The child clapping her hands; the mother wiping her eyes—small, powerful things that settled right inside my heart like they now belonged there forever.
A Timekeeper, possibly older than Kohen, standing at the base of the Great Clock, looking up at its face with an expression of such complete and utter exhaustion that I wanted to reach in there, wherever (whenever) he was, and askhim what was wrong.
He was holding a wrench. His hands were shaking. He looked at the Great Clock and his lips parted—and then he was gone.
Another Timekeeper, this one a woman, crouching inside a room that was almost familiar—only because the ceiling of it was made of glass. I could just see the light outside, but nothing else. The room itself was dark and old and full of thick pipes crusted with decades of rust. Across from the woman, slumped against the wall, was a man, his eyes open but vacant, his hands moving in small repetitive circles against the stone floor—drawing something invisible, over and over, the same pattern, the same shape.
It felt…wrong. He didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe right. His chest rose and fell in a rhythm that was too even, too mechanical, like something else was doing the breathing for him. The woman wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at a device mounted to the wall above his head—a small clock mechanism, half hidden behind a pipe, its gears still turning. She studied it for a while, and then she reached up with bare hands and pulled something out.
A pin. A single pin, thin as a needle, and the gears ground to a halt.
The man on the floor jerked. His hands stopped drawing. His breathing stuttered, broke its mechanical rhythm, became ragged and uneven and human again.
He fell sideways onto the stone, gasping like he’d been underwater for too long.
Then the Timekeepers were gone.
The flashes came faster.
My heart beat louder.
One face, then three, then ten—light and dark and muted and bright colors—a knife, a hammer, a chair, a glass—too much, too much, too much, too much?—
My eyes closed, squeezed shut tightly. My hands covered my ears on instinct as the noise seemed to get louder and louder, too. It was too much, too fast. I was falling way too fast, and my mind screamed and my muscles locked, and my heart said,slow down!
I needed to slow down.
Ineededto, if I was going to continue to fall as I should.
The thought fell in the center of the chaos of my mind and settled all disputes.Slow,my heart said, and my body listened.
My muscles relaxed. My lungs filled all the way, slowly. My eyes opened again, and I was no longer going down like an arrow—more like a feather, slightly swinging to the sides.
The scenes, the moments that were being displayed on the walls around me had slowed down, too, the noise simmered, my focus strong and able to stick toonething at a time again.
The next momentopenedfor me slowly, deliberately, almost hesitantly. Of all the scenes I’d seen so far, possibly hundreds of them before my mind nearly shut down,thiswas the only place I actually recognized with certainty.
It was the Distribution Room.
The same room I’djustbeen standing in. The same Distributor, the same column that held it, the same ceiling—but it was also different. A little newer.Cleaner. The brass plates of the column were brighter, the stone floor unscuffed, the walls more intact—the makeshift window we’d looked through was half as big here, as if the wall had just begun to break apart.
Most importantly, the room wasn’t empty.
Shewas standing there all by herself.
I came to a halt—mind and heart and lungs. I paused as if I no longer belonged to Time at all. I recognized her even though she looked different from how she lookednow.
Then again, anyone would be able to recognize the White Queen when they saw her, I supposed.
She was…a girl. She was maybe a few years older than me, with pale hair pulled back from a face that was beautiful and tired and hard in a way that made me feel like maybe that hardness wasnew. Still uncomfortable on her features—a brand new expression she was just learning to wear.
The room was dark except for the amber glow of the pipes and the sunlight that slipped through the opening in the ceiling from where you could see the Great Clock’s underside. She moved through it with the confidence of someone who’d definitely been here before, had walked this floor many times.
She went straight to the Distributor’s base, knelt in front of the column, right there in front of the gear lock.The same gear-lock.
There were no tools in her hands, only white magic flashing from her raised palm—and then the panel opened.
Just like it had before, when Master Talik had spent minutes and minutes going through the sequence, the panelopened with a hiss that I heard as if I was standing right behind her.
