The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

by Natasha Pulley

He had been pleased about that when he heard, then horrified to be pleased, because being pleased with something so boring meant that without noticing, at no particular point that he could see, he had shrunk to fit the job.

Thaniel listened for a while longer, because the silence was so deep and clear that he could hear ghosts of the thirty-six of thirty-seven possible worlds in which Grace had not won at the roulette, and not stepped backward into him. He wished then that he could go back and that the ball had landed on another number. He would be none the wiser and he would be staying at Filigree Street, probably for years, still happy, and he wouldn’t have stolen those years from a lonely man who was too decent to mention that they were missing.

all he had done was lock himself up in a few little rooms and assume the rest of the house had fallen down.

‘I wish you’d turned up five years earlier. You needn’t have been so long working for Ito.’ ‘You weren’t my Thaniel yet. You weren’t finished. You wouldn’t have liked me.’