Clockwork Angels: The Novel (21 page)

Behind him, he heard shouts accompanied by the thundering of booted feet. A group of guards must have gotten inside the ministry building and were storming up to the roof. If he didn’t get away now, they would corner him.

Owen placed his left foot in front of his right, stretched out his arms for balance—like angel wings spread out to fly. He refused to look down, refused to think. This was just
walking
, one step after another. He imagined Francesca smiling at him, urging him along.
I would never let myself be trapped like that!
He wavered but drove away the distracting thoughts, blinked his burning eyes and focused ahead, focused on
nothing
.

Countless times he had seen Francesca stroll along the wire as easily as he walked a street. He told himself he could do it. He swayed, gingerly lifted his right foot, and swung it in front of his left. Another step, and he was halfway across, although the gap still looked like an infinite gulf. His vision was fuzzed with black, his concentration as channeled as the view through a natural scientist’s magnifying tube. Each step brought him nearer to the other side. Another step and another.

He was walking on air. He was absolutely terrified.

He collapsed onto the other rooftop, surprised that he had crossed the entire distance. He huddled on the solid tin shingles, breathing heavily.

A door burst open on the dark cathedral rooftop behind him, and Regulators marched out, searching for him. They shouted when they caught sight of him on the opposite building.

Owen heaved himself to his feet and continued his headlong flight, although he still felt dizzy, and his knees were weak.

The clocktower bells continued to clang an alarm. All across the city, newsgraphs rattled out a notice for his capture and arrest. Someone would already be sketching his likeness based on eyewitness descriptions.

The Regulators would probably round up the carnies to interview them about him. Would any of his friends—former friends—believe he was secretly the Anarchist? Tomio had known the real D’Angelo Misterioso, but even if the carnies insisted Owen was innocent, would anyone believe mere
carnies
? Owen swallowed hard, wondering what Francesca would say about him. “A foolish boy, but I never believed he was
dangerous
!”

With two sharp kicks, he broke open a rooftop door, pelted down the stairs, and burst out onto the street. He ran in a random direction, down one street, turning a corner and heading away from the square. He ducked through an alley and emerged onto a wide road. He wanted to go home but knew he couldn’t—Owen didn’t even remember what home was. He couldn’t rejoin the carnival or go back to Barrel Arbor. There would no longer be any routine life of picking apples in a peaceful orchard. There’d be no simple cottage, no evenings in the Tick Tock Tavern, no bland and unchallenging Lavinia at his side.

He had longed for adventure.
Sometimes the Angels punish us by answering our prayers.

He had to get away, to go anywhere. His running feet carried him down to the river and the docks. Alarms rang from other clocktowers in the city, but this late at night, people so comfortable with their unwavering schedules would take a while to understand the reason for the disruption.

He made his way to the docks at the wide mouth of the Winding Pinion River. Several cargo barges were tied up at the piers, and the bustle of dockworkers loading cargo under bright coldfire lights reminded Owen of the happy day he had spent among them.

More important, though, he saw a cargo steamer ready to push off into the night. White vapors coughed out of the cylindrical smokestacks, backlit by glowing docklights. The ship’s boilers had been pumped up to high pressure, and the cargo steamer’s air horn blatted even louder than the gongs on the Watchmaker’s clocktower.

Dockworkers were removing cables as thick as Owen’s leg from dock stanchions, ready to cast off. He stared for a moment at the great ship’s beautiful lines, the hull designed to glide like a spearpoint through the Western Sea, taking everyone aboard to exotic lands. He began to run.

All but the last gangplank had been removed, and he charged toward it, using his last energy. His lungs burned and his heart pounded. “Wait! I need to get aboard.” No one could see him in the long dock shadows made by the garish coldfire lights. “Wait!”

He had dreamed of riding cargo steamers to Atlantis, of set ting foot on the distant lands mentioned in his mother’s book. Poseidon, Atlantis, the Seven Cities of Gold, and places not even named. He didn’t know where this vessel was bound, but he knew he could not stay in Crown City. Alarm bells continued ringing from clocktowers.

Where would he rather be? He made up his mind—
anywhere but here
.

The dockworkers looked at him in surprise as he ran up the gangplank, flushed, holding his porkpie cap to his head. One burly man paused while working at an enormous knot next to the gangplank, and Owen recognized him as the one who had introduced him to pineapples. The burly man’s brow furrowed, then smoothed open with realization. “Ah, I know you!” He called up to the steamer in a thunderous voice. “Hold up, you got one more to come aboard!”

The steamer crew came out and gathered at the rail to see the cause of the commotion. Owen ran up the gangplank before he had time to think—
confidence
, Golson would have reminded him. The crew didn’t know who he was, and he didn’t have a story— not yet.

After all that had happened, he could not believe this was what he deserved. He thought of the Watchmaker’s supposed plan and decided he no longer believed that all this was for the best.

But he knew that
they
believed it. And that was his story . . .

As he burst onto the deck and the steamer’s engines heated up to full power, the workers detached the gangplank and threw off the final docking ropes. The vessel drifted into the channel and steamed away into the night.

Heaving enormous breaths, Owen presented himself to the curious captain. Unable to bring himself to tell an outright lie, he chose his words carefully, “I’ve come from Chronos Square and the Clockwork Angels.” He sucked in a deep breath, swallowed hard. “I’m supposed to be here.”

The captain gave a brusque, accepting nod. That was all Owen needed to say.

The Anarchist

The things I’ve always been denied
An early promise that somehow died

W
earing a well-tailored suit and carrying his leather valise, the Anarchist made his way toward the Alchemy College. He had more than his share of vendettas, for he was an ambitious man. So many people had wronged him that it was a challenge just to keep track of the list.

Most of all, he wanted to punish the great, yet flawed, Watchmaker—that much went without saying. Also, he had never forgiven the carnival, especially Tomio. He could have made the carnival show so spectacular, if only their imaginations had been greater than their fears—breathtaking alchemical reactions igniting in a blaze like a thousand bonfires, converting base powders, rare earths, and a chain reaction of catalysts! Through the transformative ignition of powders, he would have showered the audience with sparkling, new-formed diamonds, precipitate gems that even the Watchmaker could not create! Transmuting cheap metals into gold was a mere parlor trick by comparison. Yes, the reaction was as dangerous as it was spectacular, but what was life without risk? Tomio had driven him out, just like those small-minded philosopher-professors, had insisted that he was being too brash and reckless, that he was showing off.

No one understood him. He did not need to show off for the crowds, since his greatness was inherent. Even the Watchmaker had spotted his talent back at the Alchemy College. And when the student had become too talented, the Watchmaker set out to destroy him.

But after being expelled, he had survived, and thrived, and changed. The Anarchist glanced down at the alchemical symbol on his hand. He was a precipitate, a new being, created by a set of reactions. He flexed his other hand, the scarred one, felt a twinge of blind pain that went as deep as the bone. Such fire could change a person and change a civilization.

The Anarchist sought to create a new world order, an Instability that ran counter to the Watchmaker’s repressive Stability. He did it for the good of the human race, not just for revenge . . . although revenge had to be satisfied as well.

He had already left his mark by scrambling clocks in the city, turning the sedate march of time into a drunkard’s walk. That had shaken the everyday people from their deep slumber, though it did not entirely awaken them. He could count the stunt as one little victory, but it was not sufficient to end the war. In the grandest spectacle of all, he had attempted to destroy the coldfire nexus beneath Chronos Square, along with the Watchmaker’s tower and the Clockwork Angels—a setback that would have brought down civilization in Albion.

As he strode down the street, eyes fixed forward, he drew in a deep breath. The resulting chaos would have been its own reward, a dash of cold water or a bracing shot of whiskey! The turmoil would strengthen human hearts and minds, cure them of the deadly effects of apathy and atrophy, stability and stagnation. His neat and efficient vengeance would have hurt all those who had harmed him—the Watchmaker, the carnival, and the populace of sheep.

Every piece in its place, every action leading to a reaction. Like clockwork. Only he understood the irony.

Even such a neat plan was not without its risks, however. When naïve and innocent Owen Hardy (his unwitting protégé) had discovered the plot—not entirely by accident—the Anarchist had been content to turn to his secondary plan. A man like him had to embrace random acts.

He was alone—always alone. Yes, with so much work to do, he longed for an apprentice. He needed someone, anyone, to help his fight. He could not be the only person in all of Albion with the acuity to recognize the flaws of Stability. And if he could make even a small, insignificant,
normal
man see what the whole world lacked, then the battle was half won.

By tossing the detonator to the young scapegoat, he had set the wheels in motion, giving Owen another sharp shove toward his destiny, an alchemical reaction that might precipitate another Anarchist, someone against whom the world had unjustly turned. The mob and the Regulators had pursued him, howling for blood.

Owen Hardy had the potential to be an important catalyst, but he needed to be awakened. Optimism was such an insidious venom that it left a person too cheerful to know he had been poisoned. The young man was now awake, although not ready. Not yet . . . but the Anarchist had faith in entropy.

Eventually, experience would shape the young man into an ally.

That had been three days ago. Owen Hardy was gone, fled across the sea and out of the Anarchist’s reach—for now—but he would be back. Or the Anarchist would find another candidate. And there were always the Wreckers.

Today’s demonstration might wake someone else among the sheep. . . .

Now, as the Anarchist reached the huddled buildings of the Alchemy College, he found a quiet alley, opened his valise, removed his disguise. Before he could pass through the school gates, he had to become someone else entirely.

He shucked out of his business clothes and donned a traditional white robe adorned with alchemical symbols. He tugged a conical hat onto his head, tied the robe with a green sash that denoted his rank as a mid-level official alchemist from the Watchmaker’s headquarters, a person with sufficient authority to go where he liked, but not impressive enough to attract too much attention.

The Anarchist pulled the other part of himself inside, stuffed his real thoughts and feelings out of sight, and arranged his expression to match the rest of his disguise. He arched his significant eyebrows, twisted his lips in a haughty, critical air, and walked with a mean stride to the school’s cut-stone gates.

From years ago, he knew the schedule of classes and study times, and he knew they would never change. Timekeeping was the hobgoblin of little minds, and every person here was completely predictable. Like honeybees. He walked up to the school at the precise time when his work could have the most impact.

While studying at the Alchemy College, he had done such great work that the philosopher-professors were at first impressed, then intimidated. When he remained persistent, proposing ideas for unorthodox experiments that were not part of the curriculum, they had reprimanded him.

But he had drawn the secret attention of someone far superior to their closed minds and small dreams. He discovered mysterious, unsigned notes smuggled into his books and under his pillow in the dormitory—quiet encouragement, suggestions of possible chemical mixtures for him to try, questions that even the philosophy-professors or the alchemist-priests could not answer. And he
knew
the secret communications came from the Watchmaker himself.

More than a century ago, that man had rewritten the economy of Albion when he’d discovered how to create gold. The alchemist-priests who created and maintained the coldfire nexus beneath Crown City had long since stopped making new discoveries. No one else had the imagination even to try. The Watchmaker surely must be frustrated, needing fresh blood and new ideas.

He had continued to send surreptitious suggestions to that ambitious and talented student. In all his years of continuing research, the Watchmaker was never able to create diamonds or precision jewels; instead, he had to purchase them at a dear price from the mines in far-off Atlantis. So, he had coaxed the talented student to concoct an unauthorized experiment. If successful, it should have created a wealth of gems; instead, it had resulted in a massive explosion, one that burned and disfigured his hand, earned him severe reprimands and expulsion from the school.

None of the philosopher-professors believed him when he claimed that the Watchmaker himself was a catalyst for his experiments. They laughed at the very idea. They called him insane. They insisted that the Watchmaker did not communicate directly with everyday people, that he had no contact whatsoever with mere students.