Synchrony
Eugenides, Xenophon and the officers all had watches on their expedition in QoA. Who made them?
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"Five for the officers," said Stenides, unpacking the boxful of flat pocket watches onto his work-desk. He pushed the gentleman's bejewelled fob watch, which he had been working on when his younger brother had turned up, to one side and took out another two flat watches. "Xenophon's and then yours. They're all synchronised to the second with the ones for the engineers and I've repaired yours."
"It wasn't broken," said Eugenides bluntly.
Stenides kept his eyes on the table of watches. "It opened the wrong way for you," he said as levelly as he could manage to. His brother's whole stance stiffened. Sten could tell without looking up that Gen's mouth would have set into the hard line it did whenever anyone, even the Queen of Eddis, alluded to his disability. Mostly, people changed the subject then. After some time, Eugenides' tension and anger would pass off – but Sten didn't like to leave it like that. Not this time, not in these circumstances.
"I make them that way all the time," he said, looking up firmly. "For everybody who's left-handed – and Procivitus. He had all the ones he inherited from his father turned round: he likes to be able to time his sparring matches while still brandishing his sword. Measure his whacks-per-minute," the older non-combatant son of the minister of war joked hopefully.
He had refused all gold for this work, despite the watches being the latest and most expensive mechanisms. He hadn't wanted payment – unless it was in the payment he got then, the thing he had often doubted he'd ever see again – Gen's sudden, flashing grin.
Later, when he had finished for the day, Sten walked slowly up the Sacred Way to the temple of the Hephestia. He bowed briefly to the statue of the Great Goddess, and then turned into the side chapel of the God of Thieves. The nearly finished stub of a candle still burned amidst the glittering offerings on the alter. Sten lit his own candle, and measured its burn time by his own watch. The Thief and the watchmaker had missed each other by seventeen and three-quarter minutes – which was probably what they had both had in mind. Sten leaned over, and put the second of the pair of bejewelled watch chain links down beside the one Gen had stolen from his work-desk that afternoon.
"Keep him safe," Sten muttered, uncertain what Gen might have asked for and not wishing to contradict it. Together, the chain links glinted in the candlelight, a saucy sort of glint like Gen's grin. 'I can steal anything,' they seemed to say. 'Even your chain links.'
I can steal anything. The thing Sten had grown up hoping his little brother would stop saying – and also, contradictorily, hoping that he might never find it to be not true. Wishing he would grow up and grow out of it and join the Guard – and wishing he would grow up and grow into it and never fail.
And the latter had come true, and his brother had become the Thief of Eddis, and fibula pins and earrings and the Queen's tourmaline necklace had all flowed like silk through Gen's fingers and onto this alter. And then there had been Hamiathes's Gift and cousin Ornon's sheep and the Sounisian navy and the magus of Sounis as well – and now Gen was off again, to steal something surely more daring and more dangerous than any King's Thief had attempted before – and Sten was not sure if he was more afraid of Gen failing or succeeding.
The saucy flickers still danced on the offerings his brother, mother, grandfather had heaped there, as though they knew Sten still had something to say. He thought for a moment, and then lowered his head.
"And don't let him fall off anything he didn't ought to."
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