“I wish to know what the letter says,” the girl said. “It is written in a peculiar way. I will give it back to you on two conditions.”
“I’ll take it from your dead body!” Sophia swung an arm out, her fist barreling through the air. Nicholas saw it happening, felt that wrench of dismay, as Sophia misjudged the distance between her and the other girl by nearly a foot. Li Min easily dodged, her face passive, as Sophia lost her balance and slammed into the sand, sending up a spray of it.
Sophia raised a hand to her eye patch, nearly howling in frustration. It wasn’t the first time Nicholas had seen her struggle with her altered vision, and it wasn’t the first time his heart had given an unwelcome, involuntary clench at the sight, either.
Li Min forced her dark gaze up from the girl, back to him. “I will give you this letter, and you will show me how to read it.”
Nicholas shook his head. “Unacceptable.”
If the writing was “peculiar,” he had a feeling it was written in the way Rose had coded the other letters to Etta—a calculated risk on Rose’s part, because what if Etta hadn’t shown Nicholas how to decode them?—and he was loath to reveal that secret to anyone outside the family.
The envelope emerged from inside of Li Min’s shirt, stained brown by the ale, rumpled and worn, but in one piece. That is, until the girl ripped it in half. Nicholas and Sophia both lurched toward her, crying out.
“If I do not read it, you will not read it,” Li Min warned, her voice shifting from its airy tone to flint. And to make her point, she turned the halves to the side and began to rip them into quarters.
Sophia turned to look up at Nicholas. “It’s not worth it. Let her have the damn letter. We already have our plan.”
But it would save us time…tracking Etta would be a simpler thing if we could have the last common year now, without delay, Nicholas thought.
“Don’t do it, Carter,” Sophia warned, voice low.
“I will not show you how to read it—” Nicholas held up his hand, stilling Li Min. “But I will read to you what it says.”
“Unacceptable,” Li Min said, mimicking his tone. “You might deceive me.”
“You accuse me of being dishonorable?” Nicholas said.
“What does an Ironwood know of honor?” Li Min wondered aloud, waving the pieces of the letter at him.
“My name is Nicholas Carter,” he said. “I am an Ironwood by only half my blood, and never in character. If nothing else, I am honor-bound to the Linden family not to show a stranger the sole way they have of communicating with each other without Ironwood being able to discover their secrets. You can understand that, I think, given your line of work.”
“The Linden family is dead,” Li Min said, eyes lighting up with obvious curiosity. “Only a few guardians remain.”
“Their methods work, then,” Nicholas said, “if you have not discovered that some of their travelers are still very much alive.”
Li Min inclined her head toward him, giving him that much, at least. “I will accept this condition, then. But I have one other.”
The girl was smiling again, and within the span of less than an hour, he’d already learned to fear the implications of that expression. His mind began to take tally of what little they had, and he braced himself for the loss of any of it. “Go on, then.”
“As my payment, I would like a kiss,” she said, glancing between the two of them. “A proper one.”
Nicholas paused.
Of all of the things he’d suspected she would ask for—flintlock pistols, shoes, a favor, a signed confirmation of debt—a kiss? He stared at her a good long while, waiting for her to give the true price, but she simply gazed back, her dark eyes unwavering.
Nicholas had kissed a number of women in his twenty years of life; not as many as Chase, but then, even Lothario could not top that tally. He was far—far—from being a saint, but at some point over the past few weeks, his heart had resolved that it only wanted to kiss one girl ever again, and his whole spirit seemed to retreat at the thought of kissing another.
I could kiss her forehead, her cheek, he thought quickly. She hadn’t specified where, or how.
Do it, Carter. He pressed his hands to his thighs, trying to steady the rioting dismay. Get the matter over with, read the letter, and go. That was all that mattered now. He would not think of Etta, the way she’d tasted of rain when she’d kissed him in the jungle. How he could have sworn there were stars in her hair that night in Damascus. The way she made him feel solid, and terribly brave.
Well, his mind was unhelpful.
“All right,” he said, resigned. “Let’s have it, then.”
Li Min took a step back, dark brows rising over her forehead in both amusement and disdain. “I was speaking to her.”
It was physically painful to exist inside the long stretch of silence that followed. Oh. The wheels of his mind began to turn again. Her.
“Oh. Well, that’s…it’s certainly…”
Sophia had begun to collect their scattered belongings, grumbling every curse and oath known to mankind none too quietly. At Li Min’s words, she slowly began to straighten.
“Ma’am, I apologize,” Nicholas said sincerely, inclining his head. “Forgive my presumption.”
Li Min flicked her fingers dismissively in his direction. “It can be hard for men to believe they are not all gods walking the earth, as so many women are forced to fall at their feet.”
He lifted a shoulder in a faint shrug. Where was the lie in that?
“And you expect me to fall at your feet now?” Sophia asked, her expression surprisingly even.
“No one expects that,” Nicholas said. “It’s your choice. As you said before, we have other avenues of inquiry to pursue. She can take the letter and be damned.”
“Oh? I have your permission to refuse, then?” Sophia rolled her eye.
“I only meant to make it clear—” He closed his mouth, knowing he’d botched this moment beyond repair.
“Fine,” Sophia said, cutting him off. She squared her shoulders, glancing back at him as she stepped toward the other girl. “We could go on without the bloody letter, but if it helps us find the men who—I just want this to be over with.”
Nicholas didn’t miss the catch in her voice when she said “the men.”
“Have at it,” Sophia said, removing her hat. She stood straight in front of Li Min, who mirrored her stoic expression. Nicholas had the peculiar sense that he was watching a duel, with neither of the aggrieved parties willing to fire into the air.
He kept a hand on the unloaded pistol at his side, and was startled to find that Sophia was not doing the same. Rather, she was holding her ground, waiting for the other young woman to approach.
Sophia’s throat worked as she swallowed with some difficulty. Li Min brought a hand to her face and curled a loose strand of dark hair behind the other girl’s ear. With a tenderness that made Nicholas want to avert his gaze, Li Min leaned forward.
“I’ll wait,” she said, her lips a breath from Sophia’s. “One day you may be willing to pay, and I will delight in collecting.”
Sophia’s face, already flushed from the sun, deepened to crimson as Li Min offered the halves of Rose’s letter to her. She snatched the parchment away and thrust it in Nicholas’s direction, never once taking her eyes off the mercenary. “Read it.”
Nicholas felt the knots around his lungs ease, and briny air filled them, tempered with the scent of the rotting green flesh of the jungle. He moved a short distance away from the young women and sat down on the bowed body of a fallen palm tree. With great care, he lined up the raw, torn edges.
Dear Little Heart, the center of my being…It went on to discuss the weather, King George III, and so on, like tiny riots of nonsense across the page.
Nicholas felt his brows rise as he reached up and swiped the sweat from his forehead. The endearment would read as a bit much to the casual reader, but Etta had explained to him that, in the absence of a key
to read it, the way to decode the letter was embedded within the salutation. She’d used “star” before, and “heart” was easy enough—though, what to make of “little,” and the curious inclusion of “the center of my being”?
Unless…
He curled his index fingers and thumbs together, forming a heart, and positioned it at the center of the parchment. The message it revealed was still padded with gibberish, and he couldn’t make sense of it until he imagined the shape of a small heart laid over the words at the center of the letter.
Cannot meet you. Will lead the shadows away from you as long as I can. For year, seek belladonna.
Another blasted riddle. The paper wrinkled under the force of his grip as he read the message aloud to the young women. Bloody Rose Linden.
“Iiiinteresting,” Sophia said, something sparking in her eyes. “Dare I say it, but the woman might have actually come through for us. I hadn’t considered it as an option, but she’s onto something.”
“Foolish,” Li Min shot back. “And you were right not to consider it.”
“I would prefer to know what it is the two of you are referring to, rather than watch you argue the point,” Nicholas said with a patience he did not know he still possessed.
Sophia ignored Li Min’s look of disbelief, saying, “There are two people in all of time that know the workings of our world—who make it a point to know everything everyone is doing. One of them is Grand—is Ironwood himself, and the other is the Belladonna.”
“Belladonna is a she, not a thing?” he confirmed, trying to extinguish the eagerness in his voice.
“Julian never spoke of her?” Sophia asked him, at his look of confusion. “She’s…I’m not quite sure how to put this. She seeks out treasures lost to time and holds auctions for them; only, instead of paying in gold, you pay for them in favors and secrets. Ironwood has allowed it because, generally speaking, these treasures must stay ‘lost’ to preserve his timeline.”
“What is it that you hope to accomplish with this visit?” Li Min asked. The sunlight gleamed off her coal-black hair as she cocked her head to the side. “Perhaps you might purchase the information from me, instead?”
“What business is it of yours?” Nicholas asked. In truth, he was mildly concerned about what she might ask for next, and whether or not he could trust her answer.
“I told you, it’s my business to know others’ business.”
“We are attempting to uncover the last common year with this most recent major shift in the timeline,” Nicholas said. “Is that information you possess?”
There was a single beat in which his hopes shot into the air like a firework, only to crash back down a moment later. Li Min glanced off toward the turquoise water. “No. I could…I might seek the answer for you, however.”
“For a handsome fee,” Sophia burst in. “Trying to poach some business from the Belladonna, are you? No, thank you. We’ll go to someone who will actually know, not a second-rate mercenary who can’t even decode a message.” Sophia ignored Li Min’s light laugh and turned back to Nicholas. “The Belladonna knows everything. Julian told me that on his last visit accompanying the old man, she rattled off the full scale of all of Ironwood’s comings and goings, and the supposedly secret changes he’d enacted.”
“And your quarrel with her is…?” Nicholas asked, turning back to Li Min. He did not entirely like the sound of this, aside from potentially having a more direct, guaranteed route to Etta.
Li Min lifted a shoulder, but her gaze darted over to Sophia, just for a moment, as she pressed her lips into a tight line.
“She’s bought into the rumors that the woman is a witch,” Sophia said with obvious ridicule. “That she’ll ensnare your soul. Ridiculous!”
Nicholas did balk at that. Witch was a strong accusation in his native time, and flung around far too quickly when it came to ladies with unusual interests or predispositions.
Li Min’s lips parted, but after a moment, she only smiled. Tossing her long braid over her shoulder again, she bent to retrieve her cape and hat. “You seem to have your path charted, then. Be well.”
She was several feet away and retreating into the palms before Nicholas’s mind took note that she was leaving.
“That’s it?” Sophia called after her. “After all that, that’s it?”
Li Min didn’t miss a stride as she called back, “For now. Until we meet again.”
When it looked as though she might try to follow the other girl, to haul her back for further interrogation, Nicholas caught Sophia’s shoulder with one hand and used the other to tuck Rose’s correspondence back in his jacket pocket.
“Can you believe the nerve of that girl—”
“Sophia,” he interrupted, “a witch? Is there anything else I should know?”
“Oh, we’ll be fine,” Sophia said, turning from the trail of broken underbrush Li Min had left behind.
“Are you personally acquainted with her?” he pressed.
“Well, no; but she is a legend, and between Julian’s stories and the old man’s absolute loathing of her, I feel as though I’ve a handle on her,” Sophia said quickly. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this. The only thing we have to worry about now is finding a passage to Prague. She operates in the fifteenth century—I think there should be a passage to Spain if we can reach Florida, and from there—”
“Not to interrupt your planning, but how do you propose we buy passage off this island?”
Sophia cocked her head to the side, her lips curling up at the edges as she lifted a fist-size leather bag from inside of her jacket and tossed it to him. “Some thief she is. Didn’t even notice when I cut this from her belt.”
Nicholas actually laughed, unknotting the laces to reveal enough gold coins to momentarily stop his heart. “She’ll be back for this.”
Sophia glanced back at the path Li Min had taken. “Good.”
THEY RETURNED TO THE SAME room Etta had climbed out of, accompanied by a different pair of guards, as well as a maid who her father—she shook her head, clearing the impossible word from it—who the man had practically flung at her. Also joining them was a tall, silver-haired woman with posture so severe, Etta wondered if it’d be possible to break a wooden chair against her spine. No one had introduced them, but Etta was reasonably sure this was the Winifred the man had spoken of.
“You may proceed,” the older woman told the maid. Etta would have been shocked if the girl was even seventeen; she peered out from beneath a heavy mop of dark curls escaping from a loose braid. The girl was curious, but not at all frightened or overawed, which made Etta think she was likely a guardian, someone connected to the Thorns. The lantern in her hands made fragments of light jump around them on the thick carpets and gilded wallpaper, fluttering like newly disturbed ghosts.
“A little privacy would be nice,” Etta told the older woman.
The old blade reached behind her to lock the door. Etta raised a brow, taking in the dark violet of her dress. It looked painfully cinched at the waist, with a trail of small pearl buttons that ran up the bodice to the place her tight collar ended, just beneath her chin. The silk skirt was draped with all the elegant ease of a waterfall, collecting in a slight bustle at the small of her back.
After rummaging through the wardrobe, the maid pulled out a plain white blouse with a little dark embroidery around the collar, and a long gray skirt that looked to be made of wool. It was cut narrowly at the waist and along the thighs, but flared as it got closer to the knees and brushed the floor. The poor girl seemed to realize at the exact moment Etta did that there was an icicle’s chance in summer that the tiny waist would fit her.
“I’ll let it out, it won’t be but a moment,” the girl swore, her gaze darting to Winifred.
A moment too long, apparently. With an irritated look, Winifred turned back to Etta and ordered, “Strip.”
“Can I get a please?” Etta grumbled, eyeing the very familiar garment in the woman’s hands. “I’m not
wearing the corset. Absolutely not—”
Winifred seized the scruff of Etta’s nightgown and yanked it hard over her head. Momentarily blinded by the fabric, Etta reached up, trying to loosen the ribbon before it strangled her or tore off an ear. She crossed her arms over her chest, shielding her body as the woman threw her a thin chemise.
It occurred to Etta that the woman was literally and figuratively stripping her, trying to make her feel as vulnerable as possible, and that she shouldn’t simply let her do it without a fight. When she tried to twist away from her, Winifred shoved her off-balance, dropped the corset over her head, and began to lace it up before Etta caught her next breath. The woman handed her another thin, sleeveless top to pull over the corset. Etta resented the little cheerful pink ribbons on it almost as much as the woman’s smirk.
“You poor creature. You’ve your mother’s sorry figure.”
“Touch me again and I’ll show you how alike we are,” Etta spat out.
Winifred had already turned away, retrieving the blouse and newly let-out skirt from the maid. She threw them at Etta’s feet.
“With haste, you stupid child,” she said, when Etta did not immediately do as she was told. “The Grand Master won’t be pleased if he’s kept waiting.”
Etta’s temper flared at the word child, singeing whatever restraint she might have had left. That was the only explanation she had for why she said, “Cyrus Ironwood is the Grand Master.”
The slap came so suddenly that Etta could not have dodged it if she had enough time to try. She careened back onto the bed, pressing her hand to the burning skin on her face.
“Look what you made me do,” the woman growled. “Such insolence! And after I cared for you! Washed you! Tended to your courses! And with nary a complaint. If he hadn’t asked it of me, I would have smothered you from the start.”
“You are insane,” Etta informed her, fists already clenched. “Hit me again and your friends will be picking pieces of you out of the rug!”