All I could do was watch.
His hands moved with a precision I’d never seen before. One tool, then another, then a third, one slotted into a different point, turned at a specific angle. No hesitation. No guessing.
This Timekeeper knewexactlywhat he was doing—and then the spinning stopped.
The tiny pieces we’d disrupted stopped trying to assemble. They just…stopped for a second.
Silence in the room.
I feared the whole world could hear my heart slamming against my ribcage—but it didn’t last long. In the next breath, the hand on the door clock jumped straight to twelve. The lock disengaged with that heavy clunk, and the door swung open with a creak.
Just like that.
The Timekeeper stood up. We all moved back on instinct as he slowly put those metal tools back into the pockets of his apron, then raised his head and looked at us.
A face full of deep lines and sharp angles. Brown eyes that were…calm. His beard was trimmed close to his jaw, and there were black stains on his fingers, and…
A sigh fromourside of the room.
Silas wassmiling.
“Master Talik,” he said, and his relief was evident.
He knew the Timekeeper by name. A name I was eleven-hours certain I’d heard before (if only I could remember where.)
The man looked at Silas, at his cane. At his pale face and shaking hands, and the expression on his face changed, if only for a flash. He looked relieved.
“I would ask you why in Time’s Truth you’re underneath the Labyrinth, but something tells me the answer isn’t short.”
My mouth opened and closed. I looked at the others, at March, and they were all as confused as I was.
“We…they…they came for me,” Silas said. “It’s not their fault.”
“Is that so,” said the Timekeeper without missing a beat, and he didn’t move from his place at all as he looked at us, but I wasn’t so terrified anymore. Still plenty, just not as much. Because if Silas was talking to him this way…
“And which one of you was smart enough to touch clocks in a Horologist’s study?” The Timekeeper crossed his arms in front of his chest, raised his gray brows. We all looked at Russ instinctively, but nobody said anything. Not that the man gave us a chance before he continued, “Twenty years I’ve worked in this Labyrinth, kept these old parts running. Do you have any idea what would have happened if the game had continued?”
“The door would have eventually opened,” Silas said—mutteredthe words as he lowered his head a little, as if he was now embarrassed.
What in the world was going on here?
“It would have—absolutely,” said the Timekeeper. “It would also require Sparetime to do that. Andwheredo you think the game would have extracted the Sparetime from, when the Trials aren’t active and it has no other source of energy?”
Silas’s mouth opened and closed.
Blood rushed to my cheeks as I looked at the door, at March, at Seth still half lying on the table.
Holy Hour, the door would have killed us when it opened. It would have taken all the time out of us as energy to do so.
It would havekilledus.
And Seth’s outburst had saved us.
“We didn’t—” Silas started, but the Timekeeper didn’t want to hear it.
“Of course you didn’t. Which is why you’re notsupposedto be here at all.” A sigh. A hard squeeze of his eyes. “Follow me, the lot of you. And don’t say a word until we’re out.”
With that, the Timekeeper went for the door—the door that would lead us out. The same door we’d been waiting to open, never knowing what it would do to us when it did.
