Ivara Quill stood at the granite low roof wall of the watching terrace. Her single right hand held Deren Vey’s silver pocket watch up toward the clean starlight.
The blued-steel second hand was crawling steadily through the final side of the fifty-ninth minute.
Five fifty-nine and twenty seconds.
Five fifty-nine and twenty-five seconds.
At five fifty-nine and thirty seconds, the gearwork clicked against its brass gear catch with a dry, rhythmic beat that felt, against the skin of her palm, like the pulse of a sleeping child.
Beside her on the stone coping, Doma Reel’s chipped kitchen timer and the heavy Gate transit pocket watch continued their quiet, clockwork vigil, their brass gears humming all at once under the sub-zero mountain draft. Thirty seconds remained before the sky-high clock of the continent struck six in the morning.
Ivara leaned her hip against the stone railing, resting the bronze sounding rod across the crook of her pinned left sleeve. Then she looked down into the vast, sunken basin of Rookvale.
In the valley three thousand feet below, something miraculous and terrifying was occurring in the darkness.
