A Tuesday in Time - 2

Usually, when we bring a Timebound into the City we bring them in through the Flower Quarter, because the overwhelmingly pleasant atmosphere tends to wow and awe people, making them slightly more malleable and less prone to having hysterics. Mind you, taking a walk through the FQ on a regular Saturday after brunch, you are probably going to see at least one or two people in tears of confusion, or hurling questions at a harassed looking Warden, or just babbling incoherently. But most of the newcomers merely look shocked and dazed and maybe even a little delighted.

Not that many come through anymore – the world truly is running out of magic. People are proud of their skepticism, their disbelief. It makes our jobs easier in some ways, but much harder in others. I would have loved a little trip to the FQ myself, settle my nerves a bit before explaining to a series of increasingly powerful (and likely, increasingly upset) people that I had just assisted a Warden in a murder. It turned out to be his own murder that he did to himself, but I doubted they would be understanding about it.

Poor Jace. His unexpectedly bad day was about to get significantly worse.

We went straight to the Clocktower. There wasn’t as much blood on me as I would have thought, considering how close I had been standing to Pierson, but there was still noticeably blood on me, which was enough to get us through the first two levels of red tape on its own. Clerks took one look at us and waved us on. I knew we were causing a bit of a scene, and I could hear furiously curious whispers spring up behind us, but I was entirely too rattled to care. I didn’t let go of Jace’s hand, and I wasn’t sure if it was for comfort or so he wouldn’t do a runner. His eyes were wide and wild.

We made it up to the 4th floor, which was the highest level I’d ever been to. The Clerk here was used to Wardens, and so had seen disheveled and lightly bloodstained (possibly even sticky) agents before, though her eyes still went wide as she looked up from her logbook. I didn’t have to explain myself to her, just showed her my ID and she immediately picked up the handset of her black and gold Royal Victoria phone and swiped a number on the rotary dialer. A whir and a click and then, “Yes, Mister Hemmersby? Adjustor Drysdale is here, with a timebound. The matter seems… urgent. Very good.” She looked us up and down and told us to have a seat, that Mr. Hemmersby would be down in ten minutes.

Jace was starting to look peaked, and I don’t know if it’s possible to sprain your eyelids from looking too hard, but he seemed ready to try it. There was a fountain of drinking water with glass cups hanging from the rim, and I got us both a drink while steering him to one of the dull green velvet couches in the waiting area. I was still coming off my adrenaline rush and was ready for a shower and a lie-down, but I tried to stay fully present for his sake. He was still staring as if he’d never seen a room before. I glanced around, trying to see it from his perspective.

“It’s like if a Victorian hotel hosted a Gatsby party but they were only allowed to use the color green,” His voice was hoarse, despite swallowing the water in one gulp. His eyes were darting wildly around the room. It was true. All the furniture and wallpaper were indeed Victorian, and the color palette was distinctly moss-toned. The fixtures, frames and prints were all art deco, and green did feature prominently there as well. The fountain was a lavish piece, a series of interlocking arches and swirls plated in gold, and the cups we drank out of could conceivably have held punch as easily as water. The whole Clocktower was like that, now that I thought about it, and had much more of a feel of a 19th century mansion than an office. This area was in green because Mr. Hemmersby was in charge of the 4th floor and his wife was in charge of him, and it was her favorite color, so there we were.

“Hmm, yes, I suppose you’re right,” I told him, seeing the room with new eyes. He finally looked at me, and there it was again, as if I had lost my mind. He was doing rather a lot of that today, and it was growing wearisome. It’s not like I was making things up, he was seeing it with his own eyes, after all. I decided to do as much as possible to explain things in the 8½ minutes left to us before Hemmersby arrived, and hopefully Jace would dial the dramatics down a notch. I opened my mouth but he spoke before I could.

“Where. Am. I. And why am I there.” So much for that hope. I rearranged what I was about to say. The way his Adam’s apple bobbed with the force of his swallow made me think he needed a drink of something that wasn’t water. Thankfully, the offices in the Clocktower are fully equipped to handle any sort of emergency, including a man who was only one additional shock away from needing a warm blanket and a soft padded room for a while. A vending machine cleverly tucked away in a wardrobe had any number of hot beverages available; I got him a black coffee with one – better make it two – shots of whiskey, and told him to sip it while I talked.

“I don’t know what happened today, Jace. You weren’t supposed to come here, far as I know, but I couldn’t just leave you.” I said, getting myself a regular black coffee – unleaded. “I also don’t know how much I should tell you about where you are, but I’ll give you an outline at least. To begin with… well, in short, Time isn’t what you think it is. It isn’t a series of carefully segmented bits that flow in a direct order, in a straight path, from the beginning to the end. Not at all. Time is a very useful idea, but it is not an absolute law.”

“So, what, like Doctor Who?” I was glad to see some color return to his face, even if it meant a return of his snark.

“Ha. No. No aliens are involved. We’re just as human as anyone else, we just… do it differently. Great show, though.”

“We? Who is we?”

“We call ourselves the Watchers. Get it, like a wrist watch? I suppose the technical term is Time Keeper. We aren’t bound by Time, the way you are. We keep it, it does not keep us.”

“Now you want me to believe you’re time travelers?” His skepticism would have been endearing, if it wasn’t so obnoxious. I usually didn’t have to deal with this side of things, and I began to see that Wardens had a lot to put up with.

“Not really, no. It’s not traveling to go from one room to the next, is it? Where we are is called simply, the City. It is outside of Time. Think of it like the hub of a wheel, with the rest of the world spread all around it. Watchers come and go from the City. We can only go forward a very short way, but we can go back to the seventeenth century, though we can’t change the future from there anymore. Eventually the past sort of fades out, and we can’t touch it or taste it; anything before the 1640s is pretty blurry.”

“Wait, so, you could take me to see… like, the French Revolution or something?”

“No, because you’re timebound. You couldn’t go through Time anymore than you could squeeze yourself through a stone wall. I could take you back to Florida, but it would be your present – never your past or future.”

“I don’t understand how any of this is real.”

“Drink your special coffee, that will help.” My tone was more patronizing than I’d intended, but I didn’t care. “The short answer is: magic, of course.”

“Magic…”

“How else?”

“You’re telling me all this,” he waved his arm around, encompassing the unusual space, “Is because of magic?”

“No, we stepped directly from a beach in Florida into a Victorian style office building with a wardrobe-vending machine that does Irish coffees thanks to the newest smart phone app.” I sipped my coffee (which I now regretted not adding anything to) and watched him try to find solid footing in an ocean of new truths. He wasn’t succeeding very well. He finished his drink in one gulp, and I continued, after taking a deep breath.

“As I was saying… Watchers are not bound to Time, so we can go pretty much any-when we please, within reason. Let’s see, what else… There aren’t many of us. We fit easily into a medium sized City. We’re very much human in other respects; we have doctors and teachers and shop keepers and priests.”

I considered him for a long moment; his expression had melted into a disbelieving sneer. If he’d still been in shock, I wouldn’t have said what I said next, but shock was fading to severe surprise, and he was not a man who handled surprise well, as it turned out. Myself, I don’t handle sneering well.

“Yes, we’re perfectly normal in other respects. Our heads blow up when we get shot at point blank range, for example.”

Hemmersby arrived just as Jace was vomiting noisily into his empty coffee cup.

“How did they get ahold of a Time-lock?” Hemmersby asked himself out loud after he’d heard my first debrief. It would not be my last. I was going to have to repeat it at least three more times before the end of the day. Go up a level, debrief. Go up another level, debrief again. Even people who truly know the value of Time don’t mind wasting someone else’s.

“Sir, I thought only Wardens could use Time-locks. If Pierson was able to activate it and then pass it to an actual timebound and have it work for them… that’s very bad.”

“Yes, Drysdale, I’m fully aware, thank you.” His snit was made more pronounced by his heavy Yorkshire accent. He was the very image of a 1920s businessman, from his neat three piece suite to his perfectly trimmed little mustache. He never went out of doors without a hat. I rolled my eyes but was careful that he didn’t see it.

Frankly, I was so relieved to have Mr. Alexander taken off my hands for a while that I couldn’t bring myself to work up a real annoyance. Hemmersby had taken one look at the situation and called for backup, namely, an experienced Warden named Janet who knew exactly how to acclimate the timebound to their new reality.

Before we got any further, I found myself to have been very much mistaken. I wasn’t sent up to the next level; rather a Warden came to collect me, and I was unceremoniously hauled up to the very top, the 10th floor, highest of the administration levels (there were two floors of apartments above that). I had never been here before, but everyone in the City knew who was in charge.

She went by the name Idalia Makris, though I suspect it is not the name her mother gave her. She’s one of the oldest of us, and we tend to live quite long lives, so that’s saying something. One popular rumor says she lived through the Black Death. Another is that she’s a secret child of Alexander the Great. I have a harder time believing that one, but really, you never can tell.

Regardless, she is a force. Cunning, wise, fiery temper on occasion, brilliant tactician always. Also uncommonly beautiful, with shining dark hair, vivid blue eyes, and olive complexion, all together she looks like an actual goddess. I had never seen her up close before, and she was even more electrically elegant in person. Black silk blouse, ruby red silk trousers, red stilettos, understated but clearly expensive jewelry… she could have walked off the cover of Vogue. She terrifies me.

“Silas, what are we dealing with?” She spoke to my bosses’ boss, who had a coveted office on the 9th floor. I had met him a handful of times, and was relieved to find him there. Besides them, there were four other high ranking officials, whom I knew by reputation, and their presence at this meeting sent a wave of cold dread through me.

“Too soon to say positively,” Silas answered, flipping through a stack of photographs that he then passed out to the group. We were all sitting in Lady Makris’ personal boardroom, which was done over in white and chrome and black. Very Gatsby. A record player in the corner was pouring out Glenn Miller, and I tried to focus on that for a bit, make myself relax.

This worked until the photographs got passed down the line and ended up in front of me – they were taken by an Observer, someone who’s sole purpose it was to obtain evidence of an Event after the fact for documentation purposes. One of the reasons I had wanted a wide open space was so that it would be easier to prove what had happened, should the need arise later. Turns out my instincts had been correct. There were photographs of every moment of the encounter with Pierson, including very blurred images that showed my progress through microtime, from where I stood beside Jace Alexander to when I turned the gun as it was firing a split second later. It felt very much as though someone had an icy grip around my throat.

“Should I have an advocate present?” I dared to ask, since everyone was watching me reacting to the photos.

“That isn’t necessary,” Lady Makris said, “Silas here is your representative, but you aren’t in trouble. Pierson did not anticipate dying so abruptly and did not clean up after himself as well as he might have. He forgot to erase the security tapes of you getting the file from him, though he altered the record to show he had given you the original mission directive, rather than the fabrication you ended up with. He also didn’t count on the fact that you would do your paperwork like you should, in advance. There’s a lovely paper trail that, combined with your testimony and the account from Mr. Alexander, add up to Pierson attempting to commit what would have been a devious crime.”

“What was the original mission, if I may ask?” This was the question I had been burning with curiosity over since the first time the bartender lied to me about Jace’s whereabouts.

“It’s above your clearance level,” one of the other suits, a Mr. Pemberley, began, but Silas reached out a hand to stop him.

“It’s a little too late for that,” he said, with a wry smile. “Clara, the original mission was to bring Jace here at all costs, immediately. We knew he was in danger, and that he is important to an Event, but we are still trying to put all the pieces together for why. We can’t see far enough ahead yet, but we got a directive that he must be Timed-out immediately. Whatever it is, it was worth attempting to kill him for.”

“But if you don’t know, how did Pierson?” I asked the question that seemed logical, and wasn’t prepared for the chilly silence and significant glances that followed. Silas and Lady Makris exchanged a long look, and she finally nodded, once.

“Clara…” Silas gave me a rare smile. “There is, of course, more to it. I’ll be very frank, since you have proven yourself trustworthy today. There is a traitor in the Clocktower, and it wasn’t Pierson. He was merely an agent acting on behalf of someone else. Even a Warden can’t give a Time-lock to just anyone. There have been signs for some time now that we had a rat, but this is the first instance where we’ve been able to prove it.”

“How did Mr. Alexander get a letter telling him I’d be coming for him?” This had been bothering me since Jace first told me of it, but mostly I was trying to change the subject because I definitely did not want to know about any traitors at high levels, that was too much today. Possibly tomorrow I could handle that, but not right now. Lady Makris herself answered this one.

“Firstly,” she began, her tone wry, “That was our doing, and it was all going according to plan until this morning. In the mission directive that you ought to have received, you’d have been told that a subject needed to be brought to the Clocktower with all haste, and that he had been alerted to your presence, and would be willing to leave with you. It also warned you of the great danger he was in, which you might be exposed to. You ought to have been sent directly to the armory after receiving the file – that’s how we were able to track what Pierson told you, in fact. You logged your mission summary before you left (which is a protocol that many Adjustors don’t bother to adhere to reliably, by the way, and he was counting on that) and the fact that you made no mention of weapons acquisition was a red flag.”

I found myself twisting the collar of my jacket, an anxious habit I thought I’d broken. I made myself clasp my hands on the table instead. This was a lot of information to take in, and they were giving me space to process it, for which I was grateful. Another question had occurred to me, and I was hesitant about asking it, unsure I really wanted to know the answer. Lady Makris must have been able to read it on my face, because she interrupted my thoughts to say them out loud.

“Are you wondering why you were sent, and not a Warden, or at least someone with more experience?”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been wondering,” I admitted. “Since the scene at the bar, in fact. This ought to have been given to someone who could defend themselves.” If there was a hint of rebuke in my voice, well, so be it.

“Had the Event gone according to plan, you would have been equipped properly,” Silas took over the explanation. “We had you scheduled for self-defense, some martial arts training, you were even supposed to get a pistol and learn to use it.”

I let this information sink in. If I was supposed to get all that, that could only mean…

“Although I hear you did pretty well with a butcher’s knife,” Silas continued, and even Lady Makris’s lips twitched. “Just the sort of initiative we expect from a Warden-in-Training.”

My breath left me in a rush. A Warden? I wasn’t expecting that for years, yet! I’d only been an Adjustor for a couple of centuries.

“It ought to have been under happier circumstances that we told you, but needs must.” Lady Makris interjected, “You’re young for it, but you’ve shown potential. We need some fresh blood in the mix, people who we can trust. Right now, that list is rather appallingly short. But starting tomorrow, you’ll spend the next span learning to be a Warden. I’m confident that we will be proud of you.”

I recognized this as a dismissal, and thanked them with all the dignity I could muster while making a speedy exit. I decided I’d be very excited about it eventually, but it’s difficult to work up an enthusiasm when you’ve got a mixture of pineapple juice, sweat, blood, and dried rain on your person. This had been an eventful day, I’d over-thought every moment, and now the only thing in the entire world that I wanted was a fifty-year-long shower.

Just then the elevator doors opened. I started to step out of the way, until I saw who had gotten off. My shower was going to have to wait.