The Street of Smiths appeared on no official map of Londrivar. It was there — it could be walked, wetted by rain, swallowed by fog like any other — but the city's cartographers seemed to have forgotten it with a consistency that bordered on intention. That night, steam rose through the pavement grates in slow white spirals, and the gas lamps flickered without any wind.
Elias Crowe emerged from the fog and stopped at the corner.
He was a little over thirty, though his eyes carried something that suggested more. Tall, with narrow shoulders but a firm posture — the kind of figure that occupies space with precision, not with volume. Dark, slightly wavy hair, always one step past tidy, as if he'd begun the day with some intention toward appearance and found something more interesting to think about halfway through. Angular features, a nose with a slight twist at the bridge that hinted at a story he never told, and eyes of a grey-green that, under the lamplight, looked almost amber.
He wore a long coat of dark wool, well cut but with slightly worn elbows — the mark of someone who leans against surfaces while observing. Beneath it, a three-button waistcoat and a shirt with the collar loosened, as though formality were a tool he set down when he no longer needed it.
He stood still for forty-three seconds. Not from hesitation — it was method. Before entering anywhere, he counted what could be counted: exits, angles, shadows, what was out of place.
What was out of place was the watchmaker's window.
The shop occupied the ground floor of a dark brick townhouse, squeezed between a closed tobacconist and a parts depot that smelled of rust even with the door locked. The bronze plaque read A. VOSS — WATCHMAKING AND PRECISION INSTRUMENTS. The window had been broken from the inside — the shards visible within, the outer frame intact, without a single mark of impact on the outside.
He pushed the door open with two fingers. It was unlocked.
The interior was dark and silent in a way that seemed like work.
Shelves from floor to ceiling lined both side walls, laden with clocks — pocket watches, wall clocks, table clocks, some with their mechanisms exposed like unfinished surgeries. Crowe estimated between ninety and a hundred and ten units in a single sweep of his eyes. The smell was of machine oil over old wood, with something older underneath, difficult to name.
Every clock had stopped.
At the centre, a darkened mahogany counter with a solitary lamp fighting the darkness. Inspector Vance Maren was at the back of the shop, rising when he heard the footsteps.
Maren was broad where Crowe was narrow. Grey moustache, shoulders like a dock porter, the permanent expression of someone who had seen too much and slept too little. He wore his inspector's coat the way someone else might wear a work apron.
— Took your time, — he said. — I came, — replied Crowe.
Maren had learned, over time, that no further information was coming from that direction. He exhaled through his nose.
— Aldric Voss. Sixty-two years old. Lives upstairs, alone. A neighbour heard glass breaking shortly after midnight, came to check in the morning. Nothing stolen. Voss is gone.
Crowe was already walking toward the window. The shards were spread in a fan opening inward — some had travelled far, almost to the counter. Outside, the pavement was clean. There was nothing there. If something had been hurled with enough force to break that glass, it should have been out there.
It wasn't.
He picked up a larger shard. Turned it against the lamp. The inner face bore paint — fragments of a pattern. A curved line, something that might have been a number, what appeared to be an arrow.
— The window had something drawn on the inside, — he said. — It did. Diagrams, from what's left. Circles, lines, numbering.
Crowe set down the shard and turned toward the counter.
The counter was where Voss had been.
A pocket watch mechanism, dismantled, its pieces laid out in reassembly sequence — work interrupted mid-task, but without haste. Every piece in place. The lamp on the counter was new, different from the others in the shop, its glass clean and its wick barely used. It had been brought there specifically, that night.
Voss was awake. Working. He chose this lamp.
Crowe leaned over the pieces. Let his eyes move slowly, without touching. It was then that he saw it — between two gears, in a tiny gap invisible from any angle except from directly in front and slightly below counter level, there was a piece of paper folded twice.
It had not fallen there. The fit was deliberate.
He picked it up. Unfolded it.
Good quality letter paper, four words in a firm but hurried hand, in ink too dark red to be merely red ink:
He saw the interval.
— What's that? — Maren had drawn close without being heard, which was, in itself, a data point about how thoroughly that note had occupied Crowe's attention. — I don't know, — he said.
Maren waited. Crowe usually knew, or pretended not to while already deducing. The plain I don't know without qualification was rare enough to be noted.
Crowe folded the paper and placed it in his waistcoat pocket.
— I want the upstairs flat. And anything with names and dates — receipts, notebooks, whatever there is.
Maren huffed. It was his way of agreeing.
Crowe turned one last time before heading up. The wall clock above the counter — the largest in the shop, bronze face, brass hands — had its second hand moving. Unusual for an unwound clock. But that was not what held his attention.
It was the direction. The hand moved backwards. Slowly, with mechanical steadiness, as though it had always been that way.
He did not mention this to Maren.
First understand. Then explain.
He climbed the narrow stairs with his hand grazing the brick wall, feeling the dull vibration of machinery somewhere below — like a heart beating too slowly to be healthy.
Somewhere in this city, Aldric Voss had vanished after seeing something that had led him to write four words in ink the wrong shade of red.
Crowe had the note in his pocket. The clock in his head. And the feeling, firm and familiar, that he stood at the beginning of something larger than it appeared.
That feeling warranted attention.