Wayfarer by Alexandra Bracken
The furious clanging of their blades should have woken the dead.
A blade lanced down through the darkness, forcing him to drop to the ground to prevent it biting into the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Nicholas lashed a leg out, trying to upend the Shadow, but the man jumped to a nearly inhuman height, flipping back down to catch Nicholas in the face with the full force of his body.
A thousand stars burst behind his eyelids and he was momentarily blinded by the flashing of them. Sophia’s shout made him turn just as the Shadow’s claw would have pierced the inner part of his ear. It caught him over his cheek instead. Nicholas slipped in the pools of blood on the floor, unable to get his feet beneath him.
Damn it all, get up, get up—
He had fought a hundred battles at sea, fended off pirates and boardings. He’d avoided knives to his belly and axes to his neck and he had survived; even the fighters hardened by the sea, he’d survived. But the best-trained of those men were raging, dumb animals compared to this Shadow, who seemed to anticipate his blows before Nicholas decided to try for them.
Etta—He took a vicious punch to his chest, and felt ribs crack. Etta—
He tried to imagine her the way she had been on the Ardent, when she’d appeared in the haze of battle; he tried to use that image, like a prayer for strength, to drive his next hit. Yet, when his mind’s eye drew the memory forward, the scene was cracked between the jaws of darkness. Her screams suddenly silenced, the blood running in rivulets over her face. The clean slice of a claw through her ear.
Her body as pale and still as the marble angels that surrounded them.
He surged up from the ground, knocking the Shadow back. The attacker made as if to lunge forward, but halted, dropping to a knee and howling in pain. Behind him, Sophia had slipped to the ground and cut the tendon of his ankle. Nicholas seized the opportunity at the same moment she did, each of them slicing toward the Shadow’s neck.
The body fell to the ground.
Another screech of metal on metal brought Nicholas back around to where Li Min was using her arms, every trembling ounce of strength in her body, to turn the Shadow’s long claw back onto the woman’s body, piercing the soft flesh of her neck.
“I am…forever…” the woman gasped out.
“You are dead,” Li Min corrected, and finished her.
“As are you,” came another voice. Nicholas whirled back toward the entrance of the tomb, his sword following the path of another Shadow as he stepped inside. Two more fell in line behind him. “Little lost one. Do you remember me, as I remember you?”
He knew she didn’t mean to, that it was likely the way the man’s voice licked at the air like a snake’s tongue, but she stepped back, just that small bit. Her hands gripped her dagger hard enough for him to hear her knuckles crack.
Though he knew she would likely despise it, Nicholas felt a fierce surge of protectiveness for the young girl stolen from her family and brought into their darkness, and the young woman who stood before him now, having survived it.
The entirety of his right hand lost sensation, and then the rest of his arm. Nicholas barely caught the sword with his weaker left hand, his gaze narrowing on them, as his heart beat a vicious tattoo of fear.
“Li Min,” Nicholas said quietly. “Take her and go. I’ll catch up to you.”
“No—” Sophia began as Li Min knelt beside her. “Wait, are you—”
“I have the astrolabe,” Nicholas told the Shadows. “Who will fight me for it?”
The flash of Sophia’s white shirt at the edge of his vision told him, if nothing else, that they had gotten out of the cramped space. One of the Shadows broke off to pursue them, only to be summoned back by the flick of the first man’s hand.
Nicholas raised his sword, swallowing the blood in his mouth. I will live. It was not a question, but a necessity. He only needed to create a path to the entrance of the mausoleum, and then he could lose them in the darkness.
The Shadow in front matched his stance, letting the hood fall away from his face.
A voice in the darkness began to whisper, to pulse, to growl. The Shadows recoiled at the sound of it. Two ducked back through the entrance, vanishing with a soft patter of footsteps.
“Liar,” the Shadow said, lingering just a moment more before pulling his hood up and following their path. Nicholas staggered forward, using the walls to support himself as he moved. If the Shadows had gone left, he would go right, and hope it might lead him to Li Min and Sophia. To the Basilica.
But from the depths of the city of the dead, a voice rang out, as brittle and airy as the plaster dust that swirled around him. “Child of time.”
The words scored down his heart, tugged his attention back. He turned, clutching his numb arm to his chest. And though his tired mind was prone to tricks, and his heart weary of them, he could have sworn he saw another figure standing there. The long, pale cloak clasped around his neck flowed down the line of his back, curling at his feet like a cat. It gave his bearing a forceful regality that made Nicholas wish he could summon the strength to turn away again. The distance seemed to close between them, though neither of them moved, and Nicholas saw that his profile was as faultless as if it had been painted by a master’s hand. All at once, the ring on his finger began to sing its song of pain, flaring as the man turned his head more fully, his gaze dropping to it. It was only then, when he caught the whole of the man’s countenance, that Nicholas saw that his features were like that of a demon—like that of Death himself.
He turned and ran as if hell burned behind him.
IT SURPRISED HIM SOMEHOW THAT a city of the dead would be arranged like an actual city, but here he was, running down dark, winding streets that split the rows of tombs and structures into a grid. When, at last, his feet found the edge of a set of stairs, he realized he’d begun to climb toward the surface. He was grateful for the challenge of the steps, the warmth that crept into the air as he rose up through the layers of earth and carved stone, and nearly wept at the first sighting of fat candles perched along the wall of a narrow hallway. It meant he was near the end.
He was even more grateful to find that Sophia and Li Min were already there, waiting for him.
“What took you so long?” Sophia demanded from where she sat on the ground. “Damn you for sending us away!”
Nicholas looked at her as though she’d declared herself recently hatched from an egg. He wiped the stinging line of blood from his cheek, only to find that he was still clutching the sword. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, and he forced himself to quell his fear at the realization, so as not to frighten them. “I worried for you, too, Sophia.”
“Ugh,” she said, crossing her arms and turning away. “I knew you’d be revoltingly sentimental about this.”
“Forgive the presumptions I made about your character on our first meeting,” Li Min said. “I see the sort of person you are now.”
“Yeah, a bleeding idiot,” Sophia muttered.
“Are you hurt?” Li Min asked. “Beyond what we can see?”
The smell of warm wax coated the air, clearing the lingering touch of decay in his throat and lungs. Nicholas turned back to see if there was a way of barring the door behind them—there was. He slid the latch into place, fully ignoring the voice that told him it wouldn’t be enough.
“I saw something,” he told them, instead of answering her. “I need to know…I need to understand what it was.”
“You saw him. The Ancient One,” Li Min said, as if his face alone had revealed it. “He allowed you to live?”
In that moment, when he’d met the man’s gaze…there was no other way to describe it, save to say that Nicholas had felt acutely aware of his own years, how they might fit inside the man’s palm.
“He called them—the Shadows—away,” Nicholas said. “I haven’t the faintest notion as to why.”
“I did not know he was capable of mercy.” He did not, for one moment, enjoy the flash of fear he saw tre
Blood, he realized. That was the travelers’ blood. In the rush of their fight and flight, he’d neglected to spare more than one horrified second thinking of the Ironwood travelers who had been killed and left for them to find. Their lives had been reduced to splatters of gore, and they’d become nothing more than a way to taunt the next victims. These Shadows could have done the same to any of them, and that put their odds of surviving this in rather stark terms.
“Yes,” he told her. “Did you learn what it was?”
“1905,” she said, with a look that hinted that she had known the whole time. He was too ravaged by pain and apprehension to care much in that moment. “We can take the passage upstairs, the one that leads to Florence. From there, it will be a voyage, but it should not take more than a few days—”
“What the hell is wrong with your arm?” Sophia interrupted. Without preamble, she reached up, gripping his right wrist and using it to haul herself, at last, to her feet.
Nicholas looked away. “It is only sore—”
“You haven’t moved it once!” He could see that Sophia had dug her nails into his hand, but could not feel it. “What—you mean it’s the ring?”
Her voice was rising in pitch, and she looked as if she wanted nothing more than to pull the arm out of its socket and beat him senseless with it.
“The Belladonna’s poison,” Li Min said, taking a turn at lifting his arm and turning it to and fro, as if reading a map. “If you do not complete her task, it will eventually travel to your heart and cause it to seize in the same way. What did she ask of you?”
“To kill Ironwood,” Sophia said, before he could.
“But why?” Li Min asked, her tone hushed.
“Have you met him?”
“Enough,” Nicholas said. “We can discuss it along the way to 1905.”
“Yes, please,” Sophia said.
Li Min drew the hood up over her ears, obscuring most of her face from view. “Niceties don’t suit you.”
They suit almost the entirety of the world, Nicholas managed to think, not say.
“This way, then.” Li Min urged them forward again, her cape fluttering down the hall.
“You need to do this,” Sophia ordered him as they followed. “You can’t trade your life for the old man’s. It’s not worth it. Half the world would throw you a parade for it.”
“Like you’ll kill the men who harmed you?” he asked.
She turned, staring straight ahead, her jaw set. “That’s different. I won’t die if I never find those roaches. If you won’t do it, I will. The day Cyrus Ironwood gets what he wants is the day my corpse is lowered into its grave.”
Ironwoods, he thought, shaking his head. Always so eager to shed their own blood.
“What happens when the old man is gone?” he asked. “Will you step up as heir? Expect the other families to fall in line behind you?”
“All I care about is wiping that smear of shite off the face of this earth, and salting the ground that grew him,” she snapped. “Whatever becomes of the families when he’s gone is up for someone else to decide. I want no part of any of this anymore.”
She wants to be free of this. The one person he saw as being an emblem of everything the family stood for wanted nothing more to do with it. Remarkable.
Li Min slowed as they reached the next imposing door, pressing her ear against the rough, dark wood. She glanced back, nodding to Nicholas, then pushed the door open, revealing a set of steps that spiraled up out of sight.
Nicholas started forward, only to stop again at the sound of a voice floating down to them. He drew Sophia back into the shadows of the nearest wall, his mind trying to spin up possible explanations for what they were doing down there—to be caught now, and in their bloodied appearance—
A light moved along the stone wall of the stairwell, marking the man’s progress. He appeared sooner than expected, an older gentleman in robes whose pleasant face went slack with surprise.
“We are—” Sophia shifted smoothly into Latin. “We have come to pay our respects—”
Li Min’s arm lashed out, thumping the priest on the head with the flat of her sword. Nicholas barely managed to step forward to catch him in time as he wilted to the ground.
“Too slow,” she said to Nicholas’s incredulous look. “Time to move.”
“She was right about one thing,” Sophia said as she passed him. “You’re no pirate, Saint Nicholas. Where’s that ruthless edge that lets you hack sailors apart on ships?”
“Affronted by this lack of honor,” he told her.
She must have rolled her eye. “Hang honor before it hangs you.”
Li Min, at least, seemed to know where they were going. It took Nicholas some time, however, to even realize that they’d entered St. Peter’s Basilica and were walking its quiet halls. Sophia had referred to it as the “old” St. Peter’s, and he saw the truth of that immediately. This structure had none of the grandeur he’d witnessed when he and Julian had visited it in search of the astrolabe—but that had been, what, the twentieth century? He’d been struck mute by the masters of art who graced its ceilings and walls; it had collected treasures and grandeur over time, the way a traveler family would. This iteration was simple, with stark lines and angles that lacked both a sense of gravity and permanence. Still, it was by no means as humble as the Anglican churches in the colonies, which seemed to pride themselves on being as plain and grim as possible.
He glanced up as they passed by a large chapel, its door open just enough to catch the glimmer of rows of candlelight. Beside him, Sophia kept her gaze down, her pace as labored as his own. Nicholas was so deep in his own thoughts that he did not notice when she drifted a few steps behind him, stopping.
“Good lord, Carter,” Sophia whispered. “You’ve been mooning over this damned thing for a bloody month, and now you just drop it willy-nilly?”
Sophia held up a familiar gold earring, its small leaves and blue stone shivering with the breeze. Nicholas’s hand flew to the leather cord around his neck, his heart slamming up from his chest into his throat.
Hell and damnation—
But the talisman and the earring were still there, secure. He felt the slight weight in his hand. So how…?
A drumming began in his chest, spreading out and out and out through his blood until he couldn’t quite feel his fingers.
“Surely it’s not the same,” Li Min said, taking it from Sophia. “Look—”
But when placed side by side in his hand, they were almost identical, to the best of an artist’s skill and capability. They were a pair. They were…
Etta.
Nicholas tore away from the others, stumbling back toward the chapel, running down the length of it, finding nothing and no one. He returned to the hall, wild with disbelief and hope, searching for any other hint of her—anything that might tell him where she had gone. Dust stung his eyes, blurring his vision. It choked him, filling his lungs, wringing the last gasps of air out of him. The desperation was intolerable, but he couldn’t let it go, not yet—
“Etta?” he called, his voice as loud as he dared. “Etta, where are you?”
“Oh God,” he heard Sophia say. “This is painful to watch. Make him stop. Please.”
It was Li Min’s face that brought his frantic searching to a halt. The carefully constructed cipher cracked as she bit her lip, her eyes darting to the side. “Surely you are not referring to Henrietta Hemlock?”
“Hemlock?” Sophia said, holding up a hand. “Wait—”
“Henrietta, the daughter of Henry Hemlock—”
“Etta Spencer,” Nicholas said impatiently. “Her mother is Rose Linden, and, yes, Rose told me Hemlock is
“Why didn’t you tell me that?” Sophia asked. “You didn’t think it was relevant that the leader of the Thorns procreated with the beast that is Rose Linden? My God, this explains so much. So much.”
Li Min could not look at him. Her jaw worked silently, her hands clenching at her sides. Nicholas felt his stomach roll in revolt, and he’d stepped into a trap, and there was no way to free himself from the painful, searing cage of hope. “Do you know where she is? That’s who we’ve been trying to find. She was orphaned, to the last common year—”
She closed her eyes, releasing the breath trapped inside of her. “I do. I am…truly sorry. Your search ends here, for she is dead.”
ETTA WAS NOT SURE HOW long she stood rooted to that same spot. Terror had such a firm grip on her that it could have pulled the skin off her bones. Julian ventured forward a few steps, waving the soot and ash out of the way as best he could. Revealing only more soot and ash.
“There’s…there’s nothing,” he said, turning back to her. “How is that possible? The buildings, the people…”
He wasn’t wrong; as far as the eye could see through the smoke—which turned out to be very far, without the hindrance of buildings crowding the park’s boundaries—there was nothing beyond the husks of what had once been. If the air cleared, Etta knew she’d at least be able to see the East River. She had thought the destruction of the San Francisco earthquake had been absolute, but this…this was…
“Oh my God,” she said, pressing a hand against her mouth.