Paul Witcover - The Emperor of all Things

Quare shrugged. ‘Even so, it is still no more than a curiosity, a toy.’

‘Do you suppose I would attach so much importance to a mere curiosity? Would Lord Wichcote risk so much to possess it, or the thief you encountered upon the rooftop go to such trouble to steal it?’

‘I don’t understand …’

‘I wonder if I might borrow that sharp little tool of yours.’

‘Of course.’ Quare reversed the scalpel and held it out.

Resting his weight on one stick and letting the other fall back against his hip, the master took the tool in a rock-steady hand. Before Quare could react, the hand darted out.

Quare yelped, more in surprise than pain, and watched a bead of blood appear on the tip of his finger. ‘What—’

‘Quickly,’ Master Magnus interrupted. ‘Hold it over the watch!’

Quare was too stunned to do anything but obey. Drop after drop of his blood dripped into the pale silver insides of the watch. It pooled there like the shadow of the sun creeping across the face of the moon in swift eclipse, a dark stain that must soon spill over.

But it did not spill over.

Instead, it seeped into the watch. The parts of the movement, the wheels and pinions and plates, the escapement, the fusee, all the pieces so cunningly carved out of … something … sucked in the blood. Drank it in like water absorbed by a sponge. And as they did, they changed colour, took on the redness of Quare’s blood. Or perhaps it was that they turned translucent as glass, only seeming to take on the hue of what filled them.

But Quare was not interested in such distinctions. He stood transfixed with awe and creeping horror, mesmerized by the sight of the watch so engorged with blood that it seemed to glow like a hot coal in the palm of his hand. He would not have been surprised had it burned him. But the watch, already warmed to his body temperature, grew not a whit warmer.

Then he felt it faintly shudder. Felt a convulsion spark and bloom within the watch and pass through it into his flesh, his blood, like a call seeking answer.

He would have dropped it then, cast it from him like a loathsome, cursed thing, but Master Magnus took hold of his wrist in an unbreakable grip, preventing him.

Quare moaned, words as far beyond him as thought, as reason. For now, as if his heart had answered the call, the watch throbbed to life, pulsing in time to the rhythm in his chest, the wheels and pinions turning, the teeth meshing: the movement running, keeping time.

‘ There is your source of power,’ Master Magnus said, his voice fierce, triumphant.

QUARE DREW ON his pipe and tilted his chair back against the wall, gazing through a fog of tobacco smoke at the other tavern patrons eating and drinking at tables and along the bar. Wheels of candles hanging on chains from the beams of the ceiling provided a wan illumination. According to the clock on the wall above the fireplace, it was approaching nine o’clock. Quare had no reason to doubt the time, though he had not checked it against his pocket watch as he was normally wont to do. Nor could he locate in himself the remotest desire to do so.

The Pig and Rooster was packed, the atmosphere boisterous. A man wearing an eye patch had taken out a fiddle and begun scratching a tune in the far corner, and an appreciative audience had gathered round, clapping and shouting encouragement as a little capuchin monkey done up as a Turk, a bright red turban strapped to its head, capered and turned somersaults on a table beside the fiddler. Elsewhere, men were playing at cards, chess and draughts, and at a nearby table a rowdy group of apprentices from assorted guilds, including his own, was engaged in a – so far – good-natured drinking game mediated by a pair of dice … or perhaps it was a dice game mediated by draughts of ale. Three barmaids – a brunette, Martha, and two blondes, Arabella and Clara, who looked enough alike to be sisters – hustled back and forth across the sawdust-covered floor with loaded trays, bantering with the men they served while expertly dodging groping and grasping hands … and just as expertly, it seemed, failing to dodge others . A fire crackled in the hearth, adding to the smoke and heat.

Quare sat at the back of the tavern, his only companions a mug of ale and a steak and kidney pie, both barely touched. Beside them on the stained and gouged table top a candle burned in a battered tin holder, the flame bending and swaying. He had come to the Pig and Rooster, a favourite haunt, to lose himself in the easy good-fellowship of the public house, yet instead he felt cut off from everything and everyone around him, as if the smoke from his pipe had wrapped him in a hazy cocoon.

The horror of all that had happened in Master Magnus’s study lingered like a nightmare that refused to fade. It clung to him like a leech – a leech of the mind. Of the very soul. He could still feel the throbbing pulse of the hunter in his hand, strong and regular as the beat of a living heart. Against his palm, like the ticklish scrabbling of an insect, he had felt the hands of the watch moving. He would have dropped it, thrown it away, but Master Magnus had clamped his wrist in a grip of iron.

‘Control yourself, sir! Master your fear, damn you, or you’re of no use to me!’

He’d turned his head away with a groan.

‘Look at it!’ Master Magnus had hissed. ‘And you call yourself a clockmaker? Look you, sir. Look you!’

Quare looked.

The fiery crimson glow of the pocket watch had faded to something like the cherry blush of colour on a young girl’s cheek. The rotation of the wheels and pinions was slowing, and the vigour of the pulsations communicating themselves through the case to his hand was weakening, the interval between them growing wider. The watch was running down. Its ruddy colour waned, passing from apple red to strawberry to rose to a wan pink, like wine diluted in water, as the fuel of Quare’s blood thinned, consumed by the uncanny engine in his hand. Another moment and the movement had returned to its original appearance of pale, unblemished silver, and the wheels once again were still.

The watch had stopped.

Only then did Master Magnus release him. Quare gasped, vaguely conscious that he’d been holding his breath. His thoughts were sluggish; he felt as if he’d taken a blow to the head. His fingers opened reflexively, and the watch slid to the table top; it landed face up, and Quare saw that the hands had moved from their former positions, pointing now at sigils whose significance he did not know any more than he had a moment ago but which nevertheless seemed invested with sinister import. He drew back as though afraid the watch might fling itself upon him.

‘What in God’s name is that thing?’ he demanded. And then: ‘How does it work ?’

At which the master gave a satisfied chuckle. ‘You’ll do, Quare. You’ll do.’ He reached past Quare to retrieve watch, case, and crystal, tucking all three into his waistcoat pocket without pausing to reassemble them. When he turned, his eyes narrowed and he said, ‘You might want to tend to that finger.’

‘What? Oh.’ Blood oozed from the cut. He had thought the master had but pricked his finger; now it was clear the blade had sunk deeper. Digging a handkerchief from his pocket, he fashioned a makeshift bandage. The finger throbbed as though from a bee sting, reminding him of how the watch had pulsed in his palm. He shot Master Magnus a trenchant look and opened his mouth to demand an accounting, but before he could get a word out, a shadow passed before his eyes like the wing of a great black bird.

The next thing he knew, he was gazing up at the frowning face of Master Magnus, which seemed to be suspended some considerable distance above him, hanging down as if attached by invisible wires to the still-more-distant ceiling.