Pocketwatch of the Timekeeper

The watch does not tick loudly. That is intentional. It rests in my waistcoat pocket, warm from my body, its brass casing worn smooth by years of handling. Most who glimpse it assume it is sentimental—an heirloom, perhaps. I have encouraged that assumption.

In the square below my study window, a scaffold has been erected. Executions gather a particular kind of crowd: the righteous who crave affirmation, the curious who crave spectacle, and the quietly relieved who are grateful the rope is meant for someone else. Today the condemned is a courier’s apprentice, seventeen years old, guilty of altering a magistrate’s decree before delivering it. He changed a single word in an order that would have doubled levies in the river district. He replaced increase with forgive.

He did it knowing the risk.

Intent does not erase consequence, but consequence should at least be proportional. The magistrate has named it treason. I consider it arithmetic.

When the noose is fitted and the priest begins speaking of restored order, I rest my thumb against the crown of the watch and wait for the lever to move. Timing matters. Precision is the only courtesy time extends.

The moment the mechanism releases, I open the case and turn the crown exactly one measured rotation.

The world stills.

Sound drains first, then motion. The rope hangs in a patient curve. The executioner remains poised between breath and effort. The crowd becomes a frozen tapestry of half-formed reactions. Only the boy can move within the paused minute, though even he does so as if wading through deep water. His eyes find mine as I descend into the square.

“You understood the cost,” I tell him quietly.

He nods. There is fear in him, but not regret.

I step onto the scaffold and examine the beam and knot. Everything has been arranged efficiently. Too efficiently. The drop will be clean and final. I do not remove the rope, nor do I free him. I am not here to erase judgment; I am here to adjust it. With careful fingers, I alter the knot’s position and shift the lever housing by the smallest possible measure. When time resumes, the fall will be imperfect—violent enough to satisfy spectacle, survivable enough to allow reconsideration.

Small changes are the only ones the watch tolerates.

I close the case.

Sound returns in a rush. The lever drops. The boy falls. The rope snaps taut, then slips just enough to send him crashing against the platform instead of into silence. The square erupts in confusion. The priest stumbles backward, declaring an omen. The magistrate’s certainty falters in the face of public doubt.

I step forward before confusion hardens into cruelty and suggest, calmly, that perhaps judgment has been amended. No one wishes to argue theology in a frightened crowd. By sunset the sentence is commuted to exile. By morning the apprentice is alive and far from the river district.

Back in my study, I set the watch on my desk and study the faint new fracture spreading across its enamel face. There is another scratch along the casing that I do not remember earning. Time resists interference, and resistance leaves marks. I wind the mechanism carefully, counting each turn, mindful of the strain I have added.

I do not reverse tragedies. I do not attempt hours or days. Those ambitions belong to reckless mages who mistake power for permission. A minute is enough. A minute is precise. A minute allows correction without unraveling the tapestry entirely.

The watch resumes its quiet ticking.

That is sufficient.