So that was what they did, Marcus trembling at the thought of the danger to his little girls. And he had no assurance that Ianira was safe, either, that no one had followed her to London. He bit one lip, wishing desperately they had all been able to go through one gate together as a family. But Jenna Caddrick and Noah Armstrong had argued the point forcefully.
Unfortunately, they hadn't brought anything like enough supplies to take his precious children all the way out to the rugged mining camp where the shooting competition was to be held. They'd planned for Marcus and the girls to bolt out of Denver, to ditch the tour and take a train east into the Great Plains which he had seen in so many cowboy movies. They would hide in one of the big cities like Chicago or St. Louis for three or four cycles of the Wild West Gate, just long enough for Noah to eliminate any threat which might come through from up time on the next cycle of the gate.
Then they could slip back onto the station, after Noah had gone back up time, taking to the legal authorities the proof which the detective had brought onto the station. Only when the men responsible for the murderous attacks had been jailed, would Marcus and his little family be safe again. And Julius, too. The teenage leader of Shangri-La's Lost and Found Gang had come through the Porta Romae, same as Marcus had. Julius was playing his part as Jenna's double with superb skill, laying a false trail for their pursuers to follow. His act at the departures lounge, dressed as an aggrieved lady tourist bawling about her injured foot had convinced onlookers, while Noah, acting the role of the drunken Joey Tyrolin, had drawn all attention away from Marcus, who'd needed to remain anonymous until safely on the other side of the gate.
Marcus had taken Julius' own station identification, so he could act as "Joey Tyrolin's" baggage porter to disguise his own identity. Julius had used a fake ID produced by the ever-resourceful Noah Armstrong. Jenna Caddrick had furnished it, as well as the money for the Denver Gate tickets. Marcus' throat closed, just thinking of the risk Noah and Jenna and young Julius were running to keep his family safe. Ianira and his children had never seemed so fragile to Marcus, never more precious to him. They had agreed to the charade, because they'd had no other choice.
But Marcus had never ridden a horse in his life. And while he had once been accustomed to the burning brilliance of a Mediterranean sun, he'd lived for several years in the sunless world of TT-86. Despite the broad-brimmed hat which shaded his face, by the time they were an hour out on the trail, Marcus was sunburnt, sore in more places than he'd realized his body possessed, and miserably homesick for the station and his wife and his many ‘eighty-sixer friends.
"We'll go through with the itinerary we set up," Noah Armstrong told them on the trail. "That way, the bastard following us will think we haven't twigged to who he is. Any edge we can find, we need." Dressed in a cowboy's gear, Noah Armstrong was more difficult than ever to pigeonhole as a man or a woman. Each time Marcus thought he'd gathered enough clues to decide, the up-time detective did or said something which threw all his theories into chaos again.
Marcus had seen individuals like Noah Armstrong before, in the slave markets of Rome. Ambiguous in the way their bodies grew into adulthood, developing into neither man nor woman, such people were exceedingly rare in nature. But they were pitifully common on auction blocks. Boys in Roman slave markets were routinely castrated as children to preserve a child's sexless features and mannerisms, so they would grow into eunuchs. Neither male nor female, such artificially created eunuchs were valuable slaves. But those born that way fetched astronomical prices in Roman slave pens. Marcus had seen one such slave fetch half-a-million sesterces at auction—ten times the going rate for a highly educated scribe or Greek tutor. Romans, Marcus had learned over the years, were avaricious collectors. And the more unusual the item, or the individual, the greater the status in claiming its ownership. Whoever Noah was, the detective was luckier than he or she knew, to've been born up time, not down the Porta Romae.
As they rode out of Colorado Springs with dust from the horses' hooves hanging on the hot air, Julius frowned slightly under his calico bonnet brim. "Do you want me to go ahead and enter the shooting contest, then? I've watched a lot of movies, but I don't really know how to shoot a black-powder pistol."
"Don't worry about that," Armstrong reassured Marcus' young friend. "I'll show you how to load and operate the pistols tonight at camp, and I'll teach you to fire them. You don't have to shoot well enough to win or even qualify. Just make it look good, that's all we need. Long before the competition's over, we'll have nailed this bastard Sarnoff, so we can go back to Denver. When we've eliminated him, I'll want you to go with Marcus and the girls to the nearest train station. As soon as the men responsible for this have been arrested, I'll send word and we can bring everyone home again."
It sounded so simple...
But Marcus had learned the hardest way possible that nothing in life was ever simple, least of all a high-stakes game in which religion, political power, and human life were the stakes. During the long hours it took them to reach the mining camp, refurbish the ghost town to a livable state, and set up the shooting course, with Marcus periodically checking on his precious little girls to be sure they still slept and breathed comfortably in their snug cocoon, Marcus couldn't help glancing over his shoulder every few minutes, expecting disaster to strike them down at any moment.
He searched the faces of the others on the tour, the eager college-age kids who had gathered for a try at the medal, the older shooters who'd clearly been at this sport longer than the kids had been alive; he studied the guides supplied by Time Tours, the baggage handlers and mule drovers who tended the line of stubborn, slack-eared mules which had toted the equipment and personal baggage of the entire competition; and wondered what it must be like to be free to come and go as one pleased through the up-time world, through any gate, so long as the money was there to pay for a ticket. And each time the silent, hired killer who'd come through the gate with them glanced sidelong at Julius and himself, Marcus sweat into his dungarees and swallowed back sour fright.
Some of the tourists were talkative, laughing and bragging or sharing stories about other competitions they'd participated in. Some of them talked about re-enactments of historical battles involving thousands of people and weapons ranging from pistols to full-sized cannons. Marcus had seen cannons only in photographs and movies. Other tour members were loners, keeping to themselves, cleaning and oiling their guns regularly, working hard at tasks assigned to get the competition's complex course of fire laid out and the buildings refurbished, speaking little and wolfing down their supper in silence at mealtime. Impromptu sing-alongs and amateur musicians provided entertainment for those with the desire to socialize.
There was even—and their happiness left Marcus feeling more lonely and isolated than ever—a young couple who planned to marry during the competition. They had brought along a wedding dress, a bridesmaid, a best man, an officiant, and photographer for the happy occasion. The photographer snapped pictures of everything and everyone in sight with a digital camera, much to the irritation of Noah Armstrong. The one person in the tour Marcus avoided like plague was Paula Booker, the station's cosmetic surgeon. She was preoccupied, at least, by the fun of her vacation, and paid little attention to the baggage handlers where they sat in the shadows, eating their meal in silence.
But when Artemisia and Gelasia woke up from their long, drugged sleep, all hell broke loose—and Paula Booker recognized him. Her eyes widened in shock and she opened her mouth to speak... then closed it again, looking abruptly frightened. She understands, he realized with a jolt of hope, she understands we are in danger, even if she is not sure of the cause.
Meanwhile, the whole camp had erupted and the baggage manager, who was not an ‘eighty-sixer, but an up-timer hired by the tour organizers, demanded to know what insanity had prompted him to bring two toddlers off the station. The uproar echoed off the black-shadowed mountains hemming them in.
Nearly stammering under the
close scrutiny of Sarnoff, aware that Noah Armstrong's hand was poised on the grip of a pistol at the detective's side, Marcus offered the only explanation he could: "I am a down-timer and we are never allowed off the station, sir. My little girls have never seen the sun..."
It was true enough and more than a plausible reason. In fact, several women burst into tears and offered the sleepy girls candy and ribbons for their hair while other tourists, irate at such a notion, vented their wrath on the head baggage handler, protesting the cruelty of enforcing a law that didn't even permit down-timers' children to leave the station.
"It's not healthy!" one woman glared at the hapless Time Tours guides, men who lived full time down the Denver Gate, rarely returning to the station. They did not recognize him, thank all the gods. One woman in particular, the wedding photographer, was thoroughly incensed. "I've never heard of such an awful thing in all my life! Not letting little children go through a gate for some real sunshine! When I get home, you can believe I'm writing my congresswoman a nasty letter about this!"
Julius, playing the part of Cassie Coventina, added, "You certainly can't expect two little girls to sleep in that disgusting, filthy livery stable!" The disguised down-timer boy glanced at him, giving him and the children a winning smile, "They can stay in my cabin tonight. Every night, in fact. I've got plenty of room."
"Thank you," Marcus said with an exhausted, grateful smile.
So the girls moved into Julius' protective custody and Marcus and Noah watched the killer sent to stalk them, tracking him during their every waking moment, and Paula Booker followed them silently with her gaze, biting her lip now and again, clearly wanting to approach him and fearing to jeopardize his life, or perhaps her own, by doing so, while all of them, killer included, waited for the chance to strike. The man stalking them was too clever to wander off alone, where one or more of them could have sent him back to whatever gods had created him. They couldn't strike in front of witnesses any more than he could, but the chance everyone was waiting for came all too soon, during the endurance phase of the shooting games.
Marcus, burned to lobster red by the sun, was assigned the job of riding shadow on Julius' heels for this portion of the competition. The "endurance round" involved riding a looping, multiple-mile trail through the sun-baked mountains around the dusty gold-mining camp. The competitors were to pause at predetermined intervals to fire at pop-up targets placed along the trail like ambushes. Noah, deeply wary of Julius riding alone through the wild countryside, told Marcus quietly, "I want you to trail him, just far enough behind to stay in earshot. I'll trail you, same way."
Marcus, heart in his throat, just nodded. He couldn't keep his hands from trembling as he mounted his stolid plug of a horse and urged the animal into a shambling trot. He set a course that took him away from camp on a tangent, allowing him to loop back around and pick up Julius' trail just beyond the first ridge outside camp.
The sun blazed down despite the earliness of the hour. At least Julius' persona, Cassie Coventina, had drawn one of the early slots for riding the endurance course, so it wasn't too unbearably hot, yet. Dust rose in puffs where Marcus' horse plodded along the narrow, twisting trail. He urged the nag to a slightly faster shamble until he caught sight of "Miss Coventina" ahead, riding awkwardly in a high-pommeled side saddle. Marcus eased back, cocking his head to listen, reassured when Julius began to whistle, leaving him an audible trail to follow. Marcus glanced back several times and thought he caught a glimpse of "Joey Tyrolin" once or twice through the heat haze behind him.
Saddle leather squeaked and groaned under his thighs. Marcus began to sweat into his cotton shirt. He worried about the girls, back at camp, even though they were surrounded by fifteen adoring women who weren't riding the endurance trail until later in the afternoon, or who were part of the wedding and weren't competing at all. The mingled scent of dust and sweating horse rose like a cloud, enveloping his senses and drawing his mind inexorably back to the years he'd spent as a slave working for the master of the chariot races and gladiatorial games and bestiaries at the great Circus Maximus. The scent of excited, sweating race horses and dust clogged his memory as thoroughly as the scream of dying animals and men—
The sharp animal scream that ripped through the hot morning was no memory.
Marcus jerked in his saddle. Blood drained from his face as the scream came again, a horse in mortal agony. Then a high, ragged shriek of pain, a human shriek, tore the air... and the booming report of a gun firing shook the dusty air...
Marcus kicked his horse into a startled canter. He wrenched at the gun on his hip. From behind him, a clatter of hooves rattled in a sudden burst of speed. Noah Armstrong swept past as though Marcus' horse were plodding along at a sedate walk. Another gunshot split the morning air. Then Marcus was around the bend in the trail and the disaster spread out in front of him.
Julius was down.
His horse was down, mortally wounded.
Dust rose in a cloud along the trail, where Noah pursued whoever had shot down Marcus' friend. He hauled his own horse to a slithering halt and slid out of the saddle, then flung himself to the young Roman's side. Julius was still alive, ashen and grey-lipped, but thank the gods, still alive...
"Don't move!" Marcus was tearing at the boy's clothing, ripping open the dress he wore as disguise. The calico cotton was drenched with dark stains that weren't sweat. The bullet had gone in low, missing the heart, plowing instead through the gut. The boy moaned, gritted his teeth, whimpered. Marcus was already stripping off his own shirt, tearing it into strips, placing compresses to staunch the bleeding. In the distance, a sharp report floated back over the rocky hills, followed by three more cracking gunshots. Then hoofbeats crashed back toward them. Marcus snatched up his pistol again. Noah Armstrong appeared, riding hell for leather toward them. Marcus dropped the gun from shaking hands and tied the compresses tighter.
The detective slithered out of a sweaty saddle and crouched beside the fallen teenager. "Hold on, Julius, do you hear me? We'll get you back to camp. To that surgeon, Paula Booker."
"No..." The boy was clawing at Noah's arm. "They'll just kill you... and Marcus... the girls... he'll kill you..."
"Not that one," Noah said roughly. "He's dead. Shot the bastard out of his saddle. Left him for the buzzards."
"Then they'll send someone else!"
If they hadn't already...
The unspoken words hung in the air, as hot and terrifying as the coppery smell of Julius' blood. "Please..." Julius was choking out the words, "you can't afford to take me back. I'll only slow you down. Just get the girls and run, please... ." Marcus tried to hush the frantic boy. Guilt ripped through him. He'd allowed Julius to help—this was his fault. "Please, Julius, do not speak! You have not the strength. Here, can you swallow a little water?" He held his canteen to the boy's lips.
"Just a sip," Noah cautioned. "There, that's enough. Here, help me get him up. No, Julius, we have to go back to camp anyway, to rescue the kids. You're coming with us, so don't argue. Marcus, we'll put him on your horse." The detective glanced up, met Marcus' gaze. "He's right, you know. They will send someone else. And someone after that."
"What can we do?" Marcus felt helpless, bitterly afraid, furious with himself for bringing his young friend into this.
"We leave Julius with the camp surgeon, that's what. As soon as we get back to camp, you get the girls and take them back to the livery stable with you. During the confusion, you and I will leave camp with the kids. Take our horses and our gear and ride out. By the time they figure out we're gone, we'll be far enough away to catch a train out of the territory."
Marcus swallowed exactly once. "And go where?" he whispered.
"East. Way East. To New York." Noah held Marcus's gaze carefully, reluctance and regret brilliant in those enigmatic eyes. "And eventually," the detective added softly, "to London. Jenna and your wife will be there. We'll meet them."
Three years from now...
Marcus l
ooked down into his young friend's ashen face, his pain-racked eyes, and knew they didn't have any choice. Three years in hiding... or this. When next Ianira saw their children, just hours after dropping them off at daycare, from her perspective, Artemisia would be nearly seven, Gelasia almost four. Gelasia might not even remember her mother. Ianira might well never forgive him. But he had no choice. They couldn't risk going back to the station, not even long enough to crash through the Britannia Gate. And crashing it was the only way they could get through the Britannia, because there wasn't a single ticket available for months, not until after the Ripper Season closed. Marcus bowed his head, squeezed shut his eyes. Then nodded, scarcely recognizing his own voice. "Yes. We will go to London. And wait." Three entire years...
Wordlessly, he helped the detective lift Julius to Marcus' saddle. Wordlessly, he climbed on behind his dying friend, steadied him and kept the boy from falling. Then turned his horse on the dusty, blood-spattered trail and left Julius' groaning, gut-shot mount sprawled obscenely across the path. A sharp report behind him, from Noah's gun, sent his pulse shuddering; but the agonized sounds tearing from the wounded horse cut off with that brief act of mercy. He tightened his hands around the sweaty wet leather of his reins.
And swore vengeance.
* * *
Jenna woke to the sensation of movement and the deep shock that she was still alive to waken at all. For a moment, the only thing in her mind was euphoria that she was still among the breathing. Then the pain hit, sharp and throbbing all along the side of her skull, and the nausea struck an instant later. She moaned and clenched her teeth against the pain—which only tightened the muscles of her scalp and sent the pain mushrooming off the scale. Jenna choked down bile, felt herself swoop and fall...
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