A small, pleased smile softened Ibbitha’s habitually disapproving face. “I’m glad you see it. Can I help you with a stronger cleansing incant?”

“No, I’ll manage. I’d not keep you from Arno’s eager embrace.”

A faint blush. Newly wed Ibbitha was so terribly proper. “Well, if you’re sure, I’ll see you on the morrow, Barl.”

Barl watched the workroom door shut behind her, then pretended to fuss over her bench as the last three artisan mages departed, bidding her a disinterested farewell. As soon as she was alone she leapt back from her bench. Excellent. Now she could play.

Although, to be clever, she should wait a little while to make certain Arndel didn’t return. To pass the time, she gave Ibbitha’s work in progress a cursory inspection. A betrothal clock for Lady Isolte’s eldest daughter. Ho hum. Oh, the actual design was pretty enough, but as a clock mage Ibbitha was hardly inspired. There were so many ways she could stamp herself onto this clock, lift it from pretty enough into the realm of magnificent, and she’d not taken advantage of even one. Ibbitha’s problem was that she had no vision. She never looked past the confines of an inked design to the hinted possibilities that lay between and beyond the lines.

I don’t think it would even occur to her to try. I could make Lady Isolte’s girl a glorious betrothal clock. Given the chance, I could make it sing.

Instead she was lumbered with journey clocks, shackled to the parched imagination of patrons like Artur Traint. What she was doing now was barely a step up from where she’d started in the artisanry, making the cheaper, less fastidious trade clocks that were sold throughout Dorana and into its neighbouring lands.

Arndel is a nubbin. Why won’t he admit my true worth? He has to know it would only enhance his reputation.

There was still no sign of the Artisan Master. Surely she’d be safe now. Heart skittishly thudding, she withdrew to the storeroom. Just this once she would craft a clock worthy of her gifts.

A trickle of nervous sweat tickled her spine. Hurrying, she tipped the raw ingredients for her dream clock onto the floor. Three types of rare sand, pink and silver and blue, gemstones for weight and counterweight, gold and silver and copper for pendulum and cradles. She didn’t need Lord Traint’s inked parchment to guide her, the journey clock’s design was etched in her memory. Squat and uninspired, functional, plain. And all the incants needed was a little tweak here, a twist there, a subtle realignment in this note and that one. So simple. So elegant. How could Traint not see?

Sigil by sigil, breath by breath, the journey clock she’d longed to create grew beneath her sure, steady fingers. Not a slow process this time, since she’d created it once already. But now the clock’s sheer crystal housing glowed, alive with a pearlescent sheen. It rose swiftly before her, slender and strong, not squat, not merely functional, but a tender, eloquent expression of hope. Journey clocks were made for travelling, and here was a clock to travel full of dreams and possibilities. Created to echo the dreams of the traveller who carried it.