Chapter 97
Kompis tumbles down a chute of greasy brass into a narrow space lit by stolen lantern-light. Mingus lands on top of him. Above, the gap grinds shut.
crouching over him, grease on her cheeks, the little brass cog swinging from her ear, grinning.
A hidden world between the gears: a long, narrow, ever-shifting town built in the spaces where the teeth don't quite meet. Rope bridges, lantern strings, hammocks, a bakery in a hollow axle. Every house is built to move with the gears. People everywhere, ordinary and ragged and loud. No clocks anywhere.
staring.
A baker pulling bread out of an oven: "Baked it at the wrong hour! Tastes better!"
A couple dancing: "We married on a Tuesday nobody scheduled!"
An old man asleep in the afternoon, which is illegal up top: "…mm… crime…"
Children playing a game with no rules, shrieking.
holding up a stub of chalk with a drawing of a clock face, and one tick-mark in red.
A tower of cells, each one a clock-face, the prisoners' chains ticking. The crew is in one large cell, chained to the wall. Vigolas is upside down, having tried to climb the wall chained.
Above the gaol the clock strikes. DONG. The guards begin their change, perfectly in step.
Fifty-seven… Kugge's Unwound slither out of a drain.
Fifty-eight… Kompis and Mingus run along a pipe above the cells.
Fifty-nine… the guards turn their backs in perfect unison, exactly as scheduled.
The panel is drawn with no ticking at all, silent, the only frame on the planet where nothing is due. In that one second: Kompis drops into the cell. Kugge's grease-black fingers pick three locks. Mingus pulls a chain loose with his teeth. Rougeina, unchained, Swaps the whole crew one by one into the drain.
Tick. The second ends. The guards turn round to an empty cell and chains swinging.
The crew, freed and filthy, surrounded by curious Unwound. Bakasura's small eyes rise out of Smurjan's shadow, look at the bakery in the axle, and drool.
crowded. The crew eats wrong-hour bread. An old woman, Gran Fjäder, unscheduled for forty years, sits across from Vigolas.
leaning in.
very quiet.
Far above, a great CLANK. Then another. The gaps shudder. Lanterns swing. Dust pours down.
white.
The enormous gear-teeth on both sides of the hidden town begin to grind together, closing the gaps with the force of continents. Brass walls slide in like the jaws of the world. Rope bridges snap. Lantern strings tear. Houses built to move are crushed like matchboxes. Unwound run screaming toward the last open seams, carrying children and bread and old people.
And at the centre of the spread, where the biggest gap is closing fastest, the crew: Smurjan braced, and rising out of his shadow, Bakasura, his colossal maw jammed between two gear-teeth, holding them open, teeth on brass, brass on teeth, the whole weight of a continent grinding against his jaws.
The Unwound pour through the gap Bakasura holds: Kugge herding children, the baker with his bread, Gran Fjäder on Drekk's back. Kompis and Mingus last.
on his knees, sweating, holding Bakasura up from inside.
stopping in the gap, looking at Bakasura's jaws straining against the brass. Through the bell-rope mask, a long look. Then:
The last of the Unwound are through. Bakasura lets go. The gear-teeth slam shut with a BOOM that shakes the planet. Bakasura sinks back into Smurjan's shadow, jaw cracked, "…Crunchy," very faintly.
a wider gap deep in the planet's core gears. The Unwound, crowded and shaken, counting heads. Nobody lost. Kugge looking at Bakasura's shadow with enormous eyes.
The crew climbs a shaft up to a spy-hole in the back of a public clock-face in a city square. Through the numerals they can see the square, the Timekeepers, and far off the great Clocktower.
eyes going gold. Lust-sight. He looks toward the Clocktower, searching for Otur's threads among the planet's ruler-straight lines.
Thousands of perfectly straight, parallel threads (schedule, schedule, schedule) all converging on the Clocktower. And from the top of the tower, where Otur sits, only one thread of her own: thin, gold, crooked, the only crooked line on the whole planet. It runs to a small object on the arm of her throne.
On the arm of a brass throne: a tiny brass music box, its lid closed, its key dusty. It has never been wound.