Wayfarer by Alexandra Bracken
Nicholas didn’t realize his sword hadn’t made the journey with them until he tried reaching for it. His fingers had to settle for a broken shard of stone, some crumbled section of the statue behind them. “Is that the reason you’ve come, then? You caught wind of the bounty and knew where to find us?”
Li Min snorted, smoothing Sophia’s hair out of her face. “I came to ensure I might be able to claim my end of our bargain. The bounty is a handsome windfall from the gods, but the Ironwoods can rot.”
“I warn you—” Nicholas blinked, trying to clear the spots floating in his vision. “I warn you that we won’t…we won’t be taken.”
Li Min ignored him, taking Sophia’s hand. She spoke to the other young woman firmly, leaning over her as if to drag her spirit back, should it try to escape. And with time, those same words became embroidered with soft pleading, though their meaning couldn’t penetrate the fog growing in his mind.
“That’s not—” Nicholas tried to push up onto his feet, but the world swung wild and unhinged around him, knocking him back into place. “Won’t be…taken…”
The ring on his hand burned as he felt his body betray him. Nicholas slumped back to the ground, fighting the way the light faded around him, gently receding in waves until there was nothing left of the world but blissful emptiness.
NICHOLAS WOKE TO A SHARP COMPLAINT FROM HIS LEFT SHOULDER, a badgering, insistent sting that dragged him forward again each time he tried to slip back into the darkness.
He was flat on his stomach, the side of his face pressed against the ridges of the mosaic beneath him. By the time his vision cleared and the cotton stuffing inside his skull was plucked out, Nicholas had the very disturbing realization that someone was stabbing him repeatedly and quite literally in the back.
“You—” His attempt to surge off the ground was met with firm resistance; a hand easily pushed him back down.
“Be still while I finish,” the voice growled back. “Unless you’d like me to accidentally sew your neck to your shoulder? It might improve your looks.”
Li Min. His gaze pivoted; from his vantage point, he could just see Sophia, still stretched out on the ground. The tiny bottles, herbs, and medicines had been stowed in the bag again, but now Li Min was rummaging through it for something else, muttering to herself. When she returned, her touch was as rough and uncaring as it had been before.
“Did you…give me something…to make me pass out?” he asked, teeth gritted. He’d had at least a dozen slashes stitched up in his career at sea, and the feeling of being sewn back together like a doll never improved.
Li Min leaned forward, so he had a clear view of her face as she raised a dark brow. “No. You are weak and faltering—not only in body, it would appear, but in judgment.”
He followed her gaze to where his hand was splayed out against the dirt. The ring looked like a tattoo in the darkness.
“Nonsense,” he said, even as the band burned, tightened. The wave of nausea that passed through him momentarily stole the feeling from his lower half. Nicholas jerked, bucking like a horse.
“Settle yourself,” Li Min ordered. “Activity will only make her poison work faster. I might ask what you traded this favor for, but I already know. You were a fool, but you are even more foolish to avoid the terms of your contract. What was her task?”
“Murder,” he muttered.
“Ah,” was her reply. “A life for a life, then.”
“You might have…warned us,” he said, letting the bitterness bleed into his voice.
“I never thought you foolish enough to go through with it,” she said simply.
“Foolish,” he agreed, “and desperate. Where are we?”
She continued her work. “The Necropolis of the Vatican. 1499.”
He rubbed at his eyes, clearing the dust and grime. He’d been right, then, to feel as though they were descending through the levels of hell to the dark heart of the earth.
There was another sarcophagus flush against the far wall, and he wondered idly if they’d moved the poor occupant from his rest upstairs to this…chamber. More importantly, he wondered who “they” were.
“Is this…your hiding place?” he asked. If nothing else, talking was a distraction.
“Yes. It belongs to a particular line of my family—the Hemlock clan, I should say.” Li Min pressed a hand flat against his bare back, holding him steady. The last surge of pain was short, at least—she knotted the thread she’d used to patch the wound in his shoulder and gave him a pitying pat on the head.
He wasn’t feeling up to it, but he forced himself to sit up regardless, hating the disadvantage the prostrate position had put him in. The Ironwoods and Lindens had secret homes and hoards—he shouldn’t have been surprised to find the same of the Hemlock family.
Li Min made another of her disapproving noises, pushing him back down. “This was used as a place to amass treasure and documents until it was forgotten. Someone sold me its secrets for a price.”
“Seems a rather inconvenient hiding place for you,” he noted, rubbing the back of his neck. To have to go through the hassle of Carthage to arrive here…
“It’s abandoned in every era, up until the twentieth century. And there are many, many passages in the Papal City, as you know. Three in this year alone.”
He didn’t, but Nicholas nodded nonetheless. “What is your plan, if not to bring us back to Ironwood?”
“She’s unconscious, and you’re as weak as a lamb,” Li Min reminded him. “You’ve trusted me thus far. I do wish to receive recompense for the gold that was stolen from me, but I am curious about this mission of yours. How it ties to the many threads that are reverberating throughout time.”
“We’ve already spent it. Your gold. There’s nothing left, and we’ve nothing else to trade you.”
“You’ve that gold.” She pointed to the leather string tied around his neck—Etta’s earring. “That is not nothing.”
His hand closed over the earring and the glass pendant. “If you think about touching this, you will lose more than a hand.”
Li Min looked doubtful at that, her dark brows lifting in pity.
“You can have this,” he said hopefully, holding up the hand with the ring. Sensation had fully returned to it; his arm felt unusually stiff, but cooperated as he tested its range of movement. Perhaps he had simply torn a muscle, as he’d originally believed.
“I’d have to cut it off, which would only kill you faster,” she informed him.
Hell and damnation. That confirmed the Belladonna’s warning.
“Where did you come by that amulet?” she asked after a moment, pointing to the large bead he’d been given.
“A boy gave it to me,” he said.
“A stranger?”
“Yes, what of it?”
She shrugged. “Nothing. Everything. He wished you protection and good fortune. It has value. Do not part with it for anything less than your life.”
“If it’s so valuable, then why don’t you take it to cancel our debt?”
“It is not the object that holds power, but the intention behind it. The wish made when it changed hands. I could no more steal that than I could take the light from the stars.”
Something in her words rattled him to his core. I shouldn’t have accepted it. Who needed protection more than that child?
“I suppose you see yourself as ‘protection and good fortune,’” he said, wiping the sweat from his face.
“How you wish to see me is your choice,” she said. “For now, you should know that I am your only chance of survival.”
Neither friend nor foe, it seemed. More a temporary ally, the way Sophia had ultimately come to fit into his life. Nicholas looked around again, drawing his knees to his chest. “As long as we don’t run out of air, this will be a suitable hiding place.”
“It is convenient, too,” she said idly. “If you die, I can leave you down here.”
“If Sophia dies, you mean,” he said, surprised at
Li Min shook her head. “She will not die. Too stubborn. Too much left unfinished. It’s you I fear for. Huffing and puffing like a locomotive over a minor flesh wound.”
“A minor—” Nicholas fought his wince. To knot the tattered remains of his pride, he added, “I’ve seen myself through far worse than this.”
Li Min made a disbelieving sound at the back of her throat. “Running from Ironwoods?”
“Ship boardings,” he said. “My—” Nicholas paused, then continued. “My adoptive…father, he is a captain.”
How strange that he’d never referred to Hall that way aloud. It was always “the captain” or “the man who raised me.” But for all his hesitance to put that label to it in his own era, Nicholas had always known the truth in his heart. As a grown man and an officer on Hall’s ship, he hadn’t wanted the others to feel he was receiving preferential treatment, or that he hadn’t earned his position there. As a child, some part of him had feared that Hall might face judgment if Nicholas went around telling that to other, less…forward-thinking people of their century.
What a poisonous thing it was, to distance himself from a man he loved, a man who had cared for him, for fear of what others might think.
He craned his neck back to find Li Min’s dark eyes studying him. When she didn’t break her gaze, he realized he hadn’t finished his thought. “Fought off pirates for years on voyages, and then became a legal one at the outbreak of the war. Sorry, the American War for Independence. There’s been quite a number of them, hasn’t there?”
“Pirate?” Li Min said with disbelief. “No chance.”
“And what do you know of it?” Nicholas said, trying to straighten his shoulders.
He felt her shrug. “It’s not an insult. I only mean to say you’d hesitate before cutting off a man’s head to steal his gold teeth. It’s not a qualm you’re allowed in that line of work.”
Fair point. “Spent a lot of time with pirates, have you?”
To his surprise, she said, “Yes. I served under Ching Shih for ten years, from…the time I was a child.”
“Who the devil is that?” Nicholas asked curiously.
“A pirate unrivaled,” Li Min said. “There is no greater one in all of history.”
“When did he live? Or she?”
She seemed appeased by this, her gaze softening slightly.
“Ching Shih bridged the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She was born in 1775. Tens of thousands came under her command, and she beat back whole empires.”
That partly explained why he hadn’t recognized her name; that and the biases of the West had likely prevented her legend from spreading past the Pacific. “What became of her?”
“She successfully negotiated her retirement.”
“Impressive,” he said, because it was. More than glory or infamy, successful pirates were those who survived the endeavor and didn’t drown, hang, or rot in prison. He stored the story away, to save for Etta.
“Have you always known you were a traveler?” he asked. “How did you get mixed up in all of this?”
“I have always known. I inherited the skill from my mother, who had once been captive under Ching Shih. When I…when the time came, I sought Ching Shih out to learn from her. To manifest my strength.” Li Min shifted, rising onto her knees and then her feet. “And now I answer only to myself.”
“That’s something,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound as bitter as he feared. “I’ve spent my whole life trying and failing to reach that place.”
For the first time since crossing paths with her, Li Min’s expression softened. “It’s not so easy for some. I should know—I’ve felt the grinding of the world as it has worked against me. The worth is in the fight, not the conquest. Do not give up.”
“I don’t intend to,” he said.
“But something stands in your way…?”
“Things are…rather complicated at the moment.”
“Complicated how?” she asked.
“My life has taken me down a path I did not expect,” he said, dodging the root of her question. “I have come so far. But the path ahead of me, the one I know I should take, is at odds with the one my heart believes is right. What’s the value of my life if I sacrifice my soul?” How much easier it was to admit such things to a stranger, and how well she listened as he continued on, his story flowing from him as simply as if he’d cut a vein and let it bleed out.
Nicholas would carve a path through hell itself to find Etta and finish answering the question of what their life would be together. That was the only certainty on which he could hang his hope. But there were too many factors beyond his control now, and he felt himself drifting further and further from all of those shining possibilities which had been a safe harbor for his heart.
In his life, he had been a slave to man, and now he grew more and more certain that he had allowed himself to become a slave to death. There was no way to break this chain that bound him to the Belladonna without staining his soul; in killing a man, he would murder his own honor and decency.
Li Min considered his story carefully, as if turning over each word to examine it and see what might be hidden beneath it.
“I understand. There is the journey you make through the world—the one that aches and sings. We come together with others to make our way and survive its trials,” she said. “But we are, all of us, also wayfarers on a greater journey, this one without end, each of us searching for the answers to the unspoken questions of our hearts. Take comfort, as I have, in knowing that, while we must travel it alone, this journey rewards goodness, and will prove that the things which are denied to us in life will never create a cage for our souls.”
Nicholas closed his eyes, drawing the damp, cool air into his chest, easing the fire there.
“I will return shortly with food and clothing,” she said. “If you leave this spot, you will be lost forever to the darkness of this place. I will not find you, not even to bury your rotting carcass. Do we have an understanding?”
“We do, ma’am,” he said.
“Keep watch over her,” Li Min said. “Her color is returning, but it will be some time before she regains use of her legs. She will be frightened upon waking.”
“And you think I’m the best one to comfort her?” Nicholas scoffed. Sophia would rather accept the tender ministrations of a rabid dog over him.
Li Min seemed genuinely confused by this. “But…you don’t care for her? Why, then, did you fight so hard to save her?”
Is that what he had done—fight for her? Nicholas had felt himself stumbling again and again. Half of his rage had been aimed at Remus Jacaranda; the other half had been reserved for himself. Not just for ignoring his own instincts, but because…because…
I nearly let someone die under my protection.
“I require her assistance,” he said. “She owes a debt to me.”
Sophia made a faint sound, a whistle of a breath between her teeth. Nicholas dragged himself closer, his hand straying down to her wrist to feel for her pulse. It felt steadier than before, and her breathing was no longer labored. The yellow light of the lantern warmed her skin from its former pallid, marblelike state, and he was surprised to find it reassuring.
I’m glad, he thought, the words jolting him to the core. I’m glad she’s not dead.
He’d wished for nothing so much as that in the moments after Etta had disappeared, after Sophia’s betrayal. If she’d been standing before him then, he would have reached out and strangled her.
Nicholas tore his gaze away, studying the shape of his shadow on the opposite wall.
“I wasn’t going with them….”
The voice was so faint, he might have marked it as another unnatural breeze. Sophia’s eyes were closed, but he could see her lips moving.
“Don’t speak,” he told her, gently laying a hand on her shoulder. “Save your strength. You’ll be well again soon.”
“I wasn’t…going
“When?” he asked. “In Palmyra?”
Her eyes cracked open and she winced at the light. “I heard…what Etta was saying. What you were saying. About Grandfather. The timeline. I went to steal it back from the Thorns. I would have…I would have come back with it. Instead…humiliated.”
“Just rest,” he told her. “We are safe here.”
“That’s why…it’s my fault…my eye—”
Nicholas straightened. “You mean to tell me you went with the Thorns to steal the astrolabe back from them? That’s why they beat you?”
“And because…I’m an Ironwood…They thought I was…his.” She looked at him from under her dark lashes, her eye patch flipped up to reveal the hollow socket beneath. After a moment, Sophia nodded. “Kill them. Will…kill them both…kill them…all….”
It had never made sense to him that she had been so savagely beaten when she’d been a willing participant in the betrayal, riding off with the Thorns. But because of her nature, it had been easy to brush aside and dismiss. Sophia had an unusually potent talent for bringing out the absolute worst in the people around her, and it had drawn out his own ugly, heartless suspicions. He’d dismissed his doubts with the cruel assumption that she’d said something, done something, to provoke their ire—as if anyone could deserve that fate.
Li Min had been so quiet on the stairs that it wasn’t until she released a low, pained sigh that he noticed her again. She was at the edge of the lantern’s light, but the bleakness of her expression lent itself to the darkness.
But she said nothing as she continued climbing. Nicholas reached for the handle of the old, rusted lantern. “Don’t you need this?”
Her voice floated back down to him, soft as a memory. “I have always found my way in the dark.”
Li Min shouldered the weight of the heavy stone cover, pushing it aside. A small chill raced down the steps and made a home inside of the tomb in those few moments before the lid was shut again.