A Thief in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 1)

by Cidney Swanson

  “There are a few things I need to explain,” she added.

  “Indeed, lady.” By his reckoning, there were more than a few.

  “First of all, you’re not actually in the, er, Faerie Kingdom,” she said. Her cheeks and lips seemed to redden with the confession.

  If this was not Faerie, what manner of land was it? Edmund’s brows pulled together. Either she spoke with deceit now or she had done so earlier. Which was it?

  “I’m sorry I lied,” she said, forestalling his questions. “I mean, I didn’t want to lie to you. I don’t want to lie to you. It was more like I just said the first thing I thought of. Well, the first thing that would help you understand you weren’t in Kansas anymore. I mean, well, London.” She exhaled heavily, as one annoyed might do. “Listen, a lot of my world will seem . . . magical to you. But it’s not magic. This is just the normal world.”

  Edmund’s frown deepened. “This is not the common world, mistress. No more than thou art a common maiden.”

  “It’s normal for me, I mean. And for everyone else living now.” Her red lips pursed as if in frustration.

  Swallowing hard, Edmund removed his gaze from those lips. He felt her charms work upon him as surely as the midwife’s cures worked upon sickness. Perhaps he was in a dream and would awaken as soon as ever the roost cock did crow.

  “Let me start over,” she said. “What’s the most complicated machine you know of?”

  Warily, he answered her. “I have ne’er heard tell of a . . . “complicatette” machine. Mean you the sort of engines they do use in playhouses to lower and raise the gods to the heavens?”

  “Um, yes. Sort of. Forget I said complicated. Just tell me about the machines where you live. Do you have a mill wheel?”

  “Aye. We use it to mill grain by power of the stream, which turneth the millstones.”

  “Perfect!” Halley clapped her hands together. Edmund observed how unmarred her hands were, neither chapped nor chafed by rough use. The hands of a lady with many servants.

  “Okay, so you understand how the power of water is harnessed.”

  “I have never before thought to speak of it as ‘harnessed.’”

  “But you get what I mean, right? You understand how the mill uses water for power?”

  “Aye.”

  “So, where you live, you harness power from horses and from water? Right?”

  “Aye, and from oxen.”

  “Right. Oxen. Well, where I live, we harness different things for power.”

  “Mistress, mean’st thou . . . magic?”

  “No. I don’t mean magic. What we do might look like magic to you, but it’s not.”

  Edmund nodded. Surely an enchantress would boast of her power, not deny it.

  “Basically,” continued Halley, “we harness different things besides horses or water to provide power to get jobs done. Primarily we use something we call electricity. It’s like the lightning that flashes in the sky. We harness it, and we use it to power all kinds of things. My phone, for instance.” Halley withdrew the narrow box from her pocket. “Having servants to deliver messages is expensive,” she said.

  Edmund nodded. Thus much he understood. Servants were an expensive responsibility.

  “It’s the same with horses and oxen,” said Halley. “They’re too expensive for ordinary people. Using electricity is cheap, so we have made a bazillion kinds of machines that do things for us using electricity.”

  Edmund felt the stirrings of comprehension. “Doth thy . . . truck harness such power?”

  “Sort of,” said Halley. “The truck runs on gasoline, not electricity.”

  At this point, Halley threw her head back against the seat and observed the ceiling. A heavy sigh escaped her throat, which was now stretched and exposed. Edmund felt again the yearning to draw her, so that the world might know of her perfections.

  So softly as to be almost imperceptible, Halley murmured, “Explaining my world to you is going to be impossible.”

  Edmund smiled. “Lady, the impossible is merely that which we have not yet known to be possible.”

  She smiled back. It was a melancholic sort of smile. “I guess.”

  Edmund was unsure the precise moments wherein Halley had gone from “wench” to “mistress” and thence to “lady,” but the appellation suited her.

  “May I ask, lady,” began Edmund, “how I might return me to London?”

  No sooner had he asked, than the great lady did frown, cover her face, and utter forth an astonishing series of strong oaths.

  14

  • HALLEY •

  One rainy day in sixth grade, DaVinci had entertained Jillian and Halley by reading aloud the dictionary definitions of all the naughty words the girls knew. They had been shocked, and a little disappointed, to find out how old the worst words were (the Romans, in particular, had a lot to answer for). Which meant that Edmund, seated beside her in the truck, probably knew every last one of those swear words.

  Halley was on the point of apologizing when Edmund began to laugh. This, in turn, made Halley laugh, which made Edmund laugh harder, and soon neither of them could stop laughing. When laughing, Edmund went from handsome to gorgeous. After a minute or two, Halley struggled to catch her breath. A shiver ran through her.

  She wanted to sit and stare at Edmund all day.

  She wanted to take his picture.

  She wanted to keep him.

  She looked away.

  “Lady,” said Edmund, his laughter abating with hers, “in truth, I feared this was not the road to London. Might I offer a suggestion? Within the magician’s subterranean chamber, I believe we might discover the way to return to London from hence.”

  Halley raised both eyebrows. He was a quick study. “Um, yeah. That’s pretty much my plan, but how did you figure that out?”

  Her phone buzzed. She ignored it.

  “It was unto that place we were first transported,” Edmund replied matter-of-factly. “And in that same place did we observe the magician appear. Is it not rational to conclude some engine of electricette doth work to call and send those who can wield its power?”

  Edmund was . . . smart. She wasn’t sure why this surprised her. Should it not surprise her? Really, why shouldn’t people from another century have been smart?

  “You’re right,” she replied, nodding slowly. “Electricity powers the, uh, ‘engine.’ Possibly with a side of quantum physics.”

  “Very well. When the sky hath blackened with night, I shall determine how heavily guarded the chamber may be.”

  “No. I don’t think that would be safe. I don’t trust the professor. It’s too dangerous to go there while he’s home. However, ten days from now, he’ll be gone. We’ll have a chance to send you back then.”

  Her phone buzzed again. “Oh, good grief,” she muttered, reading the message.

  Halley? You ok? Can you come get us?

  Quickly, she responded.

  Gimme half an hour. Some trees are down here, too.

  “More messages from thy friends?”

  “Yes. I have to drive down to the beach and help them pack up a booth. They’re at an art show. It’s sort of like a Renaissance fair. Do you have those? Never mind. Of course you don’t have Ren fairs. You’re from the freaking Renaissance.”

  “We have fairs, lady.”

  “Oh. Okay. So I have to pick up my friends and all the stuff they were trying to sell at a fair.”

  “Traveled your friends from far distant lands as well?”

  “Um, no. They live here.”

  Edmund nodded.

  “Which brings me to my next point. There’s something else I have to tell you. You and I weren’t just transported out of England.”

  “Indeed?”

  Halley took a deep breath. “We were transported to a different time.”

  “I understand you not.”

  “What year were you born?”

  “In the year of our Lord fifteen hundred and seventy-seven.�
��

  Halley did some quick math, rounding off a little. “I was born four hundred twenty years after you. We’re in my time now, not yours. So, yeah. Edmund Aldwych, welcome to the twenty-first century.”

  15

  • EDMUND •

  Edmund heard not one word in three for several minutes after that. A wholly different time? It was impossible. Reason demanded its impossibility. Time was no river, that mankind might wade upstream and down at will. Was Halley mad, then? Or . . . was he?

  He placed a hand over his heart. His pulse was temperate. Nor did he feel the fever of a maddened brain. He was perfectly well. Halley, too, spoke as one possessed of her wits. And as for dreaming, no dream of his had ever such a likeness to life.

  If what she spoke were true, however, it would explain much. His tutor had once remarked that had they lived four hundred years in the past, they would have known neither pistols nor portable clocks, would have tasted neither cinnamon nor pepper. The world of the future would, therefore, contain things a man might find wondrous—and baffling. Halley’s explanation had the scent of truth.

  But four hundred years? That would mean . . .

  It meant everyone he knew was dead.

  His breath caught in his throat. His family and household weren’t worried about him, or wondering where he was. They were all . . . dead. Long dead.

  “You okay?” asked Halley.

  Not understanding her, he made no response.

  She added, “‘Okay’ means, feeling better than unwell, even if you aren’t feeling . . . well.”

  “I am oak-ay,” Edmund said dully.

  Four hundred years? It was no marvel he could not understand all the lady said.

  “How is it I am yet alive?” he asked. “Ought I not to have become dry bones as I journeyed forward to thy time?”

  Halley shrugged. “I don’t know how it works. Or why.”

  “That is cold comfort, lady.”

  “But it brings me to another point,” said Halley. “My friends can’t know you’re . . . not from here. Time travel isn’t normal. Even in the twenty-first century. No one I know will believe it’s possible. I know I wouldn’t. So, anyway, it would be simplest if you pretended you belonged in this century. We could say you’re an actor, studying for a part.”

  The suggestion was as profoundly insulting this time as it had been the first time she’d called him a performer, inside the London theater. He drew himself up stiffly.

  “I am no actor.”

  “Truly, no offense intended. I’ve heard actors got a bad rap back in your time, but nowadays, actors are like rock stars.”

  Edmund raised an eyebrow.

  “I mean, actors are like . . . like royalty. Movie actors, especially. And if you pretend to be one, it’ll explain all the weird language. All the ‘thees’ and ‘thous.’”

  This was a concern that had troubled him. “I have noted thou dost employ neither.”

  “No. No one here does. You’re just going to have to trust me that my friends will excuse a lot of strange speech and odd behavior if I tell them you’re preparing for an acting role. Otherwise, the language thing is going to make you sound crazy. Not to mention, it’s confusing.”

  Edmund paused before answering. Her request was not unreasonable. After a moment he smiled.

  “We seem, indeed, to be sundered by our common speech.”

  “Sundered?”

  “It denoteth separation or division.”

  Halley laughed. “You can say that again.”

  Edmund paused and then complied. “It denoteth separation or division.”

  Halley laughed with greater enthusiasm. Her laughter was such stuff as summer days were made on.

  “I didn’t mean literally ‘say that again,’” explained Halley. “It’s a saying: ‘You can say that again’ means ‘I agree strongly.’”

  “Ah,” said Edmund. “I do comprehend thee.”

  “Okay. I’m going to drive us to my friends. Just remember: you’re an actor.”

  “Art thou certain this excuse will suffice to explain my . . . differences?”

  Halley laughed. “Actors are a special class unto themselves.”

  “Thou art certain, then.”

  “Is the pope Catholic?”

  “I am no papist, madam,” he said, caution coloring his voice. He was not given to popery, but like most Englishmen, his grandfather had been once. Was it an executable offense here as well?

  “Sorry,” said Halley. “‘Is the pope Catholic’ is just a saying. It means ‘duh.’ Um, I mean . . . You know what? Never mind.”

  After Halley commanded the truck to advance, Edmund was silent for several minutes, thinking of all she had spoken. Ten days. He was a captive in this wondrous land for ten days. Every curve in the road revealed new marvels: wagons the size of cottages, hung about with giant claws and shovels and endeavoring to move fallen trees; persons traveling upon conveyances with but two spoked wheels; great halls closely set one beside another. How, Edmund wondered, should the lords of such halls graze their sheep, their cattle, their horses, upon lands of such small portion?

  Edmund had questions, questions, questions. But as they rounded a curve of road, revealing a new prospect, all his questions fell away.

  “The sea,” he murmured, caressing the word as though confessing the name of a lover.

  “The Pacific Ocean,” said Halley.

  “The Pacificum,” whispered Edmund, enchanted. “Is this an island of those waters?”

  “No. California’s still firmly attached to the United States. Oh. You’ve never heard of the United States. I guess you’d call this America?”

  Edmund raised an eyebrow.

  “Hmm,” said Halley. “Maybe that name didn’t exist for you either. Oh. I remember. This is what you call the ‘New World.’”

  The New World? It was every man’s dream, every boy’s ambition. Suddenly Edmund couldn’t remember how to breathe.

  16

  • HALLEY •

  Halley wasn’t sure if she should be worried about it, but Edmund hadn’t said a thing since she’d spoken the words “New World.” He was staring at everything as though he wanted to memorize each detail. He stared at the power lines overhead. He stared at oncoming vehicles. He stared at the bikini- and board-short–clad volleyball players at East Beach.

  As Halley pulled the truck into a prized parallel-parking spot on Cabrillo Boulevard, she decided a little explanation was in order regarding fashion.

  “People dress like that now,” she said, indicating the girls in bikinis. “At the beach, anyway. Don’t stare, okay?”

  Edmund removed his gaze from the girls, murmuring he had read of the strange costuming habits of the noble savages that ruled the New World.

  Halley cringed. “Do not call people ‘noble savages.’”

  “Are they not noble? What am I to call them?”

  “People. We’re all just people.”

  “Just people.”

  “Edmund? I’m going to be honest. The less talking you do, the better.”

  He inclined his head in a bow.

  “Oh, boy. And no bowing. No bowing, no talking, no knifes, and definitely”—Halley leaned down to make sure Edmund’s sword was covered by his discarded clothing—“definitely no swords.”

  She shook her head at the impossible turn her morning had taken. And then she grabbed a ratty beach blanket from under the bench seat and bundled it on top of Edmund’s clothes and sword. Just in case.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’re getting out here. It’s just a short walk.”

  Edmund tried to move from his seat, but his seatbelt held him in place.

  “Oh. Sorry. Let me help you.” Halley showed him how to unbuckle. “I guess you already figured out how to open the door,” she murmured, shaking her head as she remembered. “I swear, when you stepped out of my truck back at the estate, I thought you were going to stab someone.”

  “Had it been required, I s
hould have.”

  “Okay, so seriously? No stabbing. I don’t know about sixteenth-century London, but if you stab someone in my time, you go to prison. And I won’t be able to get you out. You’d be stuck here in my time. Forever.”

  “I understand thee. I shall keep my blade concealed.”

  Halley, examining Edmund in her pajamas, sighed. “I guess that will do. People wear stranger things on East Beach. Good thing I didn’t pack a nightie.”

  “A ‘nightie,’ mistress?”

  “A dress. And try not to call me ‘mistress.’ I don’t know what that means where you come from, but here it means, uh, a woman you sleep with who isn’t your wife.”

  “I meant no such disrespect, mistress—that is . . . What am I to call thee?”

  Halley rolled her eyes. “Never mind. Just call me whatever.”

  As they walked down the sidewalk, they passed vendor after vendor in varying stages of packing up for the day. A few were staying, optimistic or desperate enough to stick it out rather than miss a potential sale. One vendor had creatively hung a sign, advertising, “Art-Quake Sale! Today Only!”

  When they were a couple yards away from the booth, Halley stopped and held Edmund back with one hand on his upper abs. Which, she noted, were steely. Actually steely.

  “Listen,” she said, trying not to think about his steely abs, “I think you better wait here a sec while I talk to my friends.”

  She felt him balk at the suggestion, and for a moment she thought he was traipsing down the path of “I shall do what seemeth advisable to me” again, but he merely pressed his lips together and nodded curtly.

  Halley still wasn’t sure how she was going to explain Edmund, but before she had a chance to do more than touch the ring under her shirt, DaVinci flew toward her, giving her a hug that was equal parts tackle and embrace.

  “We’re so glad you’re safe!” cried DaVinci. “There was a landslide on East Mountain—my family’s fine, by the way—and a tree crashed down on Jillian’s driveway, and our booth neighbors from Los Olivos are totally stranded because of landslides on the 101 and San Marcos Pass! It’s crazy out there!” DaVinci hugged her again. “I’m so glad nothing happened to you.”