Clockwork Angels by Anderson Kevin J. & Peart Neil

Author:Anderson, Kevin J. & Peart, Neil [Anderson, Kevin J. & Peart, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Steampunk, General, Fantasy, Music, Adventure, Fiction, Adult
ISBN: 9781770411210
Amazon: 1491523239
Goodreads: 13592828
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2012-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

INTERLUDE

The Watchmaker

The Watchmaker has time up his sleeve

In the well-lit workroom chamber in his clocktower, the Watchmaker surveyed the tiny components spread out on the table. He alone understood the intricacies and precision required to keep the perfect machinery in motion.

Sloppy work was the work of chaos, and he assembled the components of his devices—of his world—as if life itself depended on his attention and care. Indeed, sometimes it did. The Stability depended on him. All of Albion depended on him.

He was proud of his accomplishments, and he rewarded his alchemist-priests. His Regulators maintained order in every aspect of daily life. Everything worked exactly as it should, according to plan. He saw that it was good, but a truly loving Watchmaker could not grow complacent.

A wide band of leather circled his thin white hair, mounting a complex arrangement of lenses on his brow. The lenses were rimmed discs of polished crystal, some colorless, some ruby, sapphire, or amber. They sparkled in the glare of coldfire globes floating above the bench. Pairs of short copper cylinders held compound lenses for higher magnification.

With his right hand, the Watchmaker lowered a pair of eyepieces. Simultaneously, with the same precise and steady motion, his left hand selected a miniature tool from the bench.

His fingers moved unerringly, his concentration complete, as he guided the tool into the heart of the complicated mechanism. The device was a fist-sized, egg-shaped armature of machined gold that surrounded a complexity of tiny gears and jewel bearings. Precision diamonds, faceted redfire opals from the distant mines in Atlantis. A bubble of coldfire glowed at the mechanism’s heart.

“Wheels within wheels,” he muttered, exactly the way he perceived his clockwork universe, and the personal world he had created within it.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Facing away from him in the tower chamber, the four Clockwork Angels stood in their alcoves, full of beauty and majesty. He adored them—they were the closest things to perfection he had ever created. Light. Sea. Sky. Land. One Angel to represent each of the four elements.

And only he controlled the fifth element. Life.

More than a hundred years after he had learned how to create gold, the gold itself had lost its interest for him. He had controlled its supply, and thus its value, but a now-commonplace yellow metal was no longer “precious” to the Watchmaker. Even coldfire—a simple mixture of acids, bases, and catalysts that could evoke energy out of silica, the basest substance—had lost its luminescence.

The Watchmaker’s dreams were grander than that. With even rarer elements—moonstone, sunstone, bloodstone, dreamstone— he continued his quest for the essential presence of existence, the bio-alchemical force that was the heart of everything and everyone. The animating force, the fifth element—the quintessence.

The Watchmaker raised his right hand with smooth motion to select a different pair of lenses, red ones, to see deeper into the spectrum. In the same moment, his left hand reached out to select a tiny file from the array of miniature tools. He leaned closer to the device and lovingly filed smooth the edges of tiny gear teeth in the escapement.

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