“Those soldiers keep gawking at me. I’m staying in here.” She settled across from him, folding her arms over her chest as she sank low into the seat. Her blond braid fell forward when she ducked her head toward the window.
“I’m sure they don’t mean any harm,” Danny tried, but his words were met with a snort.
He shared what the captain had told him—everything he could remember, anyway—and they sat in silence until the engines revved. Danny gripped his knees, only slightly comforted by the hard ridge of the cog against his palm.
Daphne sat upright. “Here we go.”
The engines vibrated around them like the muscles of an animal before it took off running. With a heaving push and the hiss of released gas, the contraption lifted itself from the ground and steadily climbed into the open air.
Danny didn’t see the dwindling shapes of his parents and Cassie below. He was too busy keeping his eyes shut tight and whispering curses whenever the airship rattled or made an unfamiliar sound.
“Danny, you have to see this!”
Reluctantly, he peered out the window and gasped. London looked like a neighborhood of dollhouses.
Unable to look for long without his stomach revolting, Danny spread out on the bench and put his cap over his eyes. If he tried to block everything out, maybe he would be able to survive the next ten hours.
He only lasted ten minutes before he asked, “Can you see India yet?”
Daphne laughed. He had never heard her laugh before. It was strangely attractive, low and full-bodied. “Not yet.”
Maybe distracting himself would work better. “Did you already say goodbye to your family?”
He heard Daphne shift. “I said goodbye to her yesterday.”
Danny lifted his cap to look at her, but Daphne was still staring out the window. All he could see now was a mantle of gray as they passed through clouds.
“Who?”
“My mother.”
Danny’s fingers twitched when he remembered that she was in an asylum. Shame curled low in his stomach as he recalled what had driven Daphne to steal Colton’s central cog.
“You’ve no one else?”
She shook her head. “Just an aunt on my mother’s side, but she’s in Austria. They were never close, and I haven’t seen her since my father passed.”
“I’m sorry.”
Daphne shrugged.
Danny studied her profile in the gray light. Sitting up, he ran a hand over his hair. “May I ask you something?”
“You may. Not certain if I’ll answer, though.”
He tapped the corner of his eye. “Why do you have that tattoo?”
She finally turned to look at him. Her pale gaze was unnerving, but Danny didn’t look away. “It’s nothing special.” She touched the diamond-shaped mark. “Just a reminder.”
Danny crossed his legs, wondering how to respond, but the airship bumped over a pocket of wind and he groaned. He spent the next several minutes with his eyes closed, teeth clenched, trying to imagine himself back in Colton’s tower. But that only brought a different kind of pain.
The door opened and closed. He couldn’t blame Daphne for risking perverse soldiers to get away from him, so he was surprised when she returned with a glass of something vaguely yellow.
“It’s ginger water. It’ll help your stomach.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Taking small sips, he felt like a child in the care of a no-nonsense governess. Feeling slightly better now that the turbulence had passed, he asked, “Do you have any theories about the fallen towers?”
“Just ones that don’t make sense. Why? Do you?”
“Not really.” He glanced at the cog, then slipped it back in his pocket. Daphne noticed but said nothing. “Only something exceptionally powerful would be able to keep time running without a tower. After all, that’s why the new Maldon tower didn’t work. There was no spirit to make it run.”
Daphne frowned. “I’ve always wondered about that. Why are the spirits even necessary? I know the towers need guardians, but how did the spirits come to be in the first place? What makes them so powerful that they can influence time?”
“You know there’s scads of books on that. We had to take Time Theory for four bloody years.”
“I know. But no one’s found answers.” Daphne tapped a finger against her knee. This close, Danny realized that she smelled like bergamot. “Do you believe in the Gaian gods?”
“Er. Not really. But I never believed in clock spirits, either, and then I met Colton.”
“Some people think the god of time is a fabrication. Something to justify using the towers.”
Danny shrugged. He’d heard it all before. The creator of time, Chronos, had given Aetas the power to control it. Aetas was supposed to keep track of time while Chronos oversaw the world, but when Aetas shared the power with humans, Chronos killed him.
“The point being?” Danny asked.
“They say time shattered when Aetas died, and clock towers and their spirits were left to take over the responsibility. If something truly powerful is making time continue despite the fallen Indian towers … it could have to do with the gods themselves.”
Danny gave her an incredulous smile. “Do you really believe that?”
“It’s just a theory,” Daphne mumbled.
“I suppose.”
They retreated into their private thoughts, Danny watching the liquid in his glass ripple.
“Not to disprove your theory,” he said a moment later, “but it’s humans destroying the towers, not vengeful deities. What could give humans the power to restore time?”
“I don’t know.” Her eyes trailed back to the pocket where he kept the cog. “What could give humans the power to stop it?”
The tower was quiet. Well, not entirely; it could never be truly quiet. Ticks reverberated through the floorboards, the pendulum swung in lazy arcs through the air like the beating of a bird’s wings, and gears slowly turned with a low and methodical hum. The orchestra of time.
Colton sat at the window of the clock room, gazing out at Enfield. The sun was shining in full force, drenching the streets, the roofs, and the people passing by.
It had been one day since Danny left.
Colton didn’t get bored easily. He loved to watch people, and now, thanks to Danny, he could even go outside and talk to them. But today he only sat and stared. His eyes followed a couple walking down the street, but he didn’t listen in, or draw closer to look.
The way his senses worked was vastly different from the way Danny’s did, as Colton had found out after laughing at a conversation between two brothers.
“What’s so funny?” Danny had asked.
“Didn’t you hear the joke?”
Danny had peered down at them. Colton loved the way the sunlight had brightened his face, turning his green eyes two shades lighter. “How can I when I’m all the way up here?” He’d glanced suspiciously at Colton. “How far can you hear, exactly?”
“In Enfield? Everywhere.”
“And … your vision works the same way, I take it?”
“A girl is playing with a red ball a few streets down. You can go check, if you like.”
“No, I believe you.” Danny had grown pale. “Damn, that’s unnerving.”
Colton wasn’t sure why it was unnerving. It gave him something to pass the time, of which he had an eternity.