Chapter Five

“THIS IS A waste of time.” Iron Huxham threw his screwdriver onto his desk. It hit some loose cogwheels, knocking them to the floor. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d been working all day and knew that when his eyes stung and he started talking to himself, it was time to take a break.

The old master cogsmith would be along presently to pick over Iron’s work and point out where he’d gone wrong. Iron was approaching the end of his apprenticeship and had taken on more and more responsibility of late. Still, Mr Williams worried about his good name being tarnished and checked everything Iron made.

Mr Williams had found success late in life, when he recently invented a type of striker-lantern which had quickly became popular with sailors. Horological devices were by their very nature delicate and prone to wear, especially when used in salty sea air. Mr Williams had not only developed a method of sealing away the vulnerable workings of a striker-lantern, but by sliding a bar in the cap, his lantern would become sealed up tight to prevent being extinguished should it fall overboard or become splashed.

It had been Iron who rightly pointed out the candle could only burn so long as there was air inside, and suggested making the candle small and the casing larger than usual striker-lanterns to compensate. Mr Williams had incorporated this idea into his design. Along with the addition of crafty prisms to boost the brightness, Iron also suggested adding hidden air holes in the cap which would automatically slide open every few minutes to replenish the air supply inside. Of course, this mechanism required calm weather when there was no chance of an errant wave dousing the lantern.

These lanterns were a huge success and were quickly adopted by the Chase Trading Company on all of their vessels. Sailors dubbed them Davy lights because they claimed the lanterns burned underwater long enough to reach Davy Jones’s Locker.

Despite his involvement in the design, Iron had received little recognition. Owing to the competitive nature of his trade, Iron knew no other horologists. Not socially, at least. He tried not to hold Mr Williams to account for hogging all the glory around the Davy lights but it hadn’t gone unnoticed how Mr Williams had written to every horologist in town, telling them of his success and omitting Iron’s name entirely.

Aside from Mr Williams, Iron had no one to talk to about his days, no one who knew or cared about the complexities of his work. Mr Williams’s mind had started to wander of late, and he made for an unreliable conversationalist.

Iron rubbed his hand along his neat stiletto beard, took his jacket from the hook by the door, and locked up the workshop. Let Mr Williams come and inspect whatever he liked. Iron needed a break.

It would still be an hour before sunset and the weather had cleared, though shimmering puddles remained between almost every cobblestone. Iron strolled along the winding road, passing a point so narrow the roofs of the leaning buildings on either side almost touched. He liked to walk this way because of the abundance of clockworks in use.

High above his head, a skinny man leaned out a window and flicked a lever to move his washing along a line. Hot water pipes—an offshoot of horological advances—weaved through every wall like thread, and rattled when used. Above a scrubby bookshop, a sign shaped like a weighty tome had its metal pages turned by an unseen hand. In the window of a chandler, a candle dipped into a vat, over and over again, demonstrating the techniques used by the business.

He entered through the sage-green door of Farriner’s Bakery. It was much too late in the day to find any fresh bread, but the bakery was known for its selection of buns and cakes. Iron picked one out and told the woman behind the counter not to bother wrapping it. He planned to eat it on the way home.

He always found Mrs Farriner very pleasant, and she was one of the few other Black residents of the town. He had offered to work with her to create a sign to hang above the bakery door and even offered her as much discount as he thought he could sneak under Mr Williams’s nose. While she had yet to take him up on his offer, she always knocked a little off the price for his cakes, and often kept something special aside for him.

“You really shouldn’t,” he would always say, patting his belly. “I should be cutting down.”

“A growing lad needs his food,” she would say back to him.

Sometimes he wished she had been his mother. She was just about old enough, he thought, though would never dream of asking her age.

He ate his buttered fruit scone as he walked back towards home—a little set of rooms above the workshop. He had a meeting with Ms Sorcha Fontaine of the town Watch that evening; apparently they needed to discuss some issues raised by townspeople who felt put out by the street lamps. Iron had heaped a good deal of his self-worth into those lamps. Despite the time pressures involved, he had agonised over their design, aesthetically as well as functionally. He saw in them a chance not only to make his name as a horologist but to leave a mark on the landscape of the town itself.

He found a card waiting for him at home. Ms Fontaine wanted to move their meeting from the Watch house to the Jack Thistle tavern. He finished his scone, splashed some water on his face, and headed back outside.

He hurried along the twisting roads of Pudding Quarter, cutting through a handful of Entries, until he emerged in the docklands, at the rear of the well-lit and spacious Jack Thistle. He found Ms Fontaine waiting at a table.

She struggled to be heard over the sound of enthusiastic bagatelle players nearby. “I hope you don’t mind meeting here,” she said. “I couldn’t bear the Watch house any longer today.”

A group of grey-haired men all had wagers on the game and were jostling amongst themselves, trying to egg each other on and put rival players off.

She shot daggers at them. “I’ll arrest the lot of them if they don’t keep the noise down.”

Iron sat opposite her. “I don’t think you can arrest people for enjoying themselves, can you?”

Sorcha shot the group a wicked side-eye. “Vince would.”

The bagatelle players hooted and hollered as one game came to an end. Next came the slapping of backs and the begrudging exchanging of lost wagers.

“Bad day?” he asked.

Ms Fontaine sank back in her chair and blew air from her lips like a horse.

Iron laughed. “Ah, one of those days.”

“If I have to listen to one more amadán telling me these lamps are…stopping…I don’t know…fish from breeding or some such nonsense, I’ll scream. I will. I’ll scream right in their face.”

Sorcha Fontaine had an open, honest appearance and a friendly way about her that Iron found comforting. She was one of the few people his own age that he spoke to on a regular basis. They sat and ordered two bowls of beef-shin soup while discussing complaints about the glare caused by the lamps.

“Ah, Iron, what are we going to do about them?” she asked. “We can’t make them any dimmer or there won’t be any point in having them at all.”

Iron finished chewing a chunk of bread and swallowed. “Well, I suggest we do what I always do in cases like this.”

“Which is?”

“I let someone see me tinker with the lamp without actually changing anything and then tell them the problem is solved.”

Ms Fontaine just blinked at him. “That cannot possibly work.”

Iron laughed again and took another spoonful of soup. “You’d be surprised how often it does, Ms Fontaine. People will trust you if you look like you know what you’re doing.”

She laughed with him. “Listen, we’ve been working together for long enough. You can call me Sorcha, if you want to.”

“Thank you, Sorcha.”

“And I still can’t get over the fact your name is Iron. I mean, no offence, but Blackrabbit names will always make me giggle. Just a bit.” She held two fingers close together and raised her voice. “Just a teeny, tiny bit.”

Iron did take offence, just a teeny, tiny bit, but he didn’t let on. “The town orphanage said it was the name my mother called me when she left me with them,” he said. “She said she thought it would make me strong. Help me to weather life.”

“Oh, no,” Sorcha said. “Oh, I’ve been rude. I have. I do that. I’m after making a hames of things, I’m so sorry. I don’t think sometimes. My mouth just makes these noises, and I can’t control it.”

“Don’t worry,” Iron said. “Think no more of it.” He clamped his lips together and smiled but they turned inwards. He knew he’d done it, and he knew it wasn’t a proper smile, but it was the best he could muster just then.

“You know Vince grew up in the same orphanage as you?” Sorcha asked. “This was well before either of us were born, of course. What age were you when you were sent there?”

“About a year, so I’m told,” Iron said. “They didn’t know when I was actually born so the day I arrived became my official birthday. I spent my entire childhood there until I was thirteen. Then they turfed me out onto the streets.”

Sorcha sat back in her chair. “How awful. What did you do?”

“I, ah… I spent a few years sleeping rough, taking work when I could find it, and…um…stealing what I needed when I couldn’t. Please don’t arrest me!” He faked a laugh.

Sorcha dipped some bread into her soup, letting the meat juices soak into it. “Hah, no, don’t worry. Sure I had a similar beginning here myself. When me and my sister arrived, we slept under bridges and stole food.” She sucked the wet bread.

“I didn’t know that,” he said. “I’ve never met anyone who was, well, who was the same as me.”

“And look at us now,” she said. “You a fancy horologist and me a fancy Watchwoman! Sure, who would have thought it?”