Wayfarer

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 with them…wouldn’t have…” Sophia swallowed hard. “Wouldn’t have gone to the Thorns.”

“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.

He took hold of Etta’s earring between his fingers again and worried the metal hoop between his fingers, rolling it back and forth.

“If I…die…sorry.” Sophia’s voice wasn’t even a shadow of a whisper, but he heard her well. He understood.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he told her, mimicking her prim tone. “It’s as I told you before, in Damascus. You are not allowed to die.”

Her answer was silence.

We are, all of us, on our own journeys….

Sophia would never be privy to the journey he had undertaken since childhood, to find that freedom denied to him. But as much as Etta was his heart’s helpmate, Sophia was the sword at his side on the expedition he undertook now. From this moment on, for as long as their paths were aligned, she would have his trust and his blade to rely on.

Nicholas leaned back against the nearest wall, the stone cold against his overheated, sore skin, and closed his eyes. For a moment, he merely breathed in. Out. Believed, didn’t. Trusted, didn’t. Doubted, didn’t. Rode the tides of his emotions, the way he and Chase used to float on their backs in open water, watching the sky. And in that way, in a city of the dead, he finally slept as the dead did: undreaming, and unburdened.

THERE WERE CERTAIN KINDS OF exhaustion that lingered like a drug in the body, making even the simplest tasks, like lifting one’s head from the ground, feel impossible. Nicholas’s mind seemed to be in combat with the needs of his body. He startled awake, and felt as though he were locked inside a drunken stupor. Soft voices drifted over to where he remained on the ground, curled around his throbbing right hand. The lantern had been dimmed and his eyesight was blurred, but he made out Li Min’s shape leaning against the wall, Sophia’s head in her lap.

“…is this quite necessary?”

“Very,” he heard Sophia say. “I am very delicate at the moment, you see.”

“I do see,” Li Min said dryly. “Delicate is most certainly a word I would use to describe you, what with how you flee from weapons and faint upon seeing a drop of blood.”

“I haven’t the slightest idea as to what you’re implying,” Sophia said primly. “I might die yet.”

“Oh, dear,” Li Min whispered. “However can I prevent this?”

Sophia seemed to consider it, then lifted her hand from where it had been draped across her chest. “You ought to check my pulse again. Make sure you count it for…a few minutes.”

He drifted away again to the sound of Li Min softly counting one, two, three, four…

The next time he woke, it was to screams.

They came to him from a great distance, muffled but ripe with agony. In the moment it took his mind to shake off sleep, the voices seemed to transform into a living, breathing thing. Nicholas surged up off the floor, knocking his head against the low ceiling and sending a spray of plaster dust down over his body.