But instead of appreciating it, all Etta could think of was the last time she had been in Russia, for the International Tchaikovsky Competition. With Alice. Competing. Winning it all. The Times article. “Classical Music’s Best-Kept Secret.”
All of it had melted away from her life like the snow in the palace’s courtyard, leaving her nothing but pockets of glistening memories that felt like they could disappear completely at any time.
My future isn’t the real future, she reminded herself. It only existed because of one man’s greed.
Etta shook off the thought, reaching up to smooth back a loose strand of hair. Julian walked with the easy nonchalance of someone who had no idea he was being led into the mouth of a wolf. And that soft part of her she had hated so much, the one that now set her apart from her mother, ached a little at the thought. Standing in Ironwood’s presence for less than an hour had been a triumph of courage. She could only imagine what growing up with the man had been like.
“You know…” she began, “you’ll be able to pay him some compliments about it directly. Soon, if I had to guess.”
“Pay him some…” Julian’s words trailed off at the exact moment his eyes widened slightly. He turned away from her, coughing into his fist. “Please. You think…that is, I’m sure you think you’re warning me, but I already know. Of course I do. My best skill is knowing when to leave a party before the fun’s gone.”
“I’m sure that’s been incredibly useful—”
“Etta?” She looked up to find Henry had stopped and was extending his arm to her. “May I escort you in?”
With one last glance at Julian, she crossed that last bit of distance and took Henry’s arm. The courier moved ahead, signaling to the two guards posted at an imposing set of doors to open them. As they stepped into the next room, Etta felt unsteady on her small heels.
“Have they found your man yet?” she asked. “Kadir?”
Henry shook his head, but gave her hand a reassuring pat. “He mentioned in his note that if he did not feel it safe to stay, he would hide the astrolabe somewhere in the palace. It may take days of searching yet, but I haven’t any doubt we’ll find it here as he promised. The others will begin their search immediately, but I’d like you to meet an old friend of mine first. There are a few things I need to discuss with him to secure this timeline.”
The ceiling stretched high above, a dome beautifully painted in the colors of sky and earth, framed—of course—with gold. The black-and-white-checked tile was a quiet design touch compared to the stone figurines of women and angels carved into the arches where the gray granite columns met the roof. Around them, two layers of windows brought in a flood of moonlight to aid the glowing golden sconces. The walls were a pristine white where they weren’t covered with panels of silk or art or gold, most of those embellished to within an inch of their lives with meticulously crafted vines, leaves, and flowers.
The party went up one staircase; on the next landing, steps led left and right, winding up to the same high point overlooking the room.
“This is the Jordan Staircase,” Henry said by way of explanation. “Impressive, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Etta said. “I think it could do with a touch more gold.”
“More gold—” He turned toward her, brows furrowed, before his face broke into a wide smile. “Oh. Sarcasm. That’s a most unattractive trait in a young lady, you know.”
“Yes, sarcasm; one of the many services I have to offer,” Etta said, her voice even more dry, “along with driving Winifred insane.”
He gave her a knowing look. “She’ll soften, given time.”
“The way a fruit softens as it rots away?” she guessed.
He struggled to summon a stern look. “That was unkind.”
But not untrue.
They walked for seemingly forever, until Etta, an experienced city walker, felt like she might want to sit down and take her shoes off, just to spare her toes the agony of being pinched for a few minutes. The rooms blurred together in a rainbow stream—edged, of course, with gold. Blue rooms. Green rooms. Red rooms. Great halls with chandeliers the size of modern trucks. Ballrooms waiting to be filled with flowers and dancers. Parquet floors whose swirling designs were made up of a dozen types of wood. Marble floors so very glossy Etta could see her reflection as she moved over them.
And still, it took another ten minutes before a crisply dressed servant met them at the base of another grand staircase and said, in accented English, “He’ll see you in his study before dinner. Shall I show your guests into a drawing room?”
“I think we all shall wait—” Winifred began.
“I’ll be bringing this young lady with me,” Henry said. “The rest are to have free range of the rooms to conduct their search.”
Etta’s gaze slid over to Julian’s, just as Winifred drew herself to her full height with a huff and curled a thin hand over his shoulder.
Don’t leave me, he mouthed as the woman dragged him away, following another servant back down the hall. Jenkins moved to follow Henry and Etta, but was waved off.
“Sir—” he began.
“We’re safe here,” Henry reassured him. “Lock the Ironwood child in a room and go see to the search. Inform Julian that if he throws a temper tantrum or breaks anything, we’ll certainly break something of his.”
Jenkins nodded, but didn’t look especially pleased as he retreated.
The servant opened the door and went inside, but Henry held Etta back a moment.
“This friend of mine is neither a guardian nor a traveler, though he knows of our existence,” Henry said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I ask that you not share the details of the timeline you grew up with, as it might frighten him into acting rashly.”
Etta nodded and reached up again, pushing a rogue strand of hair back out of her face. Sophia had told her, in no uncertain terms, that to reveal what they could do to any non-traveler brought layers upon layers of consequences. She was surprised Henry was taking the risk at all.
Dark wood paneling surrounded them on all sides, making the awkwardly shaped room seem almost coffinlike. It was so aggressively masculine in its bold lines, the air drenched in wood polish and tobacco, that Etta wondered if the room ever received female visitors. Bookcases, most with glass doors, ran along the edge of the room, broken up in places by small oval portraits of men in military uniform. Around a corner, Etta saw a grand piano peeking out. At the center stood an impressive desk covered with picture frames of all shapes and sizes. She didn’t notice the man sitting behind it, a book open under the glow of a brass desk lamp, until he lifted a tumbler of alcohol to his lips.
“Your Imperial Majesty, Mister Henry Hemlock and Miss Henrietta Hemlock.”
Imperial Majesty.
The words dripped through her mind, slow as syrup.
As in…the tsar.
All at once she understood the warning that Henry had given her, not to speak of the timeline she’d grown up in. Because this man, who stood only an inch taller than her, with neatly combed brown hair and piercing blue eyes, should have been dead a year ago, along with his whole family.
“Thank you, that will be all,” Tsar Nicholas II said, dismissing the servant, who gave one last swift bow on his way out.
“Nicky,” Henry said simply, and it was Etta’s turn to be stunned as he favored the other man with a true, warm smile.
His friend. A friend he hadn’t saved, or hadn’t been able to; one who’d been murdered, along with his family, as a new regime had risen to power in his country. Etta’s hands felt cold and damp inside of her gloves.
This was what it meant to form attachments to people outside of their small, insular world of travelers, Etta realized. They were at the mercy of the timeline. Saving them was no guarantee that events wouldn’t change for the worse, but to live with the knowledge of their deaths…
Etta glanced at Henry again, took in the way he rubbed a hand over his face, fought to keep his
expression from slipping. A sharp jolt of pain went straight through her heart. She knew this feeling. She knew this exact brand of painful elation. Seeing a younger Alice had changed her perception of death entirely, forced her to recognize that time wasn’t a straight line. As long as she—as long as any of them—could travel, they wouldn’t be constrained by the natural boundaries of life and death.
And this was what truly set the Thorns apart from the Ironwoods; the old man only saw humanity as tools to carve and hone his vision of what the world should be. But here, in the way Henry had to press a hand to his face to mask his relief, was a kind of love; a compassion for messy, flawed humanity. A wish to spare this life, just as they had struggled to spare the lives of San Francisco’s many fortunate strangers.
The thought made Etta eager to leave, to join the other Thorns combing the rooms for the astrolabe.
All of this could be over in a night. Less than that.
“Oh, dear,” the tsar said with a faint laugh, extending a hand toward him. “I can’t imagine what’s about to happen to me to provoke that sort of reaction from you.”
His English was better than hers, somehow crisp and smooth all at once, with a refined edge.
“No, it’s only—” Henry cleared his throat and laughed. He took the tsar’s hand, releasing Etta to clasp it with his other one. “I was only thinking it’s been so very long. Will you do me the honor of allowing me to introduce my daughter, Henrietta?”
“Daughter!” The tsar came around the desk, grinning. “You never said! What a charming beauty she is.”
Henry nodded. “And wit to match.”
The tsar smiled. “Of course. Intellect and charm.”
“It’s…” Etta realized she should be doing something—something like curtseying—and did an awkward sort of bob at the knees. “It’s incredible to meet you.”
Because, honestly, what else could she say? It was incredible, absurd, and more than a little alarming.
“The pleasure is, of course, all mine.” The tsar turned his attention back toward Henry, repeating that same stunned exclamation, “Daughter! I wish you had sent word. I would have brought my own with me from Tsarkoye Selo. As it was, I hardly had time to travel into the city myself.”
“Please forgive my abhorrent rudeness on the matter. We made an unexpected trip here, as you might have gathered. And, regretfully, I only recently became reacquainted with Henrietta after a number of years apart,” Henry explained. “We’ve been making up for lost time.”
The tsar’s lips twisted into an ironic smile. “It seems odd to me that your kind can ‘lose’ time when you stand to gain so much from it. Please—sit, sit, and tell me, how have you been, my old friend? What news from your own war?”
Oh my God. The knowledge that he was well aware of their world, and had directly benefited from his association with it, made Etta shift uncomfortably. This was the very first lesson of their world Sophia had given her. How chillingly serious the other girl had been when she’d said, if nothing else, they couldn’t reveal themselves or what they could do. They couldn’t share news of the future with the past, save the dead from their fates, or even break character.
The passivity of it had infuriated her, but to see the effects of breaking those rules now, even in the service of something good, was a little frightening.
Etta found herself in a stiff-backed chair without ever remembering sitting down. Henry settled into the chair beside hers. The tsar reclaimed his own.
“It continues,” Henry said. “I take it you became acquainted with two of my men?”
The tsar sat back in his seat, his hands folded over his chest, his initial pleasure dimmed. “I think perhaps you already know the answer to that.”
Henry tried for a smile. “Are you furious with me, then, Nicky?”
“I was many things,” the tsar said. “Defeated soundly by the once-inferior Japan. Humiliated in the eyes of my cousins and peers the world over. Chastised by the poorest of this country for the conditions they were subjected to. Sickened by the Duma taking more and more power, mine by birthright.”
Etta tried to fight her cringe as the man’s voice grew hoarse. “Betrayed by former allies. Humbled by the notion that I have failed to maintain the power of my father and his father before him. But alive. The tsar. My country struggles, as all do in the face of great change, but the reforms you encouraged have been a boon, including the cessation of pogroms against the Jews, which I would never have believed.”
“The recent disturbances…” Henry began, looking troubled.
“Already tidied up,” the tsar finished. “I will find a way to soothe the ruffled feathers.”
“I’m certain of it. But what of the treaties?”
“Breaking them came more easily than I might have imagined, with France aiding the revolutionaries, who were misguided in thinking one less monarchy would better the world. It was a simple thing to stand against political assassinations, given the history of my family. Serbia was a sacrifice, but one that kept us from the war.”
The First World War, Etta thought, straightening. Russia had lost millions of soldiers; the badly managed effort, the poor conditions at home, and the machinations of other governments had all led to the ousting of the tsar, and his own eventual assassination.
“I hated you. Bitterly, I’m afraid, for countless years,” the tsar said. “I cursed you with every breath. But I trusted you and prayed on each decision. Your family has been the steward of mine for many generations, the caretaker of this land for longer than even the Romanovs.”
As in…guiding their choices? Etta wondered. Advising them on the right ones to make?
How was that any different than what the Ironwoods were doing?
“I thought you were against interfering in the timeline?” Etta asked Henry, however rude they might think her for interrupting.
“Oh, no, Etta, it’s not quite like that,” he said, quickly. “We worked very diligently to protect the timeline from the changes other families were making, especially as they pertained to ruining the fortunes of this part of the world.”
“That is true,” the tsar said. “They have never bowed to the demands of my family for more information, for ways to overcome our enemies. They have been protectors, not puppeteers.”
Settled somewhat, Etta nodded. Henry turned back to the tsar.
“The Germans no longer had quite as much interest in your rule, did they,” Henry said knowingly, “once they considered you humiliated after the war with Japan. Did they even bother with Lenin?”
The tsar shook his head. “And now they are quite busy, as is the rest of the world, with pulling themselves back together after their own humiliation. Your traveler war seems to be the only one which cannot find its end.”
Henry smiled. “We might surprise you yet. Did one of my men indicate they would be hiding something in the palace during their visit in 1905? Do you recall?”
The tsar stroked his mustache. “I’m afraid not. They were harried and bloodied, in no state to do anything but hand off your letter. The guards were reluctant to let them in to see me. They were given food and rooms to rest, but by dinner they had fled again. I’ll have one of the maids show you to their rooms after dinner—you’ll stay and dine with me, won’t you? Your men will be busy searching. There are fifteen hundred rooms here, you’ll recall.”
And how many hundreds of hiding places in each? Impatience stirred in her. We’ll be searching for days.
“Where is your foe now? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you look quite so relaxed.”
“My spies have Ironwood safely ensconced in an earlier century, in Manhattan. His men are far too distracted by the changes in America to focus on you and your country.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” the tsar said, showing what Etta thought was admirable restraint in not pushing for more details. The man took only what was offered, though he probably had ways and means of demanding more. He reached back for his glass and hel
d it up in Henry’s direction.
“Yes, thank you,” Henry said as the tsar crossed the room to a small cabinet, where a crystal decanter was stored.
“I’ll take one, too,” Etta said before she could stop herself. The tsar laughed as he poured out the liquor into the two glasses, but Etta wasn’t joking. She could have used the liquid courage to prop her nerves up. Her back only straightened as the tsar passed the glass to Henry and resumed his former position.
“Tell me about yourself, my dear,” he said. “I’m afraid you’ve got me at a disadvantage, as you likely know more about me than even I do.”
Etta swallowed again, feeling Henry’s gaze bore into the side of her head.
“Well,” she began, “I grew up with my mother in New York City some time past, ah, now.”
The tsar raised his glass to Henry. “For your own protection, I’m sure. A wise choice, my friend. There are times I wish I had done it myself. But continue, child.”
“I’m not sure there’s anything else all that interesting,” Etta said, then added, “beyond the obvious, I mean. I’ve recently begun to travel. I do play the violin, too.”
“A fine pursuit!”
“The tsar is a great lover of music,” Henry explained, visibly relaxing. “You should know, Your Imperial Majesty, that Henrietta has quite undersold herself. She’s exceedingly talented and has won numerous international competitions for her skill.”
Etta turned toward him, her heart in an absolute riot—because, for a minute, he’d sounded like he was bragging about her.
To the last tsar of Russia.
“Brilliant,” the tsar said. “You’ll play for me, won’t you?”
“I—yes—what?” Etta blinked.
“She’s got Tchaikovsky in her repertoire,” Henry continued.
“I do, but—”
“The violin concerto, no doubt,” the tsar said, crossing the room in several quick strides. He retrieved a small case from where it was tucked beneath the piano.