by Andy Gavin
Yvaine and I struggle to hoist the woozy Ben to his feet. We stagger backward, but fire is everywhere and there’s only so far we can go without char-broiling ourselves.
Rapier seems in no hurry. Ten feet away he fences with the air and clacks his jaw again.
Yvaine draws her remaining dagger, pushes the button to extend it, and holds it ready.
Rapier stops. His head tilts back and forth and he vibrates in place.
Something has finally pissed him off!
I draw my own dagger, holding it with my left hand — my right hand’s busy holding up a Founding Father.
Rapier’s head swivels back and forth between us. He moves again, sidestepping around the room. One of his booted feet toes into a burning pile of something: he stops to tug at his leg like he stepped on a giant wad of bubble gum. The flames tongue his calf, but he keeps tugging at his leg. Finally, he wrenches it free and resumes circling.
I retract my dagger and shove it back in my pocket.
“The fire!” I yell. “It sticks to him!”
I grab a heavy iron thing, so hot it burns my hand, and heave it across the room into some smoldering chairs. They shatter, throwing sparks and flames at the Tock. He dodges to the side, and is slowed as he passes through the fire, but he works past it and lunges straight at us, sword extended.
Yvaine shoves Ben in front of us.
Rapier streaks toward him, trips, and falls on his face. As he slides to the side he jingles like the broken Mickey Mouse alarm clock I had as a kid.
“He can’t harm Ben,” Yvaine says by way of explanation.
Founding Father as human shield. Can’t say I’d think of that.
“Why do strangers all want to hurt me tonight?” Ben says.
“Over here.” Yvaine pulls us back toward the anvil.
The Tock springs to his feet.
“I’ll take Ben,” I say. “Throw crap at the Tock! Anything on fire.”
Yvaine paws through the clutter. Rapier eyes her as she grabs up some burning wood and hurls it his way.
“Over here, gearhead!” I scream, drawing the dagger again and waving it.
The Tick-Tock ducks to avoid Yvaine’s projectile but swivels toward me.
A burning beam falls from the ceiling. Without looking up, he slides out of the way. Ben and I both cringe from the wall of heat — not that the room wasn’t already an inferno.
“Bucket brigades…” Ben mutters. “Organized to fight fires and prevent loss of life and property.”
The guy is strange.
I almost miss a new thrust Rapier aims in my direction. I use the dagger to knock his weapon wide. The brass blades throw blue sparks as they clang against each other.
“He be toyin’ with us!” Yvaine cries. “Waitin’ for us t’burn.”
There has to be something else to stop him, but all I see are a couple little tools and piles and piles of papers. The heat and flames have even lifted some of them into the air—
Paper. Not exactly the ultimate weapon…
Unless your enemy can’t move anything.
“Yvaine! Throw paper at him. As much of it as you can.”
The Tock thrusts again, but I duck behind Ben. Rapier stops himself, then resumes our dance.
Yvaine grabs a stack of half-printed paper — more unfinished banknotes? — and hurls it at Rapier. The bundle comes apart, filling the air. Floating embers ignite some of the pages. Inside this mess, the Tock comes to a standstill. White papers stick to him, making him look like a mummy in a paper mill explosion. His sword seems to droop under their weight. He struggles to turn his head. Between sheets, I see his free hand twitching in a small space.
“More paper!” I yell. “Ben, you too. Keep it coming.”
Yvaine and Ben hurl more bundles. The Tock pulls his free arm to his chest and gropes.
CHIME. He’s trapped and he knows it, so now he’s trying to bug out. Damned if I want him here, but I can’t let him escape. He’ll just show up again or pop back in time and do who-knows-what.
CHIME. I lunge into the paper storm, clutching Backstabber’s dagger. Maybe I can get it in there and foul up his works.
CHIME. The papers part for me, but they might as well be steel plates when the Tock-made dagger slams against them, sending a jolt all the way back along my arm.
CHIME. Yvaine chucks something flaming into the swirl of paper. Now half the stuff starts to singe and burn, adding to the fun.
CHIME. Rapier and I both discover that by wiggling and worming through the wall of shifting burning paper it’s possible to make some progress. For me this means I start to maneuver the dagger close to him. For him it means he drops his sword and snakes a hand in my direction.
CHIME. He almost gets a grip on my arm, but I jam his brother’s blade into the gears of his forearm and twist. Something metallic pops free and his hand goes limp. His mouth is locked open in a parody of rage. I notice his sword sliding down the swirling papers like a pachinko ball.
CHIME. I get the point of my blade near his chest, but the paper over the surface might as well be titanium armor.
CHIME. “Yvaine, help!” I yell as the Tock snags my wrist with his working hand. His grip is like steel, and I wince as he clamps down hard.
CHIME. The Tock and I struggle. Through the papers, I see Yvaine behind him, trying to work her own dagger into the jumble. I thrust my free hand through, scrape away at the banknotes on his chest, flip open his jacket, and uncover his dials.
CHIME. “Bastard!” Yvaine yells, working the tip of her weapon into his shoulder. The gears in his arm catch on the blade and go immobile.
CHIME. I work my hand and dagger free of the paralyzed mechanical arm. My face is close enough to his for me to get a detailed look at the fine crack in his porcelain cheek.
CHIME. “You are so out of time,” I say, using my dagger to spin the dial with the months. Yvaine darts her hand into his jacket, groping beneath, and I barely avoid slicing her fingers as I work the dagger tip under a gauge and pop the whole face free from Rapier’s mechanism.
CHIME. The spinning ruby-red whirlwind in his chest flares with the in-between, the bright firelight in the room dims, and Rapier drops into nothing.
We teeter back from the edge of his closing time-hole. Papers swirl into the space he vacated. There’s a double metallic clatter as his sword finally makes its way to the floor and the month-dial joins it.
“Chicken-hearted knave!” Yvaine steps back, something shiny in her hand.
Maybe with a bum hand, no sword, and a broken chrono-whatever, he won’t be a threat for a while. I retract the blade of my dagger, return it to Yvaine — and see what she’s holding. A gleaming brass page.
“I saw this inside his jacket,” she says. “Figured to make a habit of stealin’ ’em back.”
I smile. “I’ve got my own souvenir.” I kick the fencing sword out from under the swirling papers and snag it.
“Charlie!” Yvaine shoves me to the side, just getting us clear of another collapsing beam. It’s all very well to be free of the killer machine, but we are stuck in a burning building with no way out!
Glancing back, I see the chimney is filled with fire, so that’s hopeless. I put my arm around Yvaine and we hurry over to Ben, who’s retreated to the back wall.
The searing air cooks my lungs and threatens to boil my eyeballs. I pull Yvaine’s face to mine.
“We’re toast,” I say.
She gives me a quick kiss, and for that sweet second the fury around us fades away.
Until the building shakes, just for a moment.
“Timequake!” Yvaine whispers.
“We have to open the back door,” Ben says.
Door? I turn to find him tugging at a wall hanging of a fairytale Asian scene — which I hadn’t noticed. The whole thing falls away to reveal a small wooden door.
The first time we were here, back when Yvaine warped me out, I scanned the whole wall. No wall hanging. No door.
N
ot that I’m complaining.
Ben gets the bolt and kicks the door open, letting in a blast of cool air.
The London mist outside is pure heaven on my skin. The three of us stagger into the courtyard, where lines of people pass water buckets to throw onto the fire. They look surprised to see us.
“Where’d that door come from?” I say.
“It’s been there for decades,” Ben says. “My boss, old Mr. Palmer, likes to tell the story about the fat man who showed up one day and paid him a fortune in gold just to install it — no reason given or asked.”
Of course, until that timequake, no one told that story. Not only did adding the door, well, add the door, but the resulting timequake gave everyone memories to match.
I look back at the church entrance, filled now with a solid sheet of flame.
Thanks, Dad! I’ll consider that a belated apology.
Chapter Thirty-Five:
Newgate
London, Spring, 1725
OF COURSE, THERE’S STILL THE ANGRY MOB TO CONTEND WITH.
Ben tries to defend us, but his protestations fall on deaf ears. They’re ripe for a game of beat-the-robbers. Despite a thorough job of groping and punching, they don’t notice Rapier’s sword tucked in my arms. Normals can’t see travelers’ weapons.
Come morning, Yvaine and I are hauled off, bruised and battered, in a manure cart. I manage to raise my head — before it’s knocked back down — to take in a crowded square in front of a fortress of a building.
The mob is thickest as we pass the stocks. Back as a kid, visiting historical sites with my mom, it was fun to pretend to be locked between the wooden boards. But here it isn’t just a bunch of laughing twelve-year-olds doing the jeering. Here the rabble pelts us with things I wouldn’t touch if you paid me — like putrefying cats.
But we roll right past, through an imposing gate into a foul-smelling courtyard.
“Welcome t’Newgate Prison,” Yvaine whispers as the guards come for us.
As a budding connoisseur of correctional institutions, I have to say the prison back in Philadelphia was paradise compared to what the inmates here refer to as The King’s Head Inn.
On the bright side, the booking process is perfunctory and Yvaine and I aren’t separated.
But we are chained. Thick black Amistad-style manacles on legs and wrists. It could be worse, though. They go through our possessions — again — without touching my new sword, our metallic page, or Yvaine’s daggers.
After that, we’re pretty much tossed through the door into hell.
The Newgate felony ward, as I learn it’s called, is a warren of crowded corridors and doorless cells. It all smells like shit, and a whole lot of it since there are no bathrooms. Our bare feet are a sticky brown — best not to touch the scrapes and cuts on my face. Plus several fellow prisoners look like they should be home with the flu.
“Just say no to typhus,” I whisper.
Yvaine leans against me. “If we get some chink, we must needs bribe the guards t’remove the irons.”
“Money? In here?”
“For food and gin.”
“They don’t give us food?” Not that I was looking forward to the local fare, but since I’ve half starved a couple times of late, I’ll take my chances with weevils and gruel.
“If we gets word to Carrot, maybe he’ll sneak us some,” she says. “If not, we be right skinny by the time we can travel.”
“I think we have ten days to go.”
She nods. “Trial be before then but not hangin’ day.”
“Maybe we can get some kind of message to Sophie and my dad.”
Yvaine scowls.
“Hey, he broke his precious rules to add that door back at the church!”
“I appreciates that, Charlie. But dinna go askin’ me to stitch him a quilt just yet.”
The next morning I wake to find Yvaine cursing and kicking at a scrawny, scabrous guy who’s groping at her underwear-clad legs.
A good whack across the head with my manacles sends him scurrying. And pathetic as he is, he must be richer than us, because he isn’t in chains.
“I had it under control,” Yvaine says.
“Can’t a fellow protect his girl?”
She sighs and settles next to me. It would be a pleasant moment if not for the ambience.
We try to stand, but it isn’t easy. We brace against each other and worm ourselves up the wall.
“See?” I say. “Teamwork.”
“If I get too used t’it, I’ll go soft,” she says.
I kiss her, which hurts given my split lip.
Some of our fellow prisoners wander around like zombies. Others huddle in groups, shooting craps, and quite a few drink from skanky mugs. It’s kind of like the most sordid rave imaginable. In one room, we find a disgusting man and a suitably disgusting girl rutting away, right on the floor. She doesn’t look happy but she isn’t complaining.
“Should we help her?” I ask Yvaine.
“She probably be tryin’ t’plead the belly.”
“What’s that mean?”
“They dinna hang women that be with child.”
“And you worry about going soft?”
We settle in the visiting gallery, which is hot and loud but has fresher air and more light than below. The scene is chaotic. A long row of prison bars divides the room. It reminds me of that place at the airport where people wait to greet family coming off the plane, only here nobody gets picked up and taken home.
I use the delay to translate the page we stole from Rapier. Working the formula without pen and paper isn’t easy, and I have to scratch the Latin in the grime on the prison floor. There are just enough words I recognize to tell it’s a treatise on Benjamin Franklin, including a detailed timeline of his whereabouts and his impact on the future. The Regulator says, presentia est necessarius secundum 1765 Anno Domini: presence necessary after 1765 AD.
Tell me something I don’t know.
“Rapier’s to-do list in a nutshell.”
“Whose side this Regulator be on?”
I shrug. “Dad sure has a man-crush on him.”
“What’s that mean?” she asks.
“It’s when—”
Her face lights up. “There be Carrot!” She tucks away the page and gets to her feet.
Lost in cipher-land, I forgot we were in the visiting galley.
“I heared they catched some folk the other night,” Carrot says from the ‘free’ side after we shoulder our way over to him.
Yvaine gives him an awkward hug through the bars.
“Thanks for coming,” I say.
“Brought you this.” He passes us a loaf of bread.
I try not to think about what’s on my hands as we tear into it.
“It be stuffed with a bit of wedge,” Carrot says.
Yvaine digs through the bread until she finds several small coins.
“We owes you again,” she says.
“Just returnin’ the favor, but I wishes I ’ad Donnie’s salt t’buy off your trial. What ’appened to ’im and Stump?”
“They climbed up the chimney after you left,” Yvaine says.
Carrot nods. “I not ’eared from them, but with that much rum cole I bets they split town.”
I watch one of the guards let another pair of officers out through the gate, which gives me an idea.
“Think you could bring me a guard’s uniform?” I ask Carrot.
“Mebbe. But ain’t you be on the short side for a warden?”
I’m not so sure. Yvaine said a long time ago, people see what they expect in us, and the Tick-Tocks sure work that angle.
“See if you can, Carrot,” Yvaine says. “You heared any word on Nancy?”
He nods, his face all smile. “She done turned up this mornin’ lookin’ for coin. She ’ad the little chit with ’er.”
“Blessed virgin!” Yvaine stands on her tiptoes and tries to hug Carrot again. “He be all right?”
“Billy’s righ
t as rain. I’d of brought ’im but I didn’t know you be ’ere for sure.”
“Bring ’im, please.” A tear streaks her dirt-caked face.
The first thing we do after Carrot leaves is find the right guard to buy off our chains.
“I feel light as a butterfly,” I say, massaging my sore wrists.
“We have a wee bit o’money left for ale,” she says.
“What about food?”
“We’ll die of thirst first,” she says, grinning. “But that was a clever bit about the uniform.”
She leads me to one of the grubby tavern areas.
“We make of it what we will,” I say.
“Exactly,” she says, handing me a mug of beer. “Dinna worry, Billy be found and Ben be alive. And it takes ’em more than a week t’hang folk.”
We toast the slow judicial process.
People here mostly leave us alone because of our time traveler vibe — ahem, because of causal-dampening — but I chase some scumbags out of a rank cell for a little privacy.
We’re too wired to sleep just yet, although we probably should. Instead, I check for lookie-loos and we make a go at pleading the belly.
The Justice Hall is packed for our trial, our case having drawn no small amount of notoriety.
The white-wigged advocates give speeches, witnesses are interviewed, including the apprentice boy and Ben Franklin, and the jury deliberates.
All in about an hour.
“Do you find the prisoners guilty or not guilty?” asks a man the judge calls the recorder.
“Guilty,” the foreman says with token weightiness.
It’s hard to remain unemotional when you’re given a capital verdict.
Guards — Yvaine calls them turnkeys — hustle us from the room. Ben Franklin is in the hall outside. He uses a shilling to buy a few minutes from our keepers.
“They’ll send us up at Tyburn,” Yvaine says. “Will you take Billy?”
“I tried to plead your case,” Ben says.
He really did. His testimony spun the truth about as far in our favor as was possible, sticking more or less to the facts.