Time's Children

by D. B. Jackson

  “You needn’t shout.” The girl’s voice was nearly lost in the cool wind, the distant lapping of waves, and the whisper of the grasses.

  It took Tobias a moment to spot them. They appeared even smaller here in the open, away from houses and cobbled lanes. Their black hair and plain clothes blended with the darkness.

  The bowman turned his head.

  The man approaching from the corner of the building said, “Who’s that? Who’s he talking to?”

  “Dunno.”

  The time demons ignored them. Their ghostly eyes remained fixed on Tobias, gleaming with light for which he could find no source.

  “You summoned us,” Teelo said, as grave as Tobias remembered from the street. “It’s no small thing to summon one Tirribin, much less two.”

  “He called for children? What’s he thinking?”

  “I know,” Tobias said to the demon. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think one of you would come without the other.”

  “He’s right about that,” Maeli said to her brother.

  “Maybe.”

  She frowned, faced Tobias again. “We demand payment.”

  She had spoken of payment the last time they met. A few years. He shrank from what he was about to do. “Take the years from them,” he said, his voice quavering. “I don’t care.”

  Teeth flashed in a wicked grin.

  “What’s he talking about?”

  The men hadn’t time to say more. The demons winked out of sight. Something rushed past him, frigid air in its wake carrying a hint of decay. A scream behind him made him flinch. Another cry from in front of the warehouse roiled his stomach.

  They ignored the bowman, whose eyes had gone wide. He dropped the blade, grabbed his crossbow, and fumbled with a bolt. Tobias strode forward and kicked the bow out of his hands. The man reached for his blade, but Tobias toed that beyond his grasp as well.

  “What is it? What’s… happening? What were those things you called?”

  The man who had been stalking Tobias from the front of the warehouses lay on the lane, arms splayed. Teelo hovered over him, not quite kneeling, but not standing either. He resembled a timbercat or a wolf: stooped, but lithe and graceful. Tobias couldn’t tell what he was doing to the man, but a faint glow surrounded them both.

  He tore his eyes from Teelo to stare into the gap. Maeli loomed over the second man, her back to Tobias. That same nimbus of light surrounded her form, clearer in the deeper shadows. He had thought the demon glow silvery, like starlight. Now he realized that it consisted of many hues. Color eddied around her, like grease sliding across the surface of a puddle.

  “Sipar have mercy,” the bowman said, fear strengthening his voice.

  Maybe Tobias should have whispered a prayer of his own to the Two. But he had summoned the Tirribin and loosed them on his attackers. He had no right to seek protection from Sipar or Kheraya.

  Before long, the glow surrounding the time demons and their victims dimmed and vanished. Teelo and Maeli walked back to where Tobias stood holding the princess.

  Sofya had quieted. Her thumb was in her mouth again, and she held fast to Tobias’s shirt. Her eyelids drooped; she might fall asleep if given the chance.

  “Stay away.” The bowman eyed the demons with manifest terror.

  “You have no years to give,” Maeli said, cold dismissal in her tone. “And so nothing to fear from us.”

  Tobias noticed that the demon eyed Sofya hungrily.

  “She’s not for you,” he said.

  Maeli thrust out her lower lip, like a child denied a sweet. “She has so many to give.”

  “She doesn’t belong here,” Teelo told her. “No more than he does. Her years aren’t for us.”

  “But babies are…” She sighed. “So many years. All of them so ripe and rich.”

  “I’ve heard of your kind,” the bowman whispered, gaping at them, his face as white as the moon.

  Questions swarmed in Tobias’s mind. He didn’t know where to begin, though Maeli had given him a hint. You have no years to give. If he wanted answers from the bowman, he had to ask them now, while the man still lived.

  “Tell me who sent you,” he said, raising his pistol again.

  “I won’t.”

  “Tell me,” he said, glancing at the demons, “or they’ll take from you what little time you have left.”

  “Did you kill them?” the man asked Teelo and Maeli. “Is that what you did to my men?”

  Maeli sauntered closer, her bearing too provocative for a child’s form. “We took their years.”

  “So they’re… they’re dead?”

  “They’re empty, yes.” She halted beside the man. “He’s got nothing left – barely worth the effort.”

  Tobias watched her. “Still, it would be something, a morsel.”

  She shrugged, indifferent. “One from the child would be worth far more. Just one.”

  “No.”

  “He’s not very nice,” she said to Teelo.

  Teelo ignored her, eyeing the bowman. “If she won’t, I will,” he said. “Tell him what you know.”

  The bowman licked his lips.

  “Give me a name.”

  “I have none to give,” the man said, an admission of a sort. “Word came… from the castle. A reward, thrice what it had been. More even. Payment in gold.”

  “You’re a bounty hawk.”

  The man showed his teeth in what could have been a grin, or a rictus of pain. “One of many,” he said. “You’re a dead man, no matter what happens to me.”

  “How much gold, and what else did they tell you?”

  “Fifteen rounds. We were to hunt down a man coming here… to meet a ship. Maybe from the temple.” He nodded toward the princess. “A Northisler… carrying a babe.”

  “How were you to collect your reward?”

  The man didn’t answer.

  Tobias glanced at Teelo, who nodded, bent closer to the bowman.

  He flinched away again. Something in his hand flashed with torch fire. Tobias cried out a warning, thinking the bowman meant to attack Teelo. Instead, the man drove the blade into his own chest. A grunt escaped him and his eyes went wide. He teetered, then toppled onto his side and moved no more.

  “Well, that wasn’t very nice,” Maeli said, pouting again.

  Tobias’s shoulders slumped. “The Two have mercy.” He should have been horrified, but after all he had seen in recent days, he couldn’t dredge up much pity for this man who had tried to kill him. Wondering at his own audacity, he rifled through the man’s pockets. They were empty. Tobias considered taking his blade and bow, but the former was bloodied, and he was better with a pistol than a crossbow.

  “You summoned us,” Teelo said again. Tobias heard a challenge in the words.

  He straightened, stared down at the demon. “Yes. I needed your help. Forgive me if–”

  “Do you count us allies?”

  Tobias hesitated, wondering if the question carried more weight than the words might suggest. “I don’t know. What would that mean?”

  “He’s clever,” Maeli said. “I like that.” She scrutinized his face. “But he’s not as pretty as he used to be.”

  Tobias ran the fingers of his free hand over the scar on his cheek.

  “They hurt you,” Teelo said. He raised his chin in Sofya’s direction. “For her?”

  “Yes. They tortured me.”

  “And you didn’t tell.”

  “No.”

  Teelo nodded with something akin to approval. “Why did you call for us?”

  “I told you–”

  “Why did you think we would help you?”

  “Because you said as much the night… the night I killed that boy. You said I could find you near the wharves, and Maeli offered to help me get back to my time.”

  “For a few years,” she said, canting her head to stare up at him. “Not yours, though. Your years aren’t as desirable as others.”

  “Yes, Teelo said so that night. Why is t
hat?”

  Teelo lifted a shoulder. His gestures and manner struck Tobias as more childlike than those of his sister. If not for his teeth and pale eyes, he could have been a normal boy.

  “You’re a Walker,” he said. “Your years are… altered, marred. They’re not as pure.”

  Tobias didn’t like the sound of that. “What was it you said about Sofya? She doesn’t belong here. Not any more than I do. What does that mean?”

  “Her time is altered, too.”

  “No, it’s not. This is her time – I haven’t taken her back. I can’t.”

  “Your arrival, and the arrival of others, changed her life. This is not how her life is supposed to be.”

  “You could say that about every person in Hayncalde.”

  “That’s true,” Maeli said. “And these two tasted perfectly fine. At least mine did.” She swung her gaze to her brother, her eyes narrowing to slits. “You just said that to keep me from taking her years.”

  “No one in Hayncalde has had their years changed more than she. We don’t know what that might do to her.”

  “We can find out.”

  “No,” Tobias said.

  “You summoned us.” Maeli’s voice dripped with venom. Tobias resisted the impulse to back away.

  “I paid you with the lives of those men.”

  “Payment you were more than happy to make. They would have killed you.”

  “Nevertheless.” He held the demon’s gaze, emboldened by the knowledge that she didn’t want his years, and determined to keep Sofya beyond her reach.

  “He’s right, Maeli. It doesn’t matter if he wanted the men dead. He gave us their years. The debt is paid.”

  She glared at them both. “I don’t think I like either one of you.”

  She blurred away, as silent in leaving as she had been in arriving.

  Teelo shrugged again, but he didn’t follow her. Tobias walked to where the third man lay. He expected to see blood, teethmarks. There were none. He lay as if sleeping, but he looked nothing like he should have. His face and hands were withered, his eyes had sunk into his skull. One might have thought he’d died days or even weeks ago.

  The Tirribin joined him, the air around the boy carrying the faintest hint of rot.

  “Do you know that you glow when you kill?”

  “Yes,” Teelo said. “Whenever we eat.”

  “Isn’t it the same thing?”

  Teelo gave a somber shake of his head. “Maeli spoke true. We can take a single year, and we can take all. We don’t always kill.”

  “What would I have had to give up had I named you an ally?”

  “We would barter, settle on an arrangement. But it’s too late for that now. Maeli’s gone and you summoned both of us.” He met Tobias’s gaze again. “That was a mistake. Next time you should call only for me. Negotiations are more difficult with Maeli.”

  A chill ran through Tobias’s body. He didn’t ask the demon to explain.

  “I need to get to the wharf,” he said instead. He returned his pistol to his belt and adjusted his sack. Sofya had fallen asleep, raindrops on her smooth brow.

  He and the time demon walked toward the waterfront. Pain, dull but insistent, pulsed in his shoulders, knees, and back: the price he paid for exerting himself so in his fight with the men.

  “I haven’t met many Walkers who have gone as far as you have,” Teelo said.

  “Have you known a lot of Walkers?”

  “Of course. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.”

  “Thousands?”

  Teelo shrugged again. “I meet one or two each year.”

  Tobias stumbled, jarring the princess. She stirred, but then settled back against his chest.

  “How old are you?”

  “We don’t measure age as you do. For us, aging is a balance, years spent against years taken. But by your reckoning, I believe I’ve been alive for fourteen centuries.”

  Tobias halted. “Fourteen?”

  Teelo continued walking. “That’s an approximation,” he said over his shoulder.

  Tobias caught up with him. “And your sister?”

  “She’s older, though not by a lot. A century maybe?”

  Tobias couldn’t decide which was more ridiculous: that these children could be more than a thousand years old, or that Teelo should consider one hundred years’ difference in age insignificant.

  “How old do you feel?” Teelo asked.

  “What?”

  “Well, your body is – what? – twenty-five years?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “And your mind?”

  Tobias’s mouth twitched. “Fifteen.”

  “So which do you feel?”

  “I don’t know. Both. Neither. Something in between, I suppose. I’m not fifteen anymore, but I’m not ready to be twenty-nine.”

  He stared ahead at the wharves. The torches still burned despite the rain, but fewer people walked the docks. And fewer ships were moored.

  “Oh, no,” he whispered.

  The Tirribin said nothing. Tobias lengthened his stride, not caring if Teelo kept pace. Upon reaching the south wharf, he stopped the first worker he found.

  “Can you point me to the Crystal Wing?” he asked.

  The man frowned. “Crystal Wing?”

  “She’s out of Rooktown. I’m supposed to be aboard. She sails tonight.”

  The man regarded him with suspicion. “Wharf’s closed.”

  “It’s a temple ship.”

  “Still, it’s late for a ship to be settin’ sail.”

  “Right, of course. Thank you.”

  Tobias hurried on, searching for someone else to ask, checking the escutcheon of every vessel. The high priestess said the ship was a Kant. He saw none. Could she have been mistaken about the quay at which the ship was moored?

  He found another dock worker and asked about the ship.

  “Sure, she was here,” he said. He pointed out over the water. “That’s her there. She sailed half a bell ago, at least.”

  Tobias stared in the direction the man indicated, light-headed, his knees weak. A pair of dim lights bobbed on the swells between two Sheraigh warships. He thanked the man, though he thought he might be ill.

  “There are other ships,” Teelo said, watching the stranger walk away.

  “The high priestess arranged passage on that one. The temple paid our way, and Della told the captain a tale about Sofya and me. It was perfect. There would have been no questions, and we would have reached Rooktown with enough gold to book passage farther north. Now…” He trailed off, still queasy. They had the coins from Nuala, but with no way off Daerjen, even twice as much wouldn’t save their lives.

  “I’m afraid we can’t help you.”

  Tobias shook his head, weary as he could remember. “You already did, and I’m grateful.”

  “What will you do?”

  Tobias had no answer. The bounty hawk had known they were coming from the temple; he couldn’t risk returning there. Nor would he endanger Elinor and Jivv again. No place in the city was safe. If the bowman was right, others were hunting for them, lured by the promise of Orzili’s reward.

  It occurred to him that Orzili might have known enough to have the ship watched. When they failed to board, the watcher might have assumed that the bounty hawks succeeded.

  “They might think we’re dead.”

  Teelo considered him.

  Tobias knew that Orzili would demand irrefutable evidence of their deaths before he gave up his pursuit, but in the meantime, the failed attempt on their lives might provide them with an opportunity to get away. “If they even suspect that the killers succeeded, we can go anywhere. By ship, on foot, on horse if I can find one. The only thing we can’t do is remain in Hayncalde.”

  With the blockade still in place, they wouldn’t be leaving the city by ship any time soon. He didn’t know when another temple vessel would come. And he wouldn’t find a horse or chance venturing beyond the city walls this night. He needed a
place to sleep. Tomorrow he would work out the rest.

  “You’re still with him?”

  Tobias turned. Maeli stood behind them, fists on her hips.

  “What do you want?” her brother asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m bored.”

  “Surely you’re not hungry again already.”

  “No, that’s the problem.” A smile exposed serrated teeth. “If I was hungry, we could hunt. But I’m not. I have nothing to do. I don’t like it when you’re away.”

  “He needs a place to sleep tonight,” Teelo said.

  A sly look flashed in Maeli’s pale eyes, and her gaze darted to Sofya, asleep in his arms. “We can help him with that,” she said, her voice like velvet.

  Without a backward glance or a word of invitation, she started back toward the lanes. Teelo followed. After a few steps, he halted and beckoned to Tobias.

  Reluctantly, he followed as well.

  Chapter 31

  28th Day of Sipar’s Settling, Year 633

  The Tirribin led him to the street that fronted the coastline, but turned southward, so that they walked parallel to the outer city walls and followed the waterfront. Cobblestones gave way to dirt, dirt to sand, sand to rough rock and strewn boulders. As the terrain grew more difficult, Tobias struggled to keep up. The demons scrambled over the stone like mountain sheep, fearless and agile, born to the coastline.

  Tobias took his time, sore still, wearying quickly, and afraid he might fall and hurt the princess. Before long, he lost sight of them, and panic set in. Was this what Maeli had in mind? Had she lured him away from other people in order to attack him and steal Sofya? He climbed over yet another stone, expecting to find himself alone in the darkness. Instead, he spotted the demons some fifty paces ahead, standing atop a giant boulder, waving to him like children.

  “You’re too slow,” Maeli called, a thread of laughter in her voice. “Too bad you’re not younger.”

  Teelo laughed and waved Tobias on. He and his sister clambered down out of sight. Tobias paused where he was, sweating and out of breath. Scanning the coastline, he spotted a cluster of flames that burned in a narrow cleft of stone. Some were torches. At least one appeared to be a bonfire. Their destination?

  He lowered himself off his stone perch and continued to chase the Tirribin.