Sunday Snippets

I decided I'm going to try a new weekly pattern: posting a snippet of a work in progress (or perhaps a story for sale) every Sunday.

Alas, I do not have anything specifically appropriate for Father's Day, so y'all will have to settle for a story in honor of the grandfather (paradox). In this story, Ishene (the narrator) is a time mage, and along with her bodyguard Kemel, is tracking a rogue time mage who seems to be trying to change history by preventing the destruction of a historical landmark. The pair have traveled back in time to that fateful day:


We stood on the banks of the Aysil, a river renowned for its voice. Bargemen called harmonies across the water as they poled past. The city of Riesden rose from the banks like an immense ship never to leave its moorings.

Kemel strode off with purpose. “Where are you going?” I called after him.

“To the Clocktower,” he said. “Where else?”

I shook my head. “If she senses us, she’ll change her plans. I want to find out where she’s been.”

“Always the historian,” he mock-grumbled. His face dropped when I didn’t respond to the humor. “Where to, then?”

We entered the city in the docks district. It was too easy, with near-past eras, to forget that it was the past at all: the moored ships had different lines and flags, but the activity on the docks and the technology used to move cargo was everything I had grown up with.

And Riesden in this era was a city straining towards the future, dabbling in clockwork and mechanics that were decades away from being perfected. The explosion of the Clocktower would cause them to check their thinking, look twice at progress for progress’ sake. Erase that, and the city could plunge into a larger disaster … if it even mattered, if the timeline could survive the paradox.