Inventing a Tinker

Part 2

14 Greywatch, Year of Falcon

Two clocks ticked side by side. A fanciful mind might have likened their asynchronous cadence to the clop of a galloping horse's hooves, or one tick chasing the other. I found it grating. An hour before, I had released the pendulum on each at precisely the same moment; one had already lost time. Mrs. Elmore had been right to bring hers in for repair. A finger's touch stopped the pendulum and halted the broken clock, leaving only the soothing beat of my own perfectly functioning timepiece. Peering through an eye loupe, I pried open the back of Mrs. Elmore's clock and checked inside.

Footsteps approached from the rooms above, but the innards of the misbehaving bit of clockwork kept my complete attention. A man could drive himself mad taking time away from his work every time some wayward sound came at his ears.

"I'm going out for a few breaths of morning air, while it lasts," Mr. Kodahl announced in a cheery voice. "Don't forget to have yourself a lunch. Mrs. Kayle has been saying you look sickly." The old woman who owned the boarding house was always nattering after my health.

I grunted a reply by way of ignoring the latter comment. "Shop will be fine until you get back, sir." A good breakfast and a timely dinner made lunch a slackard's meal. At best, it was a luxury, at worst, a drain on a day's work. I had no intention of being Mr. Kodahl's assistant forever, and a habit of taking lunches was no way to make a name for myself.

The shop bell jingled once as Mr. Kodahl opened the front door and again as it closed behind him. All that remained was the comfort of one good clock's tick and the mystery of what ailed the other.

The shop's bell chimed once more. At first I assumed that Mr. Kodahl had come back for his hat, or had forgotten his purse, or some other such nonsense. I didn't bother looking up.

"Excuse me," a voice like birdsong snagged my working mind and ruined my concentration. I looked up to find that a lovely young woman had entered Kodahl's shop. The bell chimed as she shut the door behind her. Her eyes flitted around the room before looking my way. "I see you sell clocks." She smiled. It was neither a simpleton's easy smile nor the expression nervous people plaster onto their faces trying not to appear awkward. There was a joke in that smile, though at the time I couldn't imagine what it was.

She was slim, with a northern complexion complete with freckles. Her hair was true red—or what passes for red in hair, which was more of a golden orange. The clock's tick reminded me that time was passing, and it was my part of the conversation to continue. I tried to think of a clever reply. "Yes. Yes, we do," I said. Not the best of efforts, I admit.

She crossed that tiny shop in a few steps, and peered over the counter to look at what I was working on. "Are you making that one, or fixing it?"

"Fixing," I replied. I turned the case around so she could see it, but felt the fool. Most people would only see a bedeviling collection of wheels and springs, and it was rude to confuse a customer. But she bent low to better see within, so I let her study the workings. "If you see there, the escapement wheel is missing a jewel. See how it wobbles a hair's width when I press on it? That's enough to make a clock lose time."

"You mean the friction from the missing bearing," the woman said. "Not from the wobbling."

"Yes. Of course," I replied. "The wobbling was just the easiest way to—" I stopped short and looked up into her eyes. She was smirking at me. "You know a thing or two about clocks. I'm sorry. Aside from Mr. Kodahl, I don't often talk about clockwork with anyone who understands the workings."

"You don't get out of this place much, do you?" she asked, taking in the room as she rested her elbows on the counter.

The room felt warmer than it had a right to. She was very close. Close enough that, even in the dim light of the shop, I realized that I had seen her before. "Enough to remember seeing you on the street more than once."

"Oh?" she asked. "And do you happen to also know my name?" She must have seen the answer on my face—I did not. "I'm Jennai." She extended her hand across the counter.

I shook her offered hand. "Cadmus Errol," I replied. The skin was soft and her palm was damp with sweat, but the grip was solid.

"I know," Jennai replied. "Let me buy you lunch. We can talk about clocks if you want, but I know lots of other things, too."

My usual diatribe on the insidious nature of midday meals was at the tip of my tongue before I swallowed it back. I'd had fools aplenty visit while I was working, bringing clocks and small household contraptions for me to fix and treating them like they were boxes packed with foul magic. I knew the rarity of a sharp and tempered mind, and to find one in such a lovely young woman made her offer all the more tempting.

"All right then," I replied, playing as coyly as I could. "Just let me lock up the shop."