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CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

The Third Disturbance

‘Without embellishment,’ Squall said, watching impassively as Morrigan struggled to her feet, ‘and in as few words as possible … explain .’

‘I don’t—’ She took a trembling breath and swallowed the big, frantic story that wanted to explode from her, distilling it down to its simplest form. ‘I … summoned it here.’

Squall looked highly sceptical of this, but didn’t stop to question it. ‘Why?’

‘They were going to kill it.’

‘They?’

‘Wunsoc.’

He frowned. ‘According to my sources, the Wunsoc plan was to feed it, not to kill it.’

‘ Yes ,’ Morrigan said impatiently. She began ripping her stupid wings off, feeling suddenly crowded and claustrophobic. ‘But only if the Skyfaced Clocks changed, and my friend is a short-range oracle and she saw that they weren’t changing after all, so the Unresting wouldn’t come, so the Beastly Division was going to switch to Plan B and try to kill it, so I summoned it here … except it was an accident, because I was trying to send myself THERE, because you said that was possible with really big Wundrous Acts and I thought that would be easier than bringing it here—’

‘It certainly would have been easier,’ he agreed, casting a bewildered look at the Guiltghast, as if he still didn’t quite believe what she’d done.

‘—but then it crawled up out of the canal and smashed through the window and it just … it just …’ She trailed off, gesticulating wildly at the scene: all the people held high in the air by long electrified tendrils, hanging limp or writhing in agony. Margot, suspended above the ground. Piles of smashed glass everywhere. And Tobias’s lifeless body, staring into nothing.

Squall pointed at him. ‘Who was that?’

‘The murderer.’ She swallowed, and her throat felt like razorblades. ‘My uncle.’

He looked at her sharply. ‘You’re certain?’

‘We all just watched him do it.’ Morrigan swallowed again, wincing. ‘Live from the Guiltghast’s stomach.’

Squall nodded, pressing his mouth in a line, and clasped his hands behind his back. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t time to adequately express what a colossally idiotic thing you’ve done, but as you’ve once again invoked Tempus by accident via panic and regret, I daresay you get the picture?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fine.’ He sighed, then fell silent for several seconds, during which he seemed to be making calculations in his head. ‘Well, you have a decision to make. Option one: we do nothing. Wait for time to begin grinding forward again and let … all this play out as it will.’

All this , Morrigan surmised from the careless flick of his hand towards the Guiltghast, meant the dozens of deaths and injuries that had occurred, were occurring, or were about to occur inside the frozen disaster zone of the Receiving Room.

She shook her head emphatically. Not an option.

Squall began to pace, sparing Tobias’s body a glance as he passed it. ‘I suppose justice has been done for him , at least. Unfortunately, the headlines tomorrow won’t be about a murderer being caught by a clever teenage detective. I imagine they’ll be more focused on the massacre committed by a teenage Wundersmith.’

Morrigan wasn’t sure if she wanted to vomit or cry. ‘What’s option two?’

‘Go back. Make a better choice.’

‘Go back where?’

He checked his wristwatch. ‘What time did you summon the Guiltghast?’

‘Four minutes to midnight.’

‘Precisely?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Then that’s where we’re going.’ He began to remove his black leather gloves and held up both hands to face her.

‘Wait, you mean … Tempus?’ She blinked her stinging eyes repeatedly, daring to feel a tiny spark of hope. ‘But last time this happened you said you couldn’t—’

‘I never said I couldn’t ,’ he said waspishly. ‘I said I wouldn’t . In that situation, it was neither advisable nor necessary. This situation is entirely different.’ Once again he gestured to indicate the Guiltghast, the bodies, the entire horrifying tableau. ‘And it will only get worse once time begins moving again. While time is stopped, we have a brief window in which going back and making another choice is a much simpler, more straightforward path. The job is already half done. When this window closes, turning back the clock becomes MUCH more difficult, and the ethical consequences exponentially greater.’

‘If I don’t summon the Guiltghast … the Beastly Division will kill it,’ said Morrigan. ‘And nobody will ever see what Tobias did. He’ll just get away with it.’

‘Perhaps,’ agreed Squall, shrugging lightly. ‘Perhaps if you go back, one guilty person will get away with his crime. But let me be very clear: if you don’t go back, there is not a single guilty person who will leave this room unharmed. I can’t say I’m particularly bothered by the extermination of spoiled aristocrats, but you must realise that once the massacre is over … as the one who brought it about, you will be the guiltiest person left in the room.’

Morrigan felt a chill at those words, but said nothing.

‘You will remember his confession,’ Squall continued, ‘even if nobody else does. You must simply find a way to use the information you learned from it. And as for what the Beastly Division will do … look around you. Have you considered that they may, in fact, have a point? That perhaps killing the Guiltghast is the best—’

‘Is that all being a Wundersmith IS ?’ Her raised voice echoed in the vast, silent room. ‘Is it just about killing and … and death ? First the Museum of Stolen Moments, then the Hollowpox, now the Guiltghast. Am I just meant to be an exterminator ? Because if that’s all this is, you can forget it! I don’t want to be your apprentice anymore. If that’s all this is, I don’t even want to be a WUNDERSMITH.’

Squall was silent for a moment, and she saw him check his watch again, before sighing. ‘I admit, you’ve inherited an impossible task. Learning to be a Wundersmith one hundred years ago, surrounded by other Wundersmiths, in a city that celebrated our existence and applauded our work, was already hard. Learning to be a Wundersmith now, in a city that hates Wundersmiths, a city full of the dying, dangerous, neglected creations of your predecessors …’ He trailed off with a small but careful shrug. ‘You will be faced with many choices like this one, and sometimes the most palatable choice will be destruction, and sometimes that will feel as if you are the thing being destroyed.’

Morrigan felt a terrible weight of foreboding burrowing under her skin, nestling into the spot between her shoulder blades. Before she could respond, Squall went on, smoothly, lowering his voice to a murmur.

‘But I see you, Morrigan Crow. There is black ice at the heart of you. And you will need it for what lies ahead. THIS is the work of being a Wundersmith. Everything else, all the tricks and the artistry …’ He fluttered his hand as if brushing dust away. ‘It’s just window dressing. The truth is, we’ve been treading water these past months. Waiting for the Skyfaced Clocks to change, and for Basking to arrive. Now our real work can begin.’

Morrigan’s brow furrowed in confusion. ‘But Basking didn’t come. The Skyfaced Clocks didn’t change.’

‘Well, that’s the curious thing,’ Squall said quietly, glancing around the room. ‘The Skyfaced Clocks did change.’

‘But Lam saw—’ She reached into her pocket for the blackpaper, as if expecting to find she’d somehow misread it. ‘She would never have sent me this if she wasn’t sure.’

‘The Third Disturbance is a Waking Giant.’

‘The third … what?’

‘Basking is heralded by three disturbances,’ Squall explained. ‘The clocks can only change once all three disturbances have occurred, and the third – what clocksmiths call the Waking Giant – is the most important by far. The clocks were waiting for a giant to wake. What your oracle friend saw was true, at the time. It’s a paradox, see? She saw the future, so she sent you the note. And what did you do in response?’

‘I summoned the Guiltghast.’

Squall nodded. ‘Which changed the future.’

The threads were beginning to pull together in Morrigan’s mind, the full picture emerging in a quick, satisfying tapestry.

‘The task force was waiting for the Skyfaced Clocks to change … so that the Unresting would come … so they could wake up the Guiltghast to feed it,’ she said slowly. ‘But the Skyfaced Clocks were waiting for the Guiltghast to wake up BEFORE they could change! And when Lam told me the clocks weren’t changing, I summoned the Guiltghast … which means they did change after all, because they had their Waking Giant!’

‘Precisely.’

‘But it doesn’t matter anyway, does it? If I go back and make a different choice, the clocks won’t change after all.’

‘Yes, they will.’

Morrigan squinted at him, shaking her head like she had water in her ears. ‘But you JUST SAID, the clocks were waiting for a giant to wake up before they could change! If I never SUMMON the Guiltghast, it won’t wake up before midnight, which means no Waking Giant, which means—’

‘I said the summoning of the Guiltghast woke a giant,’ Squall interrupted, and there was the faintest, most minuscule hint of amusement in his black eyes. ‘I didn’t say the Guiltghast IS the giant.’

Morrigan opened her mouth and then closed it again. She was so confused it felt like her brain might explode. Before she could say anything more, however, a sound broke the silence: a single drop of water, falling from the Guiltghast’s tendril and landing on the tiled floor with the tiniest plink.

Morrigan’s stomach felt like a boulder had been rolled into it, but Squall moved immediately into action. He held his hands up once again, palms facing outwards, and she mirrored the gesture.

‘I suggest you close your eyes, Miss Crow.’

As their fingertips met through the Gossamer and the room around them began to swirl into darkness, she felt an immediate wave of nausea and let her eyelids drop.

Spring’s Eve

Winter of Three

‘What? What are you thinking?’

It felt like an eternity had passed, and like no time had passed at all.

‘It’s something stupid. You’ve just had a stupid, dangerous idea.’

Morrigan opened her eyes to find three familiar faces staring back at her, scrunched up with worry or confusion or both.

‘You’re right,’ she told Jack. ‘It was an extremely stupid idea. Louis, Lottie – how long would it take you to get to the Silk from here?’

‘We could do it in one lintel,’ said Louis. ‘The Carringtons are next in the chain, and they live right near the watchhouse.’

‘Good. Go and tell them they have a murderer to arrest at Darling House. No time for questions,’ she said, holding up a hand as Lottie took in a sharp breath. ‘Just hurry. Please.’

As the twins disappeared down the hall, Morrigan turned back to Jack. ‘I need you to bring my grandmother to the Receiving Room as quickly as possible – but be careful. She’s been unwell. Her bedroom is in the east wing, just—’

‘I’ll find it,’ Jack told her, lifting his eye patch onto his forehead as he took off at a sprint. Morrigan crossed her fingers, hoping the antidote Francis picked up from Eldritch Murdergarden had done its job.

She ripped her wings off (again) and began to pace the width of the hall, thinking about something Squall had said.

You will remember his confession, even if nobody else does.

You must simply find a way to use the information you learned from it.

What had she learned from Tobias’s reluctant confession that they hadn’t known before? What missing element did she see in the Guiltghast?

The memory of it hit her just as the Receiving Room doors swung open and Arch appeared right on cue, wide-eyed and breathless.

‘Morrigan! You need to—’

‘I need you to steal something!’ she shouted, grinning triumphantly at her quick-fingered friend. ‘Do you know how to crack a safe?’