Free The Emperor of All Things by Paul Witcover

Just as they will the secrets of this timepiece.’
    ‘I do not think so.’ Suddenly the woman was free, her hands no longer bound behind her; they were pointing at him, and they were not empty, either, but held a brace of small pistols. He had seen only a grey blur. He cursed, realizing too late that she hadn’t been cowering at all but somehow cutting herself free of the ropes he had lashed about her wrists. Or, no … not cutting herself free, but instead being freed by the sharp teeth of a small grey mouse that he now saw scamper up her sleeve and disappear into the folds of her cloak.
    Though he could scarcely believe his eyes, he forced himself to show no surprise. ‘Your little pet is resourceful,’ he said.
    ‘Henrietta is no pet but a friend and companion. And now’ – she gave him a mocking smile – ‘hand over the clock, and I will spare your life.’
    He shook his head. ‘Lay down your pistols, and I shall spare yours.’
    ‘Why do you not fire?’ she demanded. ‘Are you a coward?’
    Truthfully, he did not think he could beat her to the trigger. She was that fast. He would have to find another way. ‘You have not fired, either,’ he observed. ‘It would appear we are at an impasse.’
    For a moment, they faced off in silence. Then the woman groaned with frustration. ‘Damn you, sir, for a dunce! Why will you not ask your third question?’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘Your third question, man! Until you ask it, I am bound to do you no harm, unless you should first attempt to harm me. If you would but try to shoot, or if you would but ask – yet you do neither, as if you somehow know our ways!’
    He blinked, taken aback by the return of the madwoman of moments before. Mad, yes, but could he not use that to his advantage? ‘Perhaps I am not such a dunce after all, madam. And perhaps I know more of your ways than you think.’
    She regarded him with something like horror. ‘No. That is not possible.’
    ‘And yet, as you say, I have not posed my third question.’ Until she’d spoken of it, he’d had no idea that he hadn’t asked her a third question; indeed, even now he could not have sworn to it with certainty. Yet she obviously believed it, and, with the capricious logic of the mad, attached a dire significance to the omission. Thus Quare resolved to continue as he had started – though he soon discovered that it was more difficult to avoid asking a question than he would have imagined, even knowing that his mission, and likely his life, hung in the balance. What ignorance had allowed him to accomplish with thoughtless ease took all his concentration to continue now that his mind was fixed upon it. ‘Nor shall I pose it,’ he added. ‘No, nor attack you, either, though I will not hesitate to defend myself. I have the clock, after all, and I reckon that my masters and I may pose it as many questions as we like without fear of retribution.’
    ‘You could not be more wrong.’
    He couldn’t help chuckling at such arrant lunacy. ‘Why, you speak as if I held a weapon rather than a timepiece!’
    ‘That is precisely what you hold. A weapon so dangerous, so deadly, that it cannot be allowed to fall into careless hands. That is why I was sent to retrieve it from that supercilious bumbler, Lord Wichcote. And why you must return it to me now. Believe me, it is for your own sake. For the sake of all mankind.’
    A thousand questions clustered at his lips; he bit them back. ‘Better that such a weapon – if weapon it be – fall into English hands than into the hands of the French and their allies. These are perilous times for England , madam. We fight for our survival against foes – as I have no doubt you know very well – who would show us not a scintilla of mercy. Against such enemies, the champions of an absolutism abhorrent to every freeborn Englishman and woman, we must grasp at every advantage, no matter how slight. It is our duty, to ourselves and our posterity.’
    ‘You