Maybe that’s why, when the others followed him toward the polished white doors of the entrance of this building—he’d called ita palace—I had no trouble doing the same.
Especially since the Heart boy lingered behind all the rest, his eyes on the side of my face propelling me forward. And when I fell in line behind Cook, with Silas behind me, he came right behind us.
Difficult to explain, but his attention weighed on the back of my head. Touched me as if with an invisible hand.
Then we were outside.
It was warm, warmer than your typical day in early May, but the sun was just about to start setting. The sense of dread overwhelmed me all at once, but it only lasted a moment, until I realized that all the others felt the same way. Their wide eyes and flushed cheeks, the way they slowed their steps and exchanged looks. Not sure why that would make me feel better, but I took it, and I finally focused on my surroundings.
People, over a hundred of them, if not more. Soldiers wearing silver armor, marked with red and white over their chest plates and their silver helmets, were on both sides. Grass under our feet right off the cobbled road that led to the main entrance where the carriages had dropped us off. They were nowhere to be seen now—only the yard on the right surrounded by trees, and the people clapping their hands as they stood near tall cocktail tables full of bottles and glasses and plates.
Beyond the large oak trees surrounding the party, rose the tower—quite possibly the largest tower in the world. It was the tower that the Timekeepers had built rightunderneath the Great Clock to reach it easier. They worked on it all the time, from what we learned, as the massive gears inside the clock were always in need of oiling and fixing, and making sure that they counted the seconds properly, that they spread time equally across all of the Clockrealm.
They were very powerful, Timekeepers. They accessed time as energy in a different way, through clocks that the rest of us could not use, and they could wield incredible magic—all that was necessary to keep the Great Clock forever running.
All these things I’d learned since I knew how to learn anything, and I’d even seen the silhouette of the Great Clock when we went hiking in the mountains of our court with Father—but to actually be here and see this gigantic tower from so close up was different. It was like I’d stepped into a different world altogether, like my eyes had been opened for the first time.
Not to mentionthe queens.
Time’s Teeth, I couldn’t breathe right. Not enough seconds and not enough air left in me as we followed Calren onto the grass and toward the people, toward the Red Queen and the White Queen who waited for us at the very head of the crowd, with smiles on their faces and soldiers on their sides.
The queens are really here.
3
“Ladies and gentlemen!”
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere all at once. We all jumped—even the queens looked startled, glancing around, and then the crowd to their side parted to make way for a man who was much shorter than Cook, who wore trousers with squares on them, and held in front of his lips a round device covered in some sort of a metal mesh.
“Welcome, welcome—Your High Timenesses, ladies and gentlemen, andthe Hands of the 31st Turning Trials of the Clockrealm!”
He screamed the words into his device, and the voice spread with magic all around us, came at us from all directions, soloudit was all I could do to keep my hands at my sides.
That voice. It was unnecessarily harsh and high pitched—or maybe it was the device that made it so?
“It’s an honor for all of you to be here in the presence of our lovely queens—it is, it is!” he called and bowed low in front of the queens, who seemed just as uncomfortable as therest of us. The Red Queen flinched openly when the man straightened again in front of them, and…
“I would?—”
A sharp noise that made my brain hurt, and the White Queen put her hand over his device and pushed it down. Said something to him, but we were too far away to hear.
The man laughed, waved a hand, turned around all very casually, but his cheeks were perfectly flushed. They almost matched the exact shade of his hair.
He was very…roundin general. A round belly under his brown vest, a round face, a round nose somehow, too, and big round eyes a deep brown that looked black. He strode over to us with his hand in his pocket, the device he held there showing through the fabric of his trousers. The White Queen must have told him to put it away.
“Johnny, you’re here today as well,” said Calren when he was halfway to us, and he stepped in front of him, too, almost like he was trying to keep him from coming all the way to us.
The man did so anyway, went right around Calren and stopped in front of us. Looked up and smiled, teeth crooked, one on his upper jaw missing.
“Hello there, dearest Hands! It’s a pleasure for you to meetme—Johnny Kier, the Turning Trials’ speaker—as it is for me to meet you.” Bringing his hands to his chest, he laughed a little, and it was all I could do not to flinch.
Apparently, it wasn’t just the device that made his voice so high pitched and sharp. This was just how he sounded.
“Good to meet you,” some of the others said with nods, before Calren, smiling like he knew exactly how all of us felt, stepped to his side.
“This is Johnny, yes—the speaker of the trials, who’s here even though the trials don’t begin today—but alas,” Calren said and patted his shoulder.
But the Timekeeper didn’t want to hear it when he began to pace in front of us. “Just a second, just a second, Calren—let me see them.Fascinating,really. You’re all taller than you sounded on paper.” Then he looked at Cook standing beside me. “Exceptyou.You sounded taller, I’m afraid.”
