Cheating Death

by April White

  Ringo stepped into the bedroom, but I blocked the doorway and turned to face Doran. We were nearly the same height, and there was a familiarity in his face that I found oddly comforting, even though he usually set my teeth on edge. “I’m sorry that we’re putting people you love in danger, and I’m really glad to know there are people you love. You’ve actually been pleasant to talk to here, Doran, unlike every time you’ve popped by to drop a verbal bomb on me.”

  He smirked a little, and then seemed to make a conscious effort to smile. It was a nice smile – definitely not something I was used to seeing on Doran’s face. “We tend to become slightly more tolerable when there are people who love us.”

  I smiled in return. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”

  He laughed, and the warmth of it was startling. I searched his eyes, which were almost emerald green and strikingly like my own. “I have a feeling that there’s a lot more to you than just a Clocker/Shifter mix.”

  “Everyone has a story, Saira. There’s a lot more to you than just a Clocker/Shifter mix as well.”

  “I have people I love, too - people I may never get to see again if we can’t get this ring.”

  His smile faded. “I can’t interfere.”

  I stepped closer, and I was too close for my own comfort, but I wouldn’t break Doran’s gaze. I could feel Ringo’s eyes burning holes in my back, and I wasn’t really sure what I was doing, but I didn’t step back.

  “Then tell me something true.”

  “I’ve never lied to you,” he said quietly.

  “Tell me something I can use, even if I don’t know what it means yet.” His resolve was starting to waver. I could see it in his eyes, and I took a half-step closer until our faces almost touched. Tension pulsed from Ringo behind me, but I refused to let go of Doran’s eyes. “Tell me about the Monger ring.” He flinched almost imperceptibly, but I was too close to miss it. “It doesn’t belong to the Mongers, does it?” He flinched again, and my eyes widened. “You knew that?” Doran’s eyes had gone slightly flinty, and I suddenly had the sense that the man in front of me knew Duncan – and didn’t like him.

  My eyes searched his looking for truth. “Whose ring is it? Who is meant to have that power?”

  The silence was thick and brittle, and it cracked when he spoke. “Here’s something true, Saira. The ring is mine.”

  A Portrait

  It was a verbal atom bomb and he knew it. Whatever open easiness I’d seen in Doran had vanished, as if he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. He pushed past me into the bedroom and strode to the door.

  “Doran, wait!”

  His shoulders tensed and he spun to face me. He was angry – at me? Probably. At himself? Definitely. “I’m leaving now, and I won’t be back as long as you remain in this time. You’ve invaded my sanctuary, Saira – be mindful of that.”

  His tone was harsh, and he stalked out of the room with aggressive urgency. I turned to Ringo and whispered, “He has a spiral in this house.”

  Ringo nodded and went after him in the quietest stealth mode he had. My own feet were rooted to the spot as I stared at the open door through which my cousin had just stormed.

  He called me his cousin, but was that just an honorific because we were both descended from Jera, the Immortal Time and … Goran, the Immortal Nature? How was it even possible that the Monger ring belonged to Doran? And if it really did belong to him, was he even worse than the Mongers for being the rightful owner of a ring that controlled people’s will? The power to compel was a real thing – I’d seen it in action, and its effects were devastating. Who was Doran that he needed such power?

  I scanned the room wildly, as if I could find any clue to the mystery of Doran in the place he called his sanctuary. He was right, we had invaded the home he shared with the woman he loved, and part of me wanted to leave right then and there so he could come back. But honestly, Doran had always made me want to throw things, usually at his head, and now more than ever.

  My gaze landed on a small painting on the side of the bed I assumed was his. It was of the two of them together, Artemisia and Doran, maybe painted about ten years before, given that her hair was lit with streaks of white, but was still mostly black. It looked like something Maxfield Parrish could have done in the 1920s, in a saturated, neo-classical style that wouldn’t be popular for another sixty or seventy years. The most striking thing about the painting, besides the anachronistic style, was the similarity to something else I’d once seen. Artemisia looked straight out of the canvas at me, while Doran gazed at her with utter and complete devotion in his eyes. It was the same way Jera and Goran had looked in the painting of the Immortals at Elian Manor.

  It was the way Archer sometimes looked at me when he thought I couldn’t see him, and I wished I had a photograph or a painting of us like this. The fact that Doran had painted this of himself and Artemisia made me think I might not necessarily aim for his head when I threw something at him.

  I wanted to be alone when I left the bedroom. Or, more precisely, I wanted to be alone with Archer. The sinkhole in my chest felt wide and deep, and I tested its edges carefully. It didn’t seem quite so much like the pit of despair and apathy that it had been the past few days, but it still had those freshly-dug sides that could collapse and cause a giant chasm if a wrong step was taken.

  The art studio, with all its comforting smells, beckoned to me. I lit a lamp and found a small canvas, and with a charcoal pencil, I began to sketch.

  Ringo found me in there about an hour later. He must not have been looking very hard, or he was sick of me and wanted a break from the drama. Probably both. I didn’t look up from my drawing when he spoke.

  “There is a spiral. It’s in the kitchen garden at the back wall.”

  “Clockers love their gardens,” I said, putting a finishing touch on the ring I’d just drawn. It was on my hand as I touched Archer’s face. Instead of one person looking out and the other making gooey eyes, we looked at each other. All the longing and missing and love I had in my heart had oozed out onto the canvas and worked its way into the eyes of each figure. I knew Archer’s face from memory, but I had stumbled a little on the way his shirt sat against his collarbone, and the way his hair fell at his ear. I had panicked then and had to close my eyes and breathe through the fear of losing any part of my memory of him.

  “If I ‘ad to guess, I’d say it’s practical more than emotional. Ye ‘ave less chance of Clockin’ into someone when ye come into a garden.”

  “Why do you think he didn’t turn around and go back to Artemisia the day after he left her, once he realized his mistake?” I rubbed some pencil into Archer’s shirt to shade it. My mind had been spinning on everything I’d learned from Doran, and this particular train of thought was just the most recent.

  Ringo leaned back against a wall and crossed his arms in front of him as he watched me work. “‘E said it ‘imself. It wasn’t until she was married to someone else that she could admit ‘er feelin’s for ‘im.”

  “So you’re saying she had to go through those two months without him, and the whole sham of getting married, just so she could figure out that she really loved Doran?”

  Ringo studied me and I met his eyes. “Don’t forget what ‘e said about ‘er bringin’ suit against her attacker. Can ye imagine ‘ow strong a woman ‘ad to be then to do what she did?”

  I shook my head and sighed in disgust. “The fact that she could trust another man at all is impressive.”

  “Exactly. Maybe she needed that time to work through whatever ‘eld ‘er back from lovin’ Doran, so, even though ‘e missed out on marryin’ ‘er, in the end ‘e got the prize of ‘er ‘eart.”

  I’d gone back to work on my sketch while he talked, and there wasn’t really anything else I could do to it except fill it in with color. I’d been inspired by Artemisia’s baroque style, and had worked with the shadows and light on our faces so it looked like we were illuminated only with candles. It was anachronistic in its own r
ight, as the 1800s were considered the era of the romantics, but I liked the effect. We had been in shadows and light our whole relationship, and I wondered, if we’d had more time together, could we ever have found the golden neo-classic light of a Maxfield Parrish painting.

  “Archer ‘as always looked at ye like that,” Ringo said, indicating the drawing.

  “I miss him so much.” I whispered the words to the canvas, as if he might be able to hear my words through it. I touched the lips on his drawn face lightly, then tucked the drawing into a slot in the wall cabinet. “Maybe I’ll get a chance to finish it while we’re here,” I said as I wiped the charcoal off my hands on a piece of towel.

  “Tom’s waitin’ for us in the courtyard.”

  I sighed. “I’m kind of done with the drama for the moment, you know?”

  “As ye’ve been known to say, we’re steppin’ right over that big elephant in the room.” Ringo closed the door to the studio behind us as we left.

  “The fact that the ring with the power to compel apparently belongs to my mixed-blood cousin?”

  We took a different staircase down – one that led directly to the courtyard below. “Makes a person wonder if ‘e’s one of the good guys, doesn’t it?”

  The night was still warm, and fragrant from flowers that climbed a wall near the door. I took a deep breath. “Despite … everything, I don’t think he’s one of the bad guys.”

  “As much as I ‘ate to admit it, I agree with ye.”

  Tom waited for us at a table near the fountain. The light fall of water was the kind of white noise a person could fall asleep to, and it added to the peacefulness of the space. No wonder Doran called it his sanctuary.

  There was wariness in Tom’s expression, and I didn’t blame him – he probably expected me to go off on him again, now that I’d climbed most of the way out of my apathy-laced despair. The bath had done him good though, and he must have eaten fairly recently because his resting corpse-face had filled out enough to be considered chiseled rather than emaciated.

  Ringo and I sat down at the table. “Have you seen the art here?” I asked him. My question surprised him and I could see the mental switching of gears.

  “Not a big fan of men,” he said.

  I shrugged casually. “We heard a rumor that she got a commission at the Vatican.” It’s what Yaniv, the gem dealer, had told us about Artemisia when I showed her Archer’s emerald. “It may have already happened, or it might still be yet to come, but sometimes these things have a weird way of working out when you need them to.”

  “You’re still going to help me?” Tom asked warily.

  Ringo leaned forward. He and I hadn’t discussed any of this since we left London. Then again, I hadn’t even really thought this all the way through until now.

  “On one condition.”

  “What condition?” Tom’s voice was hard and tight.

  “I’m giving the ring back to its owner.”

  Ringo stared at me incredulously. Tom scowled and then looked back and forth between us.

  “Wait, I thought you didn’t know whose ring it is,” he said.

  “We do now.”

  “Saira,” Ringo’s tone held a warning in it, and my eyes flicked to him quickly before they went to Tom.

  “I take the ring to the owner and it’ll be out of Monger hands. That’s what you want, right?”

  “How do you know the owner won’t do exactly what the Mongers have been doing with it?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t. How do I know you won’t stab me in the back the next time I turn around? I. Don’t. None of us does. But sometimes you just have to trust that you know what’s right.”

  “So you agree that stealing the ring from the Mongers is the right thing?” Tom sat back in his chair and crossed his arms.

  “I think fixing the time stream split is the right thing. If stealing the ring is the way to get your help to fix time, then at least giving the ring to its rightful owner takes it off my plate of responsibilities. I don’t like the ones I already have; I don’t want to add more.”

  He sounded surly. “I’ll think about it.”

  I laughed completely without mirth. “No, you won’t. You’ll agree, or I’m leaving tonight. Seriously, Tom, I don’t want to be here. So if we can’t agree on this, I’m out.”

  He glared at me and then pushed his chair back from the table. “Fine. When we get our hands on the ring, you can take it to whomever you want, just as long as it isn’t either of my fathers or a Monger.”

  I smiled at that. “Deal. Not your dads or a Monger.”

  He reluctantly added his own smile, then quickly covered it when Artemisia entered the courtyard. “There you are. Mary has gone to bed and I have no one to talk to.” Ringo and Tom rose from their seats at the sound of her voice. I knew Ringo had the habit from having grown up in Victorian England, but Tom’s manners were a surprise. She waved them both back down. “Sit, sit. I’ll join you.”

  “Have you ever worked at the Vatican, Artemisia?” Now that I’d actually decided to step in this whole thing with both feet, I was anxious to pull my boots on.

  “I have painted there,” she said, “for the past ten years.”

  I shot Ringo a quick, triumphant look, then returned my gaze to our hostess. “I need to get inside the Vatican. Can it be done?”

  She sat back in surprise. “Women are not welcome inside the city walls unless they are selling or cleaning something.”

  “How do you get in?” I asked.

  “There’s a tunnel entrance that the washerwomen use. A priest leads me through that tunnel to the place I work. I am painting in the Tower of the Winds now.”

  “Can I go with you? Maybe carry your paints or be your assistant?”

  Artemisia studied me for a long moment, and I held my breath. “Doran told me about you. If I take you there, will you leave my house so my heart will return to me?”

  I exhaled. “Yes. I just need to see some part of the Vatican’s interior, and then the three of us will leave you alone.” Artemisia nodded, and I touched her arm. “I am sorry for having caused you both discomfort. We’ll be gone tomorrow night if I can see the Tower of the Winds with you during the day.”

  “Thank you. He is dear to me. I must keep time sacred with him when I can, because it is never enough.”

  “I understand,” I said quietly.

  Artemisia and Tom seemed like they were going to be up late, so I said good night and left them to their conversation. I needed sleep if I was going to function the next day, and Ringo followed me to my room. He stood at the window and looked out at the moonlit landscape while I brushed my teeth and washed my face with water from the pitcher on the dressing table.

  “Ye’re looking for a place to Clock us in?” he asked.

  I nodded with a mouth full of cinnamon tooth powder. It was nasty stuff, but it did the job.

  I took a sip of water and rinsed. “I’ll try to get as much information about the place as I can. I hate going in blind.”

  He scowled. “Ye and me both.” He waited until I’d climbed into bed before he turned around to face me. “Ye’re plannin’ to give the ring to Doran?”

  I nodded. “I don’t want it, and I don’t want anyone else to have it, so yeah. It makes sense.”

  “It’s a good idea,” he said finally.

  I hadn’t been expecting that. Ringo had taken Archer’s job of watching my back so seriously that I sometimes felt like his first answer was always going to be no. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll see what I can find in the way of supplies while ye’re with Artemisia. Any requests?”

  I smiled. “The Venetians made beautiful glass beads, but they probably don’t sell them in Rome.”

  He shook his head. “Glass beads. Ye manage to surprise me every time I think I have ye figured out.”

  “Thinking we have anyone figured out is usually our first mistake,” I said as I blew out the candle. I was thinking about Doran and the life he’d ke
pt secret.

  Ringo closed the door softly behind him when he left, and it was a long time before I could sleep.

  Artemisia and I arrived at the entrance to the tunnel at about noon. I was dressed in my own masculine clothes with my hair tied back and a hat to hide my feminine features from a casual glance. I carried Artemisia’s box of paints and was introduced to the priest at the gate as her apprentice.

  The priest led us through two other checkpoints and by several of the gold-and-crimson-striped Swiss Guard before we were finally handed off to another priest who answered a knock on a very heavy door.

  From there we were escorted down a flight of stairs inside the cool, dark interior of a long corridor. The entire place was lined with shelves, and on the shelves were leather-bound bundles of papers. Stacks and stacks of the bundles filled the shelves, and I had a sudden sense of reverence for the place. It felt like a library, but filled with records instead of books. The air wore the heavy scent of old parchment and oiled leather, and the bits of light that drifted down though ceiling grates illuminated the dust in the air like tiny dancing stars.

  The priest walked with heavy footsteps, and Artemisia’s lighter ones were a sharp staccato above them. I practiced a silent walk, made easier by my rubber-soled boots. The lack of any sound from me seemed to go a long way toward making me invisible to the priest, and I wasn’t going to break it with all the questions I wanted to ask. So instead, I studied as much of my surroundings as I could see from our path.

  There appeared to be doors set back in the walls of the corridor between a few of the shelving units, but all were closed and likely locked. One of the doors had a noticeably cleaner handle than the others, and I made some assumptions about its frequency of use. That piece of information got filed away, along with the door’s location and proximity to the end of the tunnel.

  We reached the end of the corridor, and rather than go up the main staircase to what I assumed was the exit, the priest unlocked a door on the right side of the tunnel, then directed us up the winding staircase while he locked the door after himself.