The three chronometers stood side by side on the scarred oak workbench, bathed in the calm, emerald light of the central kitchen lantern.
Tick-clack. Tock-tick. Shhh-clack.
Len Vey’s silver pocket watch, its hinged hunter cover propped open with a clean brass machine nut, read twenty-two hours, thirty minutes, and fourteen seconds. It was a northern courier’s field pocket watch, fitted with a fifteen-jewel lever gear catch, a bimetallic compensation balance to counteract winter frost. A hardened steel mainspring wound tight against its arbor. The movement had been tuned two years earlier by the guild watchmakers in Cross-Hollow, its balance wheel swaying with five crisp beats every second.
Beside it sat Doma Reel’s cast-iron passenger car kitchen timer. A squat, round clockwork gearwork salvage-harvested from a royal dining coach ten years earlier, ticking with the heavy, steady, unrushed pace of a metal tube gear catch, reading twenty-two hours, twenty-nine minutes, and forty-eight seconds. Its enameled dial was cracked across the seven, repaired with white lead paste. But its brass balance wheel swung with stubborn heavy-duty reliability.
Against the brick foundation pillar hung the master swinging weight control valve of the town tram dispatch network. A massive, six-foot dark wood case with an exposed deadbeat gear catch and a heavy liquid silver-compensated brass bob weighing twelve pounds. The swinging weight rod itself was crafted from seasoned straight-grained mountain pine, boiled in lamp-wax to prevent sky humidity from altering its length. The control valve read twenty-two hours, thirty minutes, and two seconds.
