Lord Edris Vane hasn't aged in eleven years. No one at court has noticed because he's reclusive, but the Crown's census is coming and a physical inspection will expose what he can't explain — time doesn't seem to touch him. The only clue is a clock his father commissioned from a master clockmaker before he died, a clock that has never ticked but is warm to the touch. The clockmaker is dead, but his granddaughter Nev still runs the shop. She can't fix the clock either, but she recognizes the mechanism — it's not measuring time. It's *storing* it. Someone else's years are being fed into Edris, and that someone is running out. He offers Nev his patronage and protection from the guild that's been trying to seize her grandfather's workshop. She agrees because she wants answers about her grandfather's final project as badly as he does. But every component they trace leads to another lord who aged too fast, died too young — and the trail ends at the royal palace.