THE FIRELIGHT CAUGHT THE LONG blade of Remus Jacaranda’s knife as he held it between them, but the man’s face was in shadow. The only sound in the room beyond the popping fire was Nicholas’s harsh breathing.
Finally Remus said, his voice small and quaking, “You have to understand….There is nowhere we can go….This is the only way.”
“The only way to what?” Nicholas demanded. His eyes slid over to Sophia, who was still sitting at the table, her head in her hands. He hissed at her, “Get up, will you?”
“To survive. None of us can survive without Cyrus’s protection, without kin or kindness. There is nowhere we can go that he will not find us, that the Thorns will not try to kill us for betraying them, too. We need him. I need him to trust me again—”
“Sophia,” Nicholas hissed. “We’re leaving.”
“It’s a sign of how much he wants you,” Remus said, trying to straighten his hunched shoulders, “that a runner came even to us to promise a bounty. This is our way back to his good graces.”
“All of those things you said before, about being free, escaping him—why can’t that be true? Why not leave with us now?”
“It will not work, it will not work….” The weakness, that pathetic quality to the old man, had made Nicholas dismiss the threat of him so easily, knowing he could be overpowered with ease. Twice now, he’d been tricked. Hatred scorched his heart. There truly was no end to the villainy travelers possessed. Each was more self-serving than the next.
“So Fitzhugh has gone to bring back the cavalry, has he?”
Damn his eyes. He and Sophia wouldn’t make it back to the passage in the water, but he might be able to find the other one the man had spoken of, if she would just—
Nicholas turned toward her at the sound of the first, retching gasp. Sophia jerked back from the table with a rattling cough, her hands seeming to spasm against the wood.
“What’s the matter?” Nicholas asked her. “Sophia?”
“Can’t—” she gasped out, “can’t feel—legs—”
Nicholas spun toward the man, drawing his sword so quickly, it sang as it sliced the air. “What have you done?”
Remus smiled, backlit by the hearth.
“Did you know,” he began, his voice brittle, “that the clans of the families united under the names of trees because they thought it was a clever way of symbolizing their reach into the future, and their roots winding deep into the past? Ironwood, Jacaranda, Linden…I’ve always thought that the Hemlocks picked their name not for the tree, however, but for the flowering plant.”
“You—” Sophia choked out.
Nicholas stilled, hollowed by his words. The flowering plant. But then, that was…
Holy God.
“That’s right,” Remus said, smiling. “The Hemlocks are poison itself, and they inflict their terror in the same manner as the tea you drank. They identify what it is you desire, lure you in with promises of trust and respect, only to trick you into doing their bidding, into believing their lies about the timeline.”
Sophia turned to Nicholas, her face etched with naked terror. That alone set his blood to boiling. For someone so unacquainted with fear to have that expression—he was sure it would be seared on his memory forever. Both hands were clawing at the muscles of her legs, as if trying to work the feeling back into them by force.
“You won’t be able to return now, will you?” Remus sneered at her. “I’ve put myself beyond your reach, and you matter so little to this world that the timeline has not even shifted to account for your impending death.”
Nicholas came down on the man like a thunderbolt, forcing him up against the hearth, close enough for his tunic to smolder and for the stench of burned hair to pierce the air. Remus’s smile faltered, his eyes flaring.
“You didn’t…”
“Drink your nasty concoction?” Nicholas sneered. “No, I did not, sir.”
Remus slashed wildly with his knife, catching Nicholas across the back of his sword hand and nicking his jaw. He slammed the man against the wall, hard enough this time to knock the breath from his lungs and the knife from his fingers. It clattered to the ground, and Nicholas kicked it into the hearth.
The old man’s face scrunched up mockingly, as if daring Nicholas to push him into the flames as well. Nicholas’s hand knotted in the front of the man’s tunic, giving him a warning shake. “Is there an antidote? Tell me, damn you!”
The bulk of his fury wasn’t even directed at Remus Jacaranda—Nicholas could have punched himself for missing the signals, the clues. Even when he’d noticed the other man stalling, he hadn’t pinned any sort of purpose to it.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Remus said, eyes sliding over to Sophia, who was twisting around on the ground, struggling to rise onto her feet. “You were fools to come here—”
Nicholas smashed the hilt of the sword against the man’s temple, knocking him clear into unconsciousness. He barely managed to keep his grip on him, yanking him forward out of the flames and letting his prone form slam to the ground.
The fool you are, Nicholas thought, if you think for one second that Ironwood will ever show you mercy.
“Nic—Cart—”
He spun back toward Sophia, kneeling beside her. Her hand lashed out; he caught it, giving what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. What did he know about hemlock, other than that it had killed Socrates? “Do you know any sort of antidote?”
Her face was distorted by pain and panic, but she still managed to give him an incredulous look.
Damn. Who would know how to help her? They couldn’t stay here in Carthage; they didn’t speak the language, they didn’t know how to find another physician, and it would be too easy for them to be tracked.
A crack of thunder cut through the clear morning sky; Nicholas jerked at the drumming beat that muffled the crackling pops of the fire, rivaling the sound of the Romans hammering out in the harbor. The other passage.
No time, he thought, no time—
He dove toward the ground, scooping up his possessions and stuffing them into Sophia’s bag, looping it over his shoulder. He turned back to see her struggling to compose her face and failing.
“Pardon me,” he said, bending down to scoop her up off the ground. One of her hands came up, smacking him in the face in protest. “I wasn’t aware you walking out of here on your own was still an option, but if you think you can fly out on pride alone, by all means…”
She went very still.
“I thought not.”
He rose onto unsteady feet, his vision blacking out as the blood left his head. He wasted precious seconds waiting for his exhausted body to steady before carrying her to the door. Her skin had gone the sickly shade of a fish left too long out of water, and her trembling hands…
Medicine. Surely they wouldn’t have made the poison without an antidote? Surely there was something here if Fitzhugh Jacaranda truly was a healer? Surely?
Nicholas carried her over to the worktable, setting her down only long enough to pick up the man’s bag and cinch the opening closed. He had them to the door in two quick strides when he doubled back to the chest, where he’d seen the small wooden box. With a huff, he plucked the harmonica out of its bindings and slid it into Sophia’s bag. They wouldn’t need it now, not with the passage bellowing loud enough for all of creation to hear, but he couldn’t trust the future to bring the next one to him so easily.
He kicked the door open, shifting Sophia from his arms to over his shoulder. She hit him weakly in protest.
“Be easier to run—” The words died in his throat. From his vantage point on the second story of the building, he could see over the courtyard’s wall into the street below.
Four figures were shouldering quickly through the milling crowds—four men, in a sea of women and children. The one leading the way at the front wore a faded blue tunic, his head ringed with blond, strawlike hair, clearly older than the rest. He looked to be in danger of being trampled by the men charging up behind him. Their “tunics” were poor imitations of togas, with sheets likely stripped off a nearby bed in a hurry—worse, their hair was still parted and slicked down in the style of the nineteenth or twentieth century. One even had a dark, neatly trimmed mustache like a slug above his upper lip.
It was a surprising lack of planning by a group of Ironwoods, who usually prided themselves on prudence and an overabundance of caution to avoid tampering with the Grand Master’s timeline.
Not for the first time, Nicholas wondered what price Ironwood had put on his life. Most travelers wouldn’t risk the old man’s wrath, or throw away decades of conditioning and training, for anything less than a tidy sum. He felt a foolish swell of pride at that.
“It’s just up here,” he heard the old man in front—Fitzhugh?—say.
“Your tip better be good, old man—” groused the traveler behind him. Miles Ironwood, of course. The last time he’d seen the man, Miles had been ordered by Ironwood to pummel him with his fists for Julian’s death. What a charming reunion this would be.
No time.
“Who…?” Sophia asked.
“Miles Ironwood,” he said.
“Always…wanted to…stab him.”
“Well, here’s your opportunity,” he said. “Don’t die before you give me the pleasure of watching you do it.”
The house had the same problem the city did: if the Ironwoods were coming through the courtyard, then he and Sophia had run out of exits. Unless…
Nicholas made for the stairs that led up to the next level, and the next one after that. Sophia went alarmingly slack against his shoulder. “Sophia? Sophia!”
“Hey!” The shout rose from the street, cutting through the din of voices. “Carter!”
His legs burned as he raced up the uneven stairs, Sophia bouncing against his shoulder, his whole body quaking with the effort of keeping them upright. Third story, fourth, fifth—he nearly lost his footing as they reached the roof, momentarily distracted by the heavy pounding of steps behind him. He swung them both around, scanning the roofs around him for the nearest one to jump to.
His breathing was so labored, tearing in and out of him, that he didn’t hear the whistle of the arrow at all—only felt the pain of it slamming into his shoulder. Nicholas staggered forward, knocked off-balance by the force of the blow.
“Carter, stop!” one of the men shouted. “You’ll only make it worse for yourself!”
Make it worse how? As far as he was concerned, these men would only be taking him back to Ironwood one way: dead. And he still had too much to accomplish before he’d ever let that happen.
He still had to find Etta.
Nicholas dug deep into the well of his strength, moving to the far end of the roof, trying to judge whether or not the distance would be too great to throw Sophia, when he heard a sharp whistle.
It took him a moment to locate the source: a small, dark-robed figure, crouched on the roof just beyond the one he’d been studying, waving him forward. His heart surged with the hope that it was Rose, that he might finally achieve the dream of strangling her for this mess she’d tossed them all into—but he wasn’t, to his surprise, disappointed to realize that the mystery figure was Li Min. If the choice was between Ironwood’s men and a thief who was at least clever enough to find them a way out of Carthage…well, the choice was rather simple.
“Apologies,” he told Sophia as he slid her down off his shoulder.
“—what—”
He tossed her like a basket, wincing as she struck the solid roof. He reached back, gritting his teeth, and snapped off the long end of the arrow, ignoring the warmth soaking through his tunic. There was only about a yard of distance between the two buildings, and he crossed it without trouble. Li Min met him there, kneeling to help him pick Sophia back up.
“Ma’am, are you here to help for your own mysterious reasons, or are you here to kill her for stealing your money?” he asked, his face serious. “Because I haven’t the time for the latter, and your competition is arriving shortly.”
Li Min looked up from her study of Sophia’s ashen face. “What has she been given?”
“Hemlock.” Saying the word aloud made the immense danger of it tangible, gave the threat new life.
“Quickly, then,” Li Min said. “We haven’t much time.”
Out of other options, his body fast approaching that murky line of uselessness, Nicholas followed her over to the next roof.
“Drop,” she told him, eyes flickering to something just over his shoulder.
He barely had time to take a knee before she flung a small knife from the depths of her hooded cloak, striking the first man at the dead center of his heart. The weight of his body sent the others tumbling back down the stairs. The one who managed to remain on his feet found another knife lodged directly in his throat.
Nicholas turned back to Li Min, only to find her already making her way down the stairs winding around the back of the building.
“This way, this way,” she called. “Keep up!”
“Keep up, she says,” he muttered, trying to pick up his pace without sending both himself and Sophia into a tragic tumble.
Li Min was incredibly light on her feet, not difficult for her diminutive size; still, he felt like an inelegant beast lurching along behind her. He was beginning to lose feeling in his left arm, where he felt the tip of the arrow scraping against the bone. Nicholas couldn’t focus on that thought without feeling like he was about to retch; instead, he turned what remained of his drifting attention to maintaining his grip on Sophia. The voices shouting in English were still so close, tearing through the unpleasant stillness of the besieged city.
He was grateful when his feet were back on solid ground, but there was no time to stop and clear the darkness edging into his vision. His eyes tracked Li Min as she wove in and out of the startled crowds around her like a dolphin leaping through waves. Someone—a woman—put a concerned hand on his arm as he passed, but Nicholas brushed it off and kept going, his stomach tightening as they continued up the hill to the buildings crowning the Byrsa.
Just before they reached the apex of the hill, Li Min took a sharp turn and ducked between the last two homes, kicking open a gate that stood in her way. There, just beyond a shaft of light pouring into the narrow alley, was the shimmering entrance to the passage.
As if sensing them, the pitch of its voice grew higher. Nicholas felt himself faltering, choking on dust and the metallic tang of blood, but he gave himself one last shove forward and felt himself vanish like a passing breeze.