God of Clocks

“His original plan changed history,” she cried, “and accomplished nothing!” She couldn't shake the image of Dill from her mind, dragging his shattered body from the lake. Right now she had a chance of preventing his destruction.

“But… Miss Hael, in our future those events have already happened. We are here to ensure that they do happen, that they continue to have happened, if you will. If we stop those events from occurring, the multiverse will create another new branch to accommodate our failure, and the entire continuum will be further weakened as a result.”

“Where is Sabor?” she demanded.

“I have some drawings of the proposed rafts…” Garstone went on, with evident distress. “If we-Miss Hael, where are you going?”

She was going to find the god of clocks. It was bad enough that they'd forced her back here without even waiting for her consent, but now they expected her to adhere to their ridiculous plan. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed that her bitchy twin had forced her into the timelock simply to get her out of the way. It was the sort of thing Rachel herself might have done.

I ought to have punched that woman!

Rachel halted, and touched the bruise under her eye. A bitter smile came to her lips. I'll bet you're laughing now, sis.

She didn't halt again until she reached Sabor's camera obscura table. The god of clocks was nowhere to be seen.

Garstone hurried to catch up with her. “The master is indis-posed, miss.”

“Where is he?”

“Not so much where, but when, miss.”

“When?”

“This appears to be one of those pockets of Time that Sabor has not yet experienced. He prefers to keep himself moving between critical or interesting moments in Time. The Obscura Redunda allows him to skip the more… mundane stretches of Time entirely.”

“So he's avoiding me?”

Garstone looked at the floor. “My master will arrive before you return to the castle this afternoon. He must do so; otherwise you'd never have met him.”

The assassin grunted and stormed towards the door. She wasn't about to wait around for Sabor to appear, and she certainly wasn't about to spend the next ten hours chopping wood to build rafts. She had time to reach Burntwater before Dill, Mina, and her other self arrived there. Now all she had to do was think of a way to stop the forthcoming battle and save them all.

John Anchor and Harper picked through the wreckage of the Rotsward, searching for soulpearls. Little now remained of the huge wooden skyship. The mental link between Cospinol and his slave had been the real source of the vessel's strength, but Cospinol's death had severed that link. The ship had become nothing more than timber.

Harper swept her Locator over a tangle of ropes and broken planks. The silver device in her hand made a keening sound.

Anchor looked up.

“Nothing,” she said. “The environment is confusing my Locator-all these dislocated souls. It's hard to find something as small as a soulpearl amongst all this… gore.”

“But there is less blood than before, yes?” Anchor replied cheerfully. “And less with every passing moment. So we still have hope.”

The River of the Failed had moved on. Its myriad waterways were still draining away, even now, in the direction Carnival had taken. The river was following her.

In its wake it left a red wetland of low banks, ankle-deep arroyos, and refuse. The sinking waters uncovered more wreckage with each passing heartbeat. Anchor found scraps of armour and weapons left by the gallowsmen. Sodden beams lay piled everywhere like the beginnings of bonfires. He found bent lumps of iron, hinges and nails, and even pieces of furniture. But there were no bodies. The departing currents had consumed all of those.

The rope that had once tethered him to the Rotsward stretched far across the landscape, like the corpse of some vast serpent. He stooped and picked up a section of it, and then let it drop. Strange that it seemed so heavy now.

Instinctively he reached for the leather pouch at his belt, but of course he had swallowed the last of his soulpearls. An odd feeling of irritation came over him, but he shrugged it away. He would just have to make do until he found some more.

“John, look up.”

Anchor followed Harper's gaze. Overhead loomed the Maze in all its hideous glory. Shafts of lamplight fell from countless windows in the uneven brickwork. A huge gouge existed where the Rotsward's upper scaffold had been dragged through the underside of Hell. The buckled iron and shattered facades around the edges exposed whole apartments, now ripped open and bleeding profusely. A few figures lingered on the brink of the chasm, peering down into the queer realm below.

“Aye, I would be curious too,” he admitted. “They have not seen such a thing in Hell before. I suppose.”

Harper pointed more urgently. “No, look there.”

Anchor lifted his eyes again. This time he noticed a blunt, cone-shaped object jutting from the shattered rooms at one side of the rent. This odd protrusion was dull grey in color and looked out of place amongst all the red brick and black iron. On a ledge below the object stood a little girl. She was waving at them.

“Isla?” he said.

“That vessel of hers might be able to take us out of here,” Harper replied.

Anchor frowned. “I need to find Cospinol's stash of soulpearls,” he said.

“Forget that.” Harper made a dismissive gesture. “The river consumed them all.” She waved back up at the tiny distant figure, then held up both her hands to tell the girl to stay where she was.

“No,” Anchor insisted, “my strength will fail without them. We must keep searching.” He picked up a huge cross-section of gallows wood and flung it to one side. There was nothing underneath but more of the fleshy red terrain.

“You don't need your strength any longer,” Harper argued. “We can't stay here, John. We must get back to Hell.”

He wheeled to face her, suddenly angry. “Did you not hear what I said? I need more souls! Now use your damn Locator to find me some, before I…” He growled, and kicked at a pile of planking, sending the fragments spinning in all directions.

The engineer just stared at him. “John, what's wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” he muttered. He strode away from her to search through another likely mound of debris. In truth he could not remember feeling this way before. It took him a moment to understand what the pangs in his stomach indicated.

Hunger.

When he reached the debris he set to work shifting aside pieces of wood and knots of rope. Curved fragments of a large iron pot lay half buried underneath. Then another warrior's helmet, a length of lead pipe, and a bow. Anchor examined each in turn and tossed them away. Useless, worthless rubbish. He instinctively reached down to his belt again, before he remembered that the pouch was empty. He gave a snort and bent to his task more quickly. Sheets of tin, splintered decking, a pot, planks, planks, and more bloody planks. He heaved it all over and stood gasping.

Something huge fell from the sky and smashed into the ground a hundred yards away. It had been a section of brick wall. Blood rain spattered down after it.

Anchor lifted his gaze once more.

The base of the Maze was cracking and breaking apart as a huge, tapering metal object pushed downwards through it at a shallow angle. Huge lumps of iron and masonry shuddered free from that weighty sky and fell all around him. Glass cascaded down in sparkling showers. Loose bricks fell amongst clouds of dust. The hull of Isla's ship trembled, but ultimately broke free from the stonework. Clear vapours streamed from vents at the rear of its