Thief of Time

come up with a way of making the tamed lightning flow across glass, and we’ve found a workman who can make glass that bends slightly—”
    “We,” Igor noticed. Well, that was always the way of it. “We” discovering things meant the master asking for them and Igor thinking them up. Anyway, the flow of lightning was a family passion. With sand and chemicals and a few secrets, you could make lightning sit up and beg.
    Lady LeJean reached out with a gloved hand and touched the side of the clock.
    “This is the divider mechanism—” Jeremy began, picking up a crystalline array from the workbench.
    But her ladyship was still staring up at the clock.
    “You’ve given it a face and hands,” she said. “Why?”
    “Oh, it will function very well in the measurement of traditional time,” said Jeremy. “Glass gears throughout, of course. In theory it will never need adjusting. It will take its time from the universal tick.”
    “Ah. You found it, then?”
    “The time it takes the smallest possible thing that can happen to happen. I know it exists.”
    She looked almost impressed. “But the clock is still unfinished.”
    “There is a certain amount of trial and error,” said Jeremy. “But we will do it. Igor says there will be a big storm on Monday. That should provide the power, he says. And then,” Jeremy’s face lit up with a smile, “I see no reason why every clock in the world shouldn’t say precisely the same time!”
    Lady LeJean glanced at Igor, who bustled with renewed haste.
    “The servant is satisfactory?”
    “Oh, he grumbles a bit. But he has got a good heart. And a spare, apparently. He is amazingly skilled in all crafts, too.”
    “Yes, Igors generally are,” said the lady distantly. “They seem to have mastered the art of inheriting talents.” She snapped her fingers, and one of the trolls stepped forward and produced a couple of bags.
    “Gold and invar,” she said. “As promised.”
    “Hah, but invar will be worthless when we’ve finished the clock,” said Jeremy.
    “We’re sorry? You want more gold?”
    “No, no! You have been very generous.”
    Right , thought Igor, dusting the workbench vigorously.
    “Until next time, then,” said Lady LeJean. The trolls were already turning toward the door.
    “You’ll be here for the start?” said Jeremy, as Igor hurried into the hall to get the front door open because, whatever he thought about her ladyship, there was such a thing as tradition.
    “Possibly. But we have every confidence in you, Jeremy.”
    “Um….”
    Igor stiffened. He hadn’t heard that tone in Jeremy’s voice. In the voice of a master, it was a bad tone.
    Jeremy took a deep, nervous breath, as if contemplating some minute and difficult piece of clockwork that would, without tremendous care, unwind catastrophically and spray cogwheels across the floor.
    “Um…I was wondering, um, your ladyship, um…perhaps, um, you would like to take dinner with me, um, tonight, um…”
    Jeremy smiled. Igor had seen better smiles on a corpse.
    Lady LeJean’s expression flickered. It really did. It seemed to Igor to go from one expression to another as if they were a series of still pictures, with no perceptible movement of the features between each one. It went from her usual blankness to sudden thoughtfulness and then all the way to amazement. And then, to Igor’s own astonishment, it began to blush.
    “Why, Mr. Jeremy, I…I don’t know what to say,” her ladyship stammered, her icy composure turning into a warm puddle. “I really…I don’t know…perhaps some other time? I do have an important engagement, so glad to have met you, I must be going. Goodbye.”
    Igor stood stiffly to attention, as upright as the average Igor could manage, and almost shut the door behind her ladyship as she hurried out of the building and down the steps.
    She ended up, just for a moment, half an inch above the street. It was only for a moment, and then she drifted downward. No one except Igor, glaring balefully through the crack between door and frame, could possibly have noticed.
    He darted back into the workshop. Jeremy still stood transfixed, blushing as pinkly as her ladyship had done.
    “I’ll jutht be nipping out to get that new glathwork for the multiplier, thur,” Igor said quickly. “It thould be done by now. Yeth?”
    Jeremy spun on his heel and marched very quickly over to the workbench.
    “You do that, Igor. Thank you,” he said, his voice slightly