A bird made of brass

The clock above Master Orin’s door had been one minute slow for as long as Lian could remember.

Nobody in Bellweather noticed. In a city governed by bells, one minute was a private kind of rebellion.

On the morning the brass bird arrived, the clock began to run backward.

Lian stood beneath it with a broom in one hand and the unopened parcel in the other. Inside the paper, something tapped three times.

Not a machine, she thought. Machines kept honest rhythms. This was waiting for an answer.

She set the parcel on the workbench. Beyond the fogged glass, the city’s thousand towers struck seven—all except theirs.