The air in the storeroom grew heavy, suddenly thick with the choking, ozone-tinged static that always heralded the boundary between days.
It wasn’t a physical wind. The dust on the floorboards didn’t stir. The cobwebs in the ceiling floor beams hung motionless in the damp draft. But every person in the room felt the change in their marrow. A sudden, sickening drop in air pressure that caused the ears to pop with a dull, wet click. Across the table, the flame in the copper lantern shrank, its bright yellow heart flattening into a tiny, trembling emerald bead as if the air had been stripped of its oxygen by an invisible hand.
Len stood beside the three clocks resting on the timber shelf: his father’s silver pocket watch, ticking with a sharp, metal hurry. Doma’s cast-iron kitchen timer, buzzing like an angry hornet. And the heavy swinging weight control valve salvaged from the Tram dispatcher’s office. He swung through its sixty-beat arc with an indifferent, clockwork thud.
All three second-hands were sweeping toward the upright twelve.
Tick... Tick... Tick.
The three clocks on the shelf were an archive of stolen time.
Deren’s pocket watch was a high-grade rail transit instrument, its silver case stamped with the royal postal postmark of Morren’s Ford. Its balance wheel, jeweled with tiny man-made rubies, beat at five oscillations per second. A crisp, dry flutter that Len had fallen asleep to on dozens of mountain mail runs. Beside it, Doma’s cast-iron kitchen timer was a heavy…
