockwork Angels: The Novel (18 page)

With his right hand, the Watchmaker lowered a pair of eyepieces. Simultaneously, with the same precise and steady motion, his left hand selected a miniature tool from the bench.

His fingers moved unerringly, his concentration complete, as he guided the tool into the heart of the complicated mechanism. The device was a fist-sized, egg-shaped armature of machined gold that surrounded a complexity of tiny gears and jewel bearings. Precision diamonds, faceted redfire opals from the distant mines in Atlantis. A bubble of coldfire glowed at the mechanism’s heart.

“Wheels within wheels,” he muttered, exactly the way he perceived his clockwork universe, and the personal world he had created within it.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Facing away from him in the tower chamber, the four Clockwork Angels stood in their alcoves, full of beauty and majesty. He adored them—they were the closest things to perfection he had ever created. Light. Sea. Sky. Land. One Angel to represent each of the four elements.

And only he controlled the fifth element.
Life
.

More than a hundred years after he had learned how to create gold, the gold itself had lost its interest for him. He had controlled its supply, and thus its value, but a now-commonplace yellow metal was no longer “precious” to the Watchmaker. Even coldfire—a simple mixture of acids, bases, and catalysts that could evoke energy out of silica, the basest substance—had lost its luminescence.

The Watchmaker’s dreams were grander than that. With even rarer elements—moonstone, sunstone, bloodstone, dreamstone— he continued his quest for the essential presence of existence, the bio-alchemical force that was the heart of everything and everyone. The animating force, the fifth element—the
quintessence.

The Watchmaker raised his right hand with smooth motion to select a different pair of lenses, red ones, to see deeper into the spectrum. In the same moment, his left hand reached out to select a tiny file from the array of miniature tools. He leaned closer to the device and lovingly filed smooth the edges of tiny gear teeth in the escapement. Setting it in motion, he judged its perfect rhythm and released a long slow breath that was like a prayer
.

The Watchmaker viewed his devices as mirrors of life—life the way it ought to be—action and reaction in a balance that was precise, controlled, reliable. Not like the unruly humans he tried to guide and keep content, although their simple needs were not difficult to understand and provide for. He remembered an ancient piece of wisdom for rulers: “Give them bread and circuses, and they will never revolt.” Coldfire provided all their energy needs. His alchemically controlled weather patterns kept the farms productive, and the people well fed. Traveling roadshows like the Magnusson Carnival Extravaganza kept them entertained. All was for the best.

Even so, a few rogues and renegades insisted on disrupting his Stability, but he would deal with them soon. For now, he had to tend his beautiful Angels.

Viewed through the powerful magnifiers, the intricate mechanism filled the Watchmaker’s eyes and delighted his mind. Spiritual machinery, possessed of a life force he himself had instilled, and of which he was both master and servant.

It could not exist without him—but he could not exist without it.

In youth, one might search for riches. In middle age, a man might want power. But now, after more than a century, the Watchmaker considered life itself most precious. Time was most precious.

Long ago, the Watchmaker had discovered a primitive form of the quintessence and used it to keep his own daughter alive when a cruel disease tried to take her from the world; he force-fed her the energy, kept her head alive even when the rest of her body failed. Back then, the quintessence had been only a raw distillate, powerful but unrefined, and she did indeed still live—after a fashion—but it was only an early experiment. It had not turned out well, and he had lost her anyway. It had been so long, more than seventy years. How much of her still remained? His daughter would never forgive him . . . but he was not in the business of giving or receiving forgiveness.

Even so, he wished he could do it all again.

The Watchmaker had caught glimpses of her over the years while walking in one of his disguises, and he had invited the carnival to perform at the summer solstice mainly because he wanted to see her again. She had never forgiven him, would not talk with him—of that he was sure—but at least she would be here in Chronos Square. At least she was still alive. Did she not appreciate that? The success of the experimental procedure was a tribute to his own abilities.

But he had gotten better over the years.

At the workbench, he turned his attention to the most delicate of the movement’s complications, the
tourbillon
, the “whirlwind.” Its rotating cage would counteract the effects of gravity on the escapement and balance wheel, keeping the interlocking gears, springs, and wheels accurate at any angle, any temperature, any altitude. Wheels within wheels. Just as the tourbillon controlled the machinery, he himself could control the most chaotic of nature’s powers. He could reap the whirlwind.

He held up a larger implement, and his thumb pressed a lever to spark flint and steel. He touched it to the gold, egg-shaped armature, and blue lightning flickered in tiny arcs deep in the mechanism. Finally, he snapped the backplate on the energized clockwork device, and he set to work on the tiny hydraulic pump it would control.

The Watchmaker had kept himself alive by making all the necessary calculations and bargains. Mere humans might have to live and die in their limited spans, but not the Watchmaker. Albion simply couldn’t function without him, and the Stability would fall apart under the guidance of imperfect people. Therefore, he had an obligation to stay alive.

Taking the throbbing device, he walked over to the nearest Clockwork Angel, the figure made of pure white, her clothes lustrous, her skin turned to simulated stone. Between the beautiful wings on her back, he opened the access hatch where her activating machinery sat motionless. She was a Titan, a giant among humans, filled with the energy and grace his experiments had given her.

All four of these clockwork beauties had been volunteers a long time ago, starry-eyed followers who believed in every detail of his plan. At one time they’d been partly human, but they were now much more than that. As he connected the clockwork heart to the cavity in her chest, released the quintessence, and set the wheels in motion, he whispered, “Animate!” The power source sparked life into the Angel.

With the smoothest vibration, her wings extended, then folded again, as if stretching. The Angel swiveled her head and blinked her beautiful, glassy eyes. Looking at him with love in a gaze so powerful and ethereal, the Clockwork Angel nearly hypnotized
him
. He felt a thrill run through his own body, his own systems.

For an instant so brief that it might have been an illusion—
had
to be an illusion—her normally serene expression changed to a shocking flicker of utter hatred and despair.

The Watchmaker’s arms stuttered and jittered in unexpected reaction. An unevenness occurred in his own delicately aligned gears. With his other hand, he forcibly straightened his arm, bent his wrist, and felt the gears move smoothly again. He tugged down his sleeve to cover his enhancements and fastidiously brushed away specks of imagined dust. Soon, he would have to replace his own quintessence animator.

Smiling with perfect love and adoration again, the Clockwork Angel faced forward and returned to rest.

His bees buzzed around the hives, a white noise that he found soothing. In the large enclosed courtyard gardens of the Cathedral of the Timekeepers, the Watchmaker kept his own beehives, an array of conical structures with hinged backs for the removal of the combs. The structures were made of delicate and pure wax, filled to dripping with the gold manufactured by his perfect insect pets. And while he admired their uniform behavior and natural precision, the bees operated on their own Stability, unrelated to his personal wishes. When viewed through the bees’ multifaceted eyes, even the Watchmaker’s world must seem an uncooperative, disordered place.

But he was doing his best.

As he approached the thrumming hives, the Watchmaker needed no protection, just his confidence and his gentle nature. Little enough of him was still human anyway; why would the bees bother to sting him? After opening the hinged door, he bent to watch all the busy little creatures chasing out their destinies. Marvelous.

Even so, he had never been able to determine why his hives produced significantly less honey than most others. He had studied the best volumes on the science, devoted much time to becoming the best possible apiarist, but his bees seemed to lack proper incentive. Given the smaller volume of honey, however, the Watchmaker declared it rare and consumed it on only the most special of occasions.

He leaned closer, and the throbbing buzz increased as the bees became agitated, but not yet aggressive. He viewed the hexagonal chambers interlocked like gears and admired what they represented to him. Out of the seeming chaos they created not just order, but
beauty
. Bees understood the perfection of geometry. They created something useful, which also happened to be beautiful. If only people could learn the lesson of lowly insects. Yes, the honeybee was the perfect symbol for him.

He recalled the intricate chronometers he had built more than a century ago, early in his career, early in his existence: timepieces of such accuracy and craft that they went far beyond their original intent, not just to tell time but to instill awe through their perfection. He had always considered that a laudable goal for its own sake, whether or not others could understand all the intricate connections and symbology.

He looked up from his study of the hives as his loyal commander of the Black Watch entered the courtyard garden. Seeing the bees whirling through the air like static, the commander stopped at a safe distance, raised his voice. “Watchmaker, sir, a fresh report from our scouts on the Western Sea. Our long-range military ships have completed another section of the ordered grid mapping.”

“And have they found the Wreckers?” The droning sound of the bees blurred his words.

“No, sir, but they continue the search.” The man flapped a hand in front of his face, though he should have known that too much motion might intimidate the bees.

The Watchmaker nodded. “Even an empty data set provides important information. We know where they are
not
, so that limits the areas of the sea where they can
be
.”

The Watchmaker was eager to find the pirates who kept attacking his cargo steamers, costing him fortunes in essential resources from Atlantis: the jewels he needed for his most precise watches; the moonstones, bloodstones, and dreamstones necessary for his quintessence research. The Wreckers must have a lair somewhere out on all that open water, but the Watchmaker’s airships were hindered by their range from the coldfire pivot points. The new ones under construction, though . . .

Impatient, he was tempted to have the scout fleet broaden their sweeps and loosen the net, but he was not a haphazard man. “The search has to be done properly, according to the pattern. And when the Wreckers are found—no matter how long it takes—we must descend upon them with an irresistible force.”

As his anger increased, he felt his metronome pulse picking up speed; energy gathered in his veins. Whenever the attack happened, he would join them for that assault. The Wreckers and the monstrous Anarchist were a personal affront to him.

Bees swirled around him, unnoticed.

The provocative graffiti had been removed, the sabotage of steamliner rails repaired. The recent mayhem caused by the Anarchist’s stunt of resetting so many clocks had been more dramatic, because it shook the citizens’ faith in time. But the Watchmaker reassured everyone. He would be victorious in the end. He was an intelligent man, not a wild animal. Civilization must triumph over barbarism. Order had to succeed above chaos. “Thank you, Commander,” he said as the insects swirled around him. “Continue your search with due diligence.” The black-uniformed Regulator turned on his heel and departed from the garden, glad to be away from the bees.