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Prologue

THEY HAD TRIED to destroy the Will, but that proved to be beyond their power So they broke it, in tays It was broken physically, torn apart, with the fragments of heavy parchment scattered across both space and time It was broken in spirit because not one clause of it had been fulfilled

If the treacherous Trustees had their way, no clause of the Will would ever be executed To reat care

The first and least of the fragle clear crystal, harder than dialass The box was locked inside a cage of silver and e was fixed in place on the surface of a dead sun at the very end of Time

Around the cage, twelvepost upon one of the nuht in the dark matter of the defunct star

The Sentinels had been specially created as guardians of the fragh twice as tall, and their skins were luminous steel Quick and flexible as cats, they had no hands, but single blades sprang from each wrist Each Sentinel was responsible for the space between its own hour and the next, and their leader ruled them from the position between twelve and one

The metal Sentinels were overseen by a carefully chosen corps of Inspectors, lesser beings ould not dare question the breakers of the Will Once every hundred years one of these Inspectors would appear to ment was safely locked away

In recent aeons, the Inspectors had becoe, box, and crystal, salute the Sentinels, and disappear again The Sentinels, who had spent ten thousand years in faithful servicebetween the chapters of the clock, did not approve of this slipshod attention to duty But it was not in their nature to complain, nor was there any means to do so They could raise the alarm if necessary, but no more than that

The Sentinels had seen o No one else had ever visited No one had tried to steal or rescue the frag had happened for all of that ten thousand years

Then, on a day that was no different from any of the one before, an Inspector arrived who took his dutiesoutside the clock face, his hat askew from the transfer, his official warrant clutched firold seal was clearly visible The Sentinels twitched at the arrival and their blades shivered in anticipation The warrant and the seal were only half of the permission required to be there There was always a chance the ords delivered by the previous Inspector would not be uttered and the Sentinels' blades would at last see blurring, slicing action

Of course, the Sentinels were required to allow the Inspector a race It was not unknown for a transfer between both time and space to briefly addle the wits of anyone, immortal or otherwise

This Inspector did seem a bit the worse for wear He wore a fairly standard huirth This human body was clad in a blue frock coat, shiny at the elbows and ink-stained on the right cuff His white shirt was not really very white, and the badly tied green necktie did not adequately disguise the fact that his collar had come adrift His top hat had seento the left When he raised it to acknowledge the Sentinels, a sandrapped in newspaper fell out He caught it and slipped it into an inside pocket of his coat before speaking the ords

'Incense, sulfur, and rue, I am an Inspector, honest and true,' he recited carefully, holding up the warrant again to show the seal

The Twelve O'Clock Sentinel swivelled in place in answer to the ords and the seal It crossed its blades with a knife-sharpening noise that made the Inspector tremble and waved a salute in the air

'Approach, Inspector,' intoned the Sentinel That was half of everything it ever said

The Inspector nodded and cautiously stepped from the transfer plate to the curdled darkness of the dead star He had taken the precaution of wearing Iuised as carpet slippers) to counteract the warping nature of the dead star's dark h his superior had assured him that the warrant and the seal would be sufficient protection He paused to pick up the transfer plate because it was a personal favourite, a large serving plate of delicate bone china with a fruit pattern, rather than thea china plate because it could be easily broken, but it looked nice and that was important to the Inspector

Even the Inspectors were not allowed to pass the inner rim of the clock face, where the feet of the nuerly trod past the Twelve O'Clock Sentinel and stopped short of the line The silver cage looked as solid as it should, and the glass box was quite intact and beautifully transparent He could easily see the crystal inside, just where it was supposed to be

'All, ah, seems to be in order,' he muttered Relieved, he took a small box out of his coat pocket, flicked it open, and with a practiced ht nostril It was a new snuff, a present froher authority

'All, ahhh, ahhh, in order,' he repeated, then let out an enormous sneeze that rocked his whole body and for a old line The Sentinels leaped and twisted froular positions, and the Twelve O'Clock Sentinel's blades ca doithin an inch of the Inspector's face as he desperately windain his balance

Finally he ht side of the line

'Awfully sorry, terrible habit!' he squeaked as he thrust his snuff box securely away 'I'm an Inspector, remember Here's the warrant! Look at the seal!'

The Sentinels subsided into their usual pacing The Twelve O'Clock Sentinel's ar

The Inspector took out a huge patched handkerchief from his sleeve and ht he saw so small and thin and dark When he blinked and re

'I don't suppose there is anything to report?' he asked nervously He hadn't been an Inspector long A decade short of four centuries, and he was only an Inspector of the Fourth Order He'd been a Third Back Hall Porter forof Ti to report,' said the Twelve O'Clock Sentinel, using up the rest of its standard vocabulary

The Inspector politely tipped his hat to the Sentinel, but he was concernedHe could feel soht But the penalty for a false alarht be de a Hall Porter or, even worse, be made corporeal – stripped of his powers and , breathing baby

Of course, the penalty for ht beeven vaguely huent life And even that was not the worst that could happen There were far more terrible fates, but he refused to contemplate them

The Inspector looked across at the cage, the glass box, and the crystal Then he got a pair of opera glasses out of an inner pocket and looked through those He could still see nothing out of order Surely, he told hione amiss?