The Harbor Market Clock was housed in an octagonal wooden spire built atop the 1680 Customs House, sitting directly over the salt water of the inner basin. When Julian and Corvus arrived at the docks at three-thirty AM, the tide was high, and the dark water slapped rhythmically against the green-timber pilings beneath the Customs House floorboards. Renard had reached the tower ten minutes ahead of them.
Through the high round window of the spire, Julian could see the flickering light of Renard's dark-lantern. But the ground entrance to the Customs House was locked with a heavy iron padlock, and the external iron ladder leading to the spire had been pulled up six feet from the dock surface to prevent harbor climbing.
"I can't reach the ladder," Julian said, straining his arms upward from the damp wooden dock. "It's two feet beyond my fingertips."
Corvus landed on the iron ladder's bottom rung. He looked down at Julian, then at a pile of discarded cargo netting and copper binding wire lying near a barrel of salted cod. The raven hopped down to the wire pile.
What followed was a display of corvid problem-solving that would have stunned the senior fellows of the Capital's Natural Philosophy Society. Corvus selected an eighteen-inch piece of stiff copper binding wire. Holding one end under his right foot on the dock timber, he took the middle of the wire in his powerful silver-notched beak and bent it sharply at a ninety-degree angle.
He shifted his grip, bent the tip twice more, and created a clean, double-sheathed hook. He picked up the wire hook in his beak, flew up to the bottom rung of the iron ladder, and looped the hook over the release latch that held the ladder in its raised position. He braced his feet against the iron rung and pulled backward with his whole body weight!
CLICK-CLACK! The release latch popped! The iron ladder slid down smoothly on its brass runners, settling onto the dock surface with a soft thud.
Julian stared at the raven in open-mouthed wonder. "Corvus... you're a genius."
Corvus clicked once—obviously—and flew up to the belfry sill to keep watch. Julian climbed the ladder silently, reaching the belfry door just as Renard prepared to apply the magnetic grease to the Market Clock's pendulum suspension spring.
"Stop right there, Renard!" Julian shouted, kicking the belfry door wide open!
Renard spun around, the dark-lantern casting harsh, wild shadows across his face. "You?!"
"I have your file fragment from St. Jude's," Julian said, stepping into the room, holding his ground. "I have your grease brush from the North Gate. And I have your monogrammed scarf. It's over!"
Renard's eyes panicked. He looked at the window, then at Julian, then at the heavy iron wrench lying on the workbench beside him. His hand reached for the wrench.
"You think the City Council will take the word of a disgraced apprentice over a Master from the Capital?" Renard sneered, gripping the iron tool.
"I'll throw you into the harbor basin with that wrench around your neck—and tell Vance I caught you sabotaging the third clock!"
He lunged at Julian with the heavy iron wrench raised! Julian watched from the base of the iron ladder as the copper wire hook engaged the release catch sixty feet above. The mechanical efficiency of the raven's action was something that no horology textbook in the Guild library had ever documented—a wild bird using leveraged mechanical force to unlock an iron catch that had stumped human climbs for years.
As the ladder settled onto the wet dock timbers, Julian grabbed the iron side-rails and began his ascent, his leather boots making soft, damp thuds on the rungs. Above him, Corvus hovered at the belfry window frame, his dark head turning back and forth between the ladder below and the flickering lantern light inside the clock chamber, acting as an aerial sentinel against any sudden ambush from the darkness.
The iron ladder of the Customs House spire vibrated beneath Julian's boots as he climbed toward the high window where Renard was working. Above him, Corvus maintained a constant aerial patrol around the octagonal wooden belfry, his dark wings sweeping through the sea-mist to keep watch on the surrounding dockyard roofs.
Through the window louvers, the smell of burnt oil and metallic grease was growing stronger with every rung Julian climbed. He reached the upper platform, drew a deep breath to steady his racing pulse, and put his shoulder against the timber access door.
Inside, the ancient copper dials of the 1680 movement ticked on, blissfully unaware of the sabotage prepared for their gears.