“There’s no we,” Nicholas told Sophia, detangling her fingers. “This is the answer.”
Find Etta. Salvage her future. Fix those things he’d ruined.
And to one day live a life of his own making, be left to his own ends, whatever shape that might take now.
“You won’t say what the task will be before we agree?”
The Belladonna’s eyes narrowed, glancing toward a grandfather clock behind him. “I haven’t yet decided. But you’ve thirty seconds to agree before the offer is rescinded and Selene escorts you out.” She reached over and used one of her grotesque nails to tap the lip of the jar containing the thin silver weapon, marking the seconds.
Nicholas’s instincts were murmuring in displeasure about the lack of time to weigh the costs of this. Perhaps if he could make the deal more tolerable, sweeter, he could find that boldness that good faith required…
“I have a single condition,” he said, meeting the Belladonna’s feline gaze. “Before I agree, I would like you to answer a different question first.”
Are you in league with the devil? He shoved the thought aside. Will you devour my soul like a tart?
The Belladonna snorted, puncturing the silence that followed. “Yes. All right.”
“Are the Thorns still in possession of the much-sought-after astrolabe, the one that used to belong to the Lindens?” Nicholas tried to be as specific as possible, so she could not twist her answer, or tell him the fate of a different astrolabe.
After a moment, with obvious reluctance, she said, “In the last report I received, yes, a Thorn was still in possession of the astrolabe.” Her veil ruffled as she took in a breath, sucking it against her lips. “Earlier, you mentioned the Jacarandas—I do not suppose you mean Remus and Fitzhugh, the traitors?”
Sophia glanced over at Nicholas before asking, “So what if I did?”
“If you are hoping to find the Thorns, the group’s last known location was in San Francisco, in 1906. They appear to be on the move, however,” she added, “and I’m not entirely certain of where they’ll settle next. And if I am not certain, those two toadstools have no hope of knowing, either.”
Nicholas’s brows rose. That was more information than he ever could have prayed for. He dared to test the limits of his luck by asking, “Do the Thorns have other times they frequent?”
“They do, but I’m certain they are investigating the changes to the timeline and will not be returning to any of those periods at present.”
Nicholas felt the knotted muscles in his shoulder ease. He gave her a curt nod of thanks, feeling more secure in his decision to proceed now.
The metal desk creaked as the Belladonna leaned her weight onto it, but before she could speak, Selene let out a sharp whine.
A warning.
Through the wall to his right, Nicholas could have sworn he heard voices shouting the word Revolyutzia! in the instant before the room blurred like fogged-over glass and began shaking violently.
Thunder stole through the air, deafening and absolute. The jars and display cases rattled, heaps of glass smashing into each other as whole shelves collapsed. Sophia stumbled hard into the edge of the desk with a startled cry. Nicholas jerked backward, but caught himself in time to avoid the section of ceiling plaster that smashed near his feet.
“What the devil was that?” he demanded. A mortar strike?
More voices now: “Za Revolyutzia!”
The Belladonna shook the dust from her hair and gown not unlike Selene, and began to sniff inquisitively at the air. Satisfied with whatever she’d discovered, she glanced at the small silver watch pinned to her hip. “Calm yourself, beastie. This room has withstood any number of revolutions and riots. The only entrance is the passage. We are quite secure.”
There were only a few moments of silence before the sound of heavy footfalls seeped through the walls, slashed through by the steady, racing sounds of shouts and gunfire. Voices were muddied, in a language he couldn’t speak—“Ochistite dvorets!”
The Belladonna rose, her gaze sweeping around her room, breath hissing from her. She stooped to pick a small silver bell and rang it. The longer it went without answer, the harder she rang it, until finally she heaved it at the passage. The young boy ducked as he entered, just missing a dead-on strike to the head.
“Clean up this mess,” she told him. “And take an account of anything beyond repair.”
The boy was sensible enough to wait until the woman looked away before sticking out his tongue.
“That’s another year you owe me,” she told him without taking her eyes off her desk. “Such ingratitude. And after I rescued you from my brother.”
The already-pale child turned the shade of chalk. With a nod, he went back through the passage, setting off its usual thunderous roar, and returned a moment later with a broom and pan.
“Now, where were we?” the Belladonna said pleasantly, ignoring the irritated sweeps of the boy. “Oh, dear—”
She picked up one of the skulls that had fallen from the netting, stroking the curve of its empty eye sockets lovingly. “I was rather fond of her. She used to bring me daffodils.”
“That was the timeline,” Sophia interrupted, her voice hollow. “It shifted again.”
Because someone used the astrolabe, or—? Nicholas had never experienced the sensation of time aligning from one version to a new one; by the time he’d begun to travel with Julian, it had settled into some stability under Ironwood’s rule.
But the woman had mentioned revolutions, riots, implying that one might very well be happening outside of these walls. Could it be that the explosion they’d felt had been the actual cause of the change, and not someone acting in an earlier year?
Which meant…what, exactly, for Etta?
“We weren’t orphaned,” he said slowly, trying to reason this out on his own. “Are we in the last common year, then? Was that the change itself, and not just a ripple?”
“Yes. But if that’s your attempt to get me to reveal our year and location, you will be sadly disappointed,” the Belladonna said, “I shall neither confirm nor deny we are in a year after both of your birth years.”
Meaning, by her sad attempt at a wink, they were.
“A change this large would impact the information we’ve discussed as part of the deal,” Nicholas said. “To locate the person in question, we’d need to know this year as well as the prior change. To ascertain if she’s been orphaned again, to this very year.”
The Belladonna’s jaw worked back and forth beneath her veil, eyes flashing. “All right, beastie. I suppose it’s time to move this shop again, anyway. But know, my dear child, that you have asked and received far more of me than any man. I will not be pressed further.”
“Understood. The transaction, then,” Nicholas said, trying to clear the dust from his mouth and throat before he swallowed it. “How do we complete it?”
Nicholas had noticed in passing that she wore an abundance of gold and silver rings on each of her fingers. They stacked up past her knuckles, some as thin as veins, some seemingly as thick as the finger itself.
Now the Belladonna drew one off her ring finger and rose on creaking bones, shuffling through the fallen plaster and glass to the other side of the desk, carrying the whole room forward with her. Nicholas took the small gold band from her, surprised to find it so cold after being on her finger.
Under her gaze, he slid it onto the ring finger of his right hand, and waited. Not a permanent mark on his flesh, thank God, for he’d enough scars for a dozen men. But a sign of ownership all the same, however temporary.
Something inside of his heart began to sound in warning, like a ship’s bell at the edge of a storm.
No. I have come this far, and there is still too much ahead to stop now.
“Our agreement is thus: a favor of my choosing for information on the last common year and the Thorns,” the Belladonna said. “‘I swear to abide by our agreement, or my life will be forfeit. That is my vow.??
? Repeat it.”
He did, and no sooner did the word vow leave his lips than the ring seemed to flare with heat, tightening around his skin. Nicholas took a generous step back as he pulled away from the woman’s clawlike grip. Not wanting to alarm Sophia, he clasped his hands behind his back and attempted to pull the damned thing off, or at least twist it to relieve the sudden pressure.
It did not move.
Selene retrieved her bone once more, her teeth clacking against its battered form. The Belladonna returned to her seat, sinking slowly into it.
Sophia leaned both hands onto the desk and said, “Let’s have it, then.”
The Belladonna’s veil rustled again. How someone so old could have the laugh of a young girl, he would never know.
Horror was a beast of a thing. It devoured everything it encountered. Hope. Faith. Expectation. Nicholas felt a chill stinging along his spine.
“Ma’am…?” he began, forcing his voice steady.
“Sweet beastie,” she said, “for all of your talk, for all of your thinking you were clever enough to weight this deal in your favor, it never once occurred to you to specify that I needed to provide the information before you completed my favor. ‘The future,’ of course, can mean centuries or seconds, minutes or hours.”
Nicholas gripped the edge of the desk so tightly he heard his own knuckles crack. “That is dishonorable—unconscionable!”
Sophia was more plainspoken. “You deceitful witch!”
The Belladonna’s eyes were so harrowing, they nearly sent Nicholas’s soul retreating from his body. “Such a thing to say.”
“That is outrageous!” Sophia hissed. “They stole it from me! They beat me to take it—they left me with—”
She pressed the heel of her hand against her eye patch and swore again, spinning away, stalking back toward the passage.
“Hardly a tragic tale,” the Belladonna called after her, “when it has created the woman you are now. You’ll be of great help to him in this task. One eye will be enough.”
Sophia stopped just for a moment, her posture rigid. “I don’t need any eyes to tear you to shreds.”
“You made it sound as though you weren’t entirely certain what you would ask of me,” Nicholas managed to get out between gritted teeth. A deal is a deal. He never, not for one solitary moment, would have agreed to this favor had he known it would eat up the one currency he didn’t have: time.
“I’ve only just decided you were right for this particular one. It should not take you long, provided you are as industrious as I’ve heard.”
Another faint stirring at his core. He squared his shoulders, meeting her delighted gaze.
“It’s quite simple, really,” the Belladonna said. “I would like for you to kill Cyrus Ironwood.”
IT OCCURRED TO ETTA THAT perhaps the passage itself wasn’t cold; it was simply breathing out the frosty air of what lay on the other side of it.
She opened one eye slowly, half-amazed by the fact that she was still vertical. The passage had tossed them out at alarming speed after seeming to spin them head over heels, but…she’d landed. Landed solidly, as if she’d taken the jump out of it herself.
“There are you are,” a voice said over the rattling moan of the passage. There was a slight pressure on her wrist, and the shallow daze ripped away, jolting her back into the moment. Etta forced herself to take smaller breaths, sipping at the freezing air, cooling her lungs and pounding temples. At their backs, a wave of pressure burst from the passage, and she didn’t need to turn to know that the last two guards had finally come through it.
Etta swung her gaze around; when she’d traveled with Nicholas, she’d learned quickly enough that survival meant assessing her surroundings, determining the year, and figuring out how best to blend into the scenery. The lance of panic that went through her dissipated as her mind caught up to her instincts.
They had taken a passage on Russian Hill in San Francisco to Russia itself, which struck her as too big of a coincidence to be an actual coincidence. Her mind would never truly accept this, how her heels could be crunching through loose gravel one moment, then sinking into the soft earth of a forest in the next. But trees sheltered them from all sides, their leaves shot through with fiery shades of red and gold, and the silence of this place made it feel more like a memory she rediscovered than a moment.
To her left, jutting out of the glassy surface of the crawling river, was a rock formation that looked like something out of a dark kingdom, its jagged height like the remnant of a small watchtower.
That same dark stone had been used to construct the breathtaking bridge that rose high over the water in an almost perfect arc. Its spine looked as thin as a finger from her vantage point. The way it was settled into the earth, becoming part of the mass of life around it, made her wonder if it wasn’t just old, but ancient.
But what struck her most, what held her there in disbelief of its beauty, as the Thorns milled around, was the way the late-afternoon light reflected the image of the bridge into the water below.
“A perfect circle,” Henry said from beside her. “Two halves meeting, for a time, as a whole.”
Etta’s brows furrowed at that show of romanticism, but Henry had already directed his attention to a pinched-faced Winifred, who was working her way through the mass of assembled guards. She’d changed into a fur coat, and a hat that looked like some sort of enormous, exotic flower was about to eat her face.
“Sir, all of the preparations have been made,” she said. “He’s expecting you for dinner this evening.”
“He?” Etta asked, though she knew it was useless.
Winifred’s eyes flicked over at Etta, at Henry’s coat still wrapped around her shoulders. “I’ve procured a gown for her, if you’d like her to dine with you.”
“Excellent,” Henry said. “We’ll stop by the others’ hotel so that we can both change. I’m assuming you found an appropriate suit for me as well?”
“Of course,” Winifred said. “It was the very first thing we did after we confirmed the alterations had taken hold.”
“Any word from Kadir?”
The missing Thorn. Etta’s focus sharpened on the woman’s face, searching.
But Winifred shook her head, clearly troubled. “It’s likely he’s safe in the palace, and waiting for us to arrive.”
“Why, Aunt, that almost sounded optimistic,” Henry said with a knowing look to Etta.
“Otherwise,” the woman finished, “he’s dead and we’ll only be in time to collect his remains.”
“There it is,” Jenkins murmured nearby. “Can always count on her to douse the light of hope.”
Henry held out his arm to Etta, and once she’d taken it, they made their way toward the rough path that edged out from below the overgrowth of trees and bushes. Two of the guards jumped into place in front of him, leading the way. Etta found her feet naturally sinking into the footprints that already marked up the trail.
While not all of the Thorns had left San Francisco, an even dozen had gone ahead to make preparations for Henry’s arrival. Julian, to her surprise, had been escorted out with them. She’d caught sight of him being half dragged onto the street, trying to hide the decanter of brandy inside of his coat.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
He glanced at her. “I hope you don’t mind, but it’s a surprise—oh, no, I promise, it’s a welcome one. I simply want to see…I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine, and an important place to my side of the family.”
A parent who shared with their child. What a novel concept. “As long as it doesn’t involve tigers. Or cobras.”
“Pardon?” he said, startled.
Winifred swept into the conversation with her usual awareness and tact. “Far be it from me to tell you what to do, Henry, but I worry—the girl has hardly been trained, and the stakes of this dinner will be so high—let me at least work with her for a few days.”
“There are no stakes. It is simply di
nner with a friend,” Henry said. “I need you to take charge of searching the various rooms for Kadir and the astrolabe.”
The world darkened around them as the trees closed ranks over their heads and the sun continued its downward slide.
“What happens if he and the astrolabe aren’t here?” Etta asked, her boots squelching loudly through the mud. “What then?”
“I haven’t gotten past the prayer that he is here,” Henry said. “I’m curious, though, what would you do in my position?”
“Do you care what I think?” Etta asked.
He seemed confused by the question. “Would I have asked otherwise? I want to know your thoughts.”
Etta wanted to bask for a moment in the small, trembling warmth of that idea, but quickly stomped it down.
“The thoughts of a seventeen-year-old child,” Winifred said. “Really, Henry.”
But he wanted to know, and was plainly waiting. It made her feel…
Trusted.
When in her life had her mother ever stopped to ask her about her thoughts or feelings on something, without having already made the decision herself?
Even Nicholas. Even Nicholas had tried to take advantage of her trust, however halfhearted the attempt had been. He was overburdened with a guilty conscience, and was honorable in a way only the heroes of history and fiction seemed to be.
“Immediately start sniffing around any Ironwoods you can find,” Etta said. “Set off more alterations—as many as you can manage at once.”
Henry inclined his head toward her, considering this. “Ah. To lure Cyrus out with the astrolabe to fix them?”
Etta nodded. “Even if he didn’t bring it out into the open, you’d still split the Ironwoods’ attention. Meaning more chances to follow one of the Ironwoods back to wherever he’s taken up and find the astrolabe there.”
“Fortunately, we already have that information. He’s bought back his old home in Manhattan, eighteenth century. We’re having a damned time getting near to it with the British occupation, though.” He let out a thoughtful hum. “I had considered using the Ironwood yearling to lure him out to more open ground. We simply don’t have the manpower for what you’re describing, though it’s an excellent strategy otherwise.”