Time's Children

by D. B. Jackson

  Wansi crossed her arms, appraisal in her gaze. “You’re rather unusual, you know. It’s rare for Travelers to have two fully realized abilities.”

  “I’m better at Spanning.”

  “Of course. You’ve been doing it since you were a child. And still, you Walked on your first attempt, which tells me you could become an accomplished Walker as well.”

  Mara stared at the chronofor. “I only went back a bell. That’s like Spanning from here to the courtyard outside the window. It’s nothing. How do Walkers go back an entire turn or two or five? I can’t imagine it.”

  “They practice, as you will.”

  She looked up at that. Wansi’s stare didn’t waver. At length Mara shifted her gaze and raised the cup to her lips. She was starting to recover. “To have changed the past so completely, Tobias had to have gone back even more. Much more.”

  “I’d considered that. He may have gone back years, in contravention of palace law.”

  She could think of no reply, and they lapsed into silence. Eventually Mara drained her cup and stood. She felt steady on her feet, and her head had cleared.

  “I should go back.”

  “Probably. We’ll speak more after you do.” Wansi crossed to the shuttered window.

  Mara removed the robe, folded it and left it on the table where it had been.

  “One click to the right. No more,” the Binder said.

  She turned the small stem until she heard a single metallic click, inhaled, and depressed the larger button.

  The effect this time was immediate. A violent tug at her belly jerked her forward into the ferment of the between. She knew not to draw breath, and having been through it once, she endured this passage without panicking. Still, the assault on her senses left her exhausted and light-headed. She kept her feet upon emerging, but only because she caught herself on the table.

  “Was that Walk easier?” Wansi asked from her stool. She had set aside the sextant and was reading from a curled piece of parchment, her spectacles shining with candlelight. Several other scrolls lay scattered on the work bench.

  “Yes.” Mara began to dress. “How long was I gone?”

  “Not long. Moments, that’s all.”

  “Do you remember the conversation we had when I arrived here a bell ago?”

  Wansi set down the parchment, but didn’t look her way.

  “It’s all right. I have something on.”

  The Binder swiveled in her seat. “Yes, I do.”

  “So I changed the future.”

  She feared Wansi might scoff. This was hardly an occasion worthy of history. But if the Binder thought her statement grandiose, she kept it to herself. “Yes, you did. This is why Walkers have been forbidden from going back more than a year. It’s also why the palace has traditionally had a Walker to train Walkers, just as we have a Spanner to teach Spanning. Had the chancellor known about your other ability, he might have replaced Mistress Karis when she died. As it is, you only have me. So I’ll tell you what Karis often said: Walking carries enormous responsibilities that go beyond anything most Spanners or Crossers can imagine. If you continue to Travel back, even a single bell at a time, you have to weigh every word, every deed.”

  “According to Droë – the Tirribin – in the other future, Walkers were the most valued of Travelers. They were sought after by kings and sovereigns. Maybe that’s why.”

  “That could be. Another possibility occurs to me. I’m old enough to remember a world without tri-sextants and tri-apertures. Before Spanners and Crossers could Travel in groups, theirs were considered the lesser arts.” She canted her head, eyes on Mara.

  “You’re suggesting that in Tobias’s time, there were no tri-devices.”

  “A likely conclusion, don’t you think?”

  “Then that brings me back to the same question I asked Droë: why should we think that lost future is any better than this one? Maybe things were worse in Tobias’s world.”

  “Perhaps. His decision to Travel back in time to change history suggests as much.”

  Mara nodded, pensive.

  “What did the Tirribin say when you discussed this with her?”

  “I asked, ‘Who’s to say this future isn’t the one we’re meant to have?’ And she said that she was, and I was.”

  “What did you think of that answer?”

  A mirthless smile lifted one corner of Mara’s mouth. “I didn’t like it. I still don’t. It comes back to responsibility. I don’t want it, at least not that much of it. This shouldn’t be my decision, or hers.”

  “It may have to be. Aside from the three of us, I would guess that few people are aware that this other time ever existed. If Tobias is dead, it could be that no one else knows.”

  Mara’s cheeks went cold, forcing her to recognize an uncomfortable truth: she cared more about finding Tobias, a boy she didn’t remember – had never met in this lifetime – than she did rescuing the world from a troubling future.

  Wansi narrowed her eyes. “The easiest thing to do would be to ignore what the Tirribin told you, ignore what you’ve felt, and let the world continue on this path, right or wrong.”

  “There are a lot of wars right now… and the autarch is winning all of them. The world doesn’t seem like a very happy place.”

  Wansi made no effort to mask the pain in her blue eyes. “I’m not sure you can do much about that. There will always be sadness and violence and death. Right now many people in this world are quite happy with their lot. A different future will surely bring joy to some, and ruin to others. There’s no ledger for this, no accounting that will enable you to determine where the most happiness lies.”

  “Then how do I decide what to do?”

  “You follow your instincts. The Tirribin was right. You’ve known for several days that some vague thing is wrong with the world, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then that’s your answer. It’s the only information you have.”

  “Is it enough?”

  “I’m not a Walker. It’s not for me to say.”

  Mara frowned, prompting a sad smile from the Binder.

  “That’s a coward’s way out, isn’t it?”

  “A bit, yes.”

  “I’m afraid it’s all I have to offer.” Wansi stood. “For now, I think the best thing you can do is practice your Walking, as well as your Spanning.”

  Mara placed the chronofor next to the robe she’d used. “I will. Do you want me to come back tomorrow?”

  “No,” the Binder said. “I want you to take the chronofor and practice on your own.” She answered Mara’s look of surprise with a shrug. “There are no other Walkers in the palace; that device has been gathering cobwebs. Use it, make yourself comfortable with it. And by all means, be discreet. If the chancellor or his guards find out you’re Walking with a chronofor I gave you, it’s liable to raise questions neither of us wishes to answer.”

  His guards. Mara didn’t miss the implication – as she’d guessed that first day of this misfuture, she wasn’t alone in hating the Oaqamaran presence in the palace.

  Mara stepped to the door, but paused there, her fingers resting on the handle. “Do you know how long ago tri-devices began to be used?”

  The Binder hesitated. “As it happens, I was looking that up when you returned. I don’t know when the first was created. As far as I can tell, they came into widespread use approximately a dozen years ago. Possibly a bit more.”

  Mara’s knees gave way, and again she might have fallen if not for her hold on the door handle. Going back a mere bell had been punishing. Yet somehow Tobias had Walked a dozen years, or more. He was beyond her reach.

  Chapter 21

  9th Day of Kheraya’s Descent, Year 647

  Mara almost surrendered that evening. Knowing that time was on the wrong path would eat at her. She would regret never finding Tobias, and she dreaded telling Droë that she couldn’t help her. But she could live with all of that. She would never survive a Walk back
in time of a dozen years. Or more.

  She hid the chronofor in the Windward Keep among her few possessions, between an overshirt her mother had sent for her thirteenth birthday, and a dress, also a gift from home, that she’d long since outgrown. Maybe she should have taken it back to Wansi straight away. What was the use in keeping it if she didn’t intend to use it?

  Later. She could give it back to the Binder tomorrow, or the next day. With a last glance at the pile of clothes concealing the device, she left the dormitory and hurried to join the other trainees for their evening rations. Before she reached the refectory, she was stopped by three soldiers who wanted to know what she was doing on her own, unsupervised. She stammered something about having to do extra work for the Binder, and they let her go, but the encounter deepened her fears. It also rekindled her resolve.

  They don’t belong here.

  Still, she didn’t try Walking that night or the next day. If Wansi was right and the invention of tri-devices was connected to something Tobias had done, he had gone far indeed.

  She didn’t have to decide anything yet. In the meantime, though, she needed to practice.

  The next day at the midday meal, while the rest of her cohort ate, she left the table, drawing glances from Nat and Delvin, and approached the refectory door. She took care to walk to a male guard.

  “Where are you going?” he asked in the Ring Isle tongue, his accent sharpening the words.

  “I don’t feel well.”

  “You’re sick?”

  She averted her gaze. “Not sick. Just… it’s my time.”

  Mara chanced a look at the man. His face had grown crimson. She suppressed a laugh.

  “Well, go on then,” he said, waving her away as if he thought her ailment might be catching.

  She hurried from the refectory, using the same excuse to similar effect with two more guards on her way to the Windward Keep.

  Retrieving an extra robe and a candle and flint from her shelves, she tucked the items under what she was wearing, and stole into the corridor. She needed a room, a place where she could Walk without being seen, either in the present or the past.

  Mara walked the hallways of the palace, trying not to make a sound, keeping her distance from open windows and arrow slots, listening for voices and footsteps. She hadn’t much time before the next lessons began, flooding these corridors with trainees. At one point she had to duck into an empty lesson room to avoid a pair of soldiers.

  She found what she sought on the third story of the palace, along a deserted corridor whose chambers overlooked the upper courtyard. It was a storage chamber, filled with piles of items too old to be of value, but too valuable to be discarded: ancient volumes and crumbling scrolls of parchment, worn robes coated in dust, forgotten portraits of former instructors and chancellors. Cobwebs hung in corners, shifting as her movements stirred the fusty air. A bit of light seeped into the chamber around the edges of a lone shuttered window, making her glad she’d brought the candle and flint. Yes, this would do nicely.

  She hid the extra robe and candle there, under an old upholstered chair, let herself out of the chamber with utmost care, and hurried to her next lesson. Her arrival drew another glance from Delvin, but he said nothing to her, which suited her fine.

  Upon finding a place to practice, however, her nerve failed her. She felt trapped, caught between her fears, and the lingering knowledge that nothing was as it was supposed to be. In the end, it was Delvin, of all people, who allowed her to break free of her indecision.

  Kheraya’s Ascent ended three days after she hid her robe in the dusty chamber. The Goddess’s Solstice, Kheraya Ascendant, was a day of feasting and celebration. At least it was supposed to be.

  Mara kept to herself. In past years, she had savored the celebration and a day’s respite from lessons and training. This year, with so much on her mind, she would have preferred to muddle through a routine day.

  She did enjoy that evening’s meal, and as she and Nat stepped out of the refectory into a warm, misty evening, she felt little urgency with regard to Walking, or anything else.

  Then she saw that a crowd had gathered at the top of the stairs leading to the lower courtyard.

  She and Nat exchanged looks and hurried to join the others. As they walked, Mara spotted Hilta, but not Delvin. Her apprehension deepened.

  The scene awaiting them in the courtyard made Mara’s stomach heave.

  Delvin knelt in the grass, his hands bound before him and staked to the grass. He had been stripped of his robe and shirt. Two men stood over him. One was the chancellor, his pale, fleshy features lit by the last silver light of day, and the warm glow of nearby torches. The other was a soldier, who held a naked blade. Two of the alabaster-skinned Belvora flanked the chancellor as if guarding him, their wings folded, their amber eyes roving over the gathered trainees.

  “The Two have mercy,” Mara said under her breath.

  One of the other trainees, a year younger than she, regarded her and shook his head.

  “Not likely.”

  “What did he do?” Nat asked.

  “What do you think? It’s Delvin.”

  Nat nodded, and Mara, in her horror, understood. She and Wansi had joked about it not so long ago. Mister Ruhj in particular seems to be hungry all the time, the Binder had said. Has there ever been a meal at which he wasn’t first to finish his rations?

  Neither of them had added that upon eating all of his rations, he spent the balance of nearly every meal time begging others to share theirs. When that didn’t work, he occasionally resorted to more desperate measures. He had stolen food before. Until tonight, he had never been caught.

  “This… thing on the grass at my feet,” the chancellor said, his voice carrying, silencing them all, “is not your fellow trainee. He is not your friend. He is not even my Spanner. Not tonight. Tonight, he is a thief and traitor. Because to steal food from our kitchens is to steal from all of you, from all of us. This was no prank. This was no act of daring. His actions are a betrayal, make no mistake. As a result, you all will have less to eat tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. Because of what he has done, you will be hungry.

  “So his punishment must be severe. You will want for food, and so he must be disciplined. That is only right.” He opened his hands, a perfunctory smile carving lines in his face. “Just as it is only right that you should watch as he is punished, so that you can be certain that your suffering does not go unavenged.”

  He glanced at the soldier and gave a single nod.

  The man stepped forward and raised his sword, the steel shining in the firelight. For one horrifying moment, Mara thought he intended to kill Delvin. He didn’t. Rather, he brought the flat of the blade down on Delvin’s back with a slap that echoed across the courtyard. Delvin stiffened and cried out. Even from a distance, Mara saw a long, red welt form on his dark skin. The soldier raised his blade and struck him again. And again and again. Until the echo of the blows and Delvin’s screams blended into an appalling din, and blood streamed from the flayed skin on Delvin’s back. Hilta sobbed. Mara turned away, pressing her brow against Nat’s shoulder. Still it went on.

  It ended when Delvin passed out. The chancellor waved the soldier away before turning on his heel and returning to his keep, the Belvora a step behind. Once he had entered the palace, and the demons had flown to the tower ramparts, masters rushed forward to tend to Delvin. The other trainees dispersed singly or in small groups, all of them silent.

  Mara shared a glance with Nat and stalked back toward the dormitory. Her doubts had vanished. Whatever a different future might hold, it had to be better than this.

  The following morning, she rose early, dressed, and crept through the corridors to her secret chamber, the chronofor heavy in her pocket.

  She lit her candle, set the spare robe where she could reach it with ease, and stripped off her clothes, shivering in the cold, still air. This first time Walking on her own, she didn’t dare attempt to Travel
back more than a bell. If she could accustom herself to the shorter journey, she might eventually build up to longer ones.

  She set the chronofor as Wansi had instructed, readied herself, and depressed the central stem.

  The pull and the between were every bit as jarring as she remembered. Upon emerging into the earlier time, she fell to the floor, toppling a stack of books into a set of upright paintings, which promptly fell over. The clatter would have been enough to wake anyone nearby from even the most sound sleep.

  Her heart battering the walls of her chest, she threw on the robe, expecting soldiers and Belvora to storm in and carry her to the chancellor for a beating.

  Nothing happened. After waiting for some time and realizing no one would be coming, she gathered herself for the journey to her correct time. The Walk back proved somewhat easier, which Mara took as an indication that she was already making progress. She should have contented herself with that.

  Instead, she traveled back and forth twice more, a bell each time. During the second of these Walks, she realized that the chronofor was less precise than she’d assumed. Upon her arrival in the earlier time, she found the stack of books and row of portraits she had knocked over upright and undisturbed. She stared at the volumes, pondering the implications of the neat pile. At last it occurred to her that she herself might show up at any moment and knock them over again, or rather, for the first time. Terrified at the prospect of encountering herself in this past, she set the chronofor forward a bell and returned to when she belonged, hoping she wouldn’t meet herself in her own time.

  Her vision swimming, as much with her exertions as with her puzzlement over the implications of her different forays to and fro, she dressed in haste and stumbled out of the storage chamber into the silent corridor. She hurried back to the dormitory, entering as others were putting on their clothes.

  “Where have you been?” one of the girls asked, eyeing her askance.

  “Privy,” she said, her voice sounding unsteady. Fortunately, the other trainee didn’t appear to notice or care.

  Mara followed the others to breakfast and then to training. But throughout the day, she felt exhausted, dizzy, and sick to her stomach. She fought to keep her eyes open during her lessons, and her work in Wansi’s chamber was so slipshod that she nearly ruined the sextant she was calibrating. The Binder regarded her with a brow-furrowing blend of concern and disapproval.