"My name is Arsenio, and I am a watch."
The statement didn't make any sense, but he said it with such resigned confidence that Anneliese thought she must be missing something.
Julian, however, was straight to the point: "I don't know what a watch is."
"You're not supposed to," Arsenio said flatly.
"Then why would you tell us?" Anneliese asked, her anxiety spiking; she had quite enough to worry about as it was—would this information put her in more danger?
"Because you asked, and because..." Arsenio ran both his hands through his shaggy hair. "This is almost entirely my fault."
"Did you let Preminger out?" she asked, although she couldn't imagine why he would. She wasn't sure why, but she had the distinct impression that he cared about her very deeply.
"No, but I know who did." Arsenio bit his lip and tried to look apologetic, forgetting that Anneliese couldn't see his expression.
"I'm sorry," Julian said frostily, "but you haven't explained what a watch is."
Arsenio turned his apologetic look to Julian instead, although he could see through several futures that Julian was inclined to be petty and unforgiving for at least two weeks. "You won't like it. There's a very complicated morality about my work and I don't think you'll understand. If I'm honest, and I must be at this point, often I don't understand, but I suppose that's the point."
Julian looked like he was about to make a rude comment, and Anneliese piped up: "Sit down, please, and let's hear him out. Preminger is missing, Julian, and I'm so afraid." She was considerably less afraid now that they seemed to have some sort of magical ally, but she didn't mention that to her husband as he threw himself into a chair beside her. She put her hand on his arm and then looked to Arsenio, momentarily blinded. She blinked rapidly. "Can—can't you do anything about your face?"
"I don't know what I'm doing," he said helplessly. "No one has ever said they could see a watch before. Well, obviously, everyone can see me, but they can't see me the way you do, or if they have nobody has ever said anything about it before. I don't even see a lighted face when I look at another watch."
Anneliese nodded, trying to ignore the creeping feeling that she was abnormal. She was sure that Arsenio could explain this, too, if she just gave him a moment to speak. Julian seemed about to say something, but Anneliese squeezed his arm and shook her head as slightly as she could.
"The word 'watch' has a double meaning, in relation to me. It's the kind of being I am, and also my job title. As far as the being part goes... I don't know very much about it, except that I'm intrinsically magical, in a way, although our powers are limited and we're generally discouraged from using any magic other than what we need to hide our appearances. I'm not sure why, except that it would be extraordinarily too convenient in many situations, which almost defeats our job purpose. Also, in case you're curious, all watches are made, not born, as far as I have been able to tell, but I don't remember the process or know how it's done. We're discouraged from forming strong relationships among ourselves, and especially among humans. Most don't seem to mind..." Arsenio sighed. "I have long suspected that I am defective in this regard, although I have no proof of that beyond the general paranoia of feeling other that I am sure you are familiar with, given recent events." He gestured to his face, and took a deep breath that he exhaled as a heavy sigh.
"And the second part?" Anneliese prompted, when he was silent for a long moment, seeming lost in thought. "Your job?"
"Yes, that. Besides shapeshifting or glamour to hide our appearances, watches can also... see the future in a somewhat limited sense, but I'm sure any vision of the future doesn't seem very limited to you." He smiled apologetically again, but this was lost on Julian and Anneliese, of course, could not see him. "The future, of course, changes constantly. Each and every decision made by you and everyone around you changes something, even if it's only the color of the tablecloth the next day."
Julian frowned and wondered why that sounded uncomfortably familiar. Arsenio sat down, careful to give Julian space.
"I cannot see my own future, but I suppose that is because my job is not to have my own future. I'm not meant to have any sort of 'private life,' as it were. I am meant—and I beg you to please stay calm and listen to me—I am meant to influence the future of others."
Anneliese did not feel particularly anxious about this, and so she wondered why Arsenio was suddenly the picture of tension, at least from the set of his shoulders and hands. "I'm not quite sure I know what you mean. Can you elaborate?"
Arsenio nodded and reached into his vest pocket, pulling out a thin book and laying it on the table. It would have been unremarkable except for the small, ticking clock stamped onto the cover. It also glowed, but Anneliese was sure that neither Julian nor Arsenio was aware of this. "This is my dossier. It contains, essentially, the plan I am meant to carry out in relation to a particular person's life." He flipped to a page in the middle and pushed it across the table to Anneliese. "Humans aren't supposed to be able to read it, but I'm sure you'll have no trouble."
She nodded once and looked down at the book. The letters were small and neat, but she could not tell if they were handwritten or printed on a press. Most of the page was incomprehensible scribbles, but the last line was clear: Appear as Herve at the Beaumont-Von Brandt wedding. "Herve?" she asked, pushing the book back to him; it gave her a headache to read it, as the letters wobbled slightly.
"That was my name as a horse, but you wouldn't have known that." He closed the book but did not put it away. The imprinted clock ticked along with the clock on the mantle in perfect time. She wondered whether that meant the mantle clock was accurate, or if the dossier simply kept time wherever it was.
The latter seemed more likely, she realized with some alarm.
"Who gives you this 'plan'?" Julian asked finally, frustrated that he had seen only a blank page.
"It isn't God, as far as I've been able to tell," Arsenio said quickly, and Anneliese slumped a little. "I am not an angel; I am a watch. But beyond that, I don't know." His face twisted apologetically yet again.
"You don't know?" Julian said incredulously, and even Anneliese raised her eyebrows. "You just—just take orders from this book, without knowing who writes in it?"
"I know that it must be my creator," Arsenio said half-heartedly, as though he had had to defend this question many times before. "And," he added urgently, "I have never killed anyone, or injured them in any way, at least not directly." He winced. "Although I may have hurt people through my inaction on more than one occasion. Following orders is not without repercussions."
"But how is it decided, then, who you 'help'? What makes Anneliese, or myself, so special that you've been assigned to our lives? I'm assuming that's what you're doing here."
Arsenio closed his eyes. "Yes, I am assigned to you two, as well as Erika, and Dominick to a very minor degree, or at least I was. I haven't received any more instructions, any more steps in the plan, for two months. Usually, I was updated on something to do at least once a week, even if it didn't directly involve the four of you."
Julian twitched and Anneliese took his hand, squeezing it gently as if to say No, not yet.
"To answer your question, however, I don't know. I don't know how anyone is chosen, or why. On the whole, I am more ignorant about my nature than I care to admit, and yet here I am, freely admitting it to you two." Arsenio gestured to the pair of them and then ran a hand through his hair again, the other resting absently on his dossier. "I'm not even sure how old I am, although I can safely say at least two millennia have passed since I first awoke in this life."
"What do you mean, awoke?" Anneliese asked, leaning forward.
Arsenio shifted uncomfortably. "I told you, watches are made. But beyond that—"
"Let me guess," Julian interrupted. "You don't know the process?" He rolled his eyes.
"No, I don't. I'm sorry that I don't, but that is the way of things for a watch. Sometimes..." He sighed heavily. "Sometimes I have searched for answers, and only come away with the vague feeling that my question was answered. I never remember how, or even what the answer was, but it keeps me from asking questions. I suppose those are moment my creator intervened, and then erased my memory of it."
"Can you erase someone's memory?" Anneliese asked quietly.
"I have never tried, but I'm almost sure I'm able." He looked at her and cursed himself and his magic. "I would never do it, regardless. I can't really describe the sensation, but it is not pleasant."
He looked so dejected that Julian almost felt bad for him.
Almost.
"If you can see the future, why didn't you stop Preminger from getting out?" he demanded.
Arsenio blinked. "I thought I made it clear that I am not omniscient. To see anything of value, I have to be focusing; I don't have random visions of relevant things, as convenient as that would be. My usual job takes careful consideration. I spent months planning exactly how to get Alphonse to choose you, once that was finally decided."
"What do you mean, decided? Do you... Do you mean it almost didn't happen? I almost never met him?" Anneliese clutched at Julian's arm.
"Oh, you would have met him, but my dossier vacillated for quite a while about the way." He opened his dossier again to a page that still seemed to be in the middle, and showed her a single word: Julian. "I'm sure the nuance is entirely lost on you, of course, but your life could have taken two main paths: One in which Julian was chosen as your childhood tutor, and another in which Erika would be chosen to be your handmaiden."
Anneliese raised her eyebrows, and even Julian looked stunned.
Arsenio coughed and then continued hesitantly, "Obviously, we know the path this timeline has taken. In the other, Alphonse noticed Erika in the village and saw how similar you two look, and he chose her thinking this would amuse you. You two grew very close and went on to be quite the pranksters, frequently switching places until your parents no longer bothered to scold you about it. Twins in almost every sense." He smiled, eyes glazed as he watched something that neither of them would ever see. "Julian, meanwhile, found his parents wretched and ran away from home. He made it to Slade and was taken in by the Dittmar family, who raised him as a scholar. He met you much later, visiting the castle with his adoptive father, and you had a short courtship, during which time you were invited to Dulcinea to attend a ball for Dominick. You sent Erika in your place, and that's how they met. Each pair still evenly matched, in vastly different ways. Happier all around, really."
Arsenio seemed to come back into himself and shook his head. "But it didn't happen like that," he said unnecessarily. He sounded weary, but not quite sad. "I didn't choose the way, but as I said, I spent months considering ways to make each happen. In the end, I simply bumped into Alphonse in the square and he looked right to Julian. It was simple, innocuous, and entirely forgettable. Alphonse had no idea that I spent weeks looking through every future I could see, calculating times and angles and the number of steps to take. Julian, of course, had no idea I was ever there at all, although I wasn't dressed as Josué that day, just in case."
"Is that a typical... interaction?" Anneliese asked, finally relaxing her grip on Julian's arm.
"Yes. I am not supposed to be noticed, and I am to do exactly as I am told." He paused. "On two occasions, I was not told to do anything, and so I acted on my own. The first time was twelve years ago, when I came to heal you. You—" His voice broke, and he took a moment to clear his throat before continuing: "You were going to die. Nothing they could have done was going to help you. But you were not supposed to die then. I have seen you die in a hundred thousand ways"—he flinched—"but none of them ever involved you wasting away in a sickbed at ten years old. That was not the plan. I had my dossier open and stared at it for days, waiting for some instruction, some order to help you. But none came, and eventually I went anyway, consequences be damned.
"The second time was two years ago. You were in the mine... And again, I suddenly had visions of you dying down there, when you were absolutely not supposed to. That time, I could not risk digging you out myself. I was sure it would be pushing my luck and my creator would swoop down and punish me. So I ran to get Wolfie instead, a longer, more indirect path, but safer, I thought, in the long run. It was not directed, but then I had not acted directly.
"I suppose this marks a third occasion, but this time, at least, you reached out to me. In any case, as I said before, this is my fault, and I don't care what happens to me anymore. I must keep you safe." He looked directly at Anneliese, but she did not see him. She could not.
"But why? Why do you love me so much?" She did not hesitate to use the word, when it was so clear, but Julian stiffened slightly.
"I don't know," Arsenio said helplessly, staring at his hands, looking up as Julian shifted in his chair.
"But you do know who let Preminger out. You said so earlier," Julian said finally, crossing his arms.
"Yes, I know. But you won't like it."
Julian rolled his eyes. "I don't like that my life is being manipulated by an unknown puppetmaster, but I'm dealing with it. Now please, enlighten us with the one thing you do know."
Arsenio swallowed and then looked at Anneliese before mumbling something unintelligible under his breath.
"Oh, of course now is when you choose to shut up."
Anneliese frowned at him, but he was too busy glaring at the floor to notice. "Is is another watch? Are there bad watches?"
"I wish, but no. The closest we have is me." He laughed softly. "No, I think this is a bit worse than a rogue agent." He sat back in his chair and stared determinedly at the ceiling. "My wife let Preminger out."
Julian muttered, "Of course."
"I thought you weren't supposed to have friends, let alone a wife!"
"Well..." He kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling. "It's never been explicitly stated, just heavily implied, and watches are very fond of loopholes..."
"Oh, Arsenio." Anneliese put her head in her hands.
"What do you want me to say? She wasn't evil when I met her! People change, you know, oh how they change..." He shook his head. "We've been on and off for ages, but I think we may finally be done for good." He tried to smile.
"Why would your wife want to let Preminger out?"
Arsenio blinked, as though this should be obvious. "She wants to kill you, of course."
"What could we have possibly done to upset her? We don't even know her!" Julian protested. "And if she wants us dead so badly, why didn't she do it herself? She was already in the castle, so I'm sure it wouldn't have been hard."
Arsenio kneaded his forehead. "Reina has had five or six hundred years of watching me operate, and I suppose this is her poetic justice against me, too; she still loves me too much to want me dead." He laughed softly.
"But why? What did we do?" Julian said impatiently.
"You didn't do anything," Arsenio sighed. "Dominick, on the other hand..."
"What did Dominick do?" Anneliese asked, bewildered. She had the strangest feeling that Arsenio was looking at Julian for some reason.
He was indeed looking at Julian out of the corner of his eye as he said, "He put our daughter in prison."
Julian froze, and Anneliese put her head in her hands. Of course. "You have a daughter, and a wife... Oh, Arsenio, you're not very good at this, are you?"
"No, I'm not."
With resigned exasperation, Anneliese raised her head and asked, "Very well, what did your daughter do?"
"I'll leave the details to Dominick's discretion, but the short of it is that she tried to kill him. He could have had her executed for that, mind, but he put her in prison instead. It was quite lenient of him, and I'm grateful for that. But I would not begrudge him if he ever changed his mind. Reina, on the other hand, has decided that you must all be 'punished,' although I'm not sure exactly what her hit list looks like. She doesn't want me to interfere, so she's blocking me out."
"She can do that?" Anneliese asked, astonished.
"Can she teach me?" Julian muttered.
Arsenio rolled his eyes at Julian, for once grateful that Anneliese couldn't see him. "Yes, she can do that. Six hundred years of watching me and figuring out what makes a watch tick, in addition to her prodigious magical skill, is more than enough to block her from my view, and Preminger as well, of course. She's keeping a close eye on him." He smirked, although Julian couldn't fathom why.
"How do you know she wants to kill us if she's blocking you out?"
"Because at certain points, your futures are obscured, and then the next time I can see you is at your funeral," Arsenio said stonily. "Reina is the only person I know that can block me like this, and she has her reasons for wanting you all dead. It's very simple to put it all together. She doesn't care if I know her plan; she cares if I stop her. You should have seen how furious she was when I warded Marisol's prison against her."
Anneliese closed her eyes and massaged her temples. "Who is the man in the cell?"
"His name is Peter. He's a farmer from Slade."
"Does his family miss him?"
"He doesn't have a family. Reina knows better than to draw attention to herself."
"Why... Why can I see him?"
Arsenio looked at her appraisingly. "I think that's best left for another time."
Julian heaved a great sigh, and Arsenio glared. Anneliese put her hand on her husband's arm and nodded to the watch. "He's right, Julian. I've got such a headache already. But I have one more question for you, Arsenio, if that's alright?"
"Of course."
"Reina may have let Preminger out, but he isn't exactly dangerous. He's not a skilled assassin—he couldn't even pull off his coup!—and it isn't as if he has any magic..."
Arsenio winced, and Julian raised his eyebrows. "Oh, what now?"
"If Reina is conducting herself like I know she will... She took a drop of his blood when she let him out. If she has that, she can control him, even give him certain powers if she likes."
"Oh, well that's just perfect, isn't it?"
"She isn't stupid, she knows very well that Preminger couldn't do it on his own! But with invisibility, or a poison touch, he can do everything he promised her, even if he stumbles and blunders through the entire affair. Reina may have a roundabout manner, but she knows what she's doing."
"I don't understand why she doesn't just kill us herself," Julian said grumpily. "If she's so powerful."
"I'm sure that would bore her. If she did it, she would be just a mother on a rampage. But having the failed usurper slaughter the two royal families that got in his way, while also acting as her assassin? It's almost like justice."
"Justice?" Anneliese raised her eyebrows.
"If that's what Reina is thinking, which she almost certainly is." Arsenio shrugged.
The room was silent except for the ticking of mantle clock.
"So, in essence," Julian began, standing up and beginning to pace, "you are a 'watch,' an ageless magical puppeteer manipulating our lives according to an unknown entity's unfathomable whims. Your wife, that you are not supposed to have, is a six-hundred-year-old sorceress, and she wants us dead, but she doesn't want to kill us herself because that wouldn't be poetic. So instead, she has let Preminger out of prison so that he can kill us, and she's giving him magical powers to make it easier. All because Dominick rightly put your daughter—which you are also not supposed to have!—in prison after she attempted to kill him. Have I got all that right?"
Arsenio nodded, and then for Anneliese's benefit, said "Yes."
Julian rubbed his chin. "Well, we've got to warn Erika and Dominick."
Arsenio closed his eyes, and Julian cursed; Anneliese gasped, and he covered his mouth before whispering a muffled "Sorry." He lowered his hand and glared at the watch. "What now? What could possibly be wrong with warning Erika and Dominick that they could be killed at any moment?"
"Dominick doesn't believe in magic," Arsenio mumbled, but both Anneliese and Julian heard him.
"He doesn't believe in magic? Are you—? Are you serious?" Julian looked like he wanted to utter another stream of profanities, but he kept silent as his hands curled into fists.
"What about Erika?" Anneliese said quickly. "Does she believe? Could she make Dominick believe?"
Arsenio shook his head. "Not in any future I can see. He'll only believe if he sees magic for himself, something that couldn't be explained away as mundane."
"Then you have to go see him, and do something magical in front of him!"
Arsenio looked taken aback. "I'm not supposed to—"
"Don't get me started on what you're not supposed to do," Anneliese said warningly. "Erika is my friend, and I won't have her in danger of getting murdered because of what you're supposed to be doing!" She took a deep breath. "Just go to them and explain everything like you did for us."
"It won't work. It was easy, with you two, because you have definitive points in your lives where you remember me. They don't. If I show up and start talking about watches, even Erika won't listen to me." A hundred thousand futures slid through his vision, each with the same outcome: Disbelief.
"I'll write a letter, and explain that—"
"No, no, no, that won't work."
"Well, I could just go back to Dulcinea, with you, and we could both—"
"No!" Arsenio shouted. "No, you're much safer in the castle, and once I've warded it you mustn't leave. Besides, your mother is going to pieces trying to 'protect' you from royal duties, and it's unfair to her." He shook his head. "I'll... I'll think of something."
Anneliese fell silent thinking about her mother, while Julian said, "You weren't planning on warning them?"
"I wasn't planning on warning you! I was just going to... I don't know, ward both castles and hope for the best." He put his head in his hands. He had considered venturing to the Watchtower to plead for help, but he did not consider the situation quite desperate enough to reveal how many rules he had broken. He still had slim hope that they had somehow gone unnoticed until now. "They're going to call you for dinner in five minutes, and I need to ward the castle. Let's... Let's pick this up tomorrow morning. I'll have a plan by then." He'd never had to come up with his own plan before. He wasn't sure he wanted to laugh or cry when he thought of how far he had strayed.
"How do we know you won't vanish in the middle of the night?" Anneliese asked as Arsenio stood.
He looked at her for a long moment and wished she could see his expression. He slouched and picked up his walking stick, letting Josué's face settle over his own. He tucked his dossier back into his vest pocket. "I know I don't deserve it, but I must ask you to trust me."
Anneliese nodded, and Arsenio hobbled out of the room, wheezing slightly.
"Do you think he's going to come back?" Julian said quietly.
"He has to," Anneliese said confidently, but she wasn't sure who she was trying to convince.