Wayfarer

Alive.

“Are you—are you all right?” he asked, one tentative hand touching the back of her head.

Behind him, around him, men and women burst through the entrance of the tent, in clothing that ranged in style from the twentieth century to the first, weapons in hand. Leading the charge was Li Min, shrouded in black silk. The young woman shot forward, skimming through the carnage, seemingly searching. Nicholas and Sophia were locked in the middle of a blood-soaked circle, the bodies piling around them, choking them off from the rest of the room—from the attackers, the victims, the men and women who clutched their dead, screaming, until they too were silenced. With the smoke filling the space, it was nearly impossible to tell a shadow from a Shadow.

Nicholas stumbled, taking a blow to his back that brought him to his knees. Li Min drew herself back, just like an arrow notched on a bow, and then she was flying again, straight for him. She pulled a small dagger from her boot, launching it at the neck of the Shadow who’d cornered them at the table. The range of emotions that exploded across Sophia’s face at the sight of the other girl was indescribable.

“You are not forgiven!” she shouted.

Li Min kicked a silver serving platter up off the wreckage of canvas and wood on the floor. A man—an Ironwood—had taken up a gun and aimed, but she used the heavy platter to deflect the shot away from Nicholas and Sophia, and then to knock the man clear off his feet. In her next move, she seemed to produce a sword out of thin air, driving it through the back of the Shadow who had recovered enough to swing her claw and sword at Sophia’s face. Nicholas, his face fixed in determination, ripped the blade out from between her shoulders and proceeded to slash her with the cold dispassion of someone who’d fought, and thrived, in many more battles than his opponent could ever imagine.

Sophia gripped the front of Li Min’s cloak, drew her in, and kissed her soundly as the flames from the nearby candles caught the tent and set it ablaze.

“Thorns!” someone shouted above the shrieks, the vibrations of the dark one’s speech, the screams of agony and fear as the travelers tried to flee.

Another voice. “Hemlock!”

Henry spun Etta away; she heard, rather than saw, the explosion of a gunshot that ripped through the din of clanging metal. He jerked, but didn’t fall—Etta reached up, trying to pull back to see where he’d been hit, only to find that a man in a trim suit behind him was already slumping to the ground, shot clean through the skull.

The smoke from the burning stall began to fill the air, but it lifted as her mother stepped forward without a mask, her rifle still raised—pointed now at Henry, who calmly brought up his sword, bringing it to rest at the spot where Rose’s long, pale neck met her shoulder. She, too, was wearing the white auction robes, though now she had painted herself red and black with blood and smoke.

Etta pulled back from Henry with a jerk of alarm.

Rose’s cool expression slipped at the sight of them, cracking enough for her relief to bleed through.

“Can you get her out of here?” Henry asked.

Rose said nothing, only nodded.

“No—!” Etta ripped herself out of his grip. “You don’t understand, the astrolabe—you can’t destroy it—”

A familiar cry had Etta spinning back around. Nicholas had taken cover behind the overturned table with Sophia and Li Min. As one, they lifted it and used it as a battering ram, charging into the two Shadows who’d begun taking turns driving their claws through the body of one of the Thorns on the ground, trying to crawl over to another wounded young man.

When she looked toward her mother, Rose was nearly unrecognizable in her bone-pale terror.

Etta turned slowly.

It was the quiet, the way he absorbed the sounds around him like a vacuum, that was so deeply disturbing. The walls seemed to kneel to him, leaning forward, as if with each step he quietly devoured more of the world. The man in gold glided forward through the wreckage. The fighting fell away from him, the shadowed attackers drawing their prey into the stalls like predators wanting to feast on their kills. The hem of his robe was soaked up to the knee with blood.

Henry reached for her, but it was her mother who seized her. Etta found herself tucked between her mother’s back and the wall of the tent as the glittering man passed by. This close, his face had the consistency of rice paper. For a terrifying moment, Etta imagined she could see the dark blood throbbing through his rootlike veins.

But she wasn’t shaking—her mother was. Rose Linden, who had hunted tigers, betrayed Ironwoods, conquered an unfamiliar future, was shaking. As if that same raw fear carried vibrations through the air, the radiant man stopped suddenly, turning toward them, his eyes seeking. Recognition flared as he found Rose, his lips curving into a horrifying imitation of a smile.

“Hello, child.”

A whisper.

A curse.

Knowledge flooded Etta, filling the cracks in the picture she had begun to assemble of her mother’s life. Henry stepped in front of them both, but the man had no interest in him. As the man passed by, her father recoiled, as if the man had brushed his soul. There was something about the way the air itself seemed to curl and vibrate around the man, bowing to him, that made Etta’s stomach clench again.

“My God, my God, Rosie—” Henry said, turning toward her.

“You…believe me?” The vulnerability in her mother’s words was shattering.

“I’m sorry,” Henry said, so softly that Etta wasn’t sure her mother could hear him over the swarm of fighting. It felt as if she were standing in the path of two hurricanes finally on the verge of collision, the winds of clashing blades and blood whipping around them.