BRRR DELIVERED Yackle safely onto the cobblestones of the courtyard. He could feel the quickening of her pulse; it matched his own. He was aware of Ilianora standing to one side, neither demure nor deferential, just a handmaiden to her own life. The sun struck the silvery stitching in her veil. If she was a eunuchess, she was a striking one, coming forward to offer Yackle her arm.
“Well, there you are,” said the dwarf, poking his head out of a window halfway up. “Never known the gears to stick, ever. But I think I just fixed it. Maybe it was balking until you arrived. What took you?”
“A vision took me,” said Yackle in a theatrical voice.
“Visions, schmisions,” said the dwarf. “We got the corner on that market, darlin’.”
“This is quite an operation you got here,” said Brrr.
“The Clock of the Time Dragon, at your service. Well, not at your service,” said the dwarf. He pulled himself out of the window and scrambled down the side. “All this time we’ve been pulling history out of a hat, and we never crossed your path before?”
The thing was massive—mounted on a flatbed cart, three times as high as Brrr standing upright. From a distance, he guessed it would resemble a stupa of some sort, an ornately carved portable omphalos, but close up one could see the ticky-tack aspect.
“It’s due for a once-over-lightly,” admitted the dwarf, as if he could guess the Lion’s opinions. “Every little while we replace the fabric, do some touch-up work. But we’ve been on the road lately.”
“Can’t tell by me,” said Yackle, urging Ilianora forward with little twitchings on her sleeve. The elderly maunt reached out and stroked the folded leather wing of the dragon, whose head and forearms finished the steeple-top scare of it all.
“Don’t fondle the merchandise,” growled the dwarf.
“You are going to start it up,” said Yackle.
“I don’t take orders,” he replied.
“Do what the lady says,” growled Brrr.
“I’m not giving you an order, Mr. Boss,” Yackle told the dwarf. “It’s a prophecy. You’re going to start it up for me before you leave here. If you’re anxious to be on your way, and who isn’t, I might add, you’ll get it up to speed pretty damn zippy.”
“You may as well,” said Ilianora to the dwarf. “She might be right.”
“You’re the one don’t believe in prophecies. What’s got a hold of you, Missy Malarkey?” said the dwarf, but affectionately enough. He petted Ilianora’s hand a little.
“Come on, Mr. Boss,” said one of the boys, “armies on the way and all that. We’re getting wanderlust.”
“Oh, is that what you call it, boy genius? Well, the gear’s unstuck, so we’ll push off then.”
“Wind it up,” says Yackle. “I know more than you do, today at least, and it knows more than I do.”
The dwarf made a rude gesture he knew blind Yackle couldn’t see.
Brrr swelled his chest. “Mr. Boss, I didn’t throw out my shoulder and crash down the door so we could linger here exchanging pleasantries. I want to get out before the armies arrive, too. Now, I notice there is a well in the corner of the courtyard that is far too large for me to hide in but would accommodate you nicely, if you’re scared of soldiers.” Then he did something he’d never done before and, sweet Ozma, hoped he’d never have to do again. He opened his mouth and picked up the dwarf by the largest, densest part of his body—his considerably broad shoulders—and he began to carry him, as a mama cat would her kitten, across the courtyard.
“Oh, all right,” growled the dwarf. “Everyone’s going nasty on me.”
“We’re on edge,” said Ilianora. As if to authenticate the worry, the boom of cannon was heard in the distance.
A moment later the cannon sounded again, four, five times in sequence, and a hail of roof tiles rained into the courtyard. “Sister Hammer is going to be none too happy,” said Yackle, ducking her head. “But have the maunts all fled?”
“Fled, and left us locked up like that? The nerve,” said the Lion.
The dwarf climbed a small rack of stairs to the base of the Clock and disappeared inside a low painted door. Above the bartizans of the mauntery, above the Clock, new clouds of gunpowder smoke smudged a darker aspect across the celestial map of Oz. Brrr could smell the stink of saltpeter.
“Oh, for the eyes I once had,” said Yackle. “You’ll have to tell me what’s happening, Sir Brrr.”
“I don’t read omens,” he said, “en’t that your job?”
They fell silent. The dwarf could be heard moving about, setting pendulums free from their catches, winding trip-gears, muttering to himself. Stumbling. “Ow. Damn it.” Then he reappeared, breathing a little heavily and brushing some sawdust off his elbows. “Well, that’s that; she’s cooking. Let’s see what the old gal comes up with this time. I hope it en’t a nice little tragic-comedy about the beheading of several boys and the skewering of a Lion by any advancing army or such.”
“You don’t know?” said Brrr. “You didn’t set it up?”
“Of course I don’t know,” he snapped. “I’m the servant here. When did you ever know a dwarf to be in charge?”
They watched. Slowly the interior clockwork built up its reserves of power. Sounds of ticking and switching emanated from the depths of the cabinetry. There was a moaning, almost as of an orchestra tuning up, adjusting the parameters of its harmonies so as to accord.
Then the dragon began to lift its head. Notch by notch: in the costive silence you could hear the mechanism at work. Underneath the sequined scales a cleverness of hinges and loops was corralling the spine tighter, so the head of the dragon lifted, and the eyes began to burn red; the nostrils of the dragon dilated with a pornographic labial movement, issuing some hiccups of pale purple smoke.
“The dragon is smoking, too,” said Brrr to Yackle.
“I can smell that much,” she replied.