Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
In this one of many possible worlds,
all for the best, or some bizarre test?
Though the days in Poseidon City were without order and without a routine, they had a bleak sameness. Owen had no goal beyond finding food, scrabbling for money, and keeping himself safe.
Never before had he lived in the shadows. He searched for a warm place to sleep, like a rabbit desperate for a cozy warren. More often than he could count, he escaped into the memory of that one night in Francesca’s warm and welcoming tent, and the memory was sweeter and more golden than the Watchmaker’s finest honey.
Each time he found even a marginally comfortable spot, though, someone else found it soon after, usually someone stronger than he was. Three of those times, Owen fought to protect his meager scrap of normalcy, but each time he failed and found himself bruised and bloody, thrown out to search for something else. The others living on the streets of Poseidon did not fight according to the rules that Golson had taught him. Confidence alone did not serve Owen well, and his confidence soon waned.
One day in the back of a crooked alley where he hoped to find a sheltered stoop, perhaps some piled old crates and shadows for a blanket, he discovered a storefront with a grime-streaked window and a hanging wooden placard. Underworld Books. The entrance was set down two steps into the ground as if the shop itself were sinking into a new subterranean location.
A book propped inside the window caught his eye, its colors faded from long exposure to sunlight, although Owen couldn’t imagine how sunlight could ever penetrate the alley’s shadows. He recognized the cover: it was his mother’s book, the illustrated volume containing chronotypes of Crown City.
He froze, astonished. After all he’d been through since fleeing Albion, the experiences that had to be categorized as ordeals rather than adventures, this bookstore, this book, shone like a bright beacon on a dark stormy night. He touched fingers against the window, unable to reach the volume on display. The grime and dust was on the inside of the glass.
Gathering his nerve, Owen brushed off his rumpled and unlaundered clothes, adjusted the porkpie cap to cover his dirty and mussed hair, and pulled open the door of Underworld Books.
Inside at a front desk he saw a tall woman with a tangle of short, gray-brown curls and ill-fitting glasses that pinched her nose. She glanced at him with the automatic welcoming expression of a shopkeeper who saw too few customers. At the moment, she was dealing with a broad-shouldered, bearlike man with a huge beard, bald pate, and rich, dark skin.
Owen did his best to put confidence into his voice. “Excuse me, could I look at the book in the window?”
“Help yourself,” said the bookseller, who turned back to finish wrapping up a package of small volumes for the bald man and deftly tied twine in perpendicular loops. “Just be sure your fingers are clean.”
Owen wiped his hands on his trousers and gave an earnest nod. “I’ll be careful. I . . . I know this book.”
He removed the volume from its display stand in the window, and with trembling fingers, hungry for a reminder of familiarity, he turned the pages. In quieter days, he had spent endless hours pouring his imagination into the intense chronotypes: the Watchmaker’s clocktower, the ornate Hall of Regulators, the Cathedral of Timekeepers, the façades of the ministry buildings, and the lovely Clockwork Angels.
But the images in this book did not show the Crown City he remembered. The plates sewn into the binding were not the deep alchemically treated photographs from his mother’s book, and certainly did not show the sights he had seen with his own eyes.
The bald, bearded man tucked the package of books under his arm and turned to go. “Thank you, Mrs. Courier. These will keep me busy on a dozen more runs.”
“It’s just Courier, Commodore, you know that. And I know I shall see you again.”
He smiled at the bookseller. “Too many books to read in this one universe, but I have plenty of time on my hands—and, thanks to you, I’ve got the choice of libraries from many possible worlds.”
On his way to the door, the bearded man gave Owen a polite nod, as if to encourage a fellow literary traveler. “That’s an excellent book, young man,” he said. “I have one of the variations myself.”
Focused on the book in his hands, Owen stared at the images, bewildered, even distraught. “This is different.” Owen looked up at the bookseller—Mrs. Courier, or just Courier. “It’s not the Crown City I know.”
She pushed her spectacles up on her nose then rubbed at the angry red mark. “Maybe it’s from a different Crown City.”
“How many Crown Cities are there?” he asked. “I’ve only heard of the one.”
“There are as many Crown Cities as there are worlds.”
He turned the page, found another unsettling image. “And how many worlds are there?”
The bearded man—the Commodore—laughed. “More than you can imagine.”
Owen frowned. “I can imagine a lot.”
Holding his package, the Commodore smiled and tipped an imaginary hat. “That explains it then.” He pushed open the door and left the bookstore.
Owen didn’t understand the explanation at all.
The bookseller jotted down a notation in her thick ledger. “It’s an import,” she said without looking up, and then quoted him a price he could not possibly have afforded, even back when he had money from the carnival. “You’re welcome to look at it . . . for now. Just be aware that it’ll be nearly impossible to replace.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose. “In fact, I don’t even know if I could find that particular world again.”
She glanced with incomprehensible meaning at a large looking glass that stood next to the bookseller’s front desk. It was unlike any mirror Owen had ever seen—taller than Courier, the size of a door, and it reflected no image. Instead, it was a single flawless piece of polished moonstone. She stroked the edge of the moonstone looking-glass. “Few people ever visit those other worlds from here.”
Nervously, Owen closed the book and placed it back on the shelf. “The Watchmaker says that this is the best of all possible worlds.”
“And how would he know that? Has he visited them all?” She clucked her tongue. “Absurd.” She marked another notation in her ledger, then closed the book. “Did you have a specific request, young man? I can find you any book from anywhere, although it might take me a while to search the alternative locations.”
“I couldn’t pay you anyway,” he said with a sigh.
“I didn’t think so.” Courier, neither surprised nor disappointed by his lack of funds, seemed content just to be compensated by seeing his love for books. “And if you did have the money, young man, I would recommend that you spend it on fresh clothes and a hot meal rather than a book . . . although some days I would rather go hungry than give up books.”
His stomach growled as if to disagree with her assessment. From what he had experienced so far, pity seemed to be a rare commodity in Poseidon City, but Courier took pity on him. She handed him a stack of flat crackers and a small bunch of grapes from a plate by her desk. “I can’t give you the book, but I can give you my lunch.”
Upon consideration, Owen appreciated that more. “I don’t know how to thank you, ma’am.”
She regarded him, seemed to see—or imagine—something there. “Maybe you’ll write a book of your own one day.”
Less than a week later, feeling a homesick need to look at the illustrated book again, even though it showed the wrong version of Crown City, Owen tried to find Underworld Books again.
Though he searched from street to street, wandering down alleys that had become all too familiar, he simply could not locate the bookshop. Either he did not remember where it was, or the shop had closed, or the entire alley had disappeared.