Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
What did I see
Fool that I was?
Heavy hearted and disillusioned, Owen left the lights of the carnival camp behind. He was unable to see where he was going, nor did he care. I’d never let myself be trapped like that!
Marriage to one’s true love? He had never thought of it as a trap! Or as foolishness. But that was what Francesca saw. She was not the person he had believed her to be. How could he have been so deluded?
Now he regretted his impulse. He shouldn’t have proposed to Francesca—it had ruined everything. He should have guarded his feelings and waited. Now it was too late to withdraw the question.
He hurried past the last line of tents, practically running. Did the other carnies consider him a naïve child as well? He had felt so comfortable with Tomio, Louisa, Golson, César Magnusson, the clowns—everyone in the carnival. They were like family to him, sharing, loving, supporting.
He remembered Francesca’s kisses, the smell of her hair, the grace of her every move, her laugh, the light in her eyes. But now he knew what Francesca thought of him and his “foolish” ideas. Such a bitter discovery.
His throat went dry as he recalled the carnival’s imaginarium, the Cage of Mythical Creatures. Had he been looking at Francesca through the distorted lenses of unrealistic love, seeing only what he wanted to see? Had she been the woman he imagined all along, or had he merely projected his fanciful illusions onto her?
When he stumbled upon a set of steamliner tracks, he followed them toward the distant glow of Crown City. Now that his own life had been so disrupted, he took comfort in any straight and perfect path. He walked along on the rough gravel of the siding, letting the cool glow of the coldfire-infused rails draw him onward. With the carnival camp well behind him, he glanced over his shoulder, paused for a long moment, then walked on again.
When Lavinia had failed to meet him on the orchard hill, he felt disappointment, but not a bottomless loss like this. Lavinia had been pleasant and pretty (or so he remembered; her features were faded like a ghost in his memory). Lavinia had not engaged his imagination, his conversation, but he saw signs of Francesca everywhere, in a whiff of night-damp grass, a whisper of wind that sounded like her voice close to his ear.
He was a naïve young man unschooled in the ways of the world, ill-equipped for what he had encountered after leaving the safety net of his small village. This was supposed to have been a great adventure, but at the moment it didn’t seem that way.
The carnies lived differently, laughed differently, played by their own rules, and Owen had danced blindly on the eggshells of misconceptions. He had thought he belonged here, and that he belonged with her.
He kept walking into the night. Moonlight washed out the stars, but he no longer looked overhead at the constellations, no longer imagined his own patterns in the stars. He saw only the ground in front of his feet.
Why had no one warned him? Surely his love for Francesca had been obvious to everyone in the carnival. He remembered the clowns and their pantomime of him at his birthday party, when the faux Francesca had blithely walked over him. Stepping on his heart.
Alas, if anyone had pointed out his foolishness and unrealistic dreams, he wouldn’t have listened anyway. Yes, Tomio and Louisa had cautioned him, he now remembered—too late—but their words had rolled off him like rain. Maybe naïve optimism was his defining force of character, and he had continued on his euphoric, hopeful path right over a cliff. . . .
We get what we deserve: the Watchmaker had said that, both as a promise and as a threat. Owen broke the rules, followed his sense of adventure, and wandered far from the plan. And now he’d been ruined for it.
Owen had not gone far along the steamliner tracks before he encountered a shadowy man. The stranger stood on the siding, as if waiting for him. Though startled, Owen was too wrapped in his own worries to be terrified. “Who are you? Why are you out here at night?”
“I could ask the same question,” said the man.
Owen recognized the lean face, the significant eyebrows, the pointed beard and mustache, and dapper businesslike clothes so unsuited to camping on the ground. “You’re the man from the steamliner car!” he blurted out.
“And you’re the boy from the steamliner car—though older now, aren’t you? A fair distance from your tiny apple-orchard village?”
“A fair distance from all of that,” Owen agreed. “I never should have left.”
“Now, that’s a foolish statement, my good friend.” The stranger’s voice dripped with acid. Owen flinched at the word foolish, but the stranger did not pause. “Since you left your humdrum home, you have seen wondrous sights, have you not? You’ve done exciting things, experienced life instead of just bland existence.”
“How would you know that?” Owen asked, then hung his head. “My heart is broken. I was spurned by my true love. And before that, I abandoned my father and my home. I lost everything through a series of bad decisions.”
The man’s laughter sounded mocking. “You’ve been brainwashed by the Stability, boy. Think what you have now that you didn’t have before. The Watchmaker gives us a steady routine, tells us all is for the best. He puts out the beautiful Clockwork Angels, but their beauty masks a cold machine inside.”
“I won’t believe that!” Owen stumbled on a rock at the side of the tracks as they trudged along. The stranger did not reach out, did not even try to steady him; instead, he let Owen catch his own balance or fall.
“People don’t understand freedom,” the man continued as Owen caught up with him. “They use the Stability as a crutch instead of walking on their own—or running.” He lowered his voice. “Or flying! You’ve been blindfolded so long you forgot how to see. I’ve watched the carnival, watched you.”
Owen noticed a striking tattoo on the back of the man’s pale, unscarred hand, a symbol like an open box containing a triangular pattern of dots. “What does that mark mean?”
The stranger looked at his hand, folded his fingers into a fist to make the tattoo dance. “Alchemists call it a precipitate. The solid from a solution. It always reminded me of blood from a stone. Or more properly, a stone made from blood—my blood.” The man toyed with his collar, adjusting an artless stickpin set with a murky diamond.
“Tomio warned me about you,” Owen said with an uncertain glance back at the lights from the carnival camp. “D’Angelo Misterioso, that was your stage name, wasn’t it? He said there’s something missing inside of you.”
The suspicious-looking stranger flashed him a dangerous grin. “There’s something missing in the Watchmaker’s society. Extreme order will kill us all.”
“Extreme freedom sounds just as dangerous.” Owen recalled the words the baker had said in the Tick Tock Tavern. “You’re a . . . a freedom extremist! I like to know that the sun is coming up the next morning.”
“You think the Watchmaker controls the sun? He’s not that powerful,” the man scoffed. “The sun comes up, and the sun goes down—then there’s all the time in between. Think about the summer solstice performance in Chronos Square, so many people—even the Watchmaker himself from his tower.” He jabbed his finger at Owen. “And do you know what’s beneath Chronos Square? The nexus of coldfire, the heart of the Watchmaker’s schemes, the power that drives the city, the machinery, the steamliners, industry! If such a thing could be disrupted . . .”
Owen was horrified. “That would shut down Crown City, send civilization back to chaos. It would be like . . . Before the Stability.”
“Well, yes, young man. Yes, it would—like resetting a clock. And we’d start with a clean slate.”
In the distance, Owen heard a whooshing sound, and the metal tracks began to shimmer with a lambent blue glow. Far away, he could see the line of sparks and the inflated zeppelin bags, could hear the distant rumble of pistons as the steamliners drifted down from the sky and alighted on the tracks. The whole train rolled toward Crown City.
“If we’re free to do whatever we want, we are responsible to no one but ourselves,” the stranger said. “Only that way can we understand the joys and obligations of true liberty. Each person should succeed because of who she is, or fail because of what he lacks, and not have some cruel Watchmaker coddle us through life.”
Owen had already experienced an awful night of collapsing dreams, and he remembered how Golson had told him to stand up for himself. “Some people want order and predictability, a life they can rely on.” The steamliner caravan was rumbling closer, and he had to continue in a shout, “Otherwise they might become lovesick fools and get hurt!”
“Strange,” the man said. “The last time we spoke, you wanted to leave all that predictability.”
Owen backed away from the tracks as the steamliner approached. He could hear the passage bell clanging. “Maybe I changed my mind. Maybe I’d like a normal life after all. I have faith in the Watchmaker!”
The man said, “I have no faith in faith. I have faith in myself and what I can accomplish.”
The front car of the steamliner shot past them, wheels thundering, the swollen airship bags rocking. Sparks flew from the steel wheels as the line of passenger gondolas and cargo cars slowed on its approach to the city.
“Without the plan, there would be anarchy!” Owen called.
“Yes . . . anarchy! And all is for the best.”
Owen suddenly realized who he was talking to. He should have seen it from the beginning.
The Anarchist stepped close to the rails and the shuddering steamliner. Barely looking behind him, as if he knew exactly what was coming and where to reach, he snagged the side of a cargo car and swung himself up.
Owen stared at the pale flash of the stranger’s face as he smiled and ducked onto the train that headed into Crown City.