Time's Children

by D. B. Jackson

  The men advanced on him, like dogs herding sheep. He would run out of room soon enough.

  The great hall in Windhome Palace hadn’t been as grand as this one, but it had been large, and though it had one main entrance, it had a smaller entry near the rear. Servants used it to bring in food and carry out empty platters. There had to be a similar way in and out of this hall, and that portal was probably near this end. Tobias wasn’t sure how to find it without giving himself away. He tried to orient himself, to remember where this end of the hall was in relation to the kitchen. It would have been easier with the sun still up.

  He thought – hoped – the kitchen was closest to the south end of the hall, to his right. He angled his retreat, trying to step with care, praying to the Two that Sofya would remain silent for a bit longer.

  Sooner than he expected, he backed into solid stone, jarring himself and the princess. She let out a soft cry.

  “Wait!” said one of his pursuers. “Did you hear that?”

  They halted their advance. Tobias remained motionless. Sofya made a suckling noise that sounded to him as loud as pistol fire. But the men didn’t speak or resume their search.

  “I don’t hear anything,” said another man. “My ears are ringing from that piece of shit banger you threw.”

  Tobias still held the half-cocked pistol he’d taken from the man he killed. He threw it now, as far as he could toward the other rear corner of the chamber, hoping with all his heart that the doorway he sought wasn’t there.

  The pistol struck the floor and went off with a burst of flame and a startling report.

  The men turned in that direction. Sofya began to fuss, but Tobias covered her mouth with his hand and sidled along the wall feeling for the door. When at last he found it, he nearly wept with relief. Better still, it was unlocked.

  He eased it open, slipped out of the hall, and closed it again with great care. He had entered a small chamber, empty save for spent carafes of wine and bare platters. The door across the tiny room stood ajar. Through it, Tobias saw a torchlit courtyard and a star-speckled sky.

  “Almost safe, princess,” he whispered, creeping to that second doorway. He paused there, searched the ward for soldiers and assassins. Glancing down at Sofya, he noticed in the spill of torch fire what he’d missed in the great hall. The princess bled from a gash on her chin, and another on her left temple. Neither injury seemed to trouble her much, though. She stared up at him, her eyes dry, one thumb in her mouth, the other hand still clutching his shirt.

  “You’re a brave one, aren’t you?” he said.

  She grinned around her thumb.

  He scanned the courtyard again. Several men entered through the east gate. All wore black. He saw no soldiers of Hayncalde.

  Another group of men crossed through the courtyard from the west and joined the first band. Together they walked to one of the stairways and entered the castle. Tobias hoped whoever lived there would manage to flee before they were found.

  Tobias decided to remain where he was for now. If the castle had been taken, all the gates would be guarded, and he hadn’t lived here long enough to know where he might find the castle’s sally ports.

  Only then did he realize that he didn’t need an escape. He had something better. Without leaving this chamber, he could go back a bell or two, and warn the sovereign of the impending attack. He couldn’t bring the princess with him, but he had to risk leaving her, just briefly. If he succeeded, none of this would happen, and she would be back with her family.

  He reached into his pocket for his chronofor, only to have something sharp jab into a finger. He muttered a curse, felt around in the pocket more carefully. His stomach heaved.

  Chapter 17

  21st Day of Sipar’s Settling, Year 633

  Shards of glass bit at his fingertips. He pulled out the device and held it close to his eyes to inspect the damage. The glass casing was gone, fractured into hundreds of tiny fragments. The face had been dented; two of the three hands had been bent so severely Tobias despaired of ever seeing them fixed. He tried to pull out the stems to set the device, but two of them wouldn’t budge. Worse, the central stem jutted from the chronofor at an angle. When Tobias tried to press it, it didn’t move either.

  He wouldn’t be going back to warn the sovereign. Nor could he return to his own time, at least not until he found a Binder to fix this device, or a trader who could sell him a new one.

  What money do you have for food, much less a Bound device?

  Had Binder Filt been in the great hall? Tobias didn’t recall seeing him, but he wasn’t sure that meant anything. Might the Binder still be in his chamber? Would he have an extra chronofor?

  Tobias pocketed the remains of his device and eyed the courtyard again. Seeing no assassins, he stepped out into the night, the princess held tightly in his arms. In his own time, he’d had a vague sense of where Binder Jarrett’s workshop was located. He hoped that Filt used the same chamber. He started toward a tower, hesitated, unable to recall if this was the correct one. Deciding it was, he loped across the tiled expanse, his back hunched, his gaze roaming the ward. He saw none of the enemy, and gained the stairway without being seen.

  He climbed with stealth, only to have Sofya remove her thumb from her mouth and give a little shriek. She jumped at the echo, but then squealed her delight and made the sound again.

  “Sofya, please!” Tobias whispered, panic quickening his pulse.

  From far off, he heard a man’s voice.

  Sofya shrieked once more and laughed, the drying blood on her face making her look like a tiny ghoul.

  They reached the second level, and Tobias carried the princess into the corridor. She made her noise again, but deflated when the effect proved less dramatic.

  The corridor was empty – a blessing. Still Tobias walked with care. Not that it mattered. Sofya chattered like a woodland wren.

  Reaching the workshop door, Tobias knocked. It was already unlatched. At his touch it opened a crack. His limbs quaking, Tobias pushed through it.

  The chamber was dark, save for the glow of starlight and the low moon seeping through a single window. Even so, he could see that he’d arrived too late. The room had been ransacked, the workbench tipped onto its side. A pool of what had to be blood stained the stone floor, as black as pitch in the dim light. To his relief, Tobias saw no corpses, no sign of Filt. Perhaps he had escaped, or maybe he had been taken. Binders were nearly as valuable as Walkers.

  He paused, his breath catching, and wondered if Gillian had escaped the hall, or if she was among the dead.

  No time for such thoughts now.

  Tobias’s first instinct was to back out the door and flee the castle. He resisted the impulse. Taking care to avoid the blood, he searched the chamber, rooting through workbench drawers and cabinet shelves, hoping he might find a chronofor. At one point he tried to lie Sofya down on the pallet near the window. As soon as he did, she began to fuss. “All right, all right,” he whispered. “I’ll hold you.”

  She grabbed his shirt again, and stuck her thumb back into her mouth.

  He made as little noise as possible, and listened for voices in the ward. Someone had heard Sofya earlier. No doubt the killers were searching for them.

  He soon found what he was after, in a sense. The Binder did have devices stored in the chamber: two apertures. No chronofors, though. After a moment’s consideration, Tobias took the devices. He placed them in an old carry sack he found in the corner of the chamber, and slung it over his shoulder. He wasn’t a Crosser. The apertures were useless to him. But someone – a merchant, like the Gray Skate’s Captain Larr – would pay handsomely for them.

  With one last glance around the chamber, he crossed to the door intending to leave. As he did, he remembered his brief encounter with Filt earlier in the day. The Binder had spoken in vague terms of a new project, and Tobias had the impression that, if not for Gillian’s warning glance, the man might have told him more. Tobias had seen nothing in th
e chamber that struck him as revolutionary, but was it possible that Filt’s device bore some resemblance to the odd sextants he’d seen in the hands of those assassins, and in Mearlan’s chamber in his own time? With that thought he considered repeating his search.

  He wasn’t sure when rumors of the Oaqamaran devices first surfaced, but the man he saw in the courtyard, who later led the attack on the great hall, was fully clothed when he appeared. Both times. In the second instance, he had carried the explosive in one hand and his sextant in the other. The woman who accompanied him held two pistols.

  Could it be that Filt had been developing the same sort of device for Daerjen? Had the idea originated here, rather than in Oaqamar? Tobias eyed the cabinets again, but he didn’t renew his search. He wouldn’t find Filt’s inventions here. Someone, either the Binder or the attackers, had taken them already.

  Assassins who could materialize anywhere they wanted – clothed, armed, ready to kill – and then vanish again just as suddenly: he had known of this possibility in his own time. Now, it seemed, he was being hunted by these killers. He and the princess. How did one fight such an enemy? How could Tobias evade them?

  “Time to go,” he said to Sofya.

  Her smile returned and she whispered nonsense sounds at him.

  “That’s right,” he said. “A game. We have to whisper.”

  She repeated the noises and laughed too loudly.

  “Shhh!”

  She imitated the sound.

  “Gods, what am I going to do with you?”

  He carried her from the Binder’s chamber, left the door as he had found it, and followed the corridor to a different tower and stairway, in case Sofya’s cries had drawn the enemy to the stairs they’d climbed.

  Tobias didn’t know where Gillian had her quarters, but he wished desperately to know if she had survived the attack. He assumed the rest of the royal family were dead. He knew the minister of arms had been killed. The Seer and minister of state had been in the hall, and must have died as well. He didn’t care to guess how many guards were lost.

  Much if not all of the court of Hayncalde had been massacred on this one night. He could think of several who would want Mearlan dead: the autarch of Oaqamar, the Duke of Sheraigh, and any number of privateering patroons in Westisle came to mind. But who had the means to plan and fund such an assault? Oaqamar might. The Seer had thought them the most likely culprits in the attack in his own time.

  “Who says it has to be just one of them?” he whispered aloud, knowing as he spoke that he had his answer: an alliance of Hayncalde’s enemies, bent on destroying Mearlan’s court for all time.

  Tobias stared at the princess as she looked around the corridor, oblivious of what had been done to her family, to her life. Unless he could find some way to Walk back in time and prevent the killings, she was all that remained of Mearlan’s line. The assassins wouldn’t rest until they knew for certain that she was dead.

  “They must have followed me,” he said under his breath. They tried to kill him in his own time, and when that failed they came back to this time. They had relied on more Travelers than any one sovereign or royal should have had at the ready.

  Voices echoed in the corridor ahead of him, pulling Tobias from his musings, and forcing him to halt. He tried the nearest door, but found it locked. The next one opened. He slipped into the dark chamber and eased the door closed again. Turning, he saw a bent woman standing near the window, a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.

  Her gaze fell to the princess. Her eyes went wide and snapped back to his.

  He nodded, put a finger to his lips.

  The voices drew nearer. He felt as though he had been carried back to his own time, and the attempt on his life by the two Travelers.

  This time, he had no means of escape. However, he did have the pistols he had taken from the minister of arms and the dead assassin.

  He took the sword from the woman and gave Sofya to her. The princess complained, but the woman cooed softly, quieting her.

  Tobias loaded the pistols, cocked the hammer on one, and returned the other to his belt. He pressed himself against the wall nearest the door’s hinges, the pistol in his left hand, the sword in his right. Footsteps just beyond the door told him the men were close. The latch on the door clicked and it swung open, concealing him.

  The men entered the chamber. Tobias could see one of them, though only from behind. He wore black and held a pistol. Tobias assumed his friend was also armed.

  “Who are you?” one of them asked the woman. “Who’s the b–”

  Shifting away from the wall, Tobias kicked the door with all his might. It slammed into the second man with more force than Tobias had expected, knocking his pistol to the floor with a clatter. The man in front spun, raising his weapon. Tobias was already moving. Closing the distance between them with one lunge, he struck at the man with his sword. The assassin dove away, rolled onto his back, and aimed his pistol at Tobias.

  Who dove as well before the man could fire.

  The second attacker had regained his feet. He’d lost his firearm, but held a long, wicked dagger. The first man and Tobias scrambled up, pistols aimed.

  Something large and dark soared past Tobias’s head. He ducked out of instinct. A water pitcher. The assassin didn’t see it and it crashed into his chest, staggering him. Tobias pounced, hacking at him again with the sword. His blow struck the base of the assassin’s neck. Blood fountained, and the assassin dropped to the floor, his head nearly severed from his body.

  The second man lashed out with the dagger, its steel glinting dully in the darkness. Tobias danced out of reach, kicked the door again so that it slammed shut, and raised the pistol.

  “Drop the knife.”

  The assassin cast a quick look at the woman and then at Sofya, who now lay on the pallet. Tobias stepped toward the man, blocking his path to either of them.

  “Drop it now, or I’ll kill you.”

  “No, you won’t,” the man said in that maddeningly elusive accent. “Shoot me, and my friends will converge on this place from every corner of your castle.”

  Tobias knew he was right. The man backed away, knife held ready. His foot hit something that scraped on the stone floor: his dead comrade’s pistol. He glanced at it, took Tobias’s measure again.

  Tobias advanced another step. The man leapt at him, blade arm raised high to strike.

  Tobias twisted away, but the man kicked out, the toe of his boot catching Tobias’s arm. The sword flew from his hand, struck the wall behind him, and fell to the floor. Landing nimbly, the assassin crouched and grabbed his friend’s pistol.

  Having no choice, Tobias fired. The report was deafening. The assassin fell back into the door, a dark stain spreading across his chest.

  Tobias straightened, let his pistol hand fall to his side. He breathed hard, and sweat dripped from his brow. Blood soaked the floor under the first assassin. More had started to pool beneath the second. A night of blood; he had never seen so much.

  He flexed the arm the assassin had kicked. It was sore, but no worse than the rest of his injuries. He was still growing used to this new body, learning to move again, to fight. But he felt strong.

  Sofya fussed. The woman crossed to the pallet and picked her up. White smoke filled the chamber.

  “Thank you,” Tobias said, retrieving the assassins’ pistols and the second man’s dagger. He slipped the weapons into his carry sack. His hands had started to shake. More men would be coming; they needed to leave. “Throwing that pitcher probably saved my life.”

  “You’re a guard?” the woman asked, gently bouncing the princess.

  “A Walker. I–” He shook his head. “There’s too much to explain.”

  Voices rose to the window from the courtyard.

  “We have to get away from here.” Tobias retrieved the woman’s sword, used his foot to push the body of the second man away from the door.

  She carried Sofya to him, glancing at the corps
e of the first man as she stepped over him. If the sight of bloodied bodies in her chamber bothered her, she gave no indication of it.

  “The Two guard you,” she said, handing Sofya back to him.

  “No, you don’t understand. We all have to go.”

  “It’ll be better for all if I remain.”

  “If you stay, and they find you,” he said, struggling to keep his voice low, his gaze flicking to the window, “they’ll kill you. Your best hope is to come with us.”

  “An old woman, bent, useless? They won’t bother. And if they try, they’ll find killing me more difficult than you might think.” At his puzzled look, she said, “I’m Daria Belani. I used to be minister of arms.”

  He saw the resemblance. “The current minister of arms…”

  “My daughter. Is she still alive?”

  Tobias winced, shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  Daria took an unsteady breath, tears winding crooked paths down her lined face. Her gaze fell to Sofya, who sucked her thumb again. “Is this who I think it is?”

  “Yes. She’s the only one left.”

  “Then I shouldn’t go with you,” she said, eyes meeting his once more. “I’ll slow you down. But I can help you get out.”

  She led him into the corridor and on toward the stairway he’d intended to use. She’d spoken true; her steps were slow, uneven. They reached the stairway, but continued past it.

  “The towers will be watched,” she whispered. “Every person in the castle heard that pistol.”

  The words stung. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “No, you didn’t. Because you allowed that assassin to disarm you.”

  “He surprised me. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Not allow yourself to be surprised. You can’t let that happen again, or they’ll kill her.” She indicated the princess with a lift of her chin.