“It is a battle not recorded anywhere but in the grooves it’s made in the Escapement. Shadow battles stone; the lizard scuttles from the glare of the sun. There was a battle here, I think, between Colossi and pupae. It created a knot in the land.

“Time passed; elsewhere. The warring factions moved on. Only their discarded materiel remained, burrowed deep underground. People came and they settled and they built railway tracks and they spread out across the Thickening, but they skirted this place. There was nothing here.

“Then, one day, I came.

“I was very tired then, I think. I have been traversing the Escapement for a long time. I have been other people, yes. Those names you mentioned. I was searching for something. Something that seemed important at the time.”

“A weapon,” the Stranger said.

“Yes. Perhaps,” the man said, dubiously. “But then, at last I came here, on my travels. And I felt it, then, under the ground. A huge silence, waiting. All that untapped time.”

Zebulon smiled at the Stranger.

“Um,” he said, “would you like to see them?”

Tick, tick, tick, tick, ti . . .

ck.

The wide doors opened wide, on hidden springs, in silence. . . .

Behind them, the dark.

“Come in, come in,” the Hierophant said.

The clocks filled every available surface. It was not a factory at all, the Stranger saw, but a warehouse: the clocks were piled up from floor to ceiling, while only in the middle was there a long workbench on which individual pieces resided, where other residents of Lugar de Espera worked with gloved hands, cleaning them. There was no sound in that room but for the distant, trapped ticks of the big clock. But there was a sort of expectant hush, as of too much time all kept in one too-small place, the sound of a coiled spring needing desperately to be sprung. There were hundreds, thousands of the things. They made the Stranger think of termite eggs.

The Hierophant rubbed his hands together. “So you see,” he said. “There really is no way out, stranger.”

The mechanic, Lucas, and the kiosk woman joined him then. They had a vague blank look in their eyes. Lucas held a wrench and the woman a large metal ladle. They hovered on either side of the Hierophant. The Stranger took a step back, and Zebulon and his minions took one step forward.

“What’s your rush?” Zebulon said, and he smiled, a little sadly. “We have time, stranger. All the time in the world.”

The Stranger backed away from them and they followed. He pushed against the doors and they opened. He noticed the quality of the light outside never changed. It was never night or high noon in that town, but an endless suffusion of grey.

“Ah, I see they’re coming,” the Hierophant said.

The Stranger turned. And he saw that Zebulon was right. From out beyond the town there came a group of passengers, trudging towards them, and he thought he recognised amidst their number one of the cooks from the train.