The Emperor of All Things (3 page)

‘I do.’

‘Has it a name, this prize?’

Quare did not hesitate. ‘Grimalkin.’

‘Grimalkin,’ the Old Wolf echoed with a growl that sent smoke billowing from between his lips. ‘Our enemies have no more skilful agent than that cursed man. For all his absurd affectations – the grey clothing, the mask, the infernal devices, the ridiculous name itself – he has never failed his masters … until now. You, sir, a mere neophyte but recently admitted to the active ranks of our Most Secret and Exalted Order, achieved what your more experienced brethren have long dreamed of accomplishing. You tracked Grimalkin, took him by surprise, rendered him unconscious. And then … did you kill him?’

‘No.’

‘Did you, perhaps, question him?’

‘I did not.’

‘No, you did neither of these things. May I ask why you chose to spare the enemy of your guild, your king, and your country?’

Quare frowned. He had expected the question, and had prepared an answer, but he had hoped his success in procuring the timepiece would have earned him a measure of leniency. ‘As you say, Grimalkin was unconscious. To kill him under the circumstances would have been cold-blooded murder. It would not have been honourable.’

Alarming quantities of smoke poured from between the grandmaster’s lips and jetted from his nostrils. ‘And was it also a consideration of honour that prevented you from peeking beneath the rascal’s mask to discover his identity?’

‘It did not seem the act of a gentleman,’ Quare affirmed. His words sounded foolish even to his own ears.

‘A gentleman, is it?’ The smoke grew denser still. ‘I was under the impression that I had dispatched a spy.’

‘I hope I may still comport myself as befits a gentleman.’

A choking sound emerged from the old man, and he spat out upon the desk what Quare at first took to be a tooth but then realized was the tip of the pipe stem, bitten off. Grandmaster Wolfe flung the ruined pipe down to one side of the exposed clockworks, sending a scattering of coals across the desktop; burn marks on the wood indicated that this was not the first time he had done so. ‘Dolt!’ he thundered, red-faced. ‘Imbecile! You will comport yourself in whatever manner best advances the interests of His Majesty and this guild!’ Then, his voice tightly controlled, he continued: ‘As to considerations of honour, Mr Quare, allow me to instruct you, as it appears Master Magnus has been lax in seeing to your education on this point. A regulator must be many things. A gentleman, yes, if circumstances warrant. But also a thief. An assassin. Or a cold-blooded murderer. In short, sir, a chameleon. A regulator does not have the luxury of weighing his actions against abstract notions of gentlemanly honour – notions which, in any case, do not apply to you, as neither your present rank of journeyman nor your condition as bastard entitles you to claim them. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, Grandmaster,’ said Quare. But inside he was seething; how long would his bastardy be held against him? Would nothing he achieved be
sufficient
to weigh against it? Oh, to discover the name of his true father, the cowardly blackguard! If he could but solve that riddle, he would pay the man a visit, no matter how high his rank, and demand acknowledgement … or satisfaction.

‘And what of putting Grimalkin to the question while he was in your power?’ the Old Wolf went on meanwhile. ‘How, may I ask, did that offend your fine scruples?’

‘It did not. I merely thought it was more important that I return with the timepiece, in case he had associates near by, ready to come to his aid. I did bind him, and made report of where I had left him as soon as I returned to the guild hall.’

‘And by the time we dispatched a team to the rooftop, the villain was long gone.’ The Old Wolf took a fresh pipe from the stand on his desk and lit it with the spill. ‘You are talented, Mr Quare. When it comes to the horological arts, you are most promising. But I find myself questioning whether you have the temperament to be an effective regulator.’

‘I—’

‘How old are you, sir?’ Grandmaster Wolfe interrupted through puffs of smoke.

‘Twenty-one,’ Quare admitted.

‘That is young for a regulator.’

‘Master Magnus did not think so when he recruited me for the Order.’

‘I remember his report. I thought that he was being overhasty, bringing you along too quickly. Patience is not among Magnus’s many virtues. Still, he argued your case persuasively, and in the end I gave approval for your induction. I feel now that I may have been mistaken.’

‘Begging your pardon, Sir Thaddeus, but that is most unjust!’ The words were out before Quare could consider the wisdom of saying them. ‘I completed the mission successfully, despite the unforeseen complication of Grimalkin! I brought back the clock, and you must have noted the innovation to the verge escapement …’

‘In this business, Mr Quare, a missed opportunity can be worse than outright failure,’ answered the Old Wolf. ‘As in a game of chess, when a player blunders and puts his queen in jeopardy, only a fool passes up the
chance
to sweep that lady from the board. As for the escapement, I am surprised to hear you mention it. That is not your affair. You were dispatched to gain possession of a timepiece, not to plumb its secrets. Your orders were explicit on that point, were they not?’

‘I-I merely wished to make certain it had not been damaged,’ Quare stammered.

‘Do not compound the severity of your transgression by inventing feeble excuses. You know very well that the secrets of this particular clock were reserved for the masters of the guild alone.’

‘A moment ago, you criticized me for not displaying initiative. Yet now it seems you would prefer me to follow my orders to the letter, without departing from them in any respect whatsoever!’

‘That is a specious argument, sir.’ The Old Wolf jabbed the end of his pipe towards Quare. ‘Save such pettifoggery for the barristers, if you please. The difference is this: in the former case, you would have been acting in the interests of your king and your guild, while in the latter, you were merely satisfying your own curiosity and ambition. There is a time for initiative and a time for obedience, and you need to start distinguishing between the two if you ever hope to rise above the rank of journeyman, my lad. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Abundantly,’ said Quare.

The old man puffed at his pipe for a moment, then sighed. ‘Well, what’s done is done. You have seen what you have seen. I would hear your opinion.’

‘I-I didn’t examine the escapement in detail …’

‘The truth, sir, I pray you.’

Quare cleared his throat. ‘The innovation to the mechanism is clever but not significant. It is an elegant if somewhat impractical solution to a problem that others are close to solving. In truth, I was surprised; it didn’t seem substantial enough to account for the urgency of my mission or the interest of Grimalkin. I can only assume I missed something.’

The Old Wolf gave a phlegmatic chuckle. ‘You missed nothing. Your assessment is entirely correct. When Lord Wichcote began to boast of his recent acquisition, claiming that it represented an astonishing breakthrough in the horological arts, we had no choice but to act with
dispatch
, sending the only regulator available, despite your regrettable lack of experience. Who controls the measurement of time controls the world, Mr Quare. It is imperative that every major horological advance become the exclusive property of this guild … and, through us, of His Majesty. Luckily, Wichcote is as deficient in his knowledge of horology as in his exercise of discretion.’ He waved the pipe over the disassembled clockworks like a priest dispensing a blessing of incense over a corpse. ‘As you point out, the innovation to the escapement is clever but no more than that. Spying, like clockmaking, is unfortunately an imprecise art.’

‘Then it was for nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ Grandmaster Wolfe shook his head; a fine dust of powder sifted down from his wig to settle on the shoulders of his greatcoat. ‘Every scrap of knowledge is valuable in itself. And consider that Grimalkin did not have an opportunity to examine the clock. The fact that it was stolen from him before he could do so will only support the rumour that it embodied some grand stroke of genius. Our enemies will now assume that we possess this knowledge, and we can use their assumption, mistaken though it may be, to our advantage.’

‘So I was right after all not to kill him.’

‘That we can turn your failure to good account does not excuse it. I would rather have Grimalkin dead than possess a thousand clever clocks. Yet it’s possible his masters will dispatch him to retrieve the clock or to learn its secrets. In that case, we may have the opportunity to rectify your mistake.’

‘Surely not even Grimalkin would dare to come here!’

‘Perhaps not. But as long as we have the proper bait, we may lay a trap for him wherever we please. And this time, I dare say, that grey-suited rogue will not escape.’

‘I hope I will be allowed the chance to redeem my honour.’

‘There is that detestable word again,’ said the Old Wolf with a sour grimace. ‘No, Mr Quare, I think you’ve had enough of honour for now. Perhaps it is best that you put aside the cloak and dagger of the regulator and return for a time to a typical journeyman’s life. There you may learn the value of obedience.’

Quare had thought himself prepared for the blow, yet it was a
moment
before he found his voice again. ‘Am I expelled from the Order, then?’

‘Suspended, rather. You need a bit of seasoning, I find. Some added experience under your belt before you can be trusted with the responsibilities of membership in the Most Secret and Exalted Order of Regulators.’

Quare stood, hands clenched at his sides. ‘If you would give me another chance …’

Grandmaster Wolfe studied him through impassive blue eyes. ‘I am giving you that chance, sir, provided you have the wit to take it.’ He waved the pipe stem in the direction of the door. ‘You are dismissed.’

Quare bowed more stiffly than before, turned, and stalked from the stifling room.

A servant waited outside. Guild hall servants dressed in identical livery, wore identical wigs, even had identical expressions painted on their identically powdered faces, making it difficult if not impossible to tell them apart, especially since they were all of middling heft and height, as if cast from the same mould. There was an ongoing conflict between the journeymen of the guild and its servants, a kind of low-grade class warfare that took place within well-defined boundaries and was fought with weapons of juvenile provocation, on the one hand, and, on the other, a sangfroid so impermeable as to verge on the inhuman. Indeed, Quare’s friend and fellow journeyman Pickens maintained, not entirely facetiously, that the servants were not human beings at all but automatons, sophisticated mechanical devices crafted by the masters, golems of natural science.

‘Master Magnus wishes to see you, sir,’ the servant intoned. His powdered face, rouged lips, and pale blue livery put Quare in mind of a well-spoken carp.

Quare gestured for the servant to precede him, then limped in his wake. Candles set in wall sconces cast a murky, tremulous light, like moonlight sifting into a sunken ship. Quare always felt a peculiar shortness of breath here in the guild hall, as if the presence of so many clocks had concentrated time itself, causing a change of state analogous to the
condensation
of a gas into a liquid. He even thought he could smell it – time, that is: an odour composed of smoke and wax and human sweat, of ancient wood, and stone more ancient still, of lives forgotten but not entirely vanished, ghostly remnants of all those who had walked these halls.

Dark oil paintings of guild masters and grandmasters from the last three hundred and fifty years glowered down at him from the walls of the narrow hallway like Old Testament prophets.
Bastard
, he imagined them sneering.
Failure
. Now he must face the judgement of Master Magnus.

Magnus and the Old Wolf were rivals for power, each believing that he and he alone knew the best way to shepherd the Worshipful Company through these perilous times. Grandmaster Wolfe clung to the past, to the guild’s traditional prerogatives, as a bulwark against the uncertainties of change, while Magnus championed a future in which innovation, rather than hoarded knowledge, would be the guarantor of the guild’s wealth and influence. Each man had his followers, but Quare – although his personal sympathies were with Master Magnus – had done his best to steer a middle course between them, knowing that the key to advancement lay in keeping his options open. He had no father or family to look to for support and could depend only upon his own native wit. Yet despite his care, he had become caught between them, like Odysseus between Scylla and Charybdis. Now, if he were not careful, they would grind him down to nothing. Indeed, he reflected gloomily, had not the process already begun?

At last the servant pushed open a door and stepped aside. Quare walked past him into a small room whose wood panelling bore gilded bas-reliefs of grandfatherly, bearded Chronos with his hourglass and hungry scythe, winged cherubs carrying bows and arrows in their pudgy hands, and scantily clad nymphs cavorting amidst scenery symbolizing the changing of the seasons. There was a smell of beeswax, though the candles were unlit, the room illuminated by the morning sun streaming through two large windows. One of these looked out upon a busy street – whose cacophony of carriages and wagons, pedestrians, sedan chairs, and pedlars crying their wares was so intrinsic a part of London’s aural landscape that Quare scarcely noticed
it
any more, though upon his arrival in the city just over five years ago he had imagined himself in a very Bedlam of noise – the other upon a time garden: a secluded outdoor space, reserved for the meditations of the masters, in which a variety of timepieces antique and modern, from simple gnomons to more fanciful sundials, along with water clocks, hourglasses, and other constructs, sprouted with the profligacy of weeds.

In the centre of the room, on a spindly-legged wooden table so delicate in appearance that it seemed in danger of collapsing under the weight of Quare’s gaze, was a clock topped by the figure of fleet-footed Hermes captured in mid stride, caduceus upraised. A settee upholstered in red and white striped satin stood against one wall, beneath a large oval mirror set in a dark wooden frame carved into the semblance of a wreath of burgeoning grape vines. Against the wall opposite were two chairs done in the same style as the settee.