The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (Watchmaker of Filigree Street, #1)

by Natasha Pulley

Some of them were pointless because it would have been faster to lean out of the main office window and shout, but the senior clerk said that would have been ungentlemanly.

This sound-seeing was something he had always kept to himself. Yellow stairs made him sound mad and, contrary to the opinions of the Illustrated News, it was frowned upon for Her Majesty’s Government to employ the demonstrably insane.

An Italian, probably; Englishmen were rained on too often to come up with anything that imaginative.

There was a shorthand for everything. GM, good morning, GA, go ahead, 1, wait a moment, BO, bugger off, generally to the Foreign Office.

Plan not to die in service of British Government. Pay insufficient.

‘My … father was gamekeeper at a big house, and the gentleman there was a concert pianist with no children. He was bursting to teach. If I’d said no, he would have tried the dog.’

Ito himself did all of those things except the last, and he had no intention of donning a kimono and bullying his wife. Mrs Ito would have hit him with her shoe.

‘They were philosophers; they put two and two together and got a goldfish.

He was forging a signature when the senior clerk stopped by him. ‘Good God, Steepleton, go home. Before you bleed all over the telegraphs.’ ‘Thank you, sir.’ ‘Is that my signature?’ ‘Yes.’ He considered. ‘Good. Carry on.’

‘Afternoon,’ said Mori from his desk. ‘Did the fainting go down well at work?’ ‘I didn’t try, I bled all over the place instead.’

‘How does it decide if it’s going to be a butterfly or a moth?’ ‘I … don’t know.’ ‘They’re different species,’ Mori said from the workshop. ‘It’s the way you decided not to be a monkey before you were born.’ Six considered. ‘Matron says I’m a monkey,’ she countered. ‘Matron will find she is anatomically incorrect.’

‘Won’t she be disappointed when there aren’t fairies?’ Thaniel said. ‘There are, I made some.’ ‘What? Why?’

‘I’d like to be a watchmaker before I’m a samurai, somewhere in the world.’ ‘Must be terrible for you, being a samurai.’ ‘Shut up, peasant.’

She had tried to explain that she hadn’t got any explosives and therefore couldn’t explode, but he only said it was dangerous to imagine she wouldn’t find a way.

‘It isn’t explosive,’ she said, for the fourth time that week. ‘And the crater wasn’t that bad, and your eyebrows were perfectly all right.’

used to be long, but I set fire to it once and it seemed better to cut it after that.’

The lights switched off and hid them from the dark street. The fading orange in the filaments showed clear in his eyes, then disappeared when Thaniel kissed him.

‘You weren’t my Thaniel yet. You weren’t finished. You wouldn’t have liked me.’

‘We’re keeping her. Not just while it’s cold.’ ‘I don’t want any extra people in my house,’ Mori protested, fadedly. ‘It’s your fault for bringing her back; you must have known what I’d say.’ Mori sighed. ‘I hardly ever know what you’re going to say. You change your mind too often.’