They had picked their way and taken him down stairs, and he’d been about to fall so many times it had become his normal now. The weight over his right shoulder had become part of him, the boy’s body his own.
Then he heard the noise—somewhere upstairs.
A scream.
The queen’s scream.
His legs continued to guide him, took him deeper into dark corridors, empty, the faded lights on the lanterns flickering as iftheywere afraid of what was coming, too.
Hide—hide—hide,went his thoughts, and he was planning to, if only he knewwhere. He was planning to, and?—
He came to a halt.
Held his breath.
Refused to blink as he looked toward the corner at the far end of the round room he was in.
The Royal Timekeeper then looked down at his legs. Theyhadknown where to bring him all along for real, even if his mind had been too busy to catch up.
See, the Labyrinth was a very…interesting place—if you could even call ita place.It was more a living machine, almost sentient, built over a century ago. And so, like allmachines, the years had worn it down. There were cracks all over the Labyrinth, if you knew where to look—corridors without shadows, rooms where no two clocks showed the same time, doors that opened before you touched them, and…
Whole rooms that had fallen off the temporal grid entirely over the decades—what the Timekeepers calledpockets,where time pooled instead of flowing, stuttered, sometimes even forgot to move at all.
Pockets—and the Royal Timekeeper’s feet had brought him to one he’d known about since he first entered the Labyrinth.
It was a room that wasn’t a room, a corridor that wasn’t a corridor, with shifting walls and a ceiling that was higher and lower depending on which step you took. His heart hammered in his chest as he carried the mumbling boy on his shoulder still, moving deeper and deeper into the narrow corridor, at the end of which was the pocket.
The far wall was made of forever-falling, perfectly silent, dark waters. There was a metal hook extending from the middle of the floor, sprouting from soil as if it thought itself a flower or a tree. One foot fell on water, another on tiles, another on grass—and then the Royal Timekeeper bent over as slowly as he could and dropped the boy on the floor with his back against the metal hook.
The next second, his knee gave.
His hand was on the boy’s shoulder, his breathing heavy, his eyes not quite able to focus yet.
“Silas,” breathed the Royal Timekeeper. “Silas, can you hear me?”
Wide, gray eyes met his own. Blood had dried under both his nostrils and on his upper lip.
“I’m…I’m sorry,” the boy choked.
“You should have waited, Silas. You shouldn’t have…you…you don’t know…”
But that was the thing, though—nobodyknew. Not even the Royal Timekeeper was certain ofithimself.
“They made us…they made uskill…” said the boy through gritted teeth, his Timekeeper Clock in his bloody fist still, the hand on it spinning and spinning without stop…
A noise somewhere far away—but the Royal Timekeeper heard it. His eyes opened wide.
He grabbed the boy’s face in his hands, went closer until his eyes were wide again, focused. “Do not try to come out there no matter what. You hear me?Do notmove from here until I come to get you. Do you understand?”
The boy’s eyes fell closed.
“Silas!” A slap and two and three, and his eyes opened once more. “Do youunderstand me?!”
The boy did not answer.
The noise came closer.
The Royal Timekeeper squeezed his eyes shut but caught a frustrated scream before it left him. “Just…just don’t move. Don’t move!”
