When they arrived at the clock tower midmorning the next day, Daphne found it disappointingly unimpressive. She’d spent the tonga ride searching for the tower above the rooftops, but the structure barely peeked above the buildings surrounding the circular clearing where it stood. The tower was mostly built of the same reddish sandstone as the officers’ billet, with a wooden frame and a brick base. There was only one clock face at the top, the glass dusty and the numerals almost too small to read. Above the face was a simple spire that ended in a prong-like symbol. The clock tower seemed inadequate for a grand city like Lucknow.
“Dinky thing, isn’t it?” Crosby muttered at her side. “I hear they want to rebuild it in the English style, but don’t have the funds. What with all this strangeness of towers falling, maybe they won’t have to.”
Perhaps it was the casualness of his remark, but Daphne suddenly felt nauseated.
A groom helped her out of the tonga—she didn’t mind offending Crosby, but didn’t want to be rude to the Indian man—and she looked up at the building. She didn’t know what the tower in Khurja had looked like, but if it was anything like this one, she wondered why it had been targeted. Did the terrorists have a strategy? Why not hit the largest cities first? Of course, everyone kept saying Delhi might be attacked, but not until New Year’s.
Daphne’s boots thudded against dark gray cobblestone as she circled the tower. Crosby had brought along Partha and another sepoy, but apart from their small contingent and the sepoys who stood at every entrance to deter anyone from coming near, the clearing was empty.
“What exactly are you looking for, Miss Richards?” Crosby asked after several minutes.
“Water.”
“Ah. We did hear that the ground around the Rath and Khurja towers was damp after the attacks. Do you know what it means?”
“No clue.”
There were no pipes or wells or pumps nearby. No grates, no sewers … no water. Bone-dry.
“Could you tell me what happened that made Major Dryden think Lucknow is being targeted?” she asked Crosby.
Frowning, the man scratched under his chin. “We usually have a guard around the tower, as you can see. They caught a few loiterers trying to get inside. Ran off before the guards were able to catch them, but no one knows how they got into the clearing in the first place.”
Daphne pointed upward. “There are roofs just there. They could have rappelled down.”
Crosby’s mouth twisted into a sneer as he eyed the guards. “I’m sure they would have spotted something as obvious as that. Then again, they could have been drunk or asleep for all I know.”
Anger flared inside her, but she tamped it down. This man wasn’t worth a reaction. “Have there been any more sightings of trespassers?”
“I’ll ask.” He left her near the tower’s entrance, flanked on either side by sepoys. Partha stood on her right, his eyes slightly swollen, perhaps from lack of sleep. Kept awake by the heat and nerves, it had taken Daphne a few hours to nod off the night before.
Partha caught her staring. “Yes, Miss Richards?”
“I was wondering if you were all right. You seem unwell.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. Before he could respond, the tower entrance opened and two Indian men dressed in rough-spun white tunics and carrying bags over their shoulders walked out, stepping into the slippers they’d left outside.
“Yeh kyaa hai?” one of them asked.
Partha replied, but Daphne only caught the word tower.
They switched to English. “The tower has already been inspected.”
Partha nodded in Daphne’s direction. “She needs to inspect it as well.”
The Indian clock mechanics narrowed their eyes, and she fought the urge to fidget. She met their gazes directly, but knew at once she’d made a mistake. They began to mutter in Hindi, too fast for her to follow.
“This is Major Dryden’s order,” Partha snapped at them. “We are looking at the tower, nothing more.”
“She cannot go in by herself,” one of the mechanics said. “We must go with her.”
“Major Dryden’s orders,” Partha repeated firmly, placing a hand on his rifle. “She is to go in alone.”
The mechanics muttered more until one rudely pointed at her. “Take off your shoes before entering,” he commanded. “This is a sacred place. You bring bad luck already.”
“What’s all this?” Crosby had returned. “What’s the holdup?”
“I was just going inside,” Daphne said. She knelt to undo the laces of her boots. The mechanics eyed her for another moment, then wandered to one side.
“You don’t need to take off your blasted shoes,” Crosby snapped. “Just get inside and do whatever it is you’re supposed to.”
“I’d like to be respectful, sir.” She carefully placed her boots beside the door and stood. When she met Partha’s eye, he gave her the hint of an appreciative smile. She gave him one in return.
Once she was across the threshold, she closed the door behind her. Angry mechanics or no, she wanted to be alone.
Except that she wasn’t alone.
And that was the whole point.
Up a short flight of stairs, she stopped on a wooden platform with a guardrail. It was part of a square-shaped walkway around the open space in which the pendulum swung lazily through the air, stirring the small hairs on her forehead as it passed.
Sunshine filtered through the glass clock face, illuminating the cables and pulleys and rope that extended far up into the rafters. Daphne took a flight of stairs leading to a higher platform, which gave her access to the iron-cast gears and cogs that turned in perfect synchronicity, powering the clock.
And Lucknow’s time.
Although the tower was not what she’d call aesthetically impressive, she still felt the familiar awe of its presence sweeping over her body, up her arms, down her back. It aged her, reminding her of her past even as it planted her firmly in the here and now, even as the world evolved around her, without her. Putting a hand on the clockwork, her eyes watered until she had to close them.
“Something is happening,” she said quietly, to herself or the clock, she wasn’t sure. “I need to know what.”
Daphne took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “Please, will you come out? I would like to speak with you. I’m worried that your tower is in danger, and if it is, I need to find a way to stop it. If you know anything, I’d like to help. Please, may I speak to you?”