Tempus White's Arc

Chapter 6 of 8

Tempus pushed through the auction house doors four weeks later, his pocket watch chain gleaming against his vest. The main hall buzzed with collectors examining tables of goods. He scanned the room for his family's timepiece, the three-handed mechanism he'd spent decades hunting. A glass case near the back wall caught his eye—gold glinted inside, the right colors, the right style. He rushed forward, his boots clicking against marble. The case held a pocket watch with three hands, indigo and magenta details swirling across its face. But when he leaned close, his chest went tight. The engraving was wrong. The gears moved forward, not backward. This was another copy, another fake made by someone who'd studied his grandfather's work. The clerk appeared at his shoulder and explained in a flat voice—the real piece had been withdrawn from sale two days ago. A private buyer had claimed it before the auction. No name. No forwarding information. Just gone. Tempus gripped the edge of the case until his knuckles went white beneath his fur. He'd been so close. The trail had led him here, through monuments and workshops and records, only to find an empty space where his goal should have been. He stumbled outside, rage burning behind his pink eyes. A fountain stood near the entrance, water cascading between marble arches and columns. The colors matched everything in this wretched city—indigo, gold, magenta, white. Tempus wanted to smash it. Forty-three years of searching, and someone had snatched the timepiece two days before he arrived. Two days. The thought made his teeth grind. He pulled out his pocket watch and wound it counterclockwise three times, then six times, then nine. The temporal parasites would feed on his anger if he didn't confuse them. His paws shook as he checked the time. Three-seventeen. Or was it five-thirteen backward? Time meant nothing when the past kept slipping away. A payphone booth stood across the street, its glass door cracked and metal frame peeling. Tempus stared at it for a long moment. Someone could have called the auction house. Someone could have tipped off the buyer. He crossed the street and yanked open the door. The phone hung crooked on its cord, receiver dangling. He picked it up and heard only dead air. No dial tone. No connection. Just silence mocking him. He slammed it back and turned away, his chest heaving. Paranoia crawled up his spine. The Queen's roses could have whispered. The buyer could have been watching him since the workshop. Maybe the leather book was bait. Maybe they'd wanted him to come here just to fail. He walked the auction house grounds until he found the garden behind the building. There, mounted on a rusted iron stand, sat a monument shaped like an hourglass. The glass chambers had cracked, and sand spilled across the base in frozen streams. Gold, white, indigo, and magenta stained the weathered surface. Tempus stopped before it and felt something break inside his chest. This thing marked time that couldn't be recovered. Moments lost. Decades wasted. His grandfather's timepiece was out there somewhere, ticking in a stranger's hands, and he had no way to find it now. He reached out and touched the cracked glass. The trail had gone cold. The buyer had vanished. And Tempus White stood alone in a garden full of broken time, no closer to his goal than he'd been forty-three years ago.