A Sword in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 3)

by Cidney Swanson

  Or the sadistic tick-tick-tick of Jillian’s desk clock.

  Why did people buy clocks that ticked so loudly?

  Think about something else.

  A bottle of Evian on the end table caught DaVinci’s eyes. Why did Jillian only drink Evian water? She said she was trying to spend less. But if Jillian wanted to save money, why did she drive a car that smelled like top-shelf leather? And why didn’t Everett live here to save on rent? And what time did the sun rise in Florida? And dear God, why couldn’t she please just fall asleep?

  DaVinci’s stomach growled at an alarming decibel.

  “Oh, good grief,” she muttered, tossing back the 600-count pima cotton sheets.

  She gave up on sleep and got out of bed. She crossed to the kitchen, her way illumined by moonlight spilling through the blinds. The light through the slats created a pattern of light, dark, light, dark that reminded her of her favorite canvas from the East Mountain 360 paintings: Moonlight Sonata.

  She crossed to the refrigerator, gripping the handle but not opening the door.

  When she’d decided to paint by moonlight, she hadn’t painted the ocean by moonlight—too obvious. Or the mountains by moonlight—nearly as obvious. She’d painted her driveway, and the bit of East Mountain Drive you could see when you looked down from the height of her roof. She’d captured the way moonlight rendered the recycle bins, the twins’ bikes, the tilting mailbox—everything in sharp relief: dark, light, dark, light. It had been her best piece in the series.

  Except . . .

  Now it didn’t exist. Her best work had simply . . . ceased to exist. Poof! Gone.

  Her stomach clenched, but this time it wasn’t from hunger.

  Dropping her hand from the refrigerator door, she fought a tightening sensation in her throat. No more tears. And no food, either. Food wasn’t going to fix anything that mattered. She turned from the fridge and gazed at the hide-a-bed, at the light spilling through the blinds. And then, before she could second-guess herself, she crossed to the door, stepped into a pair of flip-flops, and slipped her leather purse over her shoulder.

  She needed to get out and drive somewhere. Or drive nowhere. It didn’t really matter.

  She opened the door.

  Oh.

  Car keys . . .

  Back in Montecito, Jillian had always had a key caddy in her room, and sure enough, there was a caddy here on a shelf by the door.

  Keys in hand, DaVinci slipped out of the apartment and into a black-and-white world drenched in moonlight. Five minutes later, she was driving past one of central Florida’s ubiquitous lakes. The night air was warm, and it was tempting to grab a quick swim by moonlight. Except for the minor issue of Everett’s grim warning as to the probable number of alligators in Florida’s waterways.

  She wanted to capture the lake, to preserve it on canvas, bright, and bathed in silver. Pulling across the oncoming lane, DaVinci parked beside the lake on the road’s sandy shoulder. The moon, high overhead, lit everything in sharp relief. Across the lake, an old dock tilted into the water at an angle suggesting neglect. Two support beams had rotted away already.

  Movement caught DaVinci’s attention. Ripples on the lake. The air was still—heavy and hot, without any breeze. The disturbance might have been caused by reptiles, although DaVinci couldn’t see any. The circles on the water spread outward, concentric rings bumping into one another and retreating, which then restarted the cycle. On this rippled surface, the reflected moon split into a hundred tiny moons, a meteor shower of luminous bodies.

  Pulling out her phone, she rested it on the car door to take a picture of the broken moons so she could paint them later. She forgot to turn off the flash, and it flared in the dark, jolting and unanticipated. Her phone returned an eerie image: hundreds of glowing orange-gold dots spread across the lake. At first, she assumed the phosphorous dots were fragments of reflected moon, but then she realized what they really were. Dozens—hundreds, maybe—of glowing eyes. Freaking alligator eyes, rising stalklike just above the surface of the water. A shiver clambered along her shoulders.

  What were they all staring at her for? Actually, she didn’t need an answer. She started the engine again, spewing gravel and sand as she sped away.

  Although she wasn’t ready to admit it to herself, her drive wasn’t entirely aimless. She began to note landmarks Jillian had pointed out earlier. The Piggly Wiggly. A Burger King across from a McDonald’s. The Sun Trust Bank where Jillian had gotten cash. The corner where the food truck had sold them Cubanos. DaVinci was in downtown Wellesley, such as it was.

  Flicking her blinker on, she turned down the road leading to Littlewood’s lab, where she and Jillian had driven earlier in the day. Where Everett had said cheerful things about monsters in lakes and the possibility of things going worse if you tried to fix the past.

  She was almost to the lab. What was she thinking, driving to Littlewood’s lab in the middle of the night?

  She knew what she was thinking. What she was doing here. Might as well admit it.

  “I’m fixing things, okay? Do you hear that, space–time? I’m coming for you.”

  Saying it out loud made it real. She was going to do this. Continuing past the “No Trespassing!” sign, she drove well above the posted fifteen miles per hour. Why bother adhering to the laws of the land if you were about to trespass the laws of nature?

  She couldn’t let herself think about that. This was the right thing to do. Her life needed fixing, and Klee and Kahlo had made horrible messes of their lives thanks to her, and DaVinci wasn’t going to just stand by and let things be.

  There it was: the building with the large “42” painted on the side. The building housing Littlewood’s basement laboratory. And a time machine that could change everything. She stopped the car. She was here. It was time to go inside and fix things.

  She stepped out of the car, but then something made her hesitate, and she stood frozen in place, one hand resting on the handle of the car door. What if Everett and Jillian were right? What if returning to “fix” things made something else worse? What if she fixed things so Klee and Kahlo could enroll at UCLA, but then a big earthquake struck the campus, killing them both? How would she feel, knowing she had put them there? But what if enrolling at Santa Clara University meant they got in a multicar collision, and she could have prevented it?

  “Stop it!” she whispered into the quiet night. “Ugh!”

  This was getting her nowhere. There were risks everywhere, no matter what twists or turns history took. You just did your best and got on with it. You couldn’t stop to worry about every possibility or you’d end up . . . paralyzed.

  “Says the woman standing still as a statue,” muttered DaVinci. And then she let out a single gruff laugh. In her borrowed white nightgown, she must look exactly like a Grecian statue. Or Roman, perhaps.

  But she wasn’t a statue, and she refused to let her circumstances paralyze her. It was time to fix the mess she’d made. If she didn’t go in there and do it now, she might not get another opportunity. She closed the car door, locking it just to be safe. It was a seriously nice car. She was about to put the keys in her bag when she remembered she needed the code printed on the key fob to unlock the laboratory door.

  On her way to the stairwell, DaVinci noticed someone had left a light on inside. She shook her head. Arthur Littlewood was a classic absentminded professor. He was the definition—no, the poster child of absentminded professors. A tiny grin bloomed on her face. She’d actually missed the old guy. She was going to adopt him as her crazy uncle.

  “Meet my crazy Uncle Arthur,” she said, reaching for the keypad to unlock the door. “He’s mostly harmless, unless your name is Mr. Space–Time—”

  DaVinci broke off and stilled her hand in midair.

  What was she thinking, betraying Arthur Littlewood’s trust like this? What would he think of her after this?

  “Ugh!” She groaned and covered her face with her hands, pressing her bowed head agai
nst the door.

  The door that was . . . vibrating?

  What the heck? Actually, it reminded her of the vibrating sensation caused by the time machine in action. Maybe Littlewood was still inside. She peeked through the window, but it wasn’t Littlewood she saw. It was Quintus.

  “Oh. Duh.”

  Quintus who worked the night shift as security for Littlewood. Quintus whose presence meant she’d come for nothing.

  The door vibrated more insistently. What was Quintus doing, up and burning the midnight Tesla coils? Eyes narrowing, she examined Quintus where he stood not far from the machine’s travel platform. His calves were exposed, but the rest of his freaking gorgeous, of-god-like-aspect self was wrapped in a blanket. Who wrapped themselves in blankets in Florida, for goodness sake? He ran a hand through his hair—short, dark, and cut in a severe way only the very attractive could carry off. With that jawline and those high cheekbones, carrying it off was not a problem.

  He was hovering over the podium that controlled the time machine. Was he bored? Experimenting? Planning a jaunt to the past to make use of the world’s most generous ATM? DaVinci felt a chill running up her spine. What was it he’d said about retrieving Caesar to make America great again? No. He wouldn’t. There was no way he would actually bring a duplicate Caesar here. Was there?

  But what was he doing firing up the machine by himself?

  She was jumping to conclusions. Quintus was probably doing something Littlewood had asked him to do. But why would Littlewood have Quintus time travel in the middle of the night? Wouldn’t time traveling—which meant leaving the lab—be a little counterproductive to lab security?

  DaVinci reached for the door handle and then cursed softly. It was locked.

  Duh.

  She keyed in the door code and waited for the mechanism to cycle through its unlocking protocol. And that was when she realized something important. Quintus wasn’t wearing a blanket. He was wearing a cloak. No—a costume. He was dressed like some kind of Roman centurion or whatever they called themselves.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered. All at once, the pieces came together. Quintus the security guard really was secretly using the machine to send himself back to Rome to grab Caesar!

  He stepped onto the platform just as she entered the lab.

  “Are you freaking insane?” she shouted, running toward him.

  Quintus, of course, couldn’t hear her over the roar of the machine. She was going to be too late. Forcing herself to run faster, she waved her arms at him, which proved to be as useless as shouting.

  What would Princess Leia do?

  Leia would shoot him with a blaster. And if she didn’t have her blaster . . .

  Roaring like Han Solo bluffing the storm troopers, DaVinci ran straight at the security guard, aiming to knock him right off the platform.

  30

  • QUINTUS •

  Florida, July

  Thus far, Quintus had watched Everett operate the controls of the time machine on fourteen journeys to the Ancient Library of Alexandria. Moreover, so often had Quintus read the instructions for the operation of the machine that he had committed large portions to memory. Some of the words still gave him trouble, but for these he’d brought his Latin-English dictionary.

  Troublesome words aside, he was finally prepared to return to Roma where he would deliver the letter from Gaius Julius Caesar to Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus as he had sworn to do. Quintus knew he would need to act swiftly once he arrived—the journeys to Alexandria lasted for only six minutes. Fortunately, the device could be configured to transport him to any location in Roma. To gain swiftest access to the general, Quintus was going to send himself to Pompey’s massive residence-cum-theater on the Campus Martius.

  And, should he fail to meet Pompey on the first journey, Quintus would repeat his journey until he had met him. Some of the visits to Alexandria had necessitated this approach. It required patience, and for patience, there was no one like a soldier who had served under Caesar.

  Five hours remained until either Littlewood or Everett was likely to appear. Enough time for seven or more visits, should they be necessary. Tonight he would accomplish the mission Caesar had charged him with almost six months ago, by his reckoning. Tonight!

  And after?

  Caesar’s charge belonged to a world now gone for more than two thousand years.

  Quintus pushed the thought aside. It mattered not what he did after. Delivering his message faithfully was all that mattered.

  With a soldier’s precision, Quintus began to change from the garb of the Floridae to that of a soldier of Roma, an immune of the Eleventh Legion.

  He knew only one way to dress: swiftly, as if an enemy had caught the camp asleep and out of uniform. How familiar the process of belting his tunic, of tugging the overly long garment above his belt to the height proper to his rank. He laced his hobnailed soldier’s boots, recalling how Jillian, visiting his domus, his borrowed home, had mistaken his masculine boots for the sandals of a modern woman. She had remarked that she loved gladiator-style sandals. Quintus’s offense at the remark was sharp and natural, but he had hidden it. No one in this age acknowledged the sacred calling of service to Roma, the sacredness of each leather lacing, each nail in his boot.

  He was nearly done. He grasped the apron of leather strips, his pteruges, upon which were displayed the decorative tokens of the battles he had fought in Gallia. Now his scabbard was ready to receive his gladius, and he secured both to his belt. With his sword in place, he felt once more like a true Roman soldier.

  Lastly, he reached for his sagum, the woolen cloak that had kept him warm many a night in cold Gallia. The sagum, worn over his shoulders, was secured in place with a fibula, a pin from an age before buttons or zippers. It would be awkward to work the machine’s controls while wearing his cloak, but he would not risk offending Pompey by presenting himself less than properly dressed.

  Perhaps, though, he would stoke the fires of the great time travel engine before donning his sagum. Setting both fibula and sagum down, Quintus followed the written instructions, occasionally consulting his dictionary. As he labored, he felt himself entering a cool and collected space in his mind. It was like the minutes before a battle. Some of his fellows had emulated the Celtae or Belgae, driving themselves into an emotionally frenzied state before battle, but most tried to follow the example of their great general, who grew cooler and calmer in the hours before engagement.

  Only when the machine was screaming its final cries did Quintus take up his cloak again, securing it by means of his fibula, an ornamental and impractical one given him by his wife. He checked one last time to be certain he still had Caesar’s letter to Pompey. This done, he rechecked the coordinates on the screen one final time, experiencing a momentary fear that he might have mistranslated the word longitude. Hastily, he flipped his dictionary open to check the word.

  While he was confirming the word was correct, he noticed movement in his peripheral vision. A person. Running toward him. Instinct took over and he dropped the dictionary, his hand swinging automatically to his gladius. His sword was already out by the time he registered, with shock, that it was the visiting girl from earlier in the evening. Weaponless, wild, and fierce, DaVinci ran at him, her green eyes flaming cold fire.

  31

  • QUINTUS •

  Florida, July

  On Quintus’s third journey with Everett to the Ancient Library of Alexandria, something had gone wrong. Quintus and Everett had been ready to travel, standing on the platform dressed in first-century-BC clothing, when Littlewood had suddenly leaped toward them, pushed his way onto the platform, and made a last-minute alteration to the screen.

  At least, as Littlewood later explained to Quintus, he had meant for the alteration to be last-minute. As it turned out, Littlewood didn’t clear the platform in time and was unintentionally transported to the first century BC along with Quintus and Everett.

  Littlewood, suddenly in Alexandria, hadn’
t considered the necessity of keeping quiet to avoid attention and had launched into noisy apologies (and considerable hand-wringing). Quintus’s quick thinking saved the day, or at least prevented raised eyebrows among the Alexandrian librarians. Quintus threw his sagum over Littlewood’s shoulders to hide the professor’s odd clothing, while shushing him and secreting him behind a massive column.

  This had left Everett free to retrieve Aristotle’s long-lost writings on comedy. Discovery had been averted, and the three had returned home with Alexandria none the wiser.

  But tonight, when Quintus Valerius found himself in first-century-BC Roma with a twenty-first-century girl, his next step wasn’t immediately clear. Should he throw a cloak around her? Order her to stay put while he ran to deliver the message to Pompey? Things had worked out fine with Dr. Littlewood’s accidental travel, but this girl was not Arthur Littlewood.

  She was neither apologetic nor a wringer of hands. She was whispering loudly—berating Quintus, of all things—in such a constant stream of words that he had no chance to reply.

  He had greater reason to berate, but he forced himself to ignore the girl’s unceasing chatter and regroup, returning his sword to its scabbard.

  He had to decide quickly: Should he abandon his mission for the time being or press on? He’d lost a full minute already, and his window of opportunity had been small to begin with. The girl was certainly a nuisance, and worse, had the potential to do what Littlewood had not done—draw unwanted attention to both of them.

  Quintus glanced at her—she was still chastising him, albeit in a whisper. Quintus judged it might prove difficult to force her into silence, never mind into hiding. He had not studied war under Rome’s greatest general without learning to distinguish between a time to press on and a time to withdraw and await better opportunity. This was one of the latter times.

  He returned his attention to the girl, who was still addressing him.

  “Assuming you have a plan, which could still misfire in a zillion ways, including our being seen right now by someone who shouldn’t see us. And who knows what effect—”