He took hold of Etta’s earring between his fingers again and worried the metal hoop between his fingers, rolling it back and forth.
“If I…die…sorry.” Sophia’s voice wasn’t even a shadow of a whisper, but he heard her well. He understood.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he told her, mimicking her prim tone. “It’s as I told you before, in Damascus. You are not allowed to die.”
Her answer was silence.
We are, all of us, on our own journeys….
Sophia would never be privy to the journey he had undertaken since childhood, to find that freedom denied to him. But as much as Etta was his heart’s helpmate, Sophia was the sword at his side on the expedition he undertook now. From this moment on, for as long as their paths were aligned, she would have his trust and his blade to rely on.
Nicholas leaned back against the nearest wall, the stone cold against his overheated, sore skin, and closed his eyes. For a moment, he merely breathed in. Out. Believed, didn’t. Trusted, didn’t. Doubted, didn’t. Rode the tides of his emotions, the way he and Chase used to float on their backs in open water, watching the sky. And in that way, in a city of the dead, he finally slept as the dead did: undreaming, and unburdened.
THERE WERE CERTAIN KINDS OF exhaustion that lingered like a drug in the body, making even the simplest tasks, like lifting one’s head from the ground, feel impossible. Nicholas’s mind seemed to be in combat with the needs of his body. He startled awake, and felt as though he were locked inside a drunken stupor. Soft voices drifted over to where he remained on the ground, curled around his throbbing right hand. The lantern had been dimmed and his eyesight was blurred, but he made out Li Min’s shape leaning against the wall, Sophia’s head in her lap.
“…is this quite necessary?”
“Very,” he heard Sophia say. “I am very delicate at the moment, you see.”
“I do see,” Li Min said dryly. “Delicate is most certainly a word I would use to describe you, what with how you flee from weapons and faint upon seeing a drop of blood.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea as to what you’re implying,” Sophia said primly. “I might die yet.”
“Oh, dear,” Li Min whispered. “However can I prevent this?”
Sophia seemed to consider it, then lifted her hand from where it had been draped across her chest. “You ought to check my pulse again. Make sure you count it for…a few minutes.”
He drifted away again to the sound of Li Min softly counting one, two, three, four…
The next time he woke, it was to screams.
They came to him from a great distance, muffled but ripe with agony. In the moment it took his mind to shake off sleep, the voices seemed to transform into a living, breathing thing. Nicholas surged up off the floor, knocking his head against the low ceiling and sending a spray of plaster dust down over his body.
“Shh!”
Sophia was awake and sitting upright, having positioned herself against the wall. Her dark eye fixed on him as she struggled to hold up a half-eaten loaf of bread. Nicholas accepted it with ravenous relief, tearing off a chunk for himself. He chewed and swallowed absently, his attention shifting from the much-needed food to the small figure at the base of the stairs.
With the sword Nicholas had taken in Carthage in one hand, a dagger in the other, Li Min kept one foot braced on the bottom step and her eyes fixed upward, toward the entrance.
“What is that?” he whispered, coming to stand beside her. The screams tore at his nerves; his hands curled at his sides, slick with sweat. “Who is that?”
Surely not…the Ironwoods?
“We are being hunted,” Li Min said. Her eyes looked black in the low light. “Eat and put on the clothing I’ve brought you. We will not be leaving in the near future, but when we do move, it will be quickly.”
Nicholas ignored her, taking two steps up to better hear the fighting outside—the wet sound of flesh and the piercing yelps somehow permeated even the thickest of stone tombs. “What—who—is out there? You know, don’t you?”
Li Min wiped the sweat from her brow, glancing back at Sophia. With a start, Nicholas saw that Sophia had already changed into a plain white shirt and fawn-colored breeches, and had busied herself with trying to lace up a leather waistcoat. Two pairs of scuffed black boots had been tossed onto another pile of clothing at the center of the room—his, he assumed. The Chinese girl wore a billowy white shirt as well, only she had found thin hose for herself, and a red pleated doublet to be layered over both and secured in place with a heavy leather belt. They would all be traveling as men, then.
“For the love of God, tell us whatever you know,” he said. “Please.”
“You wouldn’t believe it,” she murmured. “If it is what I think…”
“I believe we are possibly about to be savagely killed, so the time for thoughtful hesitance has sadly passed,” Nicholas said. “Do you know who they are?”
“I do. They have been hunting you for as long as I’ve tracked you. They left a trail of bodies behind them—guardians and travelers alike—all dead, the same as that Linden man in Nassau.”
Nicholas’s whole body stilled.
“There is an evil here that reeks of age and decay,” Li Min said, turning to look at him. “They will not stop until they have what they’re looking for.”
“And how do you know that?” Sophia demanded. “Did you use your nose for that as well?”
“I know,” Li Min said quietly, cradling each word as if afraid to release them, “because I used to be one of them.”
“Pardon?” Sophia said mildly.
“There is not enough time to explain,” Li Min said. “They are the Shadows nurtured by the Ancient One. Stolen from their families as children, their humanity ripped from them with bloody training and manipulation. They are here for one purpose alone: to serve him. To find what he seeks above all else.”
Sophia scrabbled along the ground until she found the knife she usually kept tucked into her low boots. She swung it out toward Li Min.
“No,” Li Min said, kneeling before her again, letting the tip of the blade press against her heart. “I escaped as a child. My mother was a guardian, as was my sister. I was born able to travel, so the Shadows took me to fill their ranks and murdered my family. Witnesses to their existence dig their own graves, you see.”
“Then how did you escape?” Sophia asked, still not lowering the blade.
“I was always the smallest, the weakest,” Li Min said quietly. “The Ancient One felt I was undeserving of the privilege of serving him. One night, when the elder Shadows were teaching night stalking, I was chosen to serve as prey. As bait. Whoever killed me would receive his radiant blessings.”
Nicholas reeled back in horror.
“But it was a moonless night,” Li Min said, the words tumbling out of her. “I slipped away. They never found me again. They have not, at least, until now.”
I sought Ching Shih out to learn from her, she had said. To manifest my strength.
“It’s all true, then,” Nicholas said, fighting not to touch the ring on his hand, to ignore the way it scalded him deep down, at the seat of his soul. “From the shadows they come, to give you a fright…. Why does this…why does this…Ancient One, you said? Why does he want the astrolabe?”
“Because he believes that he will be granted complete immortality if he consumes its power; he will be impervious to harm and time’s ravages,” she said. “He has prolonged his life by taking the power of the copies, but they were not nearly enough to sate him. He fills the heads of the Shadows with promises that they, too, will live forever and inherit the world. They are acolytes as much as they are his servants.”
Sophia shook her head, as if she could fling the story away. “No. No. That Jacaranda was full of it. Alchemists? Hogwash and horsefeathers!”
But Nicholas was nodding, rubbing his face. Forcing himself to accept this, the way Etta would, in order to move on.
“You bel
ieve me?” Li Min asked. “Truly?”
He met her gaze in the low light. It was the first time he had detected true vulnerability in her voice. A hopefulness threaded with disbelief. “It aligns with what we already knew, and you’ve no reason to lie to us. But I imagine few would believe it without this evidence in front of them. Have you never spoken of this before, then?”
She tossed her braid back over her shoulder again, the corners of her mouth slanting down. “I did not think—as you said, the story is impossible to believe for anyone who has not lived it. One cannot go about prattling on about Shadows and immortality and such and be hired for delicate jobs, you see.”
“I do see,” Nicholas said, understanding better now why she worked as a mercenary, rather than inside the fold of the Thorns and Ironwoods. A secret was easiest kept by one, or none.
“It’s all true,” Li Min said. “And if we cannot escape, then we will never leave this place.”
The tortured cries died to whimpers. Li Min placed a finger to her lips. Nicholas held his breath, reaching for a weapon on his tunic’s belt that was no longer there. He looked to Li Min, who blatantly ignored him, keeping both weapons in her hands and lowering into a defensive stance. But then his attention was drawn upward again, toward the entrance to the tomb.
They sounded as any man’s footsteps would in a careful approach. It was only when that same scratching began, that long, continuous drag of sound, that Nicholas realized they weren’t hearing anything at all—not through so many layers of old stone. They were feeling the vibrations of the movements. Plaster shook loose from the ceiling, and he wondered, with a sickening twist of his stomach, what could be so heavy as to have caused that.
“Li Min,” he whispered. “Do they use a peculiar kind of weapon—a long, thin blade like a claw?”
“Yes,” she breathed out. “They receive it upon their initiation. So you have seen them for yourselves.”
They had. They’d struggled blow for blow against them in Carthage, without ever realizing it. His hand reached up and closed around the small amulet and Etta’s earring. The shaking worsened, thunder crackling through the walls, making it sound as though whoever these travelers—these Shadows—were, they were in the tomb beside them.
This is hell, he thought, or all the devils have escaped.
The light around him dampened as Sophia reached over and dimmed the lantern.
If they died down here, who would be the last of them to bear witness to the others’ screams?
Cease this at once! he barked at himself. My God, he was becoming prone to theatrics in a way that would have made Chase weep with pride. A heap of good that would do him. He’d fight, as he always had. He’d give Sophia and Li Min the opportunity to escape, and then he would follow. He would not die down here in the dark when there was a future to claim.
Nicholas could not say how much time passed before muffled voices began to bleed through the walls. He spoke French and Spanish, as well as passable Italian, owing to his time mixing with other sailors in ports. He could speak and read Latin and a touch of Greek, thanks to the patience of Mrs. Hall, but this was simply too low to make out.
Li Min cocked her head toward the door, her face twisting in concentration. For the first time in their short acquaintance, he saw a tremor of helplessness run through her expression, and a lingering flare of hope he didn’t know had died out.
There was a moment of silence before another sound began to drift through the air, curling against his skin, making his every hair stand at attention. It seemed so out of place that his mind had trouble placing it:
Laughter.
Sophia pressed a hand against her mouth. Nicholas’s skin felt as though it might actually retreat from his bones.
The steps grew softer. The vibrations settled from quakes to shivers to nothing at all. He and Li Min exchanged one last look before he released the tension that had wound up his system. He took a deep breath, expanding his lungs and chest until both ached.
“Change,” Li Min told him. “Quickly. We will need to leave before they think to return.”
Nicholas nodded, moving back to the pile of clothes. “Do you require assistance with your boots?” he asked Sophia. Her arms and hands were moving again, but he had yet to see the same of her legs and feet.
She drew in a sharp breath and, with great effort and an enormous swallowing of pride, nodded.
“I will do it,” Li Min said, brushing his hands away. He glanced at Sophia, ensuring she was comfortable with this, before picking up the breeches and sliding them on. They were undersized, which might have been a comment on how Li Min viewed him, but was more likely a matter of what was available—what she could steal or purchase without incurring any notice.
She herself wore a heavy cloak that served to blot her out of sight. He hadn’t considered before how strange it was to have a slight advantage over someone else, in spite of the disadvantages the world had foisted upon him. A dark-skinned man in the Papal City, especially one in simple clothing, would not be nearly as remarkable as a young Chinese woman.
The boots were also small, but tolerable. He turned his back to the others for a moment, changed out of the soiled tunic, and slipped the soft linen shirt on, tucking it into the breeches. He left his own doublet unlaced, ignoring how short it was on his frame. No one would be allowed to see him long enough to question it; and, well, the world had a way of ignoring its poor and simple.
He ran a hand over his face, the rasp of whiskers growing in. “If we should need to fight…”
“Aim for their skulls, throats, or along their sides just below the rib cage where the seams of their chest plates can be cut,” Li Min said. “We are safer disappearing.”
“Is there a passage nearby?”
“Two upstairs,” Sophia said. “I can guide us. Help me up, will you?” She reached an arm out. Nicholas and Li Min both moved to her side, but he arrived first, gripping her by the wrist and pulling her upright—and, as it turned out, forward. Her legs gave out and she gasped in alarm.
Nicholas caught her easily enough. “Do you have any sensation in them yet?”
Sophia nodded, clearing her throat and blinking, until finally her gaze hardened again. “I might…need help. Just for a little while longer.”
“I’m amenable to that,” he told her. His shoulder was aching from the stitches Li Min had put in, but he felt stronger just having rested. His right arm, the one that had plagued him in Carthage, protested in pain as it absorbed some of Sophia’s weight, but he tossed that concern aside.
“You won’t tell a soul of this, not even Linden,” Sophia said. “And you’ll carry me on your back, not as some sort of damsel, otherwise I’ll cast up my accounts in disgust.”
“Naturally,” Nicholas said.
“Not a word,” she grumbled.
“Not on my life,” he promised.
Behind them, Li Min was gathering up their bags, pushing her dark cloak back to loop them over her shoulders.
“You’re actually coming?” Sophia asked. “And helping us? It would be so easy to leave us as bait and escape.”
“I may be a mercenary, but I’m not a beast, nor am I an imbecile. I cannot fight them alone. He cannot protect either of you that way, or quickly escape,” she said, “not without dropping you first. And you are incapable of running or fighting should it happen.”
“I wouldn’t drop her,” he said, just as Sophia snarled, “I’ve never run from a fight in my life!”
“If we are leaving,” Li Min said, talking over both of them, “then let us leave this place. I know the way up into St. Peter’s Basilica.”
“The lantern—” Nicholas began.
“No; we move in darkness, as they do,” Li Min said, taking the first few steps up. “Quickly; quickly.”
As it turned out, he did have to set Sophia down to help Li Min lift the cover off the sarcophagus. Almost immediately, the stink of fresh, hot blood assaulted his senses. He heard Sophia gag
behind him, her arms tightening around his neck as he bent to pick her up again.
“Do you hear that?” she whispered. When he didn’t respond, she put his head between her hands and turned it to the right.
Drip…drip…drip…
The air was cool down here, too dry for condensation. A shudder rolled through him, prickling at his scalp, cutting down his spine. Li Min stood off to the side of the grave, her weapons raised, looking up—up to where Miles Ironwood’s body had been stuffed into one of the tomb’s alcoves, his unblinking eyes glowing in the dark. Rivulets of blood raced down the wall to the body of a second man, his body contorted as if his back was broken.
“Holy God…” Sophia breathed out. Nicholas swung back toward Li Min just in time to see the glint of silver, the dark shape that swung down toward the girl’s face.
“Li—!” he began, but the girl was already moving, the shorter of her two swords spinning out, catching the arm with a sickening thwack. A gasp split the air as the Shadow flew back and Li Min stooped for something on the ground. When she stood up again, she threw the longer blade his way, only to have Sophia grab it out of the air and slice at the Shadows behind them; he felt the reverberations as she struck something solid.
“Who’s there?” she bellowed near his ear. “Show yourselves! Show yourselves, you bloody cowards!”
He could see it now—see them. They were a shade darker than the air, until one, a young man with a startlingly pale face, looked up at him from beneath his hood. Nicholas felt himself dissected by the piercing gaze, cut down to his marrow. He took an involuntary step back as ice flooded his system, the backs of his knees bumping into the sarcophagus.
In one smooth movement, he pulled the sword out of Sophia’s hand and lunged forward, stabbing into the Shadow’s throat as Li Min had instructed. A hand lashed out, and he had to jump and twist onto the sarcophagus’s lid to avoid being skewered by the claw.
Sophia released her grip on his shoulders, slamming back against the edge of the sarcophagus. She reached over and pulled the knife off his belt, bracing herself as if to take a blow. Li Min let out a ferocious cry and dove toward the other Shadow, a woman with a shock of red hair. She swung her blade around, swirling the disturbed dust as she spun with it, swinging down to try to take off the Shadow’s head. The other woman was too fast, parrying with a kick hard enough to throw Li Min back a step, but not hard enough to stop her. Rage steamed off the Chinese woman, searing the air, hollowing her cheeks as she opened her mouth and let out another roar.