Chapter 101
Across Urverket every bell in every tower swings at once. The sound rolls across the gear-continents like thunder.
DONG.
(Two.)
on his bollard, third eye blazing, counting out loud.
The Timekeepers, sensing the hour, throw everything at the dock at once. Sekund leads the charge with a baton in each hand.
Rougeina Swaps into the charge with seven blades. Kali wires her cracked sickle tighter with her teeth and swings. Mingus barks off-beat, and twenty Timekeepers flinch.
DONG. (Three.)
under the Marka's bow, holding the bucket of seawater up in both hands, not moving, while batons whistle past him.
DONG.
at the bow on his crutch, one hand flat on the Marka's rail, the other raised. Green light gathers in his palm.
in Otur's lap, still playing its clumsy lullaby.
♪ …ting… ting-ting… ♪
DONG. (Five.)
on the bench, the clock-hands in her eyes slowing, slowing, the way a clock slows when it's running down.
a small smile, the first we've seen.
beside her. His big hand moves the last inch and rests on hers on the bench.
DONG. (Six.)
looking down at the troll's hand on hers. Then she stands, gown ticking, perfectly upright one last time, and turns toward the great glowing dial, the whole planet beyond it.
standing too, slowly.
A Timekeeper breaks through to Drekk. A baton swings at the bucket. TICK, and Kompis is there, Subtick-grey eyes, catching the baton bare-handed in the half-second off the beat. His nose bleeds.
DONG. (Seven.)
the green light in his palm blazing, the whole ship humming under his other hand.
DONG. (Eight.)
DONG. (Nine.) The Marka folds: masts, hull, sails, the Kettle's bell and the brass clock-hand still stuck in her deck, all crumpling inward along green creases of light, smaller and smaller, until a cube the size of a dice, dark bark-brown with a tiny gleam of brass, drops from the air and falls, plop, into Drekk's bucket, and sinks to the bottom.
THE MARKA SINKS.
DONG. (Nine.) Otur stands at the great dial, perfectly upright, gown ticking. Her mouth opens, and her voice rings out of every clock-face on the whole planet at once, calm and clear:
The tiny clock-hands stop.
catching her as she falls, gently, the brass plates going quiet one by one, tick… tick… …tick… Then silence.
Urverket stops.
Every gear-continent, every turning city, every swinging bridge, every ticking tower: all of it halts, at once, in the same breath. The brass sun stops on its arm, halfway up the sky. The grinding that has shaken the planet for three hundred years goes silent.
On every clock-face on every wall on the whole world, the hands spin free, loose, pointing nowhere.
In the streets, in the doorways, in the gaps between the gears, a whole planet of people look up: bakers, Timekeepers, children, old people, the Unwound coming up out of the gaps. Nothing is due. Nothing is scheduled. Not a wedding, not a harvest, not an execution, not a sunrise.
For the first time in three hundred years, nobody knows what happens next.
They're free.
in Drekk's hands. At the bottom, under the seawater, a tiny bark-brown cube sits perfectly still.
The Timekeepers stop fighting. They lower their batons and look at their watches, which no longer say anything. Sekund stares at his six blank watch-faces.
at the edge of the dock on his crutch, looking into the bucket, and he laughs, the big helpless laugh, and the whole crew catches it. Rougeina, Kali, Kompis, Drekk through his mask, even Smurjan's three voices. They're laughing at a ship in a bucket.
still laughing, then starting to count on his fingers. He stops. Counts again. His smile falters.
putting a hand on his shoulder.
Quiet. Trollmage sits on the wooden bench with Otur's still form beside him, her head on his shoulder as if she were asleep, her gown silent. The music box is still playing in her lap, slower and slower, winding down.
eyes wet, looking out through the great glowing numeral at the stopped brass sun.
its last notes.
♪ …ting. ♪
And silence.
A silent clock-world hanging in the starlight, gears stopped, sun stopped halfway up. And across its surface, in a thousand towns, small lights coming on: lamps lit at the wrong hour, by people who just felt like it.