Part 2 (1/2)

”That so?” Chief Coolidge had said the less you spoke, the better off you were. I didn't talk much anyway, so that suited me just fine.

”I've got something needs fixing.”

I jerked my head at the box of parts on my desk. ”Everybody's got something needs fixing.”

”Well, this is something special. And I'll pay.”

”If it's beedleworm dumplings and good-luck charms, I ain't interested.”

She grinned and it made her face a different face altogether, like somebody who knew what it was to be happy once. ”I got real money. And earbobs with emeralds the size of your fist. Or maybe you'd like some Poppy?”

”What'm I gonna do with emerald earbobs on this dirt clod?”

”Wear 'em to the next hanging,” she said, and then I were the one grinning.

I packed up my kit, such as it were, and Colleen stopped to pick up some sugar and chewing tobacco at Grant's Dry Goods. She bought a bag of licorice whips and give one to all the kids in the store. On the way out, we had to pa.s.s through the revival tents. It were the one time I got a might nervous, because Becky Threadkill took sight of me. Becky and I done all our catechisms together, and she were always the one to tell if somebody stopped paying attention or didn't finish making their absolutions. I figured her to call me out, and she didn't disappoint.

”Adelaide Jones.”

”Becky Threadkill.”

”It's Mrs. Dungill now. I married Abraham Dungill.” She puffed herself up like we oughta be laying at her feet. I had half a mind to tell her that Sarah Simpson had been his first choice and everybody knowed it. ”Over to the towns.h.i.+p, they say you got yourself in some trouble.” Her smile were smug.

”That so?”

”'Tis. Heard it told you stole two bottles of whiskey from Mr. Blankens.h.i.+p's establishment, and you was in jail three long months for it.”

I hung my head and shuffled my boots in the dirt, but mostly, I were trying to hide the smile bubbling up. Chief Coolidge done a good job getting the word out that I were a thief.

Becky Threadkill took my head hanging as confirmation of my sins. ”I knowed you'd come to no good, Addie Jones. One day, you'll be pitched into the everlasting nothing.”

”Well, it's good I had so much practice here first, then,” I said. ”You have a good day now, Mrs. Dungill.”

Once we were clear, I stopped Colleen. ”You heard what she said. If'n you want to find yourself another watchmaker, I'll understand.”

Colleen give me an easy smile. ”I think we found ourselves the right girl.” She put the handkerchief over my mouth, and the ether done its work.

I woke up in an old wooden house, surrounded by four close faces.

”We're real sorry about the ether, miss. But you can't be too careful in our line of work.” I recognized the speaker as Josephine Folkes. She were taller than the others and wore her hair all braided this way and that. The brand from her slave days were still on her forearm.

”Wh-what work is that?” I forced myself up on my elbows. My mouth were dry as a drought month.

Fadwa Shadid stepped out of the shadows and put her pistol to my temple. My stomach got as tight as a churchgoing woman's bootlaces then. ”Not yet. First, we must determine if you are who you claim to be. We have no secrets between us,” she said. Her voice made words sound like fancy writing on a lady's stationery. She wore a scarf that covered her head, and her eyes was big and ginger-cake brown.

”I'm from New Canaan. Used to be a Believer. But my mam died of the fever and my pap were out of his mind on Poppy. There weren't nothing for me there 'cept a life of looking after brats and spinning oat-blossom bread. I weren't cut out for too much woman's work,” I said, and my words sounded fast to my ears. ”That's all I got to say on it. So if'n you're of a mind to shoot me, I reckon you should just do it now.”

Master Crawford had told me once that time weren't fixed but relative. Right then, I cottoned to what he meant, because those seconds watching Colleen Feeney's face and wondering if she'd give Fadwa the order to shoot me felt like hours. Finally, Colleen waved Fadwa back, and the cold metal left my skin.

”I like you, Addie Jones.” Colleen said, grinning.

”I'm a might relieved to hear that,” I said, letting out all my air.

She offered me some water. ”I'm going to show you what we brought you here to fix. You can still say no. Understand, now, if you say yes, you'll be one of us. There's no going back.”

”Like I said, got nothin' much to go back to, ma'am.”

They led me to a barn with a small desk and a banker's lamp. Colleen pulled open a drawer and took out a velvet box. Inside were the most unusual timepiece I ever seen. The clockface were twice the size of a regular one. It were set into a silver bracelet shaped a might like a spider. Colleen showed me how it clamped on her arm. I could see a little hinge on the side of the clockface, so I knowed it opened up like a locket.

”This is the Enigma Temporal Suspension Apparatus,” Colleen told me.

”What's it do?”

”What it did was suspend time. You aim the Enigma Apparatus at something, say, a train,” she said, allowing a smirk. ”And an energy field envelops the entire thing, slowing down time inside to a crawl. It doesn't last long, seven minutes at the outside. But it's enough for us to climb aboard and be about our business.”

”What business is that?” I asked, my eyes still on the Enigma.

”Robbing trains and airs.h.i.+ps,” Amanda Harper said, and spat out a plug of tobacco. She were short, with wheat-colored hair that hung straight to her middle back.

”We're reminders that people shouldn't feel too smug. That what you think you own, you don't. That life can change just like that.” Fadwa snapped her fingers.

Colleen opened up the watch face. There were gears upon gears, the most intricate I ever seen, more like metal lacework than parts. They'd been pretty burned and bent up. Tiny flares of light tried to catch but died before they could spark. Right in the center were a teardrop-shaped gla.s.s vial. A blue serum dripped inside.

”Pretty, isn't she?” Colleen purred.

”How do you know it's a she?” I said, echoing Agent Meeks.

”Oh, it's a she, all right. Under all those s.h.i.+ny parts is a heart of caged tears.”

”We didn't make this world, Addie. It don't play fair. But that don't mean we have to lie down,” Josephine said.

Colleen put the Enigma Apparatus in my hands, and a rush of excitement come over me when I felt all that cold metal. ”Can you fix her?” she asked.

I clicked a small piece into place. Something s.h.i.+fted inside me. ”Ma'am, I'm sure gonna try.”

Colleen clapped a hand on my shoulder - they all did - and it might as well have been a brand. I'd just become one of the Glory Girls. When night come, I rolled up a tiny note, tucked it into the beak of a mechanical pigeon, and sent it back to the chief to let him know I were in.

Master Crawford taught me about getting inside the clockworks, that you have to shut out the distractions till it's just you and the gears and you can hear the smooth click and tick, like a baby's first breath. You can give lovers their moonrises off the Argonaut Peninsula or the wonder of a seeding s.h.i.+p with its silos pumping steam into the clouds, bringing on rain. To me, ain't nothing more beautiful than the order of parts. It's a world you can make run right.

”There's some speculators what say time is as much an illusion as the Promised Land,” Master Crawford told me once, when we was working, ”and that if you want to find G.o.d, you must master time. Manipulate it. Get rid of the days and minutes, the measurements of our eventual end.”

I didn't quite cotton to what Master Crawford were saying. But that weren't unusual. ”Well, sir, I wouldn't let the Right Reverend Jackson hear you talk like that.”

”The Right Reverend Jackson don't listen to me, so I reckon I'm safe.” He winked, and in the magnifying gla.s.s, his eye was huge. ”I saw it in a vision when they dipped me into the Pitch. I hadn't even whiskers and already I knew time was but another frontier to conquer. There'll come a messenger to deliver us, to impress upon us that our minds are the machines we must dismantle and rebuild in order to grasp the infinite.”

”If'n you say so, sir. But I don't see what that has to do with Widow Jenkins's cuckoo clock.”

He patted my shoulder like a grandpappy might. ”Quite right, Miss Addie. Quite right. Now. See if you can find an instrument with the slanted tip. . . .”

We got to working again, but Master Crawford's words had set my mind a-whirring with strange new thoughts. What if there were a way to best time, to crawl inside the ticks and tocks of it and press against it with both hands, stretching out the measures? Could you slide backward and forward, undo a day that had already been, or see what was comin' around the blind curve of the future? What if there weren't nothing ahead, nothing but a darkness as thick and forever seeming as your time under the Pitch? What if there weren't no One G.o.d at all and a body were only owing to herself, and none of it - the catechisms, the baptisms, the rules to keep you safe - none of it meant a dadburned thing? That set me a-s.h.i.+ver, and I made myself say my prayers of confession and absolution silently, to remind myself that there were a One G.o.d with a plan for me and the infinite, a One G.o.d who held time in His hands, and it weren't for the likes of me to know. I prayed myself into a kind of believing again and promised myself I wouldn't think more on such thoughts. Instead, I concentrated on the fit of gears. The bird pushed through the doors of the Widow Jenkins's clock and give us a cuckoo.