Alice Payne Rides

by Kate Heartfield

  “And—wait. Interactive?”

  She glances at his face, and he’s wearing a shit-eating grin.

  “Interactive. Here, I’ll start it earlier this time. Watch Antarctica closely. Should be a few seconds away.”

  She frowns at the globe. “Where? Oh.” A patch of darkness appears over much of Antarctica, a perfect circle, faint at first but it quickly darkens, like a stain.

  Almo presses something on his keyboard. “I’ll pause it there.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Officially, it’s called a shroud. I call it the Black Spot. It interferes with time travel in and out of a certain area on a given date. It’s going to win the war for us. But first, it helped us make sure that we had our rogues where we could see them, and that you would come home to us.”

  “You can freeze time travel now? How?”

  Almo inclines his head. “For short periods, and within a given area. About the size of a small-to-medium country, for about a day. There are certain . . . side effects. Strange dark weather, but nothing that can’t be explained away as an eclipse or a storm or something. Best used in primitive periods, prehistory, you know? It’s not something we plan to use much, but now that the Misguideds know we have it, we won’t have to use it. Deterrence. We’ll finally put an end to this war, Prudence. And I want you here, at the end, to make sure we win it well.”

  He’s not actually content with changing the timeline; he’s going to make sure no one else can change it either. It’s brilliant. It could win the war. But God help them if they screw something up.

  “Are you telling me my friends are in Antarctica? When?”

  He shakes his head. “This isn’t the Black Spot in question. We’ve used it a few times now. The one where your friends are trapped is a different time and place. They can’t shimmer out.”

  She looks back at the globe. “OK, but they could . . . take a bus, and then shimmer, right? What am I missing?”

  He barks a laugh. “The Black Spot doesn’t just disable time-travel devices temporarily. Once it hits, those devices are bricks. Permanently.”

  Damn.

  She shakes her head. “So there’s no way to get them out. But I can stop them from going in the first place. Or get them out after.”

  Almo shrugs. “Seems unlikely you can manage the first one without a causality glitch, but you’re welcome to try. They’re there now, you see. Space-time is frozen in that shape, always.” He shoots her another shit-eating grin. “I’m sure you’re willing to watch a man die, watch his descendants wink out of existence just so you get to have a big sister. I can understand that. But even if you manage it, Prudence, that’s not the point.”

  “It’s not?”

  He comes out from behind the desk, and she takes a step back, involuntarily.

  “The point, Prudence, is that we can always find you. We can always stop you. There is no point to striking out on your own.” He casts his gaze downward, his voice softer, sympathetic. “I know how disappointing it was for you to have to redo that nineteenth-century mission of yours so many times, and to no avail. But that’s not ever going to happen again. We have new tech. Come back to us, and we’ll make sure that what you do sticks.”

  She shakes her head, but more out of confusion than dissent. “I can’t believe you would do all this to get me back. What am I missing here, General? You used who knows how many agents in the field, and who knows how much money and energy on some new weapon, just to get me back? Frankly, I’m not that important.”

  “No, you’re not important at all,” he agrees.

  “Well, fuck you too.”

  “You’re not. I’m not. Nobody is. That’s the point of this, Prudence. You’re not learning the lesson; you are the lesson. It’s a lesson for all our agents that we—the TCC—is the only thing that matters.”

  She has a vision of a globe of blue and green light, darkening bit by bit, until the timeline is utterly blotted out. No longer this gorgeous, flexible, living thing, but a cauterized wound in the universe.

  “You’re wrong.”

  “It’s not an opinion, Prudence; it’s fact. Your sister, like any other human or plastic fork or oak leaf on this planet, was the result of a million events that could have gone any other way. The individual has no inherent existence. A human life is ephemeral. A conjunction of cause and consequence. Each of us is just . . . information. And one piece of information is not any more valuable than any other. If time travel has taught me anything, it’s that individuals don’t matter.”

  “If that’s what time travel has taught you, sir,” someone says, “then you are a rotten student.”

  Auden’s voice! She whirls and sees him, in his breeches and waistcoat, approaching from the direction of the paper screen. He must have come through the shimmer after her, damn him.

  “What the hell—” she begins, just as Almo says, “Who the hell—”

  “I’m afraid I shan’t give you my name, sir,” says Auden, nodding his head in greeting.

  He steps in close to her, speaks softly. “Miss Zuniga, if I might—I don’t want to touch your belt without your consent—”

  She whispers. “I can deal with this myself, Captain.”

  “I know where to go. I know where they are.” His voice is hoarse, his breath warming her cheek.

  She rolls her eyes. Almo is saying something, but it feels a million miles away, as though she and Auden are already in another place and time. She gives Auden an infinitesimal nod, and he steps in close, reaches to her hip and a shimmer opens behind him. He takes both her hands and steps backward, pulling her with him.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Time Is Short, or, a Scheme Is Hatched

  1780

  “I’ll call her Magpie,” Alice says.

  Jane makes a face. “You are taking her home, then?”

  “I don’t see why not. Havoc and Thunder could stand a little change, lest they become grumpy old men.”

  On the inside of Alice’s dragoon helmet, a bit of leather stretches, a kind of handle. She runs the horse’s rope through it, then freezes at the sight of Jane’s face. She follows Jane’s gaze.

  A shimmer has opened, a few steps from them.

  Auden tumbles out backward, with Prudence following, wearing an expression even more wary than her usual.

  “Good God,” Alice says. “You came after us.”

  Captain Auden frowns at her. “Miss Payne, is that the Colonel’s uniform?”

  “A lark,” she says, blushing under his censure.

  “But how did you know we’d be here?” Jane asks. “We didn’t even know we’d be here, when we left.”

  “Yes,” says Prudence. “How did you know, Captain?”

  “I remember the Day of Darkness well enough,” Captain Auden says. “Although it did not stretch as far as Charleston, where I was, we heard many stories about that morning. Your General Almo spoke of strange weather, and in my mind’s eye I saw my own hand writing the date it happened—you aren’t the only one who keeps a diary, Miss Zuniga—May 19, 1780.”

  Prudence puts a hand up to stop Alice’s questions. “But New England is a big place. How did you know they’d be here? Where are we, anyway?”

  “New York,” Jane says.

  “He said Miss Hodgson and Miss Payne would stop a murder in a coffeehouse. So I thought of coffeehouses that would have been dark on this day, and the first one that came to mind was the Merchants, naturally. I thought we might as well start here, and go somewhere else if I missed my guess.”

  “A murder?” Alice says. “Who told you this?”

  Prudence shakes her head. “There’s no time to explain. All we know is that this is a trap. We have to get out, or the time-wheel will be destroyed.”

  She puts her hand to her waist.

  “But Miss Zuniga, if we allow this man to be killed,” Auden says, “your sister—”

  “Never mind that. Don’t buy into his games.” Prudence opens the shimmer, back to Fleance
Hall and 1789. “Let’s all go home.”

  Alice steps backward. “I’m not going anywhere until you explain. We’re here to stop a man named Charles King from dropping off a mailbag infested with smallpox at the Merchants Coffeehouse.”

  “Charles King!” Auden lets out a low whistle. “So that’s it. I knew the man. He’d weathered several attempts on his life, and I would not be shocked in the least to discover that one was successful, in some timelines at least.”

  “You don’t remember learning of his death,” Prudence says, slowly. “But you do remember the Day of Darkness?”

  Captain Auden frowns. “It’s possible I would not have heard about his death, I suppose. I don’t remember ever meeting him after the siege of Charleston, but everything was such chaos in the war. The last time I remember someone mentioning his name—”

  He stops, looks up, stares at Jane as if studying her face.

  “Captain Auden,” Alice murmurs, impatiently.

  “It was you,” Captain Auden breathes. “Miss Hodgson. At the battlefield. You were the one who stopped us—” He stops, inclines his head.

  “What is this?” Alice looks from Jane to Captain Auden and back again.

  Jane shakes her head slightly. “Later, please, Alice.”

  “I am in your debt, Miss Hodgson,” Captain Auden says gravely. “But I fear that your intervention may have alerted Miss Zuniga’s former colleagues to your presence. They laid a trap for you, to bring you here. Those soldiers you overheard—I suspect one at least was working for General Almo. I’d wager the murdered man is Charles King. You are meant to speak with him, to delay him, perhaps, or keep him out of the coffeehouse.”

  “To save his life,” says Jane.

  “And—?” Alice asks, placing one hand on Prudence’s forearm, to tell her to wait, to show her that she is not alone in this, whatever this may be.

  “To change history in such a way that Prudence’s sister is never born.”

  “It’s already done,” Prudence says, her voice a little strangled. “I already don’t remember her. They set the chain of events in motion when they set the trap for you. And the moment you save his life, the Black Spot begins. It will prevent you, or anyone, from shimmering out. We’ll all be stuck here, for good. So we can’t save his life.”

  “No,” says Jane. “But we can make him disappear.”

  “Given the alternative, I’m sure Mr. King would prefer that plan,” says Captain Auden.

  “That ought to have the same effect on the future, wouldn’t it?” Jane asks. “Your sister would still live?”

  Prudence shrugs. “Who can say? It might. But it doesn’t matter. The moment Almo realizes what we’ve done, he’ll make Grace disappear some other way. Or he’ll just kidnap her the old-fashioned way. Hold her hostage. Get to me that way. Or if we take her, he’ll grab her husband, her child, and do to her what he’s done to me. He’s staked his whole reputation, the reputation of the Farmers, on making sure everyone knows how powerless and insignificant I am. He thinks he’s already won. That’s why he’s not here, now. He wants me to see, to admit, that it’s impossible. But if I try to change that, he’ll make damn sure to get in my way. He won’t give up.”

  They all hang their heads for a moment.

  “It’s all right,” Prudence says. “Not everyone gets to have a sister. Not everyone gets to live. Forget about it.”

  Jane shakes her head, holds out her hand, palm down, as if telling the world to be quiet while she thinks. It’s a familiar gesture, and Alice smiles despite everything, but it’s a sad smile. Not everyone gets to have a sister, Prudence said, and Jane heard that. Jane, who lost her own sister not long ago.

  “The moment he realizes,” Jane repeats. “And if we chose not to give him a moment? We have two ways to shimmer: the belt and the time-wheel. Charles King goes through one, and Grace Zuniga comes into existence in that instant. And in the next instant, Grace goes through the other shimmer, safe from harm. We don’t give your General Almo any time to think.”

  Prudence frowns. “We’d have to get Grace, Alexei and the kid through the shimmer. The best day would be . . . Hmm. The day Nick was born, but before the birth. Only day I know of when my diary says they were in the same place together at a given time. I suppose it could work, but Almo always has a plan B, and a plan C, and a plan D. So long as he can shimmer, he’ll come after us.” Her eyes widen. “Unless . . . He can’t shimmer. All right. OK. I have an idea. But I’ll need someone else to get my sister, and someone here, with King. We all have to work fast. Almo thinks quickly.”

  “Not as quickly as I can ride.” Alice cocks her thumb in the direction of Magpie and gives Prudence the smile of a highwaywoman.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: On Captain Auden’s Conscience

  1780

  Wray barely hears his companions; he registers the rise in their voices, the excitement of a new plan. But he cannot tear his eyes away from the piebald horse hitched to the post near the conduit. A rope connects the halter and the conduit, and hanging from the rope is a helmet, tilted just to one side, and within that helmet is a kerchief. Green, and torn, and he is certain he sees the dark brown bloodstains whose pattern he knows so well.

  It is, he tries to tell himself, a common enough colour in a handkerchief.

  That is Colonel Payne’s helmet, certainly. It would be easier—though certainly not pleasant—to believe that the Colonel himself had been the Holy Ghost, all this time. But Wray cannot make himself believe that either. The crumbling edifice that was Colonel Payne, in these last years, could not have been the terror of Hampshire.

  It is the handkerchief belonging to the Holy Ghost, a person of daring and good horsemanship, a person who has access to marvelous devices and inventions. A person who concentrates their efforts on the roads of Hampshire, and on gentlemen—he sees it now, the pattern springing into his mind as clearly as stains on cloth—gentlemen of rotten character. A person who came from an embarrassed estate, whose father had debts.

  He should have seen it before.

  In the dim distance beyond the helmet, he catches another sight: a sight he has not seen for nearly a decade now. The bright green coat and tall peruke that can belong to no other sailor but the man they seek.

  Slowly, slowly, he forces himself to look again at Miss Payne. She has followed his gaze to the horse and the rope and the helmet, and the handkerchief within. She swallows, but holds her face steady.

  “He’s here,” Wray manages. “Charles King.”

  “Jane,” Prudence says, clipped and precise, military. “You still have the time-wheel. Take Captain Auden. Go to 2071. There’s no time to waste. The second that any one of us talks to Charles King, delays him, anything, we might change the timeline here, and they’ll know, and the shroud will descend. Alice, you saddle up.”

  Alice’s chin juts out just a little. “If Captain Auden has no objection.”

  Jane, standing beside Alice, takes her hand. Just a catching of the fingers, so subtle it might go without notice.

  There is nothing subtle about the reaction from Prudence. “What the actual—Alice, you don’t need his permission—”

  Wray holds up a hand, his body moving on its own as if it knows already what he has decided. And hasn’t he? He can’t arrest Alice here and now, and allow Charles King to die, and allow Prudence to live the rest of her life with a guilt-fed empty grief with no memory in it. If a reckoning must come, let it come later. He knows what he must do, now, in this moment.

  “Ride, Miss Payne,” he says. “There’s not a moment to lose.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY: Containing Sundry Curious Events

  2145

  Prudence is slightly disappointed by the knowledge that Almo will never live through those thirty seconds of wondering whether she’s coming. He’ll never have a chance to let the wheels of his terrifying brain run to his plan B, his plan C, whatever they are. He’ll never look up, slightly discombobulated, and see her appearing after all, delib
erately late.

  Still, she did see him do that, and she will always now be thirty seconds wiser for it.

  She touches her belt and opens the shimmer into his doorless office at noon, November 30, 2145. She’s never even learned where on Earth this office is; it’s one of very few pieces of space-time hard coded in to the TCC shimmer belts. And there he is, expectant. He looks slightly satisfied to see her, and slightly wary, as though expecting a trick.

  She opens her arms wide, weaponless. “I’m here.”

  1780

  Alice, still in New York, settles into the saddle that is not her own. It smells not only of horse, but of the unknown man whose horse this was. An American; a patriot, he would have called himself. And if Captain Wray Auden had faced him on the field, they would have tried to kill each other.

  She has risked her life countless times, out on the road. The risk she is taking now feels different: like a trap closing, like sharp fingers wringing her guts. Captain Auden’s face, looking at her as though she’d killed his dog. Prison, first, and then the gallows. Transportation, perhaps, if she can find a way to plead her belly. She smiles, wondering what Jane’s eyebrows would do at the notion of an invented pregnancy.

  There is some version of Captain Auden that will choose to see her hang for her crimes. Even if a version of her beloved Jane had not told her this, Alice would know it in her heart. The question is whether this Auden will make that choice.

  It hurts, deeper than she would have thought, to be reminded that he is only her friend because he doesn’t know her. Not all of her. She has let herself be lulled by the veneer she created. She finds that she is grieving, already, for her friendship with him, false though it might have been. They won’t play billiards again; he won’t lean against the mantel in her drawing room and ask her advice on some historical mystery he is determined to solve.

  Damn his eyes! Why must he be so unbending in everything he does? So singular in his understanding of truth and justice? He doesn’t know anything about it. There is so much he can’t understand.