God of Clocks

“We've just put him in Dill's mouth,” Rachel explained.

Garstone gave a gentle cough. “Fascinating,” he said without a mote of conviction. “Shall we retire to the rowboat now, Miss Hael?”

“I'm supposed to do whatever I feel is right,” she reminded him, “otherwise I might corrupt this timeline. Well, I want to see this.” She turned to the older version of herself. “You must have lingered here, too, because that's what I would do. Hell, it's what I'm doing now. We'll leave as soon as the explosions go off. It leaves me plenty of time to get out onto the lake and meet myself.”

“Very well, miss,” Garstone said.

A thought occurred to Rachel. “You weren't in the boat,” she said to Garstone.

“Wasn't I?”

“No. I was alone on the lake.”

Garstone made a sound of surprise. “I suppose this version of me must have died, miss. After all, this is a particularly dangerous environment.”

She looked at him. “Perhaps you just decided to stay here?”

“I don't think that's very likely, miss. I have no intention of leaving you behind. Sabor would never approve of that.”

“You might have been injured.”

“That is certainly possible, Miss Hael. Although it would have to have been a severe injury to cause me to abandon you. If one cannot walk, one crawls, and if one cannot-”

“Well, what if you were unconscious?” she said. “You couldn't follow me then. You wouldn't even have to be particularly badly injured.”

Garstone glanced at his watch. “Yes, no doubt that's it, Miss Hael,” he huffed. “It explains my absence from the boat perfectly.”

“Yes,” Rachel said, “it does.” She struck him hard on the side of the head, knocking him out cold. The small man crumpled to the ground in his faded brown suit.

Rachel grabbed him under his armpits and hoisted him up. “Help me carry him onto one of those boats,” she said to her other self.

“You know I can't interfere, sis. Not yet.”

Rachel groaned. “When I become you,” she said, “don't expect any help from me.” She thought about that for a moment, and then shook her head. “Forget I said that.”

She dragged him backwards to the opposite side of the alley, away from Dill and the Rusty Saw, and propped him up while she surveyed the promenade. All of Oran's men and their whores had by now alighted from the stricken tavern. Hundred of refugees were already converging on the harbour. She spotted Rosella and Abner Hill, and felt a pang of regret. Would she be able to grab some gold for them now, while she still had a chance?

No, she couldn't risk it. Any decisions that affected the future, as she knew it, might trigger the events that led to the end of this world.

Her older self hung back, watching carefully.

“This can't be where I fuck up,” Rachel decided. “Any version of me would have done exactly the same. None of us would have left him here to die.”

Crowds jostled along the waterfront as the town barges steamed in from deeper water to dock against the wharfs. One unit of Burntwater militia was already herding people onto smaller boats, but most of the other soldiers now raced back into the town or began to fling burning torches against the dockside buildings. Fire crackled and leapt up the walls of the nearest warehouse.

Rachel waited until a group of refugees hurried past the mouth of the alley, and then dragged Garstone's unconscious body out across the promenade after them. One of his shoes fell off. Panting heavily, she reached one of the gangplanks where a queue of refugees waited to board.

“Can you take him across for me?” she said to an old couple at the front of the queue. The husband was old enough to be her grandfather, but tall and lean, and he looked strong enough to manage. He was already carrying a huge shoulder sack.

“Excuse me?”

“Take him,” she insisted. “I need to go back and find my children.”

The lie worked as she had intended. The old man tossed his sack onto the waiting barge, then slung Garstone's arm around his shoulder. With the help of a large woman already on the barge, they managed to hand the unconscious figure across the gangplank.

Now all the nearby warehouses were ablaze. Dill backed into the water and lifted two empty barges up onto the promenade to be loaded. Overhead, the massive wings of Menoa's arconites shimmered amongst the fog and smoke. Their armoured legs stood amidst the streets like war-blasted towers of steel. Sounds of battle came from the south, and then Menoa's arconite spoke: “King Menoa wishes to negotiate a truce, Dill…” Rachel ran back to the mouth of the alley to where her older self waited.

“What the hell is this?”

The voice belonged to one of Oran's men. A bearded giant, he stood at the corner of the alley entrance between two of the Rusty Saw's whores, each of them clinging to one of his arms. They looked disheveled and drunk. The woodsman's large dark eyes stared at the two Rachels for a moment before he glanced over at the promenade, where Rachel's former self still stood beside Mina. Then he shrugged the whores aside and drew his sword.

“Sisters, eh?” he said to Rachel. “What you doing sneaking about back here?” He shoved one of the whores away. “Go tell Oran what I caught here.” The woman scowled at him, but then lifted her skirts and ran off in the direction of the Rusty Saw.

Meanwhile the voice of the arconite continued to boom: “… Have the king's warriors harmed any who tried to flee? Have they hindered this evacuation? Have we used our influence over Hasp?”

The remaining whore raised a tin flask to her lips and took a drink. “Twins, I'd say,” she said. “That one's her spitting image. Look, she's even got the same cut above her ear.”

The woodsman grunted. “What are the chances of that? Looks like mischief to me.”

“Mischief,” his companion echoed.

Rachel exchanged a glance with her older self. Is this the moment you were waiting for? Is this the moment where history goes wrong? The other Rachel must have understood the unspoken question, for she lowered her eyes.

The powder kegs exploded.

The concussion blew the roofs off the buildings on either side of the alley. Rachel dropped to a crouch as a great cloud of grit and spinning shingles rushed out over the entire promenade. Some thing struck her head, knocking her forward. A tinny whining sound expunged her thoughts.

But instinct took over.

She pushed herself up.

“Stay down,” the woodsman growled. A fist grabbed her hair, forcing her head into the muddy ground. Dirt filled her nostrils. She glimpsed the edge of a blade.

And then the man suddenly released her. Rachel looked up to see his body slam against the side of the alley. Her older self now stood over her, lowering her leg from the kick she had just delivered.

Rachel gasped, “You intervened.”

“Yeah.”

“What about the future?”

“I'm changing it.” She grabbed Rachel and hoisted her to her feet. “We need to run now, before…” Her voice trailed away. She was looking beyond Rachel towards the mouth of the alley.

Oran and a large gang of his woodsmen blocked their escape. There were scores of them, armed and angry and smothered in grey dust. The whore who had gone to fetch them sat on the ground nearby, blinking and staring vacantly at her hands.

The militia leader sneered at Rachel. “Sisters?” He laughed and shook his head. “But I know the truth. Your other version doesn't even know you're here, does she? She hasn't yet been to Sabor's castle to become you. What's the difference in time between you and her? A couple of days? And at least twenty