The Clock Winked (The Sagittan Chronicles Book 2) (19 page)

Her mother
laughed,
a light
tinkling sound. “Don’t listen to him, dear.” The blue stripes on her face
flickered in the projection. “Everything you need is on this disk. Take it and
insert it into the small slot at the top of the Clock, just above the number
twelve. Then you need to climb the ladder all the way to the top. When the
clock winks, jump. This is important, my dear.”

“Very important,” her father added. “Make sure you jump
towards the six. And make sure you don’t jump too far away from the ladder.”

“And make sure you do it before your
one-hundred-eighty-third birthday.”

A crash sounded in the background. Her father looked over
his shoulder.
“Uh oh.
We have to leave now.” He leaped
to his feet and vaulted over the couch. Looking over his shoulder, he blew her
a kiss. “Love you, sweetheart.” Then he darted out of the projection.

“I love you, dear,” her mother whispered, moving very close
to the camera. “Please. Do this for us. We will see you soon.”

The projection fizzed into nothing. Bronwyn sat quietly,
tears streaming down her face.

“You had better take this,” Simon said, removing the disk
and handing it to Bronwyn.

“Tomorrow,” Bronwyn whispered through her tears. “My
birthday is tomorrow. To think—I might have failed.”

“I will help you in every way that I can. You are lucky. The
clock is very close.” Simon said. He sat down in the middle of the floor with
his eyes closed and began to hum. He held his hands out with the fingers an
inch apart. Sparks flew between his fingers. Then the humming stopped.

“What are you doing?” Bronwyn asked.

“I enabled my tracking device.”

“With sparks?”

Simon shook his head and smiled. “Lake Oliphant was
something of a jokester. He thought it would be funny to put sparks in a
bookstore.”

Bronwyn wiped her nose with her sleeve.

“That’s funny.” She smiled, just a little bit.

“Why is little girl crying?” said Rathead from the door. “Is
this monkey making you sad?”

“No, no,” Bronwyn replied. “I’m just scared, is all. He’s
trying to make me laugh.”

“By sitting on floor?”

“A monkey doing yoga—” she pointed at his position and gave
a little fake laugh. “Intellectual jokes.”

“I see. Well, this monkey is
need
to
come with me for to discuss many thing.”

“Sir,” another man said, sticking his head around the door
frame. “I’m sorry, but while we were out hunting Stryker again, Lebron escaped.
We think he’s hiding somewhere in the building.” He let out a dramatic sigh and
flung his hands in the air. “They just won’t stay where they’re supposed to!”

“Your duties you are not completing!” Rathead exclaimed.
“Why must I be
do
everything? Those two must be
catched. Shoot them, if it required!”

A third man stuck his head around the door frame.
“Lebron is holding a gun at Pria and demanding to talk to you. I offered
him pie instead, but he just started yelling more.”

“This crazy.
Let him shoot her.”

“Whatever you say, boss.”

“No, no, this is bad.
Pria from important
family.
I am come.” Rathead turned back to Bronwyn and Simon. “My
apologies I extend. Much conversation will be had when I return.”

Bronwyn watched as he darted from the room with his two
thugs, leaving the door open behind them. A moment later, one of them darted in
the opposite direction. Two minutes after that Lebron sprinted by waving a
pistol with the two men following only a second behind. Gunshots sounded,
harmonizing with the sound of more stamping feet; then Lebron ran by in the
other direction with only one thug following him. The second guard came limping
a short ways behind. Bronwyn heard a few more shots.

“This is perhaps a good opportunity to escape,” Simon said.
“And to accomplish your task.
They are quite distracted.”

“Okay. But I don’t really understand what they want me to
do.” Bronwyn peeked out the door.

“We can figure it out,” Simon said.

Lebron was coming back in their direction. He thundered by
and ducked into a doorway all the way at the end of the hall. The two guards
limped slowly down the hall, trailing a stream of blood onto the carpet.

“Ew,” Bronwyn said. She ducked back inside and waited until
the guards had passed and then slipped silently into the carpeted hall. Large
tapestries depicting shapes—circles, squares, and triangles all sort of twisted
around each other—spanned the length of the hall. Simon curled around her neck.

“I don’t know where I’m going,” she whispered.

“Just escape first, then we’ll figure that part out,” Simon
replied. He pointed to a tapestry.
“Door hidden behind that
one.”

“How do you know?” Bronwyn asked.

“I have a blueprint of this house in my memory bank. I’ve
been here before.
Once.”

Bronwyn pulled back the corner of the tapestry and sure
enough, a door handle peeked through. She looked down the hallway and then
slipped into the darkness.

“Light,” Simon said. His eyes began to glow, illuminating
the room around them. It was a gardening shed. Three shovels and some hoes sat
within arm’s reach of Bronwyn; a grass-cutter, a barrow, a wagon and till, and
a large number of poisons filled the rest of the space. A door to the lawn
stood ajar at the opposite end of the room.

Bronwyn navigated through the various gardening implements
scattered over the floor and slipped into the backyard. Vines stretched over a
stone pathway leading away from the house. In addition to the warm white light,
crashing and swearing emanated from the windows. Occasionally a loud gunshot
rang out into the night, like a knife slicing through a large sheet of canvas
and then hitting the frame. Bronwyn flinched as a woman’s voice began to curse
the gods and the grass; then a chair flew out the window and crashed into the
lawn.

By the time the chair had landed in the grass, Bronwyn had
already ducked behind a bush and remained frozen as the shards of glass rained
to the ground. One of Rathead’s thugs looked out the window.

“Heh,” he chuckled.
“Chair.
Window.”

As Bronwyn watched, Stryker rose up behind him with a frying
pan and smacked him on the head. The thug fell to the floor with eyes rolling,
babbling nonsensical words, and drool dripping from his chin. Stryker glanced
out into the yard and then turned and disappeared into the house.

*****

“We’ll find her,” John said soothingly. “Don’t worry.”

“Llewellyn is on her way here,” Pete added. “She’s worried
that Butler, her butler, is spying on her, so she’s sneaking out the back way.”

“While we’re waiting,” John said. “Look at what I found in
Oliphant’s library.” He held out the scroll and spread it out on the ottoman.
Pete and Quin looked over his shoulder, and Auvek and Salve kneeled by the
chair.

“I thought you didn’t find anything,” Auvek muttered.

John ignored him.

A tree spread out from the bottom of the page with delicate
lines curving in a myriad of directions, twisting and turning and twining with
names written in an elegant scrawl hidden in the leaves. At the base of the
tree the name Bronwyn curled its tendrils upwards and entwined with the
sprawling tendrils of the names Dwight and Aderyn. Then, in opposite directions
from there, the limbs spiraled out into an imbroglio of names, some green and
some blue. The very top of the tree was split into two sections; one blue, the
other green. The name on the top of the blue side read Romis Woerta Jade; the
green name spelled Remilio Lasta Jade.

“Well,” John said. “I guess Bronwyn didn’t inherit the blue
stripes.”

“What is this?” Auvek asked.

“A family tree,” John replied.
“Bronwyn’s
family tree, to be exact.
I don’t know why it was in Oliphant’s library,
but I could make a guess.”

“Pete,” Leslie said. The five men looked up from the tree. “Llewellyn
is here.”

Aunt Llewellyn strode into the room. Her fur coat reached
her toes, and a great fur hat perched on her forehead; netting dangled in front
of her eyes.

“Bronwyn could be in great danger,” she said. “We must find
her immediately.”

“Give us details,” John stated. “We can’t just go on some
hootenanny mission without knowing what we’re getting into.”

Aunt Llewellyn strode to the fireplace. “Well,” she began,
“as I’m sure you know
,
the Woertas and the Lasta have
been fighting for millennia. First back on their home world, now here in
Pomegranate City. When they made peace back on Gwola, it was under one
condition: that the peace would last only as long as the Clock was kept
ticking. For the first few thousand years, there were no problems. Every five
hundred years a child was born to mixed parents, and they would go reset the
Clock.

“Then the Woertans began to get antsy. They wanted to fight.
So they assassinated the Keeper. That was Roland Marchland, back before my
time. The Lasta wanted peace, so they fought back. Tell me,” she looked at
Quin, “what kind of world is it where you have to fight to have peace?”

Quin shook his head silently.

“Since fighting was outlawed on Gwola,” she continued, “they
brought the war here. Several hundred years ago, the Lasta made a huge mistake.
The plot of land which contained the Clock was purchased by Jameson Musk, a
wealthy Keeper. Unfortunately, he sides with the Woertans. The last Keeper had
to sneak onto his land to reset the Clock. I don’t know why Jameson didn’t just
destroy the clock.

“Chair Aderick was the next Keeper. He thought he could keep
that a secret by hiding in plain sight. He was wrong and he died for it. Along
with Musk, Elon Canderick is also a Keeper. That is why he—and Musk, I
guess—refused to fill Aderick’s position. Both have since disappeared. Bronwyn
is the next Keeper, but she only has until tomorrow to reset the Clock. That
means that Rathead will kill her if he finds out she is the Keeper.”

“Why does it have to be done by tomorrow?”
John asked.

“Because then the clock will run out. It was just a
coincidence that was on Bronwyn’s birthday.”

“Who knows that she’s a Keeper?” Quin frowned.

“Other than me, only Simon, the Oliphant monkey, knows all
of this. I think.”

“Simon?” asked Auvek. “Why?”

“He overheard my last conversation with Bronwyn’s mother, a
long time ago.” Aunt Llewellyn said.

“Well, Simon got kidnapped, too!” Auvek explained. “Maybe
they’re together!”

“That would be wonderful. He could help her escape,” Aunt
Llewellyn replied, clasping her hands together. “But we can’t count on it. We
should get going.”

“Why does it have to be Bronwyn?” John asked. “I mean, why
can’t someone else—like me or Auvek—reset the clock?”

“Because only Keepers know the special
instructions.
Her parents left her a note, which she stole.” Aunt
Llewellyn shrugged and her eyes turned sad. “I guess she could have run away,
but if she did, she’d be running into extremely dangerous territory. I tried to
protect her.” Anger suddenly shone in her eyes. “Musk or Canderick could have
done the task, if they weren’t such cowards. It should have been them.
Or Aderick, if he weren’t dead.”

John looked at the ceiling. “Of all the ridiculous systems!”
he exclaimed. “You’re killing each other to stop a war and only one person can
prevent it because the information is so secret no one else has been allowed a
sneak peek in thousands of years!” He threw up his hands.

“We didn’t want anyone using the information to stop us,”
she said.

“Fair enough,” John replied, “But why not have millions of
mixed babies so that no one wants to fight anymore? You’ve had plenty of time.”

Aunt Llewellyn frowned. “Look,” she said. “It didn’t happen
that way. It happened this way. Are you going to help or not?”

“Yes,” John said, “If you promise to try to find a way to
change this.”

“What happens if she doesn’t reset the clock by tomorrow?”
Auvek asked.

“We don’t know.” Llewellyn’s face paled. “We really don’t
know.”

*****

Bronwyn crouched in the bushes, looking carefully around the
lawn. A tall barbed-wire fence rose suspiciously from the ground at the edge of
the lawn. “I think we have to go over there,” she whispered to Simon.

“Perhaps,” he replied, “but there is a grid of laser
security beams that stretch across the ground in all directions, originating
from that building over there.” He pointed towards the fence.

“No alarms went off earlier, when the chair fell in the
lawn, did they?” she asked.

At that moment, Samson Lebron fled from the back door
towards the fence. His feet sliced through the laser beams. A loud beeping
began emanating from the house. Bronwyn ducked back down quickly.

“Well,” she added, “I guess that answers that question.”

Two guards sprinted down the lawn after him. One slipped in
the wet grass and slid in front of the other, causing him to tumble down and
roll across the grass. A string of swear words integrated the silence between
the piercing alarm beeps. Samson Lebron glanced over his shoulder and shouted
“Ha!” loudly. He then reached out to grasp the fence.

He screamed.
“Ahhhhh!”
A zzzzt
sound filled the air.

“An electric fence,” Simon stated.

“Maybe that’s the wrong way,” Bronwyn said.

“No. I feel as though so much security must be hiding
something—probably the clock. We should try to figure out how to get over it.”

By this time the two guards had gotten to their feet.
Samson’s hands gripped the fence tightly as his body jerked to the beat of the
electricity flowing through his veins; the guards strolled casually over to the
fence and grabbed onto the back of his jacket, forcibly yanking him back. He
fell onto the ground, still shaking. The guards grabbed his wrists and began to
drag him towards the house.