I shook his hand with a wide grin. “Thank you, kind sir,” I joked with a curtsy. “You’re awfully…tallyourself.”
Laughter—both from him and the other Spade boy. Cook,who didn’t look like a cook, shook Silas’s hand with both his, before he shook mine.
“WhereasIam awfully short,if I do say so myself,” he offered with a grin. Red stained his cheeks as we chuckled. He was indeed a bit shorter than me, but no more than an inch.
“So, the beautiful girl, the tall boy, and the short boy,” said Silas. “That’s it. I think we have everything we need. We’ll come out first at the end of these trials—no discussion.”
“Except I’ve got a feeling you’ll be too distracted,” said someone behind me—a giant of a guy. Reggie, the Club. “Isn’t that what they say about Spades? You’re too distracted partying to do much of anything?”
More laughter. Reggie grinned, and Silas laughed, and others did, too.
“That’sthe onlything you’ve never heard about Spades,” said Seth. “They’re boring.” And he flinched, looked at me. “No disrespect, of course.”
“Yes, yes, only rumors,” said Mimi next to him, nudging him with her elbow.
“Well, we’resupposedto be boring,” Silas said. “We’re the accountants of Time, are we not?”
Rumor had it that we were. When the Great White Rabbit first stole from Time and created the Clockrealm, it was said that Time sent his four sentinels to make sure that His time wasn’t misused. Those sentinels were the creators of our courts, and we were their descendants. The Timekeepers were descendants of the Great White Rabbit, it was said, and everybody insisted that the Spade sentinel was indeed Time’s original accountant because of our magic.
Spade magic served balance, craved it. Our magic ruled endings—it closed loops, shut down magic gone wrong, sealed unbreakable deals. Our symbol—the spade—illustrated our belief that all that ends must be planted to begin again.
However, I was never one to believe these rumors, as I didn’t feel like an accountant. Maybe it was just me, but I didn’t really cravebalance.I didn’t know what that even meant at this point.
“We’llcome ahead of all of you—we’re Clubs,” said Mimi. “We’re on the move while you sleep.Literally.”
Laughter—that was true, too. If Clubs stood still for longer than four hours, they aged and died within minutes. Movement was how they stayed alive—we keep time movingwas their mantra, as far as we learned in our court.
“But where’s yourheart,green ones?” said the Heart girl who flipped her hair again—Levana. “That’s right—wehave all the heart. Of course we’ll come first. We always do.” And she batted her impossibly long lashes at us.
“You guys are forgettingone thing, though,” said the tall Diamond girl—Erith—as she pretended to clean her fingernails. “We’rethe reason the Clockrealm runs the way it does. We’re the reason you can do magicandkeep your time. So…” She shrugged while the girl next to her giggled, and the boy—Russ—grinned.
“Safe to saywe’rethe ones at the head. Always,” he said.
More laughter—and they began to bicker playfully, mostly Hearts and Clubs and Diamonds, but Erith wasn’t wrong. The Diamonds were the harvesters—they literally created the energy that allowed us to do magic; otherwise, doing magic required minutes and hours off our own time, our own lives.
“All right, all right everyone!” someone suddenly called as they came from our right.
It was the Timekeeper. The Royal Timekeeper—Calren Hock.
Two men came in behind him, too, holding pads in theirhands and frozen smiles on their lips that looked all too painful to maintain.
Calren stopped before us and raised his hands. “Let me see you—fall in line please. Fall in line, everyone.”
We did.
I noticed how everyone looked at him with the same awe and confusion and hesitation as I did, even though I knew him better than them, apparently. He’d been the one to come pickmeup at home, and he’d brought me food and drinks and smiles all the way here.
“All of you seem to be whole, as promised. I see twelve heads, twenty-four arms, and twenty-four feet,” he said with a smile, and folded his hands in front of him. His friends remained a step behind, taking notes every second, too. Not sureof what,though.
“And while we’re on the topic—did you know that, supposedly, there are worlds out there who have twenty-fourhoursin their days?”
A gasp or two, but I only smiled. He couldn’t possibly mean it, I was sure. It was a joke, because—assumingthere wasanother world in the universe, which was madness all on its own—how could it possibly operate with twenty-four hours, when the Great Clock ordered time into twelve?
“It’s true,” the Timekeeper said with a nod, his eyes roaming from face to face as he slowly paced in front of us. “Twenty-four hours in a day—one could do so much with them. Can you imagine?”
“It’s not only in a day, though,” said the Spade standing to my left—Silas. The Timekeeper stopped halfway toward the other end of the line and turned. Looked at him.
Maybe it was just me, but Calren’s smile faltered a little bit before he spun on his heels and came closer to us. To Silas, who continued, “Twenty-four hours in the day and night. Like we count twelve moon-bound and twelve sun-bound hours, they consider the day and night a full cycle and count twenty-four.”How curious,said a voice in my head. “I suppose, of course,” he added.
