A Watchmaker in Ashfall

By the time the ash began to come down in earnest, Tomas Vale had already taken apart two watches, repaired one, and insulted three bad springs. The ash drifted past his window in warm, pale veils, settling on the sill where his kettle hissed over a blue flame. Below his shop, the lower market was waking: a woman called out for pepper buns, a boy dragged a crate of lemons with one crooked wheel, and somewhere in the stairwell a radio was arguing with itself at full volume. Tomas liked mornings best when the city sounded as if it had not yet decided what sort of trouble it intended to become. He leaned over his bench, squinting through a loupe at a tiny escapement, and muttered to the watch as though it were a difficult witness. It was a bad habit, but a useful one. Watches, unlike people, sometimes admitted when they were broken.

The bell over the shop door gave one dry chime. Inspector Elian Hart came in with ash on his coat and a sealed tin under his arm. He had the same expression he always wore when he expected Tomas to be annoying and was prepared to be right about it. Tomas did not look up. He turned the screwdriver another fraction, listened to the soft click of metal settling, and said, without greeting, that if Hart had come for a free opinion, he would have to wait for the cheap hour.

Hart dropped the tin on the counter. It made a small, final sound. —You say that like your hours have a mercy rate.

—My hours do. My patience does not.

—Good. Then you’ll be paid in facts instead of gratitude.

Tomas finally looked up. —That is a poor currency. It spends badly and no one likes to count it.

Hart’s mouth twitched, which was as close as he came to laughing before noon. He opened the tin and slid out a pocket watch wrapped in a strip of evidence cloth. The case was brass, tooled plain on the outside, polished by years of thumb and coat pocket. Not flashy. Not cheap. The sort of watch a courier would carry because time mattered to anyone who crossed the city by stair and landing.

—Bram Pike, Hart said. Courier. Found dead on the Ninth Landing in the East Stack. The report says fall, maybe a misstep. The family says no. I’d like a second opinion before the paperwork grows teeth.

Tomas gave the watch a look, then Hart, then the ceiling, as if a more reasonable answer might be hiding there. —You know I repair clocks, not verdicts.

—You also notice when something has been opened by a hand that thinks itself clever.

—So do undertakers.

Hart leaned one hip against the counter. —And yet I came to you.

Tomas sighed with the long suffering of a man asked to handle other people’s bad decisions. He took the watch, felt its weight, and clicked it once against his fingernail. The sound was too bright. Too tight. He set it beneath the lamp and opened the back with a thin blade. Inside, the movement glimmered like a small, disciplined city, all bridges and tension and hidden force. —Hm.

That single sound made Hart sharpen his attention. —Hm good or hm bad?

—Hm expensive. Someone cared enough to keep it in shape. Someone also cared enough to open it recently and close it again without doing the job properly.

—Can you tell how recently?

Tomas tilted the watch toward the light. The balance wheel carried a faint film of fresh oil. One screw had a tiny crescent scar where a tool had slipped. The crown pin was seated just a touch too tight. —Within a day, maybe two. And the watch is running fast.

—Fast enough to matter?

—Five minutes, perhaps six. Enough to make a man hurry if he trusts his wrist more than his stomach.

Hart frowned. —You think someone set it that way on purpose?

Tomas glanced up, dry as dust. —Inspector, if a watch lies, it is usually because someone taught it the habit.

He bent closer. A clean smell rose from the movement: cedar oil, graphite, a sharp trace of mineral grease. His own blend, or one very much like it. His brows lifted a fraction. —Well. That is either flattering or rude.

—What is?

—Someone has been borrowing my ideas.

Hart gave him a flat look. —Are you accusing the dead of theft?

—The dead are generally difficult to prosecute.

Tomas set the watch down and reached for a cloth. Outside, ash drifted thicker against the glass. Somewhere in the market, a vendor shouted that the first buns were out, and somewhere above them a door slammed hard enough to rattle the hanging brass chimes. Tomas slid the pocket watch back under the lamp and said, almost reluctantly, that he would need to see where Bram Pike had fallen. The metal had told him enough to be curious, which was his least favorite way to become involved.

Hart nodded once. —I was hoping you’d say that.

—Don’t sound so pleased.

—I’m not pleased. I’m relieved. There’s a difference.

Tomas reached for his coat with the expression of a man already annoyed by his own agreement. —Then let’s go see what your dead courier was trying to outrun.

The East Stack rose in layers above the lower market, all balconies, stairwells, and narrow landings stitched together by old iron and older habit. By the time Tomas and Hart reached the public entry, the smell of pepper buns had given way to boiled lentils, damp wool, and the hot mineral bite of ash settling on the stone. A woman on the second landing was hanging laundry over a railing with the calm ferocity of someone who believed cleanliness was a moral argument. Two children sat on the next flight down, sharing a sugar crust and a toy no larger than a matchbox. One of them stared at Tomas’s tools as if he might be hiding fireworks in his pockets.

—You always walk like you expect the stairs to answer back, Hart said as they climbed.

—Stairs do answer back, Tomas said. They creak, which is their version of honesty.

—You’re impossible before lunch.

—And you’re underprepared for me after lunch.

The Ninth Landing had been cleaned badly and quickly. Tomas crouched by the place where Bram Pike had fallen and ran two fingers over the rail. The wood was worn smooth by years of hands, but there was a newer smear along the inner curve, a thin line of gray grease where no hand should have rested. He touched it, rubbed his thumb together, and sniffed. The scent was the same mineral blend he had noticed in the watch movement.

Hart watched him work. The inspector had the patience of a good carpenter, which was to say he could stand still for a long time and look as if he had a reason. —What do you see?

—A fall that was arranged by someone who knew this landing better than the body did.

—That is not a legal phrase.

—No, but it is a sensible one.

Tomas rose and inspected the stairs above and below. The public route was steep but ordinary, worn into shallow steps by generations of feet. Yet just beyond the landing, tucked behind a stack of cleaning carts and a cupboard built into the wall, there was a narrow service door with brass hinges. The paint had been touched up recently. The latch had been oiled. The frame was cleaner than the wood around it, as if a hand had kept returning to this exact patch of wall.

—Was that there in the report? Tomas asked.

Hart glanced at it. —It’s a service passage. For staff, repairs, deliveries in a pinch.

—And how many people know it exists?

—Enough to make this interesting.

Tomas knelt and studied the floorboards. Bram’s shoes had left no sign of a stumble, only a sharp twist at the edge of the landing, as if he had turned toward someone standing just out of sight. A scuff marked the toe of one shoe, but the heel was clean. He traced the path with a fingertip, then stood again and rested his palm on the rail at the height of a man’s chest. —He did not go over this rail by accident.

Hart’s eyes narrowed. —You can tell that from a banister?

—From the banister, the shoes, the grease, and the fact that the landing is too neat where a fall would have been messy. People imagine accidents are random. They are not. They are usually badly managed plans.

A sharp voice cut in from above. —If you’re going to call my brother badly managed, at least do it to my face.

A woman descended the upper steps quickly, one hand on the rail, the other clenched around a folded paper bag. She was in her late twenties, maybe younger, with ash on her sleeves and a hard set to her mouth that suggested she had spent the whole morning refusing to collapse. She stopped beside the landing, looked from Hart to Tomas, and fixed on the watchmaker as if he were the most likely person to lie.

—Lena Pike, Hart said. Sister.

—Then you tell me, Lena said, do you have a body on this landing or a story you plan to dress up as one?

Tomas blinked at her bluntness, then gave her a small, tired bow. —At the moment, I have a watch, a suspicious rail, and the beginnings of a headache.

—That’s better than the police gave me.

—Then they are improving, Tomas said.

Lena looked at him for a beat, decided she did not hate him yet, and turned back to Hart. —Bram would not have slipped. He hated these stairs. Said they were built by someone who despised knees. He used the service route when he could.

Tomas’s gaze shifted to the narrow door again. —How often could he?

—When the steward allowed it, Lena said. Or when he had deliveries too awkward for the public steps. He told me he had a small job up here today. Something about a parcel and a handoff. He was nervous, which was unlike him. Bram jokes when he’s nervous. Today he was quiet.

—Did he say who he was meeting?

Lena’s jaw tightened. —No. But he said if he was late, I should ask the steward about the door behind the linen press. He said that very clearly, which is why I’d prefer someone tell me whether that was a joke before I begin rearranging furniture.

Tomas and Hart exchanged a glance. The landing, with its scrubbed boards and hidden passage, had stopped looking like the place where a courier simply lost his footing. It now looked like a stage after the actors had fled.