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do. All people should be free like that.”
    Owen swallowed in a dry throat. “That’s not what the Watchmaker says.”
    “This is your chance to break from the past. The devil take the Watchmaker!” said the man, and then laughed at his bravado.
    Uneasy, Owen glanced around the cargo car. He realized that the sweet, resinous smell came from stacks of pine lumber harvested from the forests to the north—he had read about them in school, as nothing more than a list of the products and resources from across Albion, but Owen had never visited the dark, tall forests. Sawmills processed the logs into thick boards, and now the lumber was heading into Crown City, where it would be used to construct new homes, new businesses, new . . . everything.
    As he settled against the stacked pinewood, looking for a comfortable position, the second half of the realization struck him—not only was he traveling away from the home he had never left before, but that he was actually going toward Crown City, the glorious metropolis of his dreams, site of the Watchmaker’s headquarters, where the Clockwork Angels graced Chronos Square and gave their magical blessings. The center of the world.
    “You’ve been to Crown City before?” he asked the nameless stranger.
    “As often as I like . . . or more often than I prefer.”
    “What takes you there?”
    “Business.”
    Owen waited, but the man did not elaborate. “Tell me about the Clockwork Angels.”
    “Wind-up contraptions. Symbols of oppression.”
    “Oppression! But they’re . . . the Clockwork Angels! They’re beautiful.”
    The man took a moment to consider, then admitted reluctantly, “They have some aesthetic merit, and they function smoothly enough. But to worship them because the Watchmaker activates them and lets them deliver pre-printed announcements? People believe such nonsense.”
    Owen was no longer comfortable riding beside this odd, intense man. “But that’s our loving Watchmaker!”
    The man’s voice dripped with scorn. “Yes. He loves us all to death.”
    “But . . . we’ve had more than a hundred years of peace and stability.”
    “Yes, the Stability. A statue has stability. A living creature requires freedom.” The stranger finished his apple and hurled the core out through the open door of the cargo car. Owen had only one left.
    He drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs, hugging himself. The adrenalin was wearing off now. He’d never had an intellectual argument with another person before. Even in school, he hadn’t been taught how to debate. There was no need when everyone believed the same thing and the Watchmaker always provided the answers. What was there to debate?
    As he knew from the pedlar’s book, in times past, the world had been torn apart by chaos and unpredictability, warfare, famine, poverty, starvation, and disease. But the Watchmaker and his alchemist-priests had brought order to Crown City and the surrounding lands. He gave them a map, gave them Stability. Without the Watchmaker, anarchy would rule the land. No one would know his place. Lawlessness would abound.
    Thinking about the frightening old tales, Owen gathered his courage. “That’s not what I was brought up to believe.”
    “You were brought up to believe—how easy for you!” the man said with an edge to his voice that could have peeled an apple. “It’s easy to believe . But now you should learn the truth. See Crown City for yourself.”
    Owen squared his shoulders. “That’s exactly what I plan to do. I’ll see what there is to see. I’ll go where I want.”

    The steamliner rolled on for hours and Owen felt overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all, by his own inexplicable audacity and his companion’s bizarre beliefs. Outside, the faint light of dawn seeped into the sky.
    Back home in Barrel Arbor, the ticking alarm clocks would ring within the hour, rousing his father for another day’s work. But the alarm clock in Owen’s room