Tallie looked into her cold cup of tea. "That was sad," she said.
The Clockwork Book spun its countless gears without comment.
"So if I understand this," she went on, "Noodles and Meatball must have taken the Orb. And probably everything else in the bank. What happened to them?"
The Book consulted its footnotes. "They were somewhat inconvenienced by Finnegan's note," it said. "Yet they managed to evade capture and embarked on a remarkable series of burglaries in which they made use of his tools. The two graduated from a large class of petty thieves into that more exclusive fraternity of the criminal elite. I have no record, however, of their ultimate fate."
Tallie mulled that over for awhile. "So I get it, I think," she said at last. "You want the Orb for the same reason Finnegan did - that thing must have more new stories in it than anything else in the whole world... right?"
The Book's eyes irised shut. "It is true that the Orb would be irresistible to me, in any circumstances," it told her. "But I believe that my motives may be more complex." The eyes opened again. "I am not well equipped for introspection. It was not considered relevant to my function."
"I don't remember my father at all," Tallie observed, and she put on a fresh pot of te
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