1 - GIDEON

Content note: This story contains strong language, supernatural peril involving stolen time, brief fantasy violence, discussion of a past injury, and sensual romantic content.

1 - GIDEON

The insufferable mechanical bird arrived before Dorothy did.

I was in the western study reviewing an estate ledger from the previous spring when a familiar metallic scratching sounded against the window.

I ignored her until a brass claw squealed down the glass.

“You have an entrance, Rosie.”

I lowered my pen. She had no intention of being ignored.

Rosie stood on the other side of the glass with her brass wings folded against her body and a small silver object clamped in her beak.

“You are perfectly capable of using the door.”

She tapped the window once more.

There were moments when I regretted giving the creatures enough autonomy to develop opinions. This was one of them.

I rose from the desk and opened the window. Rosie immediately flew past me, disturbing one of the gold curtains before landing on the corner of my desk.

She deposited the object directly on top of the ledger I had been reading.

A folding magnifier made of pure silver.

It was well used and clearly loved.

The object had been repaired once, perhaps twice. A hairline scratch marked the handle. The glass itself was beautiful.

It was also not mine.

I stared at the bird.

“Where did you get this?”

She inspected a perfectly clean wing. An evasive habit she had unfortunately learned from the family.

I picked up the magnifier.

“You will return it.”

Rosie clicked her beak.

“Yes, you will, and no, I do not care whether you found the owner interesting.”

Her head tilted.

Then every clock in the western study stopped.

I became still, but the silence lasted less than a second.

Then the clocks resumed in sequence.

A small astronomical clock hesitated before continuing three seconds behind the others.

That was a new irregularity.

The internal mechanism beneath my suit answered with a faint click, then settled.

I crossed the room to the wall regulator, mounted between portraits of two relatives who had disliked one another enough to request separate mausoleums. I opened its beveled quartz door.

The pendulum cleared its housing cleanly. The escapement kept an even beat.

Behind me, another brass bird chirped.

“I am aware of the discrepancies. The clocks do not require your commentary.”

I closed the case with an audible sigh.

The western study had been losing a few seconds all week.

Most of our clocks were stubborn. They ran a little fast or a little slow and had done so for years. Stopping without reason was new.

Dysmas Manor had been built around temporal machinery long before my birth, then enlarged by relatives whose ambitions exceeded their patience for maintenance.

My great-grandfather had added a massive gilded library.

Grandmother had commissioned a large conservatory clock.

My great-aunt Euphelia had organized her letters according to how she felt about the people who wrote them.

She called this emotional chronology. Unfortunately, her opinion of most people changed a few times a year.

I noted the stopped clocks. Adjusting them again had done very little good.

I returned to my desk.

The magnifier remained beside the ledger.

I turned it once between my fingers.

“You stole this magnifier today?”

Rosie tilted her head.

I frowned as she hopped toward the correspondence. I moved the papers out of reach before she perforated another sheet.

“You forfeited unsupervised access to documents after the incident with Princess Aquila!”

A knock sounded against the study door.

“Yes, you may enter.”

Laurus stepped inside.

His silver uniform remained immaculate despite the cold rain outside.

A wave in his carefully combed hair had escaped above one ear; everything else about him was determined to be severe.

Laurus was not yet thirty. He approached his duties as though he had personally served every generation of Dysmas before mine.

He carried an ornate tray containing tea, three shortbread biscuits, and a small silver pot of honey.

I examined the tray.

“Three biscuits?”

Laurus stopped. His expression did not change.

“Three, sir.”

“Laurus, dear, there are normally four. Did something happen to the fourth?”

“Four left the kitchen, sir.”

“Then we have suffered a loss in transit,” I said.

Rosie chirped.

Crumbs clung to the joints of Rosie’s beak.

Laurus’s jaw tightened.

“Ah, that’s how it is,” he said.

Rosie flew to the chandelier, beyond the reach of both correction and good manners.

“You cannot even eat, Rosie. Must you deprive others purely for recreation?”

I moved to pick up the scattered crumbs, but Laurus stepped in front of me.

“Please, Mr. Dysmas, allow me.”

I stepped aside. Rosie remained under supervision.

When my beloved steward was finished, he put the tray down with refined elegance.

“I will inform the kitchen that its staff has been exonerated.”

“Thank you.”

He turned.

“Laurus, one moment, please.”

He stopped as I spoke.

“Can you believe it? The clocks have done it again.”

His discipline remained intact.

“I had hoped,” he said carefully, “that the west corridor’s most recent episode was the result of your father forgetting to reset the service clock.”

“That does not seem to be the case. Tell me if it happens again, before anyone corrects the clock.”

Laurus cleared his throat.

“Yes, I will make sure to report anything strange. Will there be anything else, sir?”

“Ah, yes. Miss Lilou arrives tomorrow.”

“That’s right, sir.”

“See that her workspace is properly prepared.”

Rosie flew down to my shoulder. I took a bite of a shortbread biscuit.

“The primary archive worktable has been prepared and inspected.”

“Excellent,” I said, swallowing the biscuit.

“Compliments to the baker once more. These are phenomenal, as usual.”

“Yes, sir.”

When he left, I should have returned to my work. I found myself examining the magnifier again. A small maker’s mark sat near the hinge.

Tacitran. Practical construction. No ornament beyond what the instrument required. Its owner cared more about function than display.

Dorothy Lilou.

I had reviewed her contract three times, her credentials considerably more, and contacted her references.

Of the four conservators recommended by the Crown Archives, she had the least experience with aristocratic collections.

She had also been the only one to question the collection rather than compliment it.

Six questions had accompanied her preliminary assessment.

The fourth had interested me most.

When conflicting dates appear within a magical collection, what procedure does House Dysmas currently use to determine whether the discrepancy is clerical, historical, or supernatural?

Beneath it, she had added:

I would prefer to investigate a discrepancy before correcting it, even if the existing explanation has been accepted for generations.

Most applicants had assured me they would respect the family’s judgment. Miss Lilou appeared prepared to question it. I found that considerably more promising.

I approved her contract that afternoon.

The clock above the door struck three.

The desk clock rang.

Followed by the mantel clock.

None agreed on the exact second.

I had been meaning to correct the cadence for fourteen years.

Rosie abruptly lifted her head.

She flew toward the window.

I caught her before she escaped.

“No. No, no.”

She struggled indignantly inside my mechanical hand.

“You will not steal something else merely because the first theft entertained you.”

Rosie chirped.

Her attention remained fixed beyond the glass.

I followed her gaze.

A carriage had stopped near the estate road.

Someone stood at the gate.

I recognized Dorothy from the portrait attached to her Crown recommendation.

She stared openly at the house, without the practiced indifference a Galourian would have considered good manners.

She had arrived a day early. One of the public carriages waited farther down the road. Dorothy stood there with a stack of papers tucked beneath one arm.

Dysmas Manor was not subtle.

My great-grandfather had considered restraint and humility evidence of weak ambition.

Massive, ornate, gilded observatories rose between dark slate and crystal roofs. Clock towers intersected filigreed balconies and quartz glass. Brass mechanisms turned openly along the western facade while crystalline panes captured the lowering sun and fractured it into pale rainbows.

The estate had enough windows to make privacy largely theoretical.

Dorothy unfolded one of the papers beneath her arm.

She glanced at it.

Then at the gate.

Then at the manor again.

Rosie twisted violently in my hand.

I released her.

She shot through the window.

“Rosie!”

The rebellious bird ignored me.

Dorothy looked up as Rosie swooped toward her.

One of the tower clocks began chiming.

Four strikes.

I frowned. It was seventeen minutes past three.

The mechanism beneath my suit tightened.

Not painfully but enough to catch my attention.

I turned toward the clock on my desk.

Three seventeen!

The tower should not have struck at all.

When I peeked through the window again, Dorothy was staring upward.

Anyone else might have ignored the discrepancy.

Her head tilted. Then her face turned toward the western windows. Toward me.

Our eyes could not possibly have met across that distance.

Still, she lifted one hand. A greeting.

I stepped away from the window before I could embarrass myself by waving back.

Rosie flew directly across my line of sight.

Dorothy’s magnifier rested beside the ledger.

Tomorrow at nine, she would enter my archive.

She would ask questions.

She would examine records generations of my family had learned not to examine closely.

And if the manor had already begun losing time—

Maybe Dorothy Lilou would notice that too.