Clockwork Angels: The Novel by Kevin J. & Peart Anderson Read Free Book Online

significantly, and although the next hedge looked prickly and not at all welcoming, he braced himself and jumped out of the car with far less grace than the manner in which he had climbed aboard.

CHAPTER 5
     
    Where a young man has a chance of making good
     

    E ach autumn in Barrel Arbor, Owen and his father would rake the fallen leaves from around their cottage into sweet-smelling heaps. On one such afternoon a few years ago, Owen had nearly finished raking when a gust of unexpected wind rushed past and caught up the yellow leaves, swirling them into the air. Laughing, he had run into the midst of the golden whirlwind, holding up his hands as the colors skirled around him.
    Crown City was like that.
    After the steamliner left him behind, he extricated himself from the hedge, brushed off his clothes, and trudged into the city. The path along the rails turned into a track, and the track became a street. In the space of an hour, he witnessed enough surprises to make his eyes ache, and Crown City engulfed him with its majesty. He wanted to see it all, experience everything. He couldn’t believe he was actually here, whether by accident or determination.
    Owen walked past individual warehouses, each of which rivaled the size of his village. Industries hummed with heavy   pistons, hydraulic stamping presses, assembly lines—coldfire-driven machinery that manufactured the conveniences and necessities of daily life: efficient vehicles, harvesting machines, mining engines, household gadgets, and alchemical contraptions for the delight and comfort of all the Watchmaker’s people.
    Further along, on tree-lined boulevards, he walked past the huddled and secretive buildings of the Watchmaker’s university, where the next generation of engineers and mathematicians learned how they could contribute to the Stability. An image of a honeybee was carved into the keystone of the entrance arch.
    In adjacent university buildings, thin smokestacks spewed colored smoke and fumes from various experiments conducted within reinforced laboratories. From his mother’s book, Owen recognized
    the Alchemy College, where apprentices struggled against the elements to unlock the chemical secrets of the universe, expanding human knowledge beyond the simplicities of air, water, fire, and earth. Hoping to become members of the Watchmaker’s elite cadre of alchemist-priests, the apprentices worked with metals, salts, acids, rare earths, and even rarer substances that had not yet been named.
    Owen looked wistfully at the college buildings, imagining classrooms full of attentive students taught by philosopher-professors. If Owen had been born in a different place, set on a different path, maybe he could have been one of those students. Surely, he possessed the required intellect, or at least the imagination. But he was part of the Watchmaker’s plan, and all was for the best. It wasn’t for him to complain.
    He continued to explore the city, greeting everyone he encountered because that was the polite thing to do. They responded in kind but did not pause for a relaxed chat, the way people did during quiet afternoons in Barrel Arbor or evenings in the Tick Tock Tavern. He envied the inhabitants of Crown City, to whom the capital’s marvels were as commonplace as his apple orchards.
    Thanks to his familiarity with his mother’s book, he made his way toward Chronos Square, the center of the city, where the Watchmaker had his headquarters. That was where he would find the gigantic clocktower and the Clockwork Angels. Wide streets radiated outward from the square, crossing circular outer boulevards. Owen knew their names: Crown Wheel, Center Wheel, and Balance Wheel . . . a combination of straight paths and perfect circles, all part of a master plan that simple people like Owen could never comprehend.
    The buildings grew taller, the streets crowded with people and adorned with awnings, shops, stands. Owen’s neck hurt because he kept turning his head from