Ivara Quill drew Deren Vey’s silver pocket watch from her waistcoat pocket. She held the scarred casing flat across her palm while her thumb rested against the knurled winding stem.
The blued-steel second hand crawled across the final side of the dial with steady, unpitying care.
Five fifty-seven and thirty seconds.
Five fifty-seven and thirty-five seconds.
At five fifty-seven and forty-five seconds, the sweep hand clicked onto the upright index with a faint, metal snap that was swallowed instantly by the underground thrum of the mountain. Beside her on the survey bench, Doma Reel’s clockwork kitchen timer let out its own dry, clockwork tick, its fine china face lit up by the amber slit of a safety lantern. Meanwhile, the transit pocket watch from the Gate office hummed in its brass gimbal. All three independent timepieces, timed together across nine days of blood and soot, agreed within three beats of a human heart.
Ivara shifted her weight. She stepped from the trip-lever console to the main instrument board mounted between two load-bearing granite pillars. The board was an imposing assembly of ribbed cast iron, polished brass bezels, and thick glass columns, built twelve years ago to monitor the air-powered and high-pressure loads of the central solar collector.
