God of Clocks (34 page)

Carnival stared at the back of her hands for a moment before she realized what was wrong. A terrible numbness crept into her heart.

She had no scars.

She yanked back the sleeve of her frock and stared at her slender, supple arm, at the unblemished white flesh. She noticed how the hair hanging down over her shoulders was black and silky smooth.

“Such an improvement, don't you think?”

Carnival spun around, but there was nobody there. “Where are you?” she snarled.

Silence.

She leapt off the bed, and her bare feet pressed against cold white tiles. She felt suddenly giddy, unbalanced, and tried to spread out her wings for support. Her efforts resulted in nothing but a sharp feeling of panic.

She
had
no wings.

Carnival stood there for a long moment, completely disoriented, her heart galloping. She looked back at the window, at the fiery oblong it cast on the floor. Her gaze moved to the tall mirror in one corner of the room. From here she could see nothing in the glass but a reflection of the opposite wall. Fear gripped her more intensely.

“You know it's only a matter of time.”

She recognized the soft, lyrical tones of Alteus Menoa. His voice had seemed to emerge from that far corner of the room, from…

She stared at the mirror again.

Cautiously, she approached it.

He was waiting for her behind the glass, in place of her own reflection. He had now discarded his glass armour for white breeches and a white padded doublet. His golden eyes and silver hair shone as he smiled. “Most souls adapt fairly quickly to new forms,” he said, “but your soul is much older than most. The shock of seeing the face I have given you would be… traumatic.”

“Show me.”

The son of Ayen raised his brows. “No threats or fury—just a simple request?” He laughed. “You keep surprising me, Carnival. So much of you still remains hidden, buried under an ocean of anger and insanity. Even the souls trapped in your blood know little of you beyond your name. And even that, I suspect, is a lie. Who are you really?”

Carnival said nothing.

Menoa shrugged. “We'll reach the truth by degrees.” He raised one slender hand, and an image began to form in the glass before him. It was of a human girl with coal-black hair and vivid blue eyes, small and slender and dressed in a plain linen frock. She was the most beautiful creature Carnival had ever seen, but why had Menoa conjured this phantom if not to make the revelation of Carnival's own appearance all the more hurtful? This other young woman stood before Menoa's own reflection, her head at the height of his chest. The Lord of the Maze leaned forward, bringing his lips close to the phantom's ear.

Carnival felt his breath upon her neck. And this time, when he spoke, she knew exactly where he was. “Do you approve?” he whispered into her ear.

Three thousand years of instinct activated the angel's muscles before her heart or mind could respond. She spun fiercely, lashing a fist round at him…

There was nothing behind her but air.

She turned back to the mirror, certain that the beautiful reflection
had soured, that she would find her own hideously scarred face glaring back from that polished surface. She expected to see madness and pain.

But the same fair visage met Carnival's gaze. The Lord of the Maze had vanished from the glass, leaving the slender blue-eyed girl alone. Now, flushed and panting, her reflection gazed out at Carnival with a look of frightened awe.

Menoa's soft voice filled the room like music. “There is nothing for you to kill here,” he said, “and no one to judge you. There is no longer any reason for you to carry scars.”

A sob burst from Carnival's throat. She kicked the mirror savagely, shattering it. Then she snatched up one of the shards and drew it frantically across her arm, again and again. Blood welled in thin lines. The pain shocked her, but she welcomed it with a sort of wild desperation. She fell to her knees, dropping the shard, and groped for it again with slick, bloody hands. She picked it up and drove it into her thigh, crying out in pain.

Again and again and again.

Menoa's voice returned, now hardened by anger. “This is not your creation to destroy,” he said. “Do you understand me?
It is not yours to destroy.”

But Carnival was lost in her own pain and terror, driven by a compulsion that she couldn't fully understand. She needed her scars; her own soul required them. And so she used the glass knife until her frock hung in tatters and the white walls of Menoa's room were painted scarlet with her blood.

Smoke billowed from one of the uppermost suites of the Obscura. A sudden flare illuminated the high ceiling with ripples of red and yellow light. One of the Garstones called down for the others to fetch water, and then mildly added, “There appears to have been an explosion in the Camomile Suite.”

Scores of Sabor's assistants rushed down to the kitchen to fetch pails, pans, and carafes of water, carrying them back to the upper galleries. Hasp looked fearfully up at the growing fire, until Sabor announced, “Explosions are the work of men, not Mesmerists. Is it possible this attack has come from our future? That this is merely cannon powder from Burntwater?”

“There wasn't any powder left in Burntwater,” Rachel observed. “Iron Head's militia used it all.”

“Then our enemies simply took it before you used it,” Sabor replied harshly. “Stop thinking that every cause must precede its effect. Who knows how many universes now branch from this present moment? Menoa's forces are now in our future
and
our past, and they
know
where we are. We must leave this part of Time immediately.” He whipped open his map and frowned at it.

The massive double doors to the Obscura Hall boomed suddenly, almost leaping from their hinges.

The nearest Garstone to Rachel jumped. “I believe that was a battering ram,” he said, glancing at his pocket watch. “Our enemies must be outside.”

Rachel stared at the door.
What manner of enemies?
Without the camera obscura, they had no way of safely observing.

A second concussion hit the doors, and the cross balk cracked. Dill drew his phantom sword and positioned himself before the door.

Could such a ghostly weapon even harm the living?

Sabor scrunched up his map and set off, beckoning the others after him. Dill turned his back on the main doors and joined the group as they hurried up three floors and stopped outside the fourth timelock along the gallery. Garstones ran past them, heading in one direction with various water-filled containers, passing other versions of themselves who were returning with empty vessels towards the kitchen.

Another boom sounded below, and wood splintered.

The god of clocks peered into the suite beyond the timelock. “An eleven-year jump,” he said. “Unfortunately this suite appears to have been recently occupied.”

Rachel cupped her hands around her eyes and pressed her face against the glass. In the gloom beyond the two opposing windows she could just make out a stuffy lounge, the usual antique furniture faintly lit by starlight falling through a tall window. But then she noticed the blackened wainscoting and wall panels, the scorched shelves of a bookcase. A fire had been lit here, but had failed to take hold.

“Is there a better route?” she suggested.

From below came the sound of smashing wood.

“None with such a long reach through Time,” Sabor replied. “Nor any that is safer. The bastard universe has claimed most of the suites here, but this… this one should be untainted.”

“Get in there,” Hasp growled. “The castle's main doors are kindling. They'll be through them in a heartbeat.”

Rachel pressed up against Mina and Hasp as Sabor closed the inner door behind them. Dill hovered in the air in front of her, his translucent form partly absorbed by Mina's body. Sabor opened the outer door, and the sour smell of smoke assaulted Rachel's nostrils.

Mina covered her mouth with her hand as she hurried forward to look out of the window. “It looks peaceful. There's no sign of… anything.”

And indeed the whole castle was now silent. Rachel could no longer hear the commotion that had been so audible outside. They were in a cold, empty room smelling of fire damage.

Hasp glared at the singed furniture. “We could burn this place properly,” he said, “and stop those bastards from following us back here.”

It was quickly agreed.

They left the suite and moved back into the castle's Obscura
Hall. Now all appeared normal here, with no sign of the damage that would come later. Looking over the balcony, Rachel reassured herself that the main doors were intact. Sabor called over the six Garstones working on that particular level and gave them instructions, and within minutes the rumple-suited assistants were dousing the suite with lamp oil.

Standing outside, Mina looked thoughtful. “Could this fire we're about to light be the source of the damage we saw in that suite?” she asked.

Sabor was now studying a different map that one of the Garstones had handed him. “No,” he said. “Not unless we did so further back in Time. The damage is apparent
now.”
He looked up suddenly from the map. “Garstone!”

Two of them appeared at once.

“Yes, sir?”

“Find a suite to take you back a few hours, and light the fire
then
rather than now. Let's preserve the integrity of this timeline if we can.”

“Right away, sir.” The pair disappeared again.

Rachel still found it difficult to wrap her head around these constant paradoxes. Those two assistants would return to an earlier Time to light a fire that would be out before they arrived here, all to keep things as they should be and prevent this doomed universe from deteriorating any faster than it already was. And yet Hasp had only had the idea
after
they'd seen the aftermath of that fire.

Time, as Sabor had said, need not be linear.

Soon smoke wafted out of the Camomile Suite, but as a result of which fire Rachel did not know. Had these flames been lit moments ago, or much earlier?

Either way, the results were as expected. No pursuers came through the timelock and, for the moment at least, the castle appeared to be secure.

The views from the camera obscura, however, were grim. Nineteen of the rooms now looked out upon the bastard universe. They watched giants striding across blasted, war-ravaged lands: the Flower Lake was polluted, its waters copper blue and streaked with ochre, its shores rimmed by glistening black trees. Soul Collectors' caravans and gangs of human road agents traversed crimson trails that looked like wounds cut into the ash-grey plains. Cages of bone squatted amongst the dust of Burntwater, each silhouetted against a pale yellow sky. In every silent image Rachel imagined she could hear screams.

“The universe outside these walls is no more spoiled than before,” Sabor announced. “Yet even greater numbers of the Obscura's windows now look out onto parallel worlds, as the Lord of the Maze continues to meddle in the past. Each time he makes a change, he creates yet another universe for his agents to infiltrate.” He tapped his fingers against the viewing table, and then he made some adjustments to the mechanism underneath. A cool blue dawn appeared before them, the forest lushly green and holding pockets of mist. “Our own timeline appears to be safe for now,” he added with a nod. “The previous attack must have come from one of our local futures.”

He ordered his assistants to bring him as many of the local Time maps as he'd be able to carry and, thus armed, the party hurried further back into the past again.

Three hundred fewer years had elapsed by the time they stopped to rest and eat. The god of clocks even ordered his castle doors thrown open, so that they might take in the sunset while they supped.

The sunlight turned green where it bled through Dill, so that the young angel seemed to glow like an emerald against the amber sky.

From the castle steps they could see all the way down to the Flower Lake. Kevin's Jetty was no longer there. It would not exist
for another two hundred and ninety-two years, Sabor explained. The forest had changed, too. Gone were the mass of evergreens they would later walk through to reach the Obscura. Instead, these trees were ancient and deciduous.

“The last pockets of wildwood,” Sabor commented. “This is an arm of the Stoopblack Forest, or what's left of it. It extended all the way to Brownslough, where Hafe and I used to hunt together. These trees died out when the world cooled.”

“Cooled?” Rachel asked.

“Our expulsion from Heaven affected this whole planet,” Sabor explained. “Aethers poured out from Ayen's domain, forces malignant to this world, so whole lands were poisoned, skies burned, seas rose, and the earth cracked to its core. The clash of incompatible matter damaged the very fabric of this universe. We armoured ourselves in sheer will, and fell as stars do.” He gazed into the long golden rays of sunset. “We arrived weak and naked, so vulnerable. There was a time when this alien light would have killed us all.”

They didn't belong here, Rachel realized. None of them. This world was so alien to them that the land itself had rejected their presence. “But you acclimatized,” she said.

“We became more human.”

By consuming human souls. And now we're going back into the middle of your baptism …

Rachel craned her neck round to look up at the great building, blurring like a fevered dream as it clung to this one point in Space while joining countless other moments in Time. This castle did not belong on this earth, either. It was as much of an abomination as the gods themselves.

And now it was their only hope.

Carnival woke again in the same bed in the same pristine room. Even before she opened her eyes she knew that the Lord of
the Maze had removed her scars again. She felt a complete absence of physical pain, but a whole world of anguish inside her heart.

There was no mirror this time.

The white room was bare but for the bed and the single red window. She got up and walked over to it.

There was no glass.

Beyond lay a scrawl of red swamps and canals divided by endless low walls. Barges slipped in and out of locks on seemingly pointless journeys, while batlike winged figures cut across the sky. Carnival leaned out and looked down.