But it had been far easier than anticipated to prey on the old man’s rampant fears of theft or assassination. “He’s so suspicious of everyone that it wasn’t difficult to plant the seeds of the idea that he might need me to watch the guards watching him. With the twelve-hour time difference, Ironwood wants us to leave here no later than ten o’clock in the morning.” He added, “I would keep back at least ten minutes, in the event Ironwood tarries near the passage to see who his competition might be. I will find a way to move him along.”
“What’s the old man’s mood like? How has he been treating you?”
In the most disgusting way of all: like a prodigal son. “It’s as if the past few years never existed. He wants nothing more than to discuss his shipping fleet. He lies and dreams in the same breath—I hear all about how much wealth and power I’m to inherit and how best to manipulate those around me if I’m to keep it, and yet I know for certain he wishes to save his first wife. I am a placeholder in his mind.”
In truth, the man’s property was astounding, but his collections of rare books, ships, and artifacts from across the eras were breathtaking. And he could not deny how truly alarming it was to find himself seated at a candlelit, food-laden banquet table with the old man’s closest advisors and inner circle, when before, he had only ever been allowed to wash their plates.
Sophia hummed in thought, still fixated on the window, the swaying of the tree branches as they scratched against the glass. With all of the agility and strength of a man three times his age, Nicholas rose from the bed, ignoring the jabbing aches in his back and the hot blood needling through his veins. He felt himself on the hazy cusp of a fever, but the longer he remained awake and upright, the sharper it became. Using the bedpost for support, he came to stand directly in front of her.
“Have you seen any Shadows about?”
“No,” she said. “Now that everyone knows where the astrolabe is, I imagine they’ve finally turned their attention away from us. But if Ironwood could never find any of the witch’s hiding places, I doubt they will.”
Sophia still did not look at him, but he was seeing her now. The dark ring around her visible eye, the sunken quality of her skin. Either she had spent far too long in the cool rain and was shrinking, or there was a knot of something painful inside her, deep enough that her body was curling itself around it.
“Is that all?” he asked. “I’m glad to see you well, but…I thought we were in agreement that it was too much of a risk to meet unless there was some crucial bit of information to exchange.”
Sophia said nothing, only stood and wrung out the ends of her oversize coat, as if preparing to go. “You’re right. It was…it was very stupid to come. I think—well, I thought—that is, we should talk about what will happen in Japan. I’ll stay as close to the Ironwood bidding party as possible. If you spot someone about my size, do whatever you can to draw them toward the back of the group. I’ll try to pull him or her away from the others and take the robes that the Belladonna supposedly makes everyone wear to make the bidding anonymous.”
I’ll try to. Singular.
“That sounds simple enough,” he said slowly, waiting for her to continue.
She looked down at the back of her hands, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. Stepping to the right, as if to begin her usual listless pacing, she was startled back into place by the loud squeak of the floorboard.
“Sophia,” he began quietly. “Li Min is not out gathering supplies, is she?”
The girl swallowed. After a moment, she shook her head. His breath stilled in his chest. “Is she alive?”
The devastation on her face pierced even the numbest parts of him. She had gone a sickly shade of pale, one he associated with someone about to cast up their accounts or swoon. Nicholas took a stiff step forward as she swayed on her feet, and urged her to sit down in the chair again. Though it made his body speak in ten languages of agony, he knelt down in front of her, joints popping with the effort. Black spots swam in front of his vision at the movement, forcing him to shut his eyes tightly until they cleared.
When he opened them, a single tear had escaped down her cheek, dripping off her chin like rainwater.
“What’s happened?” he asked, gutted. “Sophia, please; tell me what’s happened.”
“She’s alive,” Sophia managed to squeeze out. “But I wish—I wish I had killed her myself. She’s been lying to us the whole bloody time. She was working for the Thorns.”
Li Min was a mercenary, and he could not say that he was surprised to hear she’d been on a job when they’d first crossed paths. “What does that have to do with us?”
Sophia gave him one of her humorless smiles, the one that curved with self-loathing. “We were her job. She was supposed to—to follow us. Keep us from finding the astrolabe before them.”
“What?” Nicholas took her by the shoulder, forcing her to turn toward him fully. “She told you this?”
Her lips pressed into a tight line, her breath harsh as it wove in and out of her. He put his hand over the place where her hands were curling, tearing at the fabric of her coat.
Sophia turned her face up toward the ceiling, but to her credit, she was looking him in the eye when she said, “Yes, while you were on the beach in Iceland. That’s also when I found Julian. And Etta.”
“What does—” Nicholas heard her, but it was only several moments later that her explanation landed. It exploded through him like a mortar round, and the damage it caused was mortal. He could not move. He could scarcely gather the wherewithal to remember to breathe.
“They were both with the Thorns this whole time,” she whispered. “Julian must have been caught by them or gone willingly in the hope they’d hide him, maybe. And they found Etta first—her father put out the false death notice to protect her, I guess. Etta was the one who recognized Li Min. Because they saw each other, just a week ago. And she still lied to our faces, she kept up their ruse that Etta was dead, even though she saw how you suffered from it. If we had gone after the astrolabe, she would have taken it out of our hands before we could have ever decided what to do with it.”
Etta was the one who recognized her.
Etta was…Etta is alive.
But how—how was Julian with her?
“Are you listening?” Sophia was saying. “Do you even care?”
She was seething, her anger holding her hostage. Her face blurred in his vision, but he was not crying. That would have required feeling something at all. This swift churning of expectations, of reality, left him hurtling toward the barbed edges of horror and fury. But he never landed. With nothing solid to grasp, he could not seem to break out of the free fall. He fell back, sitting on the ground in a bid to get the world to stop tearing around him in a blur of darkness and rain.
Alive. Impossibly, beautifully alive. If there was ever a moment he might have pulled Etta from thin air, it was this one, when he felt so illuminated, so bold with the knowledge of her, that he could have reached through the darkness of the centuries and fetched her to him.
“Why were they in Iceland?” Nicholas asked with urgency. So close, damn it all. They had been so close to him. “Were they all right?”
“They were there for the same reason you were,” Sophia said, her voice flat. “Only, the Ironwoods beat them down to the cave.”
If only the fog had delayed the longship even one hour…No.
He shook his head. It was too dangerous, too seductive a thought. Nicholas would have seen them for himself, yes, but Ironwood would have done so as well. They’d have been reunited under the worst of circumstances, and his plan to destroy Ironwood would have unraveled the instant he saw her.
“They wanted the entry fee for the auction?” To attend with the Thorns, he presumed. But the thought did not seem to follow through logically. Sophia would have met with a larger party than just the two of them. And given what Ironwood had said of Henry Hemlock’s personal wealth, it did not seem like they’d need to skim from
Ironwood’s holdings.
Etta’s father’s wealth.
The man had clearly known what Nicholas had known from the very moment he and Etta had come to terms with needing to destroy the astrolabe: Ironwood would never cease hunting her if she took what he wanted from him. He would never stop until she was dead by his hand, or someone else’s.
But did the old man believe she was dead, with the bloodied clothes as his only proof? His anxieties about double agents in his family ran deep, and with good reason. Perhaps some of his men were truly in Hemlock’s pocket, and had claimed responsibility for the death to perpetuate the lie.
That, or the old man had known she was alive all along and had decided to use the pain of it to turn Nicholas to his side, dropping the hollow promises of wealth and respect as additional lures. He thought he knew his grandson’s heart so very well, didn’t he?
“That’s the third time,” he said softly to himself, shaking his head. Seeing her inquisitive look, he clarified, “That I’ve allowed myself to be deceived. It’s remarkable we’ve made it this far, given what a fool I’ve been.”
“If you’re guilty of being a fool, it’s only because you expect the rest of us to be as honorable as you are,” Sophia said.
“I actually expect the world to be fairly miserable in its handling of me,” he said. “Over the past week, I’ve allowed desperation to speak louder than my better judgment. It’s had me on a leash this entire time.”
He glanced down at the ring on his finger, avoiding her gaze. Nicholas had paid the price for it, certainly.
“Do Etta and Julian still intend to participate in the auction?” he asked carefully.
“I think I might have scared them off,” Sophia said, sinking down onto the floor in front of him. “I did something—you’re going to hate me for it.”
He found his mind stilling again, fixating on her words. His gaze narrowed slightly. “What did you do?”
She pressed her lips tight together, as if she were drowning, trying to save that last bit of precious air.
“What did you do?” he repeated.
“You won’t understand—I was so angry, so bloody furious, and I went to this place inside myself I don’t like, that I can’t help but disappear into, and I could hear myself saying all of these things, all of these lies. I wanted to kill them for ruining everything, the two of them; I hated them for shattering Li Min’s lie; but I was scared, too.”
“Of what?” he asked. “Sophia. What did you tell them?”
She pressed her hands to her face. The panic in her voice gripped him and held him there, at her next words’ mercy.
“That you were—that you were the heir now, and happily working for Ironwood. I told them that you never bothered looking for Etta, and that you were happily won over by the old man, because whatever was between you and her wasn’t real to begin with.”
Was that all? Nicholas shook his head with a dismayed laugh. “She didn’t believe you.”
The girl pulled her hands away from her face with a look of surprise.
“There is an understanding between us,” he explained. “She knows the whole of my heart. But why would you say such a thing? Why try to send them away?”
“Because,” she said, struggling to keep her voice down, “because of a hundred reasons! Because you would have reconsidered following through with the plan to destroy the astrolabe, knowing there was a chance you could be with her now. Because she would have interrupted you, distracted you, and cost you precious time when that loathsome ring could steal you at any moment and leave me to finish this all alone. And because I will be damned before I let you lie down and die without at least trying to give us the time to break the ring’s hold over you.”
Nicholas sat back, silenced by the force of her words.
“You can bloody well hate me for it, too, but I can’t be sorry,” she said, wiping at her face in disgust. “And now you have me weeping like a child! If I liked you any less, I would beat you senseless for this.”
“I’m not surrendering to the poison, Sophia,” he said. “I fight it every single day. This has been our plan—”
“This was your plan. Yours and Li Min’s. You told me I wasn’t allowed to die,” she said. “Do you remember? In the desert, in the hospital, over and over again. Each time I wanted to slip away you were there, with your annoying ‘You owe me a debt, you are not finished with your life, this is not your end’ nonsense. It made me want to die just to irritate you, but I didn’t. So why should I sit here and watch you make the same slow farewell?”
Nicholas’s left arm began to shake under the strain of holding his weight. He shifted, leaning forward with a grimace. “Then why did you agree to follow me to the auction?”
She looked at him as if he’d asked her why chickens lay eggs. “Because I’m going to find the witch and stick a bunch of knives in her until I find the one soft, fleshy spot that makes her take your blasted ring off!”
He did not want to tell her that she was in the deepest sort of denial if she truly believed she could convince the witch of anything. The stories Ironwood had told him about the woman made his skin crawl, and he had very little doubt that killing her or wounding her would only cause the poison to work faster. She was as merciless as they came, and the only way to truly get his revenge on her would be to take the astrolabe and ruin her chances of adding another secret or soul to her collection.
He wasn’t surrendering the ship; he was going down with it, and on his own terms.
“You said they…that Julian and…Etta,” Nicholas said, trying to stamp out the ember that began to glow dangerously inside him again, “that they were planning to attend the auction? Or at least apply for entry to it?”
“They were, though judging by Linden’s expression, I think I put her off the idea,” Sophia said, with one last confession. “I told them what’s going to happen when the astrolabe’s destroyed. Neither of them took it very well.”
It was amazing that, for all of their similarities, neither Etta nor Sophia could decipher each other or understand the other’s minds. Nicholas translated Etta’s reaction for her: “That only means she’ll be there to try to steal it.”
“There wasn’t enough gold left in the cache for an entry fee, anyway,” Sophia said. “I came back and checked about an hour after you’d left. And Ironwood’s cleared out the other ones Julian would know about.”
That would pose an actual problem, though he had little doubt that Etta could think her way through the situation. “Then you’re likely right, and they won’t be there. You’ve kept them safely away from any trouble we might cause.”
“Stop trying to make me feel better,” Sophia ordered. “It won’t work. I’m determined to be angry and guilty about this for at least another two days, and then again when I’m punching your corpse.”
He tried his best to smile. “Though I sincerely doubt they believed you, you attempted to keep my pretense to maintain our plan, even in the face of great emotional turmoil. Ma’am, I regret to inform you that you now have honor in spades.”
She pulled a hideous face. “Ugh. Is that why I feel so terrible? Take it back, it’s awful.”
Nicholas shook his head ruefully. “Can you not see it, though? How your situation might align with—”
“I don’t want to hear this—”
“How it might align with Li Min’s?” he pressed on. “She kept up a pretense on behalf of another that only served to keep Etta safe and alive. This whole situation might have taken a different direction, certainly, but it wouldn’t have changed the manner of the deal I made with the Belladonna. Nothing but Ironwood’s death or her mercy will take the ring off, and neither will ever come to pass. At least now…at least now something good might come of it.”
She rubbed at her forehead. “I don’t really want logic right now, Carter. I mostly want murder.”
“Will you settle for an end to this?” he asked. “It’s all I can offer at the moment.”
Etta’s alive.
Julian is safe.
Li Min is gone.
All of these facts should have tilted the earth itself, upended him. But it changed…nothing.
It was better if Etta did not know about the ring, about the bargain, about his choice. She would fight him every single step of the way, and he couldn’t risk being taken off that path now, not when he was so close to seeing everything through.
But the weight of that, knowing he was intentionally keeping her in the dark yet again, felt as though it might crush his entire chest. He had to fight for his next breath.
“I’m…” He tried to give a name to the quiet storm inside of him, but the moment he grasped what it was, it slipped away again, and all that was left was weariness.
Resignation.
He felt now like he was taking on water, moving forward sluggishly, toward an inevitable end. The thought of Etta breathing, fighting, filled the dark sky of his thoughts with stars. If he stretched out on his back, closed his eyes, he could imagine himself back on the deck of that ship. He would be able to see those stars falling once more, arcing down in one last flare of brilliance. It was seared upon his memory as she was.
Whatever would come the next night, Etta was still in possession of her life. He was unspeakably grateful, even as he knew once more the fear of his heart lying vulnerable outside of himself. She would continue on without him, blazing through the darkness in her way. If he could not give her back her own future, he could make a life for her that was safe, free from the retribution and strife between their families. He would end this cycle, wash the blood away.
But, oh, he was a coward, because he found himself seizing on that thin hope that Sophia was right, and Etta had been turned away from this task. It was harder to die than he imagined it would be, and desperately humbling. He did not want her to see him like this, no more than he wanted her in harm’s way should things come to blows.
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