The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,29

invisible medium sensible to himself alone, as if the air around him were as thick as mud. ‘But do you know, I don’t believe it is carved of wood.’

‘Indeed? What then?’

‘Bone.’

‘Bone?’ Quare glanced at the watch in his hand and shook his head sceptically. ‘What kind of bone is so hard, yet so light?’

‘That I cannot say. But I have examined the movement under the microscope, compared the grain of the stuff with samples of wood and of bone, and though I did not find an exact match, it is unquestionably closer in nature to the latter than to the former.’

Quare shrugged. ‘Even so, it is still no more than a curiosity, a toy.’

‘Do you suppose I would attach so much importance to a mere curiosity? Would Lord Wichcote risk so much to possess it, or the thief you encountered upon the rooftop go to such trouble to steal it?’

‘I don’t understand …’

‘I wonder if I might borrow that sharp little tool of yours.’

‘Of course.’ Quare reversed the scalpel and held it out.

Resting his weight on one stick and letting the other fall back against his hip, the master took the tool in a rock-steady hand. Before Quare could react, the hand darted out.

Quare yelped, more in surprise than pain, and watched a bead of blood appear on the tip of his finger. ‘What—’

‘Quickly,’ Master Magnus interrupted. ‘Hold it over the watch!’

Quare was too stunned to do anything but obey. Drop after drop of his blood dripped into the pale silver insides of the watch. It pooled there like the shadow of the sun creeping across the face of the moon in swift eclipse, a dark stain that must soon spill over.

But it did not spill over.

Instead, it seeped into the watch. The parts of the movement, the wheels and pinions and plates, the escapement, the fusee, all the pieces so cunningly carved out of … something … sucked in the blood. Drank it in like water absorbed by a sponge. And as they did, they changed colour, took on the redness of Quare’s blood. Or perhaps it was that they turned translucent as glass, only seeming to take on the hue of what filled them.

But Quare was not interested in such distinctions. He stood transfixed with awe and creeping horror, mesmerized by the sight of the watch so engorged with blood that it seemed to glow like a hot coal in the palm of his hand. He would not have been surprised had it burned him. But the watch, already warmed to his body temperature, grew not a whit warmer.

Then he felt it faintly shudder. Felt a convulsion spark and bloom within the watch and pass through it into his flesh, his blood, like a call seeking answer.

He would have dropped it then, cast it from him like a loathsome, cursed thing, but Master Magnus took hold of his wrist in an unbreakable grip, preventing him.

Quare moaned, words as far beyond him as thought, as reason. For now, as if his heart had answered the call, the watch throbbed to life, pulsing in time to the rhythm in his chest, the wheels and pinions turning, the teeth meshing: the movement running, keeping time.

‘There is your source of power,’ Master Magnus said, his voice fierce, triumphant.

4

Pig and Rooster

QUARE DREW ON his pipe and tilted his chair back against the wall, gazing through a fog of tobacco smoke at the other tavern patrons eating and drinking at tables and along the bar. Wheels of candles hanging on chains from the beams of the ceiling provided a wan illumination. According to the clock on the wall above the fireplace, it was approaching nine o’clock. Quare had no reason to doubt the time, though he had not checked it against his pocket watch as he was normally wont to do. Nor could he locate in himself the remotest desire to do so.

The Pig and Rooster was packed, the atmosphere boisterous. A man wearing an eye patch had taken out a fiddle and begun scratching a tune in the far corner, and an appreciative audience had gathered round, clapping and shouting encouragement as a little capuchin monkey done up as a Turk, a bright red turban strapped to its head, capered and turned somersaults on a table beside the fiddler. Elsewhere, men were playing at cards, chess and draughts, and at a nearby table a rowdy group of apprentices from assorted guilds, including his own, was engaged in a – so far – good-natured