Wayfarer by Alexandra Bracken
“Where?” the man asked, smirking.
Etta glanced across the wide stretch of the river, to where another imperial-looking building loomed. She pointed, and the man turned his head to follow the line of her arm, her finger—
Etta slammed the flashlight into his skull, blowing him back into the boat, where he collapsed, unmoving. Stunned, but still breathing.
“Good God, Linden-Hemlock-whoever-you-are!” Julian called, stumbling down the hill.
Etta threw the broken remains of the flashlight into the nearest boat, and reached down to untie the boat the man had fallen into, letting it drift into the patches of ice on the Neva. She thought about apologizing, but then decided that moment that she just didn’t care.
A pirate wouldn’t apologize or thank him. A pirate would just take. And if she had to shut off some crucial, feeling part of herself to survive this and find her way back to the real pirate in her life, she would.
She heard Nicholas’s voice whisper in her ear, a protesting, Legal pirate, thank you, and for an instant allowed the small, sad laugh to bubble up in her chest.
Julian gave her a look that told her exactly what he thought about that laugh.
“Spencer,” she told him. “My last name is Spencer.”
Etta quickly stepped down into the boat, feeling it wobble beneath her feet. It steadied with the added weight of Julian, allowing her to easily reach up and unknot the line anchoring it to the dock. They drifted out toward the clumps of ice forming in the river’s slow waters, and for a moment they both looked at each other expectantly.
“I would row,” Etta told him, “except my shoulder is killing me and I can barely move my arm—so maybe you could try contributing to this escape?”
“Of course,” he said quickly, not meeting her gaze. “I was just waiting to see if you’d be stubborn enough to attempt it yourself.”
Julian picked up the oars, got them on either side of the boat, and then lifted them up and down in the water, doing little more than splashing. Etta stared at him; she was freezing, tired, shaken, and on the verge of reaching over to strangle him for even trying to make a joke at a time like this. But he kept doing it, his brow wrinkled, as if confounded about why the boat was slowly turning in a circle and not moving across the water as expected.
“Are you serious?” she asked him in disbelief. “You don’t know how to row a boat?”
His shoulders set against her words. “I’ll have you know, Nick was always there to do it when the situation called for it.”
Etta felt her jaw tighten to the point of pain as she held out her hands. He hesitated a moment before passing the heavy oars over. With a movement that made her shoulder protest pitifully, she got the boat turned around, her back to the other bank, and made the first long stroke. Those days with Alice rowing by the Loeb Boathouse in Central Park had been for something more than enjoyment after all.
Julian released a relieved sigh, leaning back to look up at the snow falling on them. No matter what he did, he always seemed to be posing and waiting for someone to compliment him on it.
“You’re rather handy, Linden-Hemlock-Spencer,” he said. “That was some brilliant teamwork, if I do say so myself.”
“I’m not sure you know what that word means,” Etta managed, her teeth clenched. She tried to mine the small bit of gold out of this situation—she was alive, and the rowing was at least warming her stiff muscles—but she could already feel the rising urge to take one of the oars and whack Julian into the freezing water.
“You’re the brawn, I’m the brains, kiddo,” he told her. “You don’t need my help with this.”
Etta was beginning to think that the real reason he’d gone to the Thorns was that he was at least self-aware enough to know he wouldn’t be able to survive on his own.
“Call me kiddo again…” She felt the words growl out of her throat, too low for her to even hear over the splash of water and the painful ringing.
“Your ears still giving you a spot of trouble?” he asked. “It’s a good sign you can hear at all—it means it might heal completely. Lesser explosions have destroyed people’s eardrums, from what I understand.”
Etta grunted, putting the full force of her anxiety into the next pull of the oars. Beethoven could compose and play instruments when he was mostly deaf. But she wasn’t Beethoven, and the thought of never hearing music again left her feeling as if her chest had been hollowed out.
Stop thinking, just row.
“What happened at dinner, exactly?” Julian asked. “One minute I was being berated by the Thorn guard for innocently inquiring about his mother’s species, and the next, the whole place started rocking on its bones.”
Etta looked down at her lap, avoiding his gaze. She might as well tell him—though it seemed unlikely, Julian might have the answer to the question that had been nagging at her since she’d been jolted back into consciousness.
“We had…we had just started the last course, when one of the waiters brought out a wine bottle to serve the tsar. He shouted something and slammed it down onto the table. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground and half the floor was gone. Henry was hurt badly, and the others…”
Julian’s brows shot up. “Was there liquid in the bottle?”
She nodded, pulling the next stroke.
“Based on the year, it was probably nitroglycerine. It explodes on impact. Very volatile. Even Grandfather didn’t like using the stuff.” His expression turned thoughtful. “How on God’s green earth did you manage to survive that?”
A good question. “Jenkins—the other guard, I mean—he jumped on it, I think, just before it hit the table. And Henry, he…”
I left him there to die.
I left him.
Etta wiped the sweat from her forehead with her tattered sleeve. “It was an Ironwood—both Jenkins and Henry recognized him. But he shouted something before he threw down the explosive—” She tried to repeat it the best she could.
“Revolyutzia, maybe? That’s revolution,” Julian said, his voice oddly quiet. “Pretending to play the part of a revolutionary for the assassination. Evil, Grandpops, but rather elegant. There is a rather unfortunate tradition of tsars being assassinated, so no one would question it.”
Etta took a breath, trying to wipe the blood from her face against her shoulder. Her stiff knees ached as she tried to stretch them out in the cramped boat. “So we’re back to your grandfather’s timeline?”
“Hell if I know, kid,” Julian said, briskly rubbing his arms to try to bring some warmth back into them. “I don’t intend to find out, and neither should you. Your opportunity to escape has presented itself, and you are hereby invited to join me in Bora Bora for as long as it takes them to sort this out.”
Etta dragged the oars through the dark water again. “I’m not going to Bora Bora.”
“Oh? I wasn’t aware that this escape involved a real plan, but do share.”
“If the Thorn, Kadir, was found dead, it means your grandfather got to the astrolabe, which means I need to find him,” Etta said, explaining it to him slowly, as if he were a small child. His mouth twitched, trying to hide a smile. “As far as I know, he’s still in 1776, in New York. How do I get back there from this point?”
“No,” Julian said, throwing his hands up in the air. “No. Because this is absurd. You should just come with me. This doesn’t have to be on your shoulders. You don’t need the weight of it—it’ll just smother you. Come with me to Bora Bora and let the devils have their hell.”
“It’s always that easy for you, isn’t it?” Etta said, shaking her head. “Let everyone else risk their lives to try to fix what your grandfather has done. Don’t take any responsibility for your family.”
He gave her a pitying look that set her teeth on edge. “Christ, you sound like Nick, with all of this talk of responsibility. Morality is a bore, kiddo. And if you think any one person can stop Grandfather, you’re mistaken. He was born out of a cloud of sulfur and his bones are brimstone.??
?
“Imagine what you could accomplish with your life,” she said, “if you weren’t so damn afraid all the time.”
The gentle thud of the broken ice against their boat and the splash of the oars in the water was the only conversation for several moments.
Julian let out a dramatic sigh and dipped a hand into his jacket, pulling out a small leather notebook.
“I suppose I’m going to have to be the lesser person in this situation and allow you to take the title of bigger,” he said, thumbing through the pages. It must have been his traveler’s journal, with notations of where and when he’d been, so he didn’t cross paths with an older or younger version of himself.
“Here we are,” he said. “There are three passages in this year and city. The one we’re headed to will take us to Alexandria, 203 A.D. From there, there’s a passage through the Vatican, and from there, you can connect to New York in…1939. Little Italy, on Mulberry and Grand.”
Etta’s grip on the oars tightened. “How does that help me?”
“You’ll just need to get to where Whitehall Dock used to be. There’s a passage to 1776, in Boston,” he said. “That’s the most direct route to that year.”
She could find a way from Boston to Manhattan. If nothing else, she could turn herself over to the Ironwood guardian who would inevitably be watching the passage, and let him or her bring her to Ironwood for her punishment.
“Why is everyone still banging on about that damn astrolabe?” Julian complained. “It’s always been more trouble than it’s worth. No one is ever satisfied with life, are they? What more does he have to sacrifice at this point? He’s gone and killed his entire family over it.”
“I had it….” She could hear the pain in her voice. “But it was taken by the Thorns—the ones who went missing. It’s my responsibility to find it and finish what I started.”
“Why? The timeline’s already changed again, and it’ll only get worse from here.”
Etta leaned forward. “You’re sure it changed?”
“You didn’t feel it?” Julian shook his head. “I suppose not. It’s not that different from the pressure of an explosion. The whole world blurs for a moment, and the sound is deafening. It’s unmistakable. Whatever this new timeline is, it’s bound to be bad.”
“More reason to find the astrolabe,” Etta said, through gritted teeth. “And destroy it in order to reset it back to its original state.”
Julian wore a strange expression. “Is Grandpops’s timeline really that bad? I wasn’t around to see the original one, and neither were you. Who’s to say he didn’t improve on a few things?”
Etta shook her head. This was the trouble with meddling at all—who decided what was considered more peaceful, or improved? A benefit to one part of the world might be a detriment to the other. You could stop a war, and it might inadvertently cause another. You could change the outcome of a battle, and it would just be the other side who experienced the losses.
“It doesn’t matter. No one should have tampered with it in the first place, least of all Cyrus Ironwood.” And even though she already knew what his answer would be, she tried anyway: “You could help me…find Nicholas and Sophia and the rest of your family. Apologize for tricking them into grieving for you.”
“Appealing to a sense of honor only works if a person has one,” Julian informed her. “I’ll go with you as far as the Vatican, but—”
She heard the crack of the gunshot and its echo as the bullet slammed into the water, sending up a spray of freezing water at them and rocking the boat. Both Etta and Julian ducked instinctively.
The next bullet splashed down on the other side of the boat.
“Can’t you row any faster?” Julian complained.
“Can you try helping?” she fired back, but Julian had already turned around to shout something at them in Russian.
The next shot from the embankment hit the rim of the boat, splintering it so close to his hand that Julian yelped in alarm, and made as if to dive into the freezing river. Through the curtain of snow, Etta could just barely make out the men gathered there, one of whom was climbing down toward the other boat.
“Why are they chasing us?” he complained.
“Thorn!” one of them bellowed in an American accent. An Ironwood. “Come back at once and you will be shown a measure of mercy!”
Julian groaned, sinking back against the boat in dismay. Etta’s arms worked faster, the oars beating at the water as the other embankment finally came within a few dozen yards.
“It’s just not fair. How did you get us into this mess? What kind of bad-luck charm are you?”
“Can you please shut up?” she snapped. “Reach for the embankment when you can and pull us in—”
The next two gunshots splintered the floating ice, spraying water across her face. Etta’s heart felt like it was about to unhook from her chest and pass up her throat. Rather than wait for Julian, she used one of the oars to catch the lip of the embankment and pull them over to it. She felt the slice of a bullet across the back of her exposed neck before she heard it explode through the air. Etta gasped in shock more than pain.
Don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t think—hard to ignore a literal brush with death, but Etta slithered up onto the snow-dusted embankment, trying to get her bearings. She clung to her last shreds of focus, swinging her gaze around. Most of the embankment’s walls were high—too high to climb up from the water. But just in front of the building—which she hoped was the Imperial Academy of Arts that Julian had mentioned—were steps that led down to the water’s edge, guarded by two enormous stone sphinxes facing inward, as if squaring off against each other.
“Don’t leave me!” Julian called after her, still crouched in the boat. A shot zinged off the stone embankment, forcing Etta’s attention up toward the group of rowboats moving toward them, shining flashlights across the dark ice and water.
“They’ll kill me,” he told her in a rush, struggling to reach the embankment again. “That’s why I never came back—Grandfather didn’t want me for his heir, and he would have killed me—”
She wasn’t surprised by Julian’s admission, but she also didn’t have time for it.
“Come on,” she said, stretching a hand out toward him. Her shoulder was on fire, her ears felt like fireworks had been set off inside them, and her whole body was trembling from the cold; but, digging deeper, she found the last burst of strength she needed to grip his hand and draw the boat forward again. Julian scrambled up onto the embankment, lying as flat as he could across from her—so close that Etta could smell the alcohol on his breath.
“What do we do?” he asked.
“You said you were the brains!” she snapped. “Where’s the passage?”
“The statues—do you see them? The right sphinx, just at the base.”
The air around its enormous stand did seem to be shimmering, but Etta had chalked that up to shock and exhaustion—and had chalked up the faint drumming buzz in the air, as if it were electrified, to her ears coming back around.
“Then we run,” she told him. It was a short distance, maybe five feet. Granted, that would be five feet of opportunity to be shot dead, but she liked those odds. Before Julian could launch his newest protest, and before she could give herself time to think about where in the world the passage might open up, Etta pushed onto her feet and ran as hard as she could. She brought her hands up just in case he was wrong, and she was about to slam headfirst into immoveable stone.
“Stop! This is your last warning—!”
Etta didn’t hear the rest. She dove into the wild heartbeat of the passage and felt the pressure of its touch tear at her skin and tattered dress. The dark chaos made her feel like she was spinning head over feet, until it shoved her out with a final, shuddering gasp.
Inertia carried her forward into a skidding stop. Her feet slid against rough stone, and she swung her gaze back over her shoulder. A small sphinx, identical to the one that had bro
ught her here, gazed out over a glistening white city and an enormous bay that had turned pink with the sunset.
Julian shot out through the passage behind her, snatching her arm and forcing them both back into a run.
They dashed around the statue and made their way down a broad avenue. The moon-bright limestone columns and steps led up to buildings that looked more like temples than homes or places of business. Etta dragged in air that was completely void of gasoline, but brimmed with hints of life—just animal sweat, human waste, and a touch of brine that could only come from being close to the sea. As they kept to the darkness, she caught sight of a distant lighthouse between the next two buildings she passed, its bright, watchful eye sweeping over the harbor below it.
“How much farther?” Etta gasped out.
“We’re following this big avenue down until we find a rather handsome temple called the Caesareum. We’re looking for two enormous red marble obelisks.”
They found them. Her heart felt like it was about to tear out of her chest by the time they reached the passage, and they sped through it into further darkness.
Julian slid to a stop on the stone floor, nearly crashing into a row of prayer candles that had carelessly been left to illuminate what appeared to be a church nave. Etta turned, her eyes sweeping over the altar’s shadowed cross, then back out at the rows of pews that spread like ribs between the confines of the walls. They were alone, finally.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll get you to your passage.”
She nodded, rubbing her hands over her face. The Vatican.
But this wasn’t the Vatican she remembered visiting with Alice. It lacked the heartrending works of art and the sweeping grandeur that conspired to make the visitor feel as insignificant in the face of God as the dust on their shoes. It was almost humble. “What year?”
“Fourteen ninety-something,” he said with a vague gesture as they reached the doors. Pressing an ear against them, he was satisfied by whatever he did or didn’t hear, and dragged the heavy doors open just enough for them to slip into the hall.
The torchlights blazed on the walls alongside them. Etta tried, failed, to calculate the hour. She reached back to rub her neck, but only felt what wasn’t there. Where—?
Etta glanced across the wide stretch of the river, to where another imperial-looking building loomed. She pointed, and the man turned his head to follow the line of her arm, her finger—
Etta slammed the flashlight into his skull, blowing him back into the boat, where he collapsed, unmoving. Stunned, but still breathing.
“Good God, Linden-Hemlock-whoever-you-are!” Julian called, stumbling down the hill.
Etta threw the broken remains of the flashlight into the nearest boat, and reached down to untie the boat the man had fallen into, letting it drift into the patches of ice on the Neva. She thought about apologizing, but then decided that moment that she just didn’t care.
A pirate wouldn’t apologize or thank him. A pirate would just take. And if she had to shut off some crucial, feeling part of herself to survive this and find her way back to the real pirate in her life, she would.
She heard Nicholas’s voice whisper in her ear, a protesting, Legal pirate, thank you, and for an instant allowed the small, sad laugh to bubble up in her chest.
Julian gave her a look that told her exactly what he thought about that laugh.
“Spencer,” she told him. “My last name is Spencer.”
Etta quickly stepped down into the boat, feeling it wobble beneath her feet. It steadied with the added weight of Julian, allowing her to easily reach up and unknot the line anchoring it to the dock. They drifted out toward the clumps of ice forming in the river’s slow waters, and for a moment they both looked at each other expectantly.
“I would row,” Etta told him, “except my shoulder is killing me and I can barely move my arm—so maybe you could try contributing to this escape?”
“Of course,” he said quickly, not meeting her gaze. “I was just waiting to see if you’d be stubborn enough to attempt it yourself.”
Julian picked up the oars, got them on either side of the boat, and then lifted them up and down in the water, doing little more than splashing. Etta stared at him; she was freezing, tired, shaken, and on the verge of reaching over to strangle him for even trying to make a joke at a time like this. But he kept doing it, his brow wrinkled, as if confounded about why the boat was slowly turning in a circle and not moving across the water as expected.
“Are you serious?” she asked him in disbelief. “You don’t know how to row a boat?”
His shoulders set against her words. “I’ll have you know, Nick was always there to do it when the situation called for it.”
Etta felt her jaw tighten to the point of pain as she held out her hands. He hesitated a moment before passing the heavy oars over. With a movement that made her shoulder protest pitifully, she got the boat turned around, her back to the other bank, and made the first long stroke. Those days with Alice rowing by the Loeb Boathouse in Central Park had been for something more than enjoyment after all.
Julian released a relieved sigh, leaning back to look up at the snow falling on them. No matter what he did, he always seemed to be posing and waiting for someone to compliment him on it.
“You’re rather handy, Linden-Hemlock-Spencer,” he said. “That was some brilliant teamwork, if I do say so myself.”
“I’m not sure you know what that word means,” Etta managed, her teeth clenched. She tried to mine the small bit of gold out of this situation—she was alive, and the rowing was at least warming her stiff muscles—but she could already feel the rising urge to take one of the oars and whack Julian into the freezing water.
“You’re the brawn, I’m the brains, kiddo,” he told her. “You don’t need my help with this.”
Etta was beginning to think that the real reason he’d gone to the Thorns was that he was at least self-aware enough to know he wouldn’t be able to survive on his own.
“Call me kiddo again…” She felt the words growl out of her throat, too low for her to even hear over the splash of water and the painful ringing.
“Your ears still giving you a spot of trouble?” he asked. “It’s a good sign you can hear at all—it means it might heal completely. Lesser explosions have destroyed people’s eardrums, from what I understand.”
Etta grunted, putting the full force of her anxiety into the next pull of the oars. Beethoven could compose and play instruments when he was mostly deaf. But she wasn’t Beethoven, and the thought of never hearing music again left her feeling as if her chest had been hollowed out.
Stop thinking, just row.
“What happened at dinner, exactly?” Julian asked. “One minute I was being berated by the Thorn guard for innocently inquiring about his mother’s species, and the next, the whole place started rocking on its bones.”
Etta looked down at her lap, avoiding his gaze. She might as well tell him—though it seemed unlikely, Julian might have the answer to the question that had been nagging at her since she’d been jolted back into consciousness.
“We had…we had just started the last course, when one of the waiters brought out a wine bottle to serve the tsar. He shouted something and slammed it down onto the table. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground and half the floor was gone. Henry was hurt badly, and the others…”
Julian’s brows shot up. “Was there liquid in the bottle?”
She nodded, pulling the next stroke.
“Based on the year, it was probably nitroglycerine. It explodes on impact. Very volatile. Even Grandfather didn’t like using the stuff.” His expression turned thoughtful. “How on God’s green earth did you manage to survive that?”
A good question. “Jenkins—the other guard, I mean—he jumped on it, I think, just before it hit the table. And Henry, he…”
I left him there to die.
I left him.
Etta wiped the sweat from her forehead with her tattered sleeve. “It was an Ironwood—both Jenkins and Henry recognized him. But he shouted something before he threw down the explosive—” She tried to repeat it the best she could.
“Revolyutzia, maybe? That’s revolution,” Julian said, his voice oddly quiet. “Pretending to play the part of a revolutionary for the assassination. Evil, Grandpops, but rather elegant. There is a rather unfortunate tradition of tsars being assassinated, so no one would question it.”
Etta took a breath, trying to wipe the blood from her face against her shoulder. Her stiff knees ached as she tried to stretch them out in the cramped boat. “So we’re back to your grandfather’s timeline?”
“Hell if I know, kid,” Julian said, briskly rubbing his arms to try to bring some warmth back into them. “I don’t intend to find out, and neither should you. Your opportunity to escape has presented itself, and you are hereby invited to join me in Bora Bora for as long as it takes them to sort this out.”
Etta dragged the oars through the dark water again. “I’m not going to Bora Bora.”
“Oh? I wasn’t aware that this escape involved a real plan, but do share.”
“If the Thorn, Kadir, was found dead, it means your grandfather got to the astrolabe, which means I need to find him,” Etta said, explaining it to him slowly, as if he were a small child. His mouth twitched, trying to hide a smile. “As far as I know, he’s still in 1776, in New York. How do I get back there from this point?”
“No,” Julian said, throwing his hands up in the air. “No. Because this is absurd. You should just come with me. This doesn’t have to be on your shoulders. You don’t need the weight of it—it’ll just smother you. Come with me to Bora Bora and let the devils have their hell.”
“It’s always that easy for you, isn’t it?” Etta said, shaking her head. “Let everyone else risk their lives to try to fix what your grandfather has done. Don’t take any responsibility for your family.”
He gave her a pitying look that set her teeth on edge. “Christ, you sound like Nick, with all of this talk of responsibility. Morality is a bore, kiddo. And if you think any one person can stop Grandfather, you’re mistaken. He was born out of a cloud of sulfur and his bones are brimstone.??
“Imagine what you could accomplish with your life,” she said, “if you weren’t so damn afraid all the time.”
The gentle thud of the broken ice against their boat and the splash of the oars in the water was the only conversation for several moments.
Julian let out a dramatic sigh and dipped a hand into his jacket, pulling out a small leather notebook.
“I suppose I’m going to have to be the lesser person in this situation and allow you to take the title of bigger,” he said, thumbing through the pages. It must have been his traveler’s journal, with notations of where and when he’d been, so he didn’t cross paths with an older or younger version of himself.
“Here we are,” he said. “There are three passages in this year and city. The one we’re headed to will take us to Alexandria, 203 A.D. From there, there’s a passage through the Vatican, and from there, you can connect to New York in…1939. Little Italy, on Mulberry and Grand.”
Etta’s grip on the oars tightened. “How does that help me?”
“You’ll just need to get to where Whitehall Dock used to be. There’s a passage to 1776, in Boston,” he said. “That’s the most direct route to that year.”
She could find a way from Boston to Manhattan. If nothing else, she could turn herself over to the Ironwood guardian who would inevitably be watching the passage, and let him or her bring her to Ironwood for her punishment.
“Why is everyone still banging on about that damn astrolabe?” Julian complained. “It’s always been more trouble than it’s worth. No one is ever satisfied with life, are they? What more does he have to sacrifice at this point? He’s gone and killed his entire family over it.”
“I had it….” She could hear the pain in her voice. “But it was taken by the Thorns—the ones who went missing. It’s my responsibility to find it and finish what I started.”
“Why? The timeline’s already changed again, and it’ll only get worse from here.”
Etta leaned forward. “You’re sure it changed?”
“You didn’t feel it?” Julian shook his head. “I suppose not. It’s not that different from the pressure of an explosion. The whole world blurs for a moment, and the sound is deafening. It’s unmistakable. Whatever this new timeline is, it’s bound to be bad.”
“More reason to find the astrolabe,” Etta said, through gritted teeth. “And destroy it in order to reset it back to its original state.”
Julian wore a strange expression. “Is Grandpops’s timeline really that bad? I wasn’t around to see the original one, and neither were you. Who’s to say he didn’t improve on a few things?”
Etta shook her head. This was the trouble with meddling at all—who decided what was considered more peaceful, or improved? A benefit to one part of the world might be a detriment to the other. You could stop a war, and it might inadvertently cause another. You could change the outcome of a battle, and it would just be the other side who experienced the losses.
“It doesn’t matter. No one should have tampered with it in the first place, least of all Cyrus Ironwood.” And even though she already knew what his answer would be, she tried anyway: “You could help me…find Nicholas and Sophia and the rest of your family. Apologize for tricking them into grieving for you.”
“Appealing to a sense of honor only works if a person has one,” Julian informed her. “I’ll go with you as far as the Vatican, but—”
She heard the crack of the gunshot and its echo as the bullet slammed into the water, sending up a spray of freezing water at them and rocking the boat. Both Etta and Julian ducked instinctively.
The next bullet splashed down on the other side of the boat.
“Can’t you row any faster?” Julian complained.
“Can you try helping?” she fired back, but Julian had already turned around to shout something at them in Russian.
The next shot from the embankment hit the rim of the boat, splintering it so close to his hand that Julian yelped in alarm, and made as if to dive into the freezing river. Through the curtain of snow, Etta could just barely make out the men gathered there, one of whom was climbing down toward the other boat.
“Why are they chasing us?” he complained.
“Thorn!” one of them bellowed in an American accent. An Ironwood. “Come back at once and you will be shown a measure of mercy!”
Julian groaned, sinking back against the boat in dismay. Etta’s arms worked faster, the oars beating at the water as the other embankment finally came within a few dozen yards.
“It’s just not fair. How did you get us into this mess? What kind of bad-luck charm are you?”
“Can you please shut up?” she snapped. “Reach for the embankment when you can and pull us in—”
The next two gunshots splintered the floating ice, spraying water across her face. Etta’s heart felt like it was about to unhook from her chest and pass up her throat. Rather than wait for Julian, she used one of the oars to catch the lip of the embankment and pull them over to it. She felt the slice of a bullet across the back of her exposed neck before she heard it explode through the air. Etta gasped in shock more than pain.
Don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t think—hard to ignore a literal brush with death, but Etta slithered up onto the snow-dusted embankment, trying to get her bearings. She clung to her last shreds of focus, swinging her gaze around. Most of the embankment’s walls were high—too high to climb up from the water. But just in front of the building—which she hoped was the Imperial Academy of Arts that Julian had mentioned—were steps that led down to the water’s edge, guarded by two enormous stone sphinxes facing inward, as if squaring off against each other.
“Don’t leave me!” Julian called after her, still crouched in the boat. A shot zinged off the stone embankment, forcing Etta’s attention up toward the group of rowboats moving toward them, shining flashlights across the dark ice and water.
“They’ll kill me,” he told her in a rush, struggling to reach the embankment again. “That’s why I never came back—Grandfather didn’t want me for his heir, and he would have killed me—”
She wasn’t surprised by Julian’s admission, but she also didn’t have time for it.
“Come on,” she said, stretching a hand out toward him. Her shoulder was on fire, her ears felt like fireworks had been set off inside them, and her whole body was trembling from the cold; but, digging deeper, she found the last burst of strength she needed to grip his hand and draw the boat forward again. Julian scrambled up onto the embankment, lying as flat as he could across from her—so close that Etta could smell the alcohol on his breath.
“What do we do?” he asked.
“You said you were the brains!” she snapped. “Where’s the passage?”
“The statues—do you see them? The right sphinx, just at the base.”
The air around its enormous stand did seem to be shimmering, but Etta had chalked that up to shock and exhaustion—and had chalked up the faint drumming buzz in the air, as if it were electrified, to her ears coming back around.
“Then we run,” she told him. It was a short distance, maybe five feet. Granted, that would be five feet of opportunity to be shot dead, but she liked those odds. Before Julian could launch his newest protest, and before she could give herself time to think about where in the world the passage might open up, Etta pushed onto her feet and ran as hard as she could. She brought her hands up just in case he was wrong, and she was about to slam headfirst into immoveable stone.
“Stop! This is your last warning—!”
Etta didn’t hear the rest. She dove into the wild heartbeat of the passage and felt the pressure of its touch tear at her skin and tattered dress. The dark chaos made her feel like she was spinning head over feet, until it shoved her out with a final, shuddering gasp.
Inertia carried her forward into a skidding stop. Her feet slid against rough stone, and she swung her gaze back over her shoulder. A small sphinx, identical to the one that had bro
Julian shot out through the passage behind her, snatching her arm and forcing them both back into a run.
They dashed around the statue and made their way down a broad avenue. The moon-bright limestone columns and steps led up to buildings that looked more like temples than homes or places of business. Etta dragged in air that was completely void of gasoline, but brimmed with hints of life—just animal sweat, human waste, and a touch of brine that could only come from being close to the sea. As they kept to the darkness, she caught sight of a distant lighthouse between the next two buildings she passed, its bright, watchful eye sweeping over the harbor below it.
“How much farther?” Etta gasped out.
“We’re following this big avenue down until we find a rather handsome temple called the Caesareum. We’re looking for two enormous red marble obelisks.”
They found them. Her heart felt like it was about to tear out of her chest by the time they reached the passage, and they sped through it into further darkness.
Julian slid to a stop on the stone floor, nearly crashing into a row of prayer candles that had carelessly been left to illuminate what appeared to be a church nave. Etta turned, her eyes sweeping over the altar’s shadowed cross, then back out at the rows of pews that spread like ribs between the confines of the walls. They were alone, finally.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll get you to your passage.”
She nodded, rubbing her hands over her face. The Vatican.
But this wasn’t the Vatican she remembered visiting with Alice. It lacked the heartrending works of art and the sweeping grandeur that conspired to make the visitor feel as insignificant in the face of God as the dust on their shoes. It was almost humble. “What year?”
“Fourteen ninety-something,” he said with a vague gesture as they reached the doors. Pressing an ear against them, he was satisfied by whatever he did or didn’t hear, and dragged the heavy doors open just enough for them to slip into the hall.
The torchlights blazed on the walls alongside them. Etta tried, failed, to calculate the hour. She reached back to rub her neck, but only felt what wasn’t there. Where—?