TOO LATE
1902—New York
The fog that had descended upon the Bowery was thick and murky as the night itself. The soft halo of the streetlamps barely cut through the gloom. The streets, wet with the day’s rain, shone like the water that flooded the rice paddies around his village. For a moment Jianyu almost felt like he was there, standing on a hillside and looking over the endless sweep of fields around his family’s home, the water-soaked ground drowning the weeds that would otherwise choke the life from the rice. But then the image flickered, and it was only the city he saw—the grimness of the streets, the sloshing puddles that would never be enough to wash away the filth and poverty that choked the life from the Bowery.
He was late. He had already failed Cela, and now he would fail again.
Picking up his pace, he did not bother with magic. His affinity would be of no help, not with the way his footsteps could be traced from puddle to puddle, but he kept to the shadows and moved faster. He could not be late. If the boy reached Nibsy, the results could be devastating. With the boy, Nibsy would hold knowledge of what was to come. It could make him unstoppable.
The streets were empty, a spot of luck in an otherwise dismal string of days. Lonely and silent, they offered no comfort. To be taken off guard, to have been beaten so soundly, and then to be handed over by Mock Duck for a handful of secrets? Perhaps he should have been grateful that he was alive. Certainly he should be grateful that Cela had been following him and had risked her own life to rescue him. But it galled him to know that he had required her protection. He had failed her—just as he had failed Dolph—but he would not fail again. He would not allow the boy from another time to win. If that happened, if Nibsy became as powerful as Harte and Esta predicted, the impact would be felt far beyond the reaches of the city, perhaps even far across the seas.
A shadow on the other side of the street moved, drawing Jianyu’s attention. As he turned, a man stepped from the darkness into the gloom of the lamplight.
Mock Duck. The silver buttons of his waistcoat glinted like eyes in the night.
Jianyu kept his head down and picked up his pace. He reached for his bronze mirrors but found his pockets empty. No matter. He called to his affinity and opened the light around him as he began to run, cutting down an alley to the next block. He did not turn to see if Mock’s highbinders were following. Instead, he focused on avoiding the puddles that would expose his exact path.
Two more blocks and then another half a block west, and he would be where Esta said the boy would arrive . . . if he had not already missed him.
He turned onto Essex Street and pulled up short. Ahead, a group of men were surrounding another.
Too late.
Jianyu kept the light close to him as he edged nearer, careful to avoid the telltale ripples his shoes would cause in the puddles at his feet. When he was close enough to see, his stomach tightened. Tom Lee and a trio of On Leongs were standing over someone—a man or a boy—and the person on the ground was deathly still.
He should go. Tom Lee would not forgive Jianyu for abandoning his oath to the On Leongs. Perhaps Lee was not as violent as Mock Duck, but Jianyu knew that if Lee found him there, Lee would not hesitate to attack. But Jianyu needed to know—was the man they stood over the boy he was looking for? He edged closer, keeping his affinity tightly around him.
One of the On Leongs kicked the man with such violence that Jianyu felt an answering ache in his own gut. The man moaned in pain and rolled onto his back.
Jianyu’s blood ran cold.
The person on the ground was not the blond boy Esta had described on the bridge. In the wan glow of the lamplight, Jianyu saw himself on the ground—it was not the boy’s face but his own contorted in agony as Tom Lee’s men prepared to attack again.
He stumbled back in stunned disbelief, splashing into stagnant water. In the shock of the moment, his affinity slipped.
Tom Lee and his men turned at the noise, and their eyes widened to see him there. Their expressions were a mixture of surprise and horror as they looked between Jianyu, standing as he was in the weak, flickering lamplight, and the body on the ground, barely moving. But Tom Lee showed no such fear. He stepped toward Jianyu, a gleam of anticipation in his expression as he pulled a pistol from inside his coat and raised it.
Jianyu turned to run, but the echo of the gun’s explosion drowned out his footsteps. He felt the pain of the bullet tear through him, and then he was falling.
Falling toward the muck and wetness of the rain-slicked streets. Falling through them—on and on—as though death were nothing but a constant descent. Falling as though he would never stop, as though he would never land.
Until his body hit hard, and he jolted upright, struggling to get to his feet. He had to run—
“Just settle down there,” a voice said, and it was not the Cantonese that he expected. It was in English, soft and rolling like none he had heard before. “Cela! Get in here, girl.”
Jianyu’s eyes opened, and the street melted away, leaving a small but comfortable room. The glow of a small lamp lit the space, and the air felt close and warm, smelling of sweat and stale bodies.
No, not the room. It was he who smelled of stale sweat. His clothes were damp with it, and he suddenly felt unbearably hot and cold all at once.
“What is it?” Cela was there in the doorway.
“He’s waking up,” a male voice said. It was the person holding him down, an older man with tawny-brown skin, his hair gray at the temples of his broad forehead. “Deal with him.”
The hands were gone, and a moment later the bed dipped and Cela sat next to him. Her graceful hands felt cool against the skin of his forehead when she touched him.
“How long?” he asked, his voice coming out as a dry rasp as he struggled to sit up. His side still ached and his head pounded.
“Hold on,” Cela said, reaching for a cup of water. She tried to put it in his hands, but he pushed it away.
“How long have I been here?” he asked again, his heart still racing from the dream of death.
“You’ve been in and out for nearly five days,” Cela said.
No. He was late. Too late. He tried to swing his legs off the bed, but the motion made him dizzy.
“You have to sit down,” Cela told him, holding him by the arm as he swayed.
“I have to go,” he said, shaking her off.
“Go?” Vaguely he realized that her voice sounded very far away. “You can barely sit up. Where do you think you’re going?”
He struggled to his feet. Too late. But his vision swam, and he stumbled backward.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Cela said. She pushed him gently back into bed, and his limbs felt so weak that he could not fight her. “You’re going to drink this water, and if you keep that down, you can have some broth.”
“I am too late,” he told her, taking the cup. His hands were trembling from the weight of the water, and he could not seem to make them stop.
“You had the life half beaten out of you. Whatever it is can wait,” she said, indicating that he should drink.
She was wrong. The boy would not wait to arrive, would not wait to find Nibsy. Jianyu drank the water reluctantly, but he was surprised at the coolness of it, at how parched he suddenly felt. It was gone before it even began to touch his thirst. “More,” he asked, his voice a plea more than a command. Five days.
He took the second glass and drank, as much to prove that he could as for his thirst. Five days. He had lost five days. Which meant that he was already too late.