Lune smiled. The sun might have risen in that small portico, by the warmth it gave him. And Irrith, too, was beaming at him with undisguised gratitude. This place keeps too many secrets, Galen thought, heaving an inward sigh of relief. I am glad to unveil at least one of them.
“I will draft an announcement,” Lune said. “In the meantime, Irrith, you might as well see what you came for. Galen, if you would be so kind as to show her the Calendar Room? I shall be in my chambers.” With a swirl of rich skirts, she was gone.
Irrith wasn’t entirely certain how pleased she was to see the pale figure of the Queen depart, leaving her with two crazy dwarves, one unfriendly-looking puck, and a very youthful Prince. But Galen stepped forward, all courtesy, to lift her to her feet, and though she didn’t physically need the aid, she accepted it gladly.
“This way,” the Prince said, and left the pillars for the broader space of the workshop beyond.
Remembering her previous experience, Irrith prodded the gap between the pillars with one finger. It encountered a familiar wall. “Er—Lord Galen—”
He turned, saw her still there, and flushed enchantingly. “Ah. Yes.” Galen came back and extended one hand, courteous as a dance. Irrith took it, and he led her into the chamber.
Peculiar equipment and half-finished projects crowded the space. Not just clocks and watches, either: she spotted the cousin of one of the objects Tom Toggin had brought to the Vale, that Galen had called an armillary sphere. This one, however, had far too many rings, set at cockeyed angles to one another, as if someone had tried to wrench the heavenly circuits they represented into a more useful configuration.
Perhaps they had. Like everything else that occupied the Queen’s attention nowadays, Irrith guessed this had to do with the return of the comet.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing past the armillary sphere to something even more peculiar.
“An orrery.” The answer came from the blond-bearded dwarf, who appeared to have discarded all animosity once the Queen was done with Irrith. His red-bearded friend, unfortunately, seemed less easily won over.
Irrith peered at the object. It had gears like a clock, and thin arms that held balls of various sizes. “And an orrery is…”
“A model of the heavens. It is more useful than an armillary sphere.” He came over to demonstrate, cranking the arms around so they circled the gold ball in the centre. Irrith guessed that represented the sun, but that was where her comprehension ended.
The dwarf smiled when she looked at him, though it was hard to find behind the beard. “I am Wilhas von das Ticken. This is my brother Niklas.” Beard or no beard, it was easy to tell when the other dwarf scowled.
Well, if he didn’t like her, she might as well go directly to the question she really wanted answered. Pointing at the door with the sundial on it, Irrith said, “So what’s that?”
Galen cleared his throat and said, “Er, yes. Dame Irrith—I don’t know what news reaches you out in the Vale, but perhaps you recall the measures taken a few years ago, to correct the calendar?” Irrith nodded. Berkshire mortals were still confused by it, checking their almanacs to see which fairs and festivals were being held on the same date as before, and which ones on the same day, regardless of the calendar. “Parliament took great pains to make sure everyone understood that this was merely a change of style, to correct for the inaccuracies that had accumulated through the centuries, and that although September second, 1752, would be followed by September fourteenth, they would not lose any genuine time.”
Wilhas snickered quietly into his beard.
Grinning a little himself, Galen said, “That… wasn’t entirely true.”
Irrith’s eyes went to the heavy door, with the sundial nailed to its surface. “So that…”
“Is the Calendar Room,” the Prince said. “It contains within it the eleven days skipped over when the adjustment occurred. All of the eleven days: those lost by every man, woman, and child in the whole of Great Britain.”
The sprite hadn’t the faintest clue how many mortals dwelt in the kingdom, but even her most inadequate guess was staggering. “How much time is in there?”
“The von das Tickens could tell you,” Galen said. “I don’t bother to keep count. More than the Onyx Court is ever likely to use, even given the way the room operates. Once the door is closed, it won’t open again until eleven days later—from the perspective of one standing outside. Within the chamber, however, it’s a different matter. If you spend one day inside, you will come out eleven days later. If you spend fourteen years inside, you will still come out eleven days later.”
When Irrith stared at him, he shrugged, with an embarrassed grin. “No, I can’t tell you how it works. This was made before I came to the Onyx Hall. You can ask Wilhas if you like, but I fear the explanation would make your head spin.”
The dwarf answered with his own cheerful shrug. “Ve could go inside and shut the door. I am sure that vith enough time, I could make her understand.”
By the time Irrith realised she was moving, she’d already drifted several paces toward the door. “May—may I see?”
Galen bowed and swung the door open. One half-eager, half-reluctant step at a time, Irrith rounded the obstacle of his body and looked into the room.
And saw the clock.
Movement and stillness: somehow both at once. Irrith knew without question that the pendulum was swinging in a broad arc across the floor, though its motion was so slow as to be imperceptible. She stared at it, unblinking, incapable of blinking, because the stone describing that arc was too large to look away from, inescapable, oppressive in its weight, as if she faced a rough-hewn chunk of Time itself—
Then something else filled her vision, because Galen had taken her by the shoulders and wrenched her around, putting the clock behind her. His face was so young—his whole life less than an eyeblink in the great duration of the universe, less than the thought of an eyeblink. Mortal. Ephemeral. That was how Irrith felt, and if she was ephemeral, then what did that make him?
The Prince was talking. Words. She focused on them. “—strikes most people like that, at first,” he was saying. “You become accustomed, eventually. As much as anyone can. I cannot say I have. Not entirely.”
Words. Tongue, and lips, and air. “That weight—”
“Twenty-five tons, or so they tell me. But it isn’t the physical burden you feel. The clock ticks once a day, and when it does… it’s like hearing the heartbeat of the Earth itself.”
She’d heard it, when they opened the door and the puck came out. Irrith might be a faerie, and immortal, but the Earth was far older than she. No wonder that sight, that sound, made her feel like a mayfly.
“Now you understand one of the limitations of the room,” Galen said ruefully. “Even faeries don’t find it comfortable. Mortals…” His eyes darkened with something deeper than fear. “But it gives us more time, and so we use it.”
His hands were still on her shoulders. Irrith suspected Galen was, in the ordinary way of things, a gentleman much concerned with propriety, but he seemed to have forgotten such things in the urgency of distracting her from the clock. The two points of warmth, seeping through her coat and shirt, were comforting against the chill that had sunk into her bones.