Free The Queen's Necklace by Teresa Edgerton

class.” Lucius bowed to Purcell across the table. “All the virtues that Man allows are embodied in the able, energetic middle class. A clever craftsman—say, a glass-blower or a coach-maker—is always free to introduce some new trick or fancy, just as an inventive genius like Francis is perfectly free to play with his clocks and dancing automatons. But let either one of them, the craftsman or the philosopher, discover or invent a thing which improves the lot of his fellow Men in anything more than thesmallest particular, or advances the total of Human knowledge by anything more than the tiniest fraction—and Society will brand him a renegade.”
    The scholar was quiet, evidently taking these words to heart. He had gained some fame as the creator of dancing dolls—clockwork figures ranging from the miniscule to the more than life-sized, from the comical to the sublimely beautiful—ormolu music boxes, miniature planetariums set with tiny gemstones, and other delicate mechanical toys of his own invention. He had gained a secondary fame as a collector of nautical clocks, astrolabes, and other instruments of scientific measurement. He had assembled a remarkable collection over the years, and he was always taking them apart and putting them back together again with small improvements.
    But of rather more significance: in one corner of his laboratory there stood a curious device, made up of bronze wheels, lead weights, and rotating compound magnets. On this particular creation Purcell had bestowed the name of “Celestial Clock,” hinting to his pupils that it would ultimately fulfill some hitherto undreamed of function—yet he had been working on his invention for eighteen years without ever daring to bring the design to its full perfection, or even explaining its purpose.
    To cover the sudden awkward silence, Jarred spoke to Lucius. “And can you dispose of the lower classes so neatly and briefly?”
    â€œEven more so. The lower classes live very little better than the Padfoots and the Ouphs, and the Ouphs and the Padfoots live like dogs.”
    â€œAll very well,” said the king. “But now you’ve dissected our entire society and found it wanting, what has that to do with what you said before? Why do you doubt—or pretend to doubt—that the Maglore ever existed?”
    â€œBecause the world is so sick and stagnant. Because—because without the dreadful example of the Maglore in all their wickednessto scare us into submission, how could Society hope to stifle our natural curiosity, our natural ambition, and our creative imagination?”
    â€œAnd so—?” said Jarred, not quite following him.
    Lucius laughed that bitter laugh again. “I doubt their existence for one reason only: because they are just too damned convenient.”

5
    Y s followed Lord Vif down three steep flights and out through a low door, to the moonlit alley where the Ouph fortuneteller and her troupe waited in the cart. Madame Solange whispered a few words in her ear, then someone offered Ys a large calloused hand. A moment later, she was sitting on a wide bench next to the driver: a great dirty brute of a Man, with bloodshot eyes and bristling jowls, who stank of sweat and cheap spirits.
    Lord Vif stepped back, the driver spoke to the horses, and the cart began to move. They turned left at the end of the alley, jogged down a narrow street for a quarter of a mile, and then came out on a broad boulevard. It was nine o’clock, but it might have been any time between noon and midnight. All hours were the same, this far north, and would remain the same until the sun finally inched above the horizon two weeks hence.
    But an immense blue-white moon with a silver halo hung just over the pointed roof-tops, and the aurora borealis played in pastel streamers across a black velvet sky already studded with a thousand diamond pinpoints of light. The city shimmered, resembling