Alan Campbell - God of Clocks

Rachel lifted a hand to touch the bruise under her eye. The flesh there still felt tender and sore. How could she have sustained the blow when she had not been there to deliver it?

But of course that had all happened in a different universe than this one. This world was the one where everything went wrong, where the future would become so unbearable that Rachel herself would come back from another time to try to fix her own mistake. She turned to face her older self and said, “What are the consequences of all this? Does it really matter if you tell me now?”

The other woman hesitated, and then said, “Dill loves you. He'd do anything for you. Even if it meant his own death. Even if it meant the end of this world.”

“I don't understand.”

“Don't let the Mesmerists take you alive.”

Rachel nodded. Now at last she understood.

An order to halt came from ahead, and the party drew up before a steep bank of rubble. Oran was standing amidst rising vapours on the summit of this obstruction, his hands cupped around his mouth as he shouted up against the great clamour of steel from the skies. Fuming clouds of smoke obscured all else.

But then Rachel spied something huge and metallic stir in the murky air behind the militia leader. The sounds of battle ceased. A shadow fell over her.

Her older self cried out and shoved Rachel hard to one side. But she wasn't fast enough. Five monstrous bone fingers descended and closed around the two women, the tips gouging deep furrows in the earth. The ground rocked, and Rachel fell against her other self.

She felt herself being lifted up rapidly into a cloud of choking dust. Below, Oran continued to shout, but she could not decipher his words. “Dill!” she cried. “Dill, is that you?”

But then a thundering voice came from very nearby: “I am told the name Rachel Hael holds meaning for you.” A pause, and then the arconite spoke more gently. “Is this she in my hand, Dill? We will not harm her. The king has always desired peace between us.”

Rachel's heart thundered in her chest. She struggled to breathe. “I hope you haven't missed your moment, sis,” she said, rubbing tears from her aching eyes. “The future isn't certain yet.”

She felt a hand squeeze her own. “No, it isn't.”

Through a break in the dust she saw Dill's skeletal face. Or was it him? She couldn't tell anymore. The arconites were all around her now. She could hear the massive crash of their feet, the rumble of their engines. She smelled the Maze in every quivering breath she took.

“Kneel,” Menoa's warrior commanded.

And then she saw him. He lacked expression-for that bone visage could muster none-but she knew it was Dill when he sank to the ground amidst the smouldering remains of Burntwater.

“Put down your weapon,” the arconite demanded.

Dill set his stolen cleaver down upon a row of rooftops. The partially destroyed buildings collapsed beneath it.

“The king is pleased,” the arconite said, “but he remains cautious. As a gesture of goodwill and submission, he requires that you permit us to return Lord Hasp to the Maze. We need his assistance to deal with a small matter there. Do this for the king and you have his word that Rachel Hael will not be harmed.”

Rachel threw herself against the automaton's fingers, and cried, “No!”

“If you agree,” Menoa's warrior went on, “you need only lower your head.”

Rachel cried out again, but she couldn't stop what happened next. Dill lowered his head. Menoa's arconite raised its blade and brought it crashing down upon the top of his skull.

Dill's jaw slammed into the ground with the force of a rockslide. The resulting dust cloud billowed out over the whole settlement.

Rachel watched in horror as the dust settled. The stream of doubts Menoa's warriors had been planting in Dill's soul throughout the battle had successfully weakened him, for she could see that he was injured. A deep fissure now ran from the top of Dill's cranium down to his jaw. He managed to raise his head again. Blood flowed freely between Dill's teeth and down across his chin.

“Hasp?” Rachel cried.

“This is the moment, sis.”

Rachel felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see her older self slipping her knife out from her belt. She looked tired, much older now than the two decades that separated them.

“What happens if you don't do it?” Rachel said.

“A lot of people suffer.”

Rachel took a long slow breath. “I wonder if we missed another opportunity-if I had only done something differently.”

“This was always the only way for us to be sure. It's too dangerous for either of us to exist here.” She turned the blade over slowly in her hands. “I'll make it quick. Neither of us will suffer.”

“But the Rachel on the lake manages to escape, doesn't she?”

“Dill won't stop the arconites' advance now. He doesn't know that that Rachel escaped, because you are here. As long as Menoa has one of us hostage, he'll obey the Lord of the Maze. This timeline is a dead end for us.”

“But we must survive elsewhere?” Rachel insisted. “The universe where I met myself out on the lake… that still exists, doesn't it? That other version of me is still in Sabor's castle.”

The other Rachel nodded. “She's you,” she agreed. “And she does survive, and grow older. And one day she realizes that no world deserves to suffer, not even a doomed one.” She smiled sadly. “Doesn't make it any easier, does it?”

Rachel rubbed tears from her eyes. “No,” she said, “it doesn't.”

“Good-bye, sis.”

“ Good-bye.”

Rachel felt finally relieved. The room into which her former self had stepped was now empty. The Greengage Suite had undergone another temporal shift, and now looked out upon a different Time altogether. She peered through the porthole to see a moonlit room.

A younger version of Garstone appeared, wearing a crushed brown suit. He tilted his head to his brother Iron Head, and then to Sabor. “You asked for me, sir?”

“You're late, Garstone,” the god of clocks replied. “I needed you to accompany Miss Hael ten hours into the past, but you've missed your opportunity. She's already gone.”

The small man took out a map from his inside jacket pocket and unfolded it. “Ten hours, sir? Hmm…” He frowned. “That does present us with a little problem, doesn't it?”

He scratched his head and then sighed. “There is a route, but I'm afraid I shall be fourteen years older by the time I rendezvous with her.”

Sabor raised his nose. “Fourteen years is nothing. You'll still be fit enough when you emerge. Ah, thank you…” He snatched an envelope from the hand of a second, much older, Garstone, who just happened to be passing at that very moment, and gave it to the younger assistant. “Here are your instructions, along with some drawings of the decoys we'll build to ensure our friendly arconite eludes his pursuers. You have fourteen years to read them and less than ten hours to execute them.”

“Those decoys were a waste of time,” Rachel said, “and we're wasting even more time here. Dill needs our help right now.”

Garstone accepted the documents from his master. “Thank you, sir. Now if you'll excuse me, I'd better be going. The first suite fails in”-he glanced at his timepiece-“fifty-three seconds.” He hurried away and disappeared into one of the many doors.

Clocks chimed all around them as if in celebration of his departure.

“Now let's go.” Rachel turned away without waiting to see if the others followed. Too many minutes had passed since they'd crowded around Sabor's obscura table and witnessed Dill crawling from the lake-an image that had already been seventeen minutes old. Anything could have happened to her friend since then.