Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
The watchmaker held the timepiece up to his ear and listened. The ticking was erratic, unstructured. He smiled and motioned for his guest to take a seat.
“This will just take a moment,” he said in his soft voice. In the outdoor markets, he was often misheard, asked to repeat himself. But here – in his studio, surrounded by nothing but quite ticking and the odd chime – he did not need to strain his voice to be heard.
His guest did not speak, but everything about him indicated that his voice was not quiet, that nobody would have trouble hearing him in the outdoor markets, even on the holiday eves when shoppers streamed through the booths like ants following a trail. The medium brim of his expertly crooked hat hid enough of his face to mask his identity without making him look sinister and his overcoat was large and gave him a geometric appearance that indicated a concealed power.
None of this mattered much to the watchmaker, who rarely looked at people. His eyes were trained for smaller things, for gears and pins that worked together in quiet concert to create secrets that only he could hear.
“Do you want some tea?” The question was a piece of conversation with no owner. The watchmaker threw it out into the space between the two men like a rock on the surface of a stream: with purpose but with no expectation of return. The larger man grunted, neither an affirmation nor a declination, but he shifted slightly and began to pour himself a cup with the set that the watchmaker had indicated with a nod.
Meanwhile, the watchmaker nudged the loop into the familiar crevice in his eye, a ship docking into port, and peered into the timepiece, whose back he had expertly pried off a moment ago.
There it was: a rogue pin, hampering the natural workings of the cogs and gears, keeping the rotations just a sliver off of perfect. He pulled it up with a simple tug on his tweezers and put the watch up to his ear.
The ticks had stopped altogether. He grimaced. Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy. He was no amateur, fresh from the halls of one of the institutes on the coast who churned a dozen watchmakers every six months. A watch with an extra pin was something that could have been handled by anyone. He should not have been so eager.
“I suggest you pour yourself another cup,” he said, noticing that the other man had gulped down his first cup of tea. “And I shall have something for you by the time you finish drinking it.”