Clockwheel Cities - Chapter 2.1: Old Friend and Empty Envelopes

 Part 1 of Chapter 2

Old Friend and Empty Envelopes

Alexej’s announcement echoed in the alley for a while. Or was it just an echo created by her brain to come to terms with this bizarre news faster? Second variant sounded a bit too dramatic, but she couldn’t let Alexej be always the drama queen number one, right?

Or maybe it was really just a normal echo. Parisian architecture was always a little bit weird in these parts of city. 

Deinne wasn’t sure, but her tongue, trained over the years for harsh answers, got ahead: “Funny.” She realised that it didn’t sound very convincing, so she quickly added: “And now seriously, you fool.”

After a few seconds of shock, Deinne was able to remind herself  that she didn’t have time for any of this. If she ran, there would still be a chance that she would make it to the meeting with Master Andersen, which meant that was still a chance to seize the future. Or at least to have a decent cup of coffee. She wasn’t sure which of those was her priority anymore.

If someone else told her that her life’s biggest dream was about to come true, she would either send them straight to a place where the sun doesn’t shine, or run to the train station. (Because of course she wanted to go to London. Every mechanic wanted to go to London.)

However, it would depend on who the messenger would be. It always does, with these things and by these things she meant “life changing insane announcements”.

And though Alexej was probably the only person she didn't want to slap in the face most of the time, in the last tiring months, his stupid jokes were starting to get on her nerves. Not that he wasn’t annoying before, but a migraine can make everything worse, and migraines were only things Deinne could confidently call her family legacy.

Exactly, Deinne thought. Stupid joke. It’s just another one of his attempts to make himself the centre of attention of anyone standing close enough. Wait two minutes and he’ll start telling you about how he beat someone at cards today with his awful magic tricks.

Deinne didn’t like that it sounded like she was convincing herself.

She didn’t want it to sound like she was convincing herself.

That created the possibility that she needed to convince herself.

Which was nonsense. Absolute nonsense.

Alexej was trying his best during her internal chaos, but he was probably getting bored. He was rocking back on his heels (of all his habits, this annoyed Deinne the most) and humming something - maybe one of his Polish folk songs.

“What do you mean, ‘Now seriously’?” A comically offended expression once again settled on his face once he noticed that Deinne’s attention returned from her inner roller-coaster. “I’m serious! You could say that at this moment I am the most serious person in whole Paris!”

Deinne rolled her eyes. A comical fool. But then, Alexej surprised her. Instead of continuing to act like a circus performer dressed as a mechanic (which he really was, if Deinne had to be honest with herself), he put his hand in one of various pockets of his coat.

Then to other one.

Alexej went on like this through every single pocket of his gigantic coat in which he looked like an emaciated scarecrow. Deinne gave a long, eloquent motion to the watch on her wrist. Slowly but surely, her time was running out, and although it was nice to see him after a long week, the meeting that awaited her was more important. This was about the future, after all. Their future. Maybe even world's future, because who knows what might they create with a proper budget. 

“Hurrying somewhere?” Alexej asked as he emptied inner pockets. 

“No.” She felt her left eyebrow twitch again. She thought she was rid of it for good, but apparently the old tic was still calling for a word whenever she felt really close to yelling at someone. But also... something about that question's formulation felt strange. 
Weird sentence structure, she realised. Maybe growing up with linguists left a trail after all.

“Doesn’t sound like that…oh, don’t you happen to have a date?”

Instead of answering, she simply burst out a quick hysteric laugh.

“My mistake,” admitted Alexej. “Deinne Leuvre and finding a boyfriend don’t go together.”

“You had enough of boyfriends for both of us.” She couldn’t miss at opportunity for a remark and noticed that his ears were starting to be a similar shade to his red hair.

Although it was good to be able to make fun of Alexej again, she was absolutely on the edge of time. Actually, she realised, there is no time left. Somewhere in the distance, a clock tower began to strike. The sun has already coloured the sky red.

It was a strange realisation. One of those who make whole world go numb and slower and weird, slightly off, slightly wrong.

The thought of all the opportunities that were just shattering in front of her eyes was chased away by the envelope which Alexej pulled out of pocket after about ten attempts. 

She recognised it.

Of course she recognised it.

The light yellow envelope with the brown seal could only came from the Order of Mechanics.

Alexej handed it to her jovially, as if it was confirmation that they had won a bag full of gold bars (which could very well have been true - you can never know with Order). She quickly turned it over in her fingers. The paper felt expensive and the broken wax seal was not that ugly shade of yellow used by mechanics in Paris.

Instead, it was dark green, the addressee was listed as Our Parisian Colleagues, and the address sat with the address of their workshop. The number of stamps told her that the envelope hadn’t came a really long way - only one with ships in it. With growing curiosity, she opened the envelope and peered inside.

She immediately looked up and glared at Alexej.

“It’s empty.”

“Of course it’s empty.”

“What’s so great about an empty envelope?” Her famous eye-twitch was coming back.

“That there was something in it before!” Another overly wide smile spread across his face and he handed her two pieces of paper. Train tickets, she realised.

Deinne grabbed them and once they were in her hands, she read what was written on them several times in a row. Alexej must have realised that this was a critical point, so he sharpened his attention for a record two minutes and did not devote himself to the other three activities (like humming, traditional dancing and pigeon-watching) at once.

“They’re to London,” Deinne said, realising how pointless it sounded.

They were to London.

Two tickets to London arrived at the address of the workshop where only two mechanics worked. Deinne liked this kind of maths way more than the meaningless equations she almost had heart attacks over at university.

"You weren’t joking,” she said slowly.

"I sometimes do that.”

She handed them back to Alexej, who carefully - as if they were made of porcelain and painted with real gold - put them away in the inside pocket of his coat.

Deinne suppressed the urge to start pacing up and down the alley, sorting through the feelings that had now turned into a bunch of crazy squirrels. Instead, she took a deep breath and tried to squeeze the imaginary squirrels into a little ball and shove it into the darkest part of her mind, from where it would hopefully never come out again.

Thoughts were racing through her head at extreme speed and Deinne felt a small smile appear on her face. Only small, of course. She definitely wasn’t grinning like a madman who just found winner’s ticket to lottery.

“Have you already packed our bags?” she asked. “The sooner we are in London, the sooner we get to the Headquarters.”

***

Of course that Alexei didn’t think about packing bags at all.

Deinne mentally slapped herself for even considering relying on Alexej’s non-existing ability to plan things step. No, instead he opened the envelope as soon as he saw it in their mailbox in La Poste and ran off to find her. It was very stupid and very Alexej-like.

“You really don’t know who delivered it?” she asked for the thousandth time as they ran down the empty street. The Order of Mechanics always sent important shipments with an escort, since by law mechanical documents could only pass through the hands of other mechanics and the monarch. 

"Nah, of course I do!"

"Alexej, for Saint Peter's sake-"

Notes:

La Poste is main post office in France. Deinne is talking about Central Post of the Louvre. You can find quite a lot of pictures of it, I've actually went there and it's pretty busy but cool place. 

St. Peter's a patron of clockmakers, the closest thing from our world to this story's mechanics.