Clockwork Angels: The Novel (24 page)

A book propped inside the window caught his eye, its colors faded from long exposure to sunlight, although Owen couldn’t imagine how sunlight could ever penetrate the alley’s shadows. He recognized the cover: it was his mother’s book, the illustrated volume containing chronotypes of Crown City.

He froze, astonished. After all he’d been through since fleeing Albion, the experiences that had to be categorized as
ordeals
rather than adventures, this bookstore, this
book
, shone like a bright bea con on a dark stormy night. He touched fingers against the glass, unable to reach the volume on display. The grime and dust was on the inside of the glass.

Gathering his nerve, Owen brushed off his rumpled and unlaundered clothes, adjusted the porkpie cap to cover his dirty and mussed hair, and pulled open the door of Underworld Books.

Inside at a front desk he saw a tall woman with a tangle of short, gray-brown curls and ill-fitting glasses that pinched her nose. She glanced at him with the automatic welcoming expression of a shopkeeper who saw too few customers. At the moment, she was dealing with a broad-shouldered, bearlike man with a huge beard, bald pate, and rich, dark skin.

Owen did his best to put confidence into his voice. “Excuse me, could I look at the book in the window?”

“Help yourself,” said the bookseller, who turned back to finish wrapping up a package of small volumes for the bald man and deftly tied twine in perpendicular loops. “Just be sure your fingers are clean.”

Owen wiped his hands on his trousers and gave an earnest nod. “I’ll be careful. I . . . I know this book.”

He removed the volume from its display stand in the window, and with trembling fingers, hungry for a reminder of familiarity, he turned the pages. In quieter days, he had spent endless hours pouring his imagination into the intense chronotypes: the Watchmaker’s clocktower, the ornate Hall of Regulators, the Cathedral of Timekeepers, the façades of the ministry buildings, and the lovely Clockwork Angels.

But the images in this book did not show the Crown City he remembered. The plates sewn into the binding were not the deep alchemically treated photographs from his mother’s book, and certainly did not show the sights he had seen with his own eyes. The bald, bearded man tucked the package of books under his arm and turned to go. “Thank you, Mrs. Courier. These will keep me busy on a dozen more runs.”

“It’s just Courier, Commodore, you know that. And I know I shall see you again.”

He smiled at the bookseller. “Too many books to read in this one universe, but I have plenty of time on my hands—and, thanks to you, I’ve got the choice of libraries from many possible worlds.”

On his way to the door, the bearded man gave Owen a polite nod, as if to encourage a fellow literary traveler. “That’s an excellent book, young man,” he said. “I have one of the many variations myself.”

Focused on the book in his hands, Owen stared at the images, bewildered, even distraught. “This is different.” Owen looked up at the bookseller—Mrs. Courier, or just Courier. “It’s not the Crown City I know.”

She pushed her spectacles up on her nose then rubbed at the angry red mark. “Maybe it’s from a different Crown City.”

“How many Crown Cities are there?” he asked. “I’ve only heard of the one.”

“There are as many Crown Cities as there are worlds.”

He turned the page, found another unsettling image. “And how many worlds are there?”

The bearded man—the Commodore—laughed. “More than you can imagine.”

Owen frowned. “I can imagine a lot.”

Taking his package, the Commodore smiled and tipped an imaginary hat. “That explains it then.” He pushed open the door and left the bookstore.

Owen didn’t understand the explanation at all.

The bookseller jotted down a notation in her thick ledger. “It’s an import,” she said without looking up, and then quoted him a price he could not possibly have afforded, even back when he had money from the carnival. “You’re welcome to look at it . . . for now. Just be aware that it’ll be nearly impossible to replace.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose. “In fact, I don’t even know if I could find that particular world again.”

She glanced with incomprehensible meaning at a large looking glass that stood next to the bookseller’s front desk. It was unlike any mirror Owen had ever seen—taller than Courier, the size of a door, and it reflected no image. Instead, it was a single flawless piece of polished moonstone. She stroked the edge of the moonstone looking-glass. “Few people ever visit those other worlds from here.”

Nervously, Owen closed the book and placed it back on the shelf. “The Watchmaker says that this is the best of all possible worlds.”

“And how would he know that? Has he visited them all?” She clucked her tongue. “Absurd.” She marked another notation in her ledger, then closed the book. “Did you have a specific request, young man? I can find you any book from anywhere, although it might take me a while to search the alternative locations.”

“I couldn’t pay you anyway,” he said with a sigh.

“I didn’t think so.” Courier, neither surprised nor disappointed by his lack of funds, seemed content just to be compensated by seeing his love for books. “And if you did have the money, young man, I would recommend that you spend it on fresh clothes and a hot meal rather than a book . . . although some days I would rather go hungry than give up books.”

His stomach growled as if to disagree with her assessment. From what he had experienced so far, pity seemed to be a rare commodity in Poseidon City, but Courier took pity on him. She handed him a stack of flat crackers and a small bunch of grapes from a plate by her desk. “I can’t give you the book, but I can give you my lunch.”

Upon consideration, Owen appreciated that more. “I don’t know how to thank you, ma’am.”

She regarded him, seemed to see—or imagine—something there. “Maybe you’ll write a book of your own one day.”

Less than a week later, feeling a homesick need to look at the illustrated book again, even though it showed the wrong version of Crown City, Owen tried to find Underworld Books again.

Though he searched from street to street, wandering down alleys that had become all too familiar, he simply could not locate the bookshop. Either he did not remember where it was, or the shop had closed, or the entire alley had disappeared.

In a world where all must fail
Heaven’s justice will prevail

H
e spent weeks and then months learning a new kind of life. He grew tough and wary, first questioning what he had known from the innocent village of Barrel Arbor, then forgetting it entirely. He was never lost because it made no difference where he was. One street was the same as another.

Chasing a new idea, just trying to survive, he found four suitably round stones. He stood on a corner and practiced his juggling, one rock after another in a smooth clockwork arc. With a pang, he thought of Francesca there watching him, teaching him, but then he drove all thought of her from his head and concentrated on nothing.

People stopped to watch him, curious. (Poseidon City must not host many carnivals.) With an audience, he juggled at the best of his ability, saw some of the faces nodding, and he smiled back at them. When he finished, catching the juggling stones with grace, he bowed. He set the stones at his feet, whisked off his porkpie hat, and passed it around, hoping for a few coins. Most of the people just looked at him; several walked away, as if called to pressing business. Finally, he received two copper coins—grudgingly given—from a pair of old men, who walked away without a word to him.

He started juggling again, maintaining his smile, remembering how the carnies performed. Sweat trickled down his forehead, but he put on the best possible show. Another small crowd gathered to watch him, but they kept to the opposite side of the street, well beyond the reach of his extended hat.

Pressing the coppers in his fist, so no one could pick his pocket, Owen walked down the street, looking at the shops until he came upon a bakery. The smell of bread and pastries intoxicated him, sharpening the knot of hunger. The baker was a jowly man whose ruddy complexion showed through an unintentional dusting of

flour. While Owen looked at the loaves of bread, the rolls, the tarts, the baker watched him with suspicion. He was very different from Mr. Oliveira, the baker in Barrel Arbor.

Extending the two copper coins, Owen asked, “I’d like to buy some bread, please. What can you sell me?”

The baker frowned at the copper coins as if they were unclean, but he took them anyway. “That’ll buy you a stale roll, and you’re lucky for it.” The man fished around behind the counter and produced a hard lump of bread, probably several days old; at least it wasn’t moldy.

“Thank you.” Owen took the bread without arguing and stood in the street outside the bakery, and he started wolfing it down. He forced himself to slow down, to savor every bite.

In an alley across the street, he glimpsed a rangy tow-headed young man about his age. He had strikingly blue eyes and a hungry look that was calculating rather than desperate. Owen ate the rest of his bread, afraid that if he didn’t it would be stolen from him.

The baker started sweeping inside his shop, stirring up a cloud of flour and powdered sugar rather than dirt and dust. The man grumbled to himself.

Owen licked his fingers, getting the last crumbs from the dry bread. He glanced across the street, but the blond-haired boy had vanished into the alley. So Owen screwed up his courage and stepped back into the bakery. The man frowned at him again—it seemed to be his natural expression—in response to Owen’s smile. “I can sweep for you, if you like.”

Though the baker hesitated, Owen stepped forward and relieved him of his broom. He applied himself with great energy to sweeping the floor, while the baker stared at him and reluctantly nodded. “Mind you do a good job.”

“Yes, sir.”

Owen swept, and the smells of the bakery made him dizzy. Though he had eaten the stale bread, it did little—nothing, actually—to dampen his hunger; it merely made him realize how very little he’d eaten in a long time. And there was so much bounty here.

“And do the walk in front, too,” the baker said as soon as Owen had finished sweeping the shop floor. So Owen did. He worked up a sweat, but he was satisfied with the job he had done. He came back inside, and the baker extended his hand. “Give me back my broom.” Owen returned it and waited, but the baker shooed him away. “Now out of my shop before you scare any customers.”

Owen’s heart fell. “But I was hoping . . . could you spare another roll? Or maybe one of those pastries?”

The baker looked offended. “No. Those are for sale.”

“But I just did the sweeping! I helped you—“

“I never promised you payment. If you’re fool enough to do work for free, I’d be a fool not to take advantage of it.”

Owen was as confused as he was indignant. No one in Barrel Arbor would ever be so ungrateful, and none of the carnies would have treated him so badly. When he’d pitched in with the dockworkers in Crown City, they had happily let him eat whatever fruit he liked. “But that’s not fair!”

The baker let out a sharp-edged chuckle. “If you think I’ll pay you just because you make me laugh, you’re sorely mistaken.”

Owen could not believe his ears. He had already endured a great deal, had been cheated repeatedly and robbed more than once. The baker had to have known that Owen expected payment. Why else would he have told Owen to sweep the front walk? If the man had taken his work with no intention of paying, then he had “robbed” Owen as surely as any other thief had. Anger simmered deep in Owen’s empty stomach. He didn’t like the way people lived here in Poseidon, or the rules by which they played. This was a barbaric society, just like the one he’d read about in the book the strange pedlar had given him before the rainshower.

As if wiping excrement from his shoe, the baker dismissed Owen and went back behind the counter. He chortled again, louder this time.

In a flash of poor judgment, Owen grabbed one of the pies on the bakery counter and pelted from the shop. His vision had focused down to a pinprick, and he ran down the street, clutching his stolen pie.

The baker burst out of the door of his shop, yelling, “Thief !” The word sounded
wrong
. The man was talking about
him
, and Owen had never been a thief, never even considered stealing. Nevertheless, he kept running, dodged into an alley, crossed to another street, and finally found a dark, quiet overhang, where he caught his breath, let his heart stop thudding. Then—even though he felt sick for having stolen—he ate his pie, a mixture of tart berries, all of which had large crunchy seeds, and very little sweetening. Nevertheless, to Owen, it was delicious, and when he finished devouring it, he looked up to see the tow-headed young man watching him.

Owen sprang to his feet. His hands and face were sticky. The other young man laughed. “I hoped to get here before you finished it all. Next time you’ll have to share.”