Clockwork Angels: The Novel (12 page)

Francesca chuckled, but it was not mocking laughter. “Needs some work, but it’s a good start.” She picked up the apples and stepped back. “We could use a juggler.” She tossed the apples at him again.

W
hen the carnival packed up to move on, the flurry looked like a random whirlwind but had a choreographed efficiency. César Magnusson had filled out the proper paperwork, paid the appropriate fees, and received permission to perform in a different sector of Crown City.

Without being asked, Owen helped the carnies wherever he saw work that needed to be done. They loaded the tents, the game booths, the disassembled whirling rides on flatcars. Tomio packed up his wagon, powered up its engine to join the line of vehicles, and the caravan puttered back toward the city like a long, slow exhale.

In spare moments, Owen practiced tossing apples into the air and was dismayed each time he dropped one. His fruit was bruised and battered by now, so he suggested to Francesca that he should try juggling with rubber balls. She dismissed the suggestion. “Absolutely not.”

“But then I wouldn’t bruise any apples.”

“Correct—and then you wouldn’t
care
. That’s more important than a few apples.”

As the carnival followed the curving arc of an outer road in toward Crown City, Owen walked beside the vehicles. Cautious, he juggled with only two apples, but he was growing more proficient. He understood the parabolic arc, the gentle path of gravity. He strode along while maintaining his intense concentration: he watched each apple as it rose and fell, considered the symphony of his muscles, his fingers, his wrists, the palms of his hands. It was like one of the Watchmaker’s equations that governed the universe.

When Francesca was nearby, though, he had a hard time thinking of anything but her. She rode aboard a rolling wagon that slowly passed him, and she laughed when he dropped the apples again. He scurried to pick them up from the dusty side of the road as he followed the moving carts. After he had gathered the apples, she patted the bench beside her. “Up here.”

“You want me to ride with you?” he said.

“I want you to
talk
with me.” She patted the seat again, and Owen grabbed a rung on the side of the wagon, stepped on the running board, and swung himself up; somehow, he managed to keep hold of his two apples. As he settled himself beside her, Francesca took one of the apples, polished it on her sleeve, and took a bite.

“I could get you a better apple, one that’s not bruised.” Owen turned around, looking back to the food wagon.

Francesca shrugged. “Nothing in life survives without a few scuffs and dents. It adds character, and it tastes just as good, maybe a little better.”

Owen ate the other apple, and it did taste better, but primarily because he was sitting beside her.

He told her about his disappointment at not being able to see the fabled Clockwork Angels. “Ah, I do enjoy the Angels,” Francesca said. “And when I see how wonderstruck you are by simple everyday things, I’m afraid you’ll become euphoric and useless when you see them.”

He sighed. “Yes, it sounds wonderful.”

She took pity on him. “Owenhardy, I love your optimism and your innocence. We don’t see much of that.” His ears buzzed after she the word love, and he had to concentrate to understand the rest of her words. He didn’t even catch that she had used the teasing contraction of his name. “I do remember you from the audience a few days ago, when I flew down on angel wings and landed in front of you.”

“I’m keeping the rose,” Owen said, patting his homespun shirt.

“That sort of wonder and appreciation is usually reserved for children, but sometimes adults can experience it.”

“I’m not an adult,” Owen admitted. “Not quite yet. My birthday is in a little more than a week. I should probably go home before then. . . .” He looked ahead as the tall buildings of Crown City grew larger. “But I haven’t seen the Clockwork Angels yet.”

Francesca reached into the folds of her peasant dress, found a pocket that he had never suspected was there, and withdrew two tickets etched on metallic paper, embossed with the honeybee symbol of the Watchmaker. The tickets shimmered like a prismatic illusion. “Hmm, I just happen to have these tickets, and I’ll take you to see the Clockwork Angels tonight.”

Overhead, the stars were aglow like scattered sparks. As Francesca led him into the city, toward Chronos Square, Owen didn’t even need a tightrope to walk on air. He was in the most fabulous city in the world, going to see the Clockwork Angels at last, in the company of the most beautiful and fascinating woman he had ever met.

During his travels so far, he might have become bruised and scuffed like a dropped apple, but none of that mattered. Surely, this was part of the Watchmaker’s perfect plan. All had indeed turned out for the best.

As he and Francesca flowed along with the people approaching the center of the city, Owen held his ticket as if it were a talisman. It felt slick and electric in his fingertips. He told her, “It’s lucky you have a ticket for this performance! I tried so hard to get one, but didn’t have the proper address or the correct day.”

Francesca chuckled. “Oh, we always carry tickets—they’re counterfeit, but the Red Watch will never notice the difference.”

Owen gripped the ticket as if the bee symbol might sting him. “A . . . counterfeit?”

Francesca did not seem at all concerned. “No one’s ever questioned it. Why would the Regulators imagine there could be a fake?”

His excitement was now tainted with trepidation, but Francesca slipped her arm through his. He was so close to her, touching her, that he felt an alchemical reaction building between them. She seemed as much at ease with him as when she’d given Tomio a kiss on the cheek. He didn’t want to ask her about the handsome fireeater, didn’t want to think about anything except her—and the Angels.

Feeling a flicker of guilt, he was sure that Lavinia must be worried about him back at the village. Had she decided that the betrothal wasn’t going to happen? What about the printed card from the Watchmaker, promising them happiness? Neither she nor Owen had ever had any doubt. According to the plan, he was supposed to get married to his true love . . . but now he was far from Barrel Arbor and with someone else entirely.

With a burst of realization, Owen suddenly wondered if he had been thinking of the wrong betrothal all along. If these unexpected events were part of a grand plan, what if . . . ? He turned to look at Francesca with a new kind of wonder, but she tugged on his arm before he could speak. They reached the line of stern Red Watchmen, who took their counterfeit tickets without objection. They each received a program card printed from a newsgraph— that evening’s scheduled pronouncements from the Angels, which Owen pocketed, waiting for the proper time. Finally, they passed through the last archway.

Chronos Square was enclosed by ornate government buildings, the Watchmaker’s ministries, the Cathedral of the Timekeepers. The main clocktower loomed like a wise parent over the crowd that had come to see the spiritual machinery. Each building bore honeybee markings in various places of prominence. Globes of pulsing coldfire hovered in the air like private suns crackling with elemental lightning.

Francesca helped him worm his way through the crowd to get the best possible view. Power shimmered in the air—an excitement, a personal energy from the eager onlookers. Through cracks between the flagstones, faint blue light seeped upward as if the Angels had summoned so much energy from the gathered people that the city itself might catch fire. The nexus of coldfire lay right beneath them! Owen felt a tingling in his feet.

Sweet-smelling smoke wafted out of vents, making the air thick and heady. When Owen inhaled, he felt giddy—more than could be explained by the sheer joy of being here. His vision fuzzed, and he became calmer, both more content and more ecstatic at the same time.

The floating globes sparked, and dazzling arcs of light leaped from one to the next to the next in a spectacular show, imposing a hush on the crowd. Chain lightning bound the globes together, pulsing.

“It’s about to start,” Francesca whispered. Even she sounded fascinated, though she had seen the spectacle many times before.

Owen stared up at the Watchmaker’s tower, concentrating on the immense doors beneath the clock face. With a rattling, mechanical rhythm, internal gears turned, and the doors began to open. The crowd inhaled in eerie unison.

Bathed in light, the four Clockwork Angels emerged from their alcoves within the tower: four beautiful women the size of Titans, with flowing stone robes, majestic wings. Their bodies sparkled such a dazzling white that even alabaster was put to shame. From the foundations of the alchemy by which the Watchmaker had saved the world from barbarism, these four figures represented the four basic elements of the universe, light, sea, sky, and land. They encompassed the whole world, regardless of what additional nuances the Alchemy College teased out and dissected from the chemistry of the creation.

People gazed up with mouths slack and eyes wide open, full of love. Owen couldn’t breathe; the others were so close, so enraptured, that they propped him up when he swayed. When he gazed upon the Angels, he realized that even his fondest dreams of his mother’s face were not so beautiful.

The Angels glided on their clockwork mechanism, spread their wings, raised their arms—and Owen could do nothing but stare. Though these were just immense clockwork automatons, they moved like living things.

As the silent Angels stood in position, everyone in the crowd held their breath. Owen felt moved to worship, overwhelmed by the grandeur, dizzy and disoriented. He closed his eyes and bowed. All around him people fell to their knees.

Gliding forward on smooth hydraulics, the first Angel took prominence. She did not speak, and her face remained chiseled, impassive, achingly beautiful . . . yet somehow he heard hollow, vibrating voices in his head. He felt strange, and the smoke in the air made his eyes water, his ears ring.

He looked down at the printed card, the program given to him in exchange for his precious ticket, and the Angels made the words there come alive:
Lean not upon your own understanding.

The second Angel rotated into position, and Owen felt compelled to look at the printed words again.
Ignorance is well and truly blessed.

But the words were just letters, lines of ink. What he read, heard, experienced, and
understood
held so much more, as if the Angels had hooked up a hydraulic conduit to his mind and poured revelations into him. “Ignorance” was not just an empty lack of knowledge, but an acceptance of the world’s vast incomprehensibility, a broad cosmic safety net that caught and cradled common people like himself. He was not being kept in the dark; the Angels were shielding him from all the things he didn’t understand, the things he didn’t need to understand. The Watchmaker was loving and omniscient, and
that
was all he needed to know. Owen’s responsibility was just to be content. . . .

Accompanied by words thrumming through his head, the third Angel’s pronouncement read,
Trust in perfect love and perfect planning
. He wondered if the Watchmaker used some trick, acoustical vibrations that made the words
mean
more. The effect was all enveloping: moving, sensual, pervasive, emotional, intense . . . intoxicating.

Owen squinted up, trying to see more. Though the faces didn’t change, a collective voice emanated from the figures, an unearthly soprano, sometimes solo, then in unison, then breaking into heartrending harmonies. Together, it created an effect that assaulted his entire being—sensory, physical, emotional. As he listened, he could imagine that the Angels, so delicate and so grand, were indeed divinely inspired.

The smoke grew thicker in the air, and finally the fourth Angel came into position to give a reassuring benediction,
Everything will turn out for the best
.

The crowd mumbled aloud in response, “Everything will turn out for the best.”

The Angels ratcheted forward to loom down from the clocktower platform, and they spread their wings as if to fly. The starry-eyed crowd surged to their feet, and everyone held out their arms as well, spreading their fingers and reaching toward the universe, as if they too could fly.

The hovering blue globes dimmed, and the arcing sparks faded from sphere to sphere, disconnecting the lightning. The Clockwork Angels folded their wings again, bowed as if to acknowledge the audience’s adulation, then retreated into the clocktower. The doors closed, like hands folding in prayer.

Owen realized he had been holding his breath, and he inhaled deeply. Only then, did he remember Francesca beside him—and that, in itself, demonstrated how wonderful the Clockwork Angels were, the perfect manifestation of the fundamental elements, light, sea, sky, land.