Chapter 1 – The Clocksmith

Tel precisely placed the finely grained side of the small file against the edge of the nearly paper-thin gear tooth and took a steadying breath. This was it. One small mistake and…

“Careful. Caaaaareful,” Grund’s gravelly voice said from right over Tel’s left shoulder, the older man’s long, grey beard scratching against Tel’s neck he was so close.

“It would be easier to be careful if my light wasn’t blocked,” Tel said without moving his lips so his hand didn’t even vibrate at the words. “If you could…”

“Ah, right, of course, of course,” Grund said, standing up, and his beard pulling across the skin of Tel’s throat like an old wool sweater.

Goose bumps sprang up across Tel’s flesh, the scarring he usually kept covered sensitive to the texture, and he clenched his teeth to push down the natural instinct to shudder while focusing on keeping his hands perfectly still. Steady. Steady. Steady! Over and over, he repeated the mantra in his head until the urge passed, and he slowly let out his breath without letting his body relax.

Then, without giving Grund the opportunity to get curious again, Tel pulled the needle-thin file directly back towards himself, exactly a quarter inch.

“There,” he said, methodically lifting the file directly away and placing it back into his tool pouch in a practiced motion. “It’s done.”

“You’re sure?” Grund asked, leaning over Tel’s shoulder again so he could look through the magnifying lenses at the tiny gear.

Tel inspected his work before replying, but gave a single nod. “I’m sure. This should do it.”

“Amazing,” Grund said. “My old hands never would’ve been steady enough to do that without ruining the entire gear. And then where would we have been? We wouldn’t have been able to replace it.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Tel said, gently grabbing the gear in a pair of soft tweezers, and placed it back in the stopwatch, the teeth fitting in perfectly with the gears around it. “It was you who noticed the hesitation of the second hand. You who figured out which gear was the problem. Nobody else in the enclave could’ve done that.”

“Nobody else but you,” Grund softly corrected, his eyes on the watch as Tel deftly replaced parts one after the other until only the watch-back remained. “And I wouldn’t trust anybody other than you with the delicate task of removing the burr from the metal.”

“That’s not true, there are at least a dozen others who could do it just as well,” Tel said, heat rising up his neck and crawling across his face. Praise from one of the most respected Clocksmiths this side of the Okenlock River? He’d have to put that in his journal later. Or…was that too prideful? Maybe Grund didn’t really mean what it sounded like…

“Once you get that back snapped back into place, let’s give it a test, see if we’ve got it fixed,” Grund said, stepping away from the workbench. “You have your stopwatch? What am I asking? Of course you have it. Too much of a treasure to leave back in your room.”

“I have it,” Tel said absently, carefully lining up the edges of the watch-back with the watch itself, then firmly pressed down with one thumb until it made a satisfying click. “Perfect,” he said, picking up the stopwatch and gently placing it back down face up.

With that done, he finally let his shoulders relax and stood up to roll his neck. What few muscles he had screamed at the extended tension, and he took a few steps around the workshop to get his blood flowing again.

Small clocks covered the wall on his right from end to end, their hands all perfectly stopped at exactly twelve o’clock, while watches in a similar state hung from chains on the wall behind the workbench. Such a shame their voices were quieted out of necessity. Wouldn’t it have been magical to hear them all ticking in perfect unison?

Tel chuckled to himself. Magical. Literally.

“I often think the same thing,” Grund said as Tel completed one lap of the room and started back towards the workbench. “Oh, don’t give me that look. Every time I’m in here I can’t help but lament how sad it is we can only repair them, keep them, but can’t use them beyond the few seconds of glory we have when we test them.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Bah, listen to me. ‘Lament’. Who actually speaks like that these days?”

“You do, obviously,” Tel said.

“Which is the problem. It marks me as different when I leave the enclave. I need to be more careful. Need to speak more…” Grund trailed off.

“More uneducated,” Tel filled in. “And since when do you leave the enclave?”

“Tel, unlike you, I leave more than twice a year. You’ve been here what, five years now, and you’ve barely visited Gravelburg…”

“It’s dirty. And busy. Too many people,” Tel said, waving his hand to change the subject.

“There are people here too,” Grund pointed out.

“But they don’t try to talk to me about anything other than clocks. And they leave me alone to work. It’s peaceful,” Tel said.

“You’re still young, Tel. You need friends your own age. Not us stuffy old folks who could be your parents. Or your grandparents,” Grund said with a chuckle.

“I wouldn’t know what parents are like,” Tel said, the old bile coming up in his throat only to be pushed right back down. Dwelling on that wouldn’t get him anywhere.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought that up,” Grund said.

Tel waved his hand again. “It’s fine. The orphanage took care of me until I could take care of myself.”

“You don’t speak of it much. Did you have many friends there?”

“I had…” Tel started. One. He had one friend. As pathetic as it is, that was all he needed, but Grund would pity him if he said it out loud. “Lots of friends,” he said instead. “I was very popular. The most popular. Everybody knew who I was.”

Knew because he was everybody’s favorite target.

Tel closed his eyes as memories of the near-endless bullying in his early years cracked open the door in his mind until he slammed it firmly shut again. It was over. Done with. Not worth thinking about. He wasn’t going back there. Not ever again. He couldn’t.

Tel opened his eyes, the old stress and clenching of his stomach passing, and turned his attention back to Grund.

The old man sighed, obviously not believing a word of it, but nodded. “Come on. Enough of that. Get out your watch and let’s see if your work is as perfect as you think.”

“It is,” Tel said. There wasn’t a lot of good things he could say about himself, but his work was one of the few. Maybe the only one. “Would you like to do the honors?” he asked, slipping his silver stopwatch out his pocket and carefully placing it on the workbench beside the one he’d just repaired.

“Oh no,” Grund said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “I like to watch,” he said with a chuckle. “You see what I did there?”

“You sounded like a perverted old man,” Tel said flatly. “Is that why you leave the enclave?”

“Pah,” Grund said and waved his hand around to dismiss the idea a little too enthusiastically. “Let’s just get these started up.”

Tel sat down on the stool in front of the workbench once again and eyed the two watches. They were almost identical, though the one on the right, Tel’s, had a bit more wear on it. A slight scuff on the glass he hadn’t been able to buff out, and a small gouge in the silver near the top. Nothing serious, and yet somehow comforting to Tel. Like the smile of an old friend.

The door in his mind leading back to memories of the orphanage cracked open again, the one person who’d actually been good to him lurking just behind it. Good to him…until he’d left Tel behind.

No.

A shake of his head closed the door again, though it didn’t slam quite as forcefully, and not before Tel caught a glimpse of that familiar smile.

I wonder how…

“Tel?” Grund asked. “Everything okay?”

“Sorry, I was just wondering if we should test these together,” Tel said to cover his momentary lapse.

“Why wouldn’t we? We test all of our work this way,” Grund said.

Tel pointed from one watch to the next. “They are obviously the same line. Nearly identical, minus a few cosmetic differences acquired over the years. And, given the quality of the internal components, and the work I just did fixing this one,” he pointed at the watch on his left, “I’m worried about how much energy they’ll generate.”

“Tel, we’re hidden inside a mountain, twenty miles away from the closest town…” Grund started.

“Twenty-point-three miles,” Tel corrected softly.

“Yes, yes. Twenty-point-three miles. What makes you think anybody would notice us turning these on?” Grund said.

“My watch is particularly accurate,” Tel answered. “As I suspect this one will be. If we turn them both on, and they are both as precise as I believe, we may experience a resonance effect. Normally we see a slight difference, even if it can only be measured in milliseconds.

“If these two watches, started at exactly the same instant as needed for the test, measure time at the exact same pace, you do understand how much order that will force on the universe, right? And the balancing chaos that will ensue, from the resonance, will be stronger than anything we’ve seen, despite their size, in the enclave. At least since I’ve been here,” he added after a moment. “While some of the devices in the vault may produce similar chaos energy, none of them have been turned on in centuries.”

When Grund didn’t immediately respond, Tel slowly turned to find the older man gently stroking his long beard in thought.

“A resonance? Hrm,” Grund said slowly, nodding to himself, though he didn’t look away from the watches on the workbench. “I see your concern. Still, as previously stated, given our location, I can’t imagine the Tailcoats would find us just because we…”

The door to the workshop slammed open, and a woman with her greying hair tied in a bun on top of her head stumbled in, breaths coming in rapid gasps.

Lena. For her to be breathing that hard, she would’ve had to run up the six flights of stairs to the workshop. At her advanced age, hurrying like that could only mean…

“The…the…Tailcoats have…found us…” she wheezed out.