Time's Children

by D. B. Jackson

  “I understand that, but in this case, I must act out of self-interest. I’m sorry.”

  “Self-interest,” Tobias repeated, laughing the word even as another pulse of agony radiated from his arm. “If you were acting out of self-interest, you’d take us. Two Travelers, Windhome-trained? A pair of Bound apertures to trade as you wish? And, potentially, the gratitude of the lone surviving heir to Daerjen’s richest house? Self-interest would have us on your ship already. You’re acting out of fear.”

  “Tread carefully, Walker,” the captain said, glowering and drawing herself up to her full height.

  He remembered the expression from his time on the Gray Skate. It had cowed him then, but not now. He wasn’t a boy anymore. He’d Walked too many years, endured too much pain, seen and spilled too much blood. More, she’d already stated her intention to leave them there, the worst thing she could do to them. He had nothing more to fear from her.

  “No, I won’t tread carefully. The Captain Larr I know from the future is canny, strong, fearless. Perhaps you haven’t yet grown into your better, older self. I have. It’s the advantage of being a Walker. And also the curse.”

  Her nostrils flared. He’d pushed her far, yet he wasn’t through.

  “We can help you, Mara and I. And you can help us. Such a partnership would be to the detriment of Sheraigh, and, I believe, Oaqamar as well. Surely that has some appeal.”

  “Appeal? You think I wish to be pursued by the navies of both Daerjen and the autarchy?”

  “I think you’re savvy enough to keep your ship out of danger. Do you already carry banners from the Axle and the Knot?”

  The captain blinked. If she hadn’t believed before that Tobias sailed with her in some lost future, she did now. “Aye,” she said, speaking more softly. “I’ve been known to fly different colors at different times.”

  “That should help.”

  “No doubt. Still, why should I risk my life and the lives of my crew for the three of you?”

  Tobias sighed, feeling more weary than he ever had. “I can’t think of another reason beyond those I’ve given. In the future, you’re hard, but fair-minded. I’m sure you possess similar qualities now. Taking us on carries risks. But if you leave us here, we’ll be killed. I’ve no doubt of that.” He indicated his wounded arm with a dip of his chin. “The proof is right here. So ask yourself: are whatever concerns you have so great that they can justify leaving us – leaving this child – to die at the hands of the man who shot me?”

  Her glare remained, but she didn’t stalk away, which he considered a small victory. After some tencounts, her expression turned speculative. “Do you have chronofors?”

  Tobias frowned at the question, knowing it undermined his argument. She had every right to ask, though, and he wouldn’t lie to her.

  “Mara’s was taken, and mine was broken the night of Mearlan’s assassination. If I can find a Binder–” He thought of Bexler Filt. “One I can trust, I can have it repaired.”

  Larr’s shrug conveyed a lack of concern. “I know of an honest Binder on Aiyanth. I’ve also done business with a peddler who trades in Bound devices. She might have one.”

  He was afraid to trust what he heard in her words. “Are you saying… you’ve changed your mind?”

  “No one has ever compared me unfavorably with my older self. I didn’t like that. Nor did I appreciate having my courage questioned, especially since I gave you cause to question it.” A crooked smile softened her features. “Besides, you raised an interesting point before: how often does a ship’s captain have the opportunity to strike a blow against Sheraigh and the autarchy in the same evening?” She regarded the princess, the angles of her face sharpening again. “A ship is no place for a babe. I’ll expect you to keep her out of the way. If she proves a distraction for me or my crew, I’ll put you off at the nearest port. Understood?”

  “Yes. Thank you, captain.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. I fear I’ll rue this decision.” Another smile cushioned this. “Gather your things. If we’re to get you away from here, we should return to the ship now and sail.”

  She walked away, leaving Tobias and Mara alone in the firelight.

  “I revealed a lot to win her over,” he said, looking down at the princess. Her eyelids had grown heavy.

  “Do you trust her?”

  “I trust the woman I met fourteen years from now. This one… Orzili and his allies would pay a lot of gold for Sofya. More than Larr can make selling those apertures.”

  “Then why tell her who this is?”

  Tobias faced her. “Because if she’d thought Sofya was our child – that we were merely a family seeking passage – she would never have agreed to take us. You heard her: A ship is no place for a babe.”

  “She might have taken just you and Sofya.”

  He felt himself color. “That wasn’t an option.”

  Mara’s smile made him blush even more. “Thank you.”

  He was first to look away. “I should retrieve my sack. And your musket.”

  “I’ll get them,” she said, wheeling away. “You rest.”

  “Get Orzili’s robe, too.”

  “I will. And the last tri-sextant.”

  Tobias stared after her, then called her name. “That was a good shot before.”

  She glanced back, eyes dancing. “I thought you said it was ‘bloody brilliant.’”

  “Heat of the moment. Saffern would have said you were too close.”

  Her smile reminded him of Windhome, of Wansi, of a youth lost only a turn or two ago. It warmed him and chilled him and left him wondering what awaited them on the Inward Sea and the waters beyond.

  Sofya sighed, her eyes closed, her head nestled against his chest. At least one of them would sleep this night.

  He thought of Jivv and Elinor, of Kaarti, of Hanrid, of Daria Belani who saved his life in the castle – good people all, and in their own way as committed as Tobias to keeping the Hayncalde sovereignty alive. Maybe they would be enough to preserve some shred of hope until Sofya came of age.

  Chapter 40

  Kheraya’s Emergence, Year 634

  Droë sang to him of ships and lost loves, the songs of sailors, which she had gathered in her memory over centuries. The unintended harvest of her hunting, now more valuable to Tresz than gold to a merchant captain.

  Their progress came slower than she expected. The Shonla could move in swift bursts, but mostly he meandered, more mist than demon. He fed even more often than she.

  Not that Droë minded too much. Free of Trevynisle, she was content to explore, to prey, to savor the novelty of constant change.

  Somewhere to the south, the woman searched for Tobias, the man Droë might love. Jealousy twisted her insides. But so did fear, which she hadn’t expected. Desperate as she was to find him and know him, she shied from the prospect of that first encounter.

  “There are ships,” Tresz said, interrupting her song. His mist parted and he pointed a spindly arm at the bay of a nearby island. Furled sails and torches pitched on shifting waters.

  “You wish to feed again?” Droë asked, trying to conceal her impatience.

  “Once more, before light.”

  “Where are we?”

  “The southern fringe of the Labyrinth. I don’t know what humans call this isle. My kind named it long ago.”

  The name he gave – a series of hisses and swishes and gurgles she couldn’t interpret – sounded much like other names he had spoken in the tongue of the Shonla. She couldn’t repeat the word, much less comprehend it. But knowing they were nearly clear of Sipar’s Labyrinth pleased her.

  In truth, she didn’t mind feeding again, and she welcomed one last respite from the chill of his company before daylight.

  “Very well,” she said. “Leave me at the port.”

  He glided low over the swells, halting on a narrow strip of sand near a cluster of wharves. She climbed off his back and stretched her limbs.

  “I will return s
hortly,” he said. “And we will go as far as we can before first light. My word.”

  Droë stared after him as he closed in on a merchant ship. Then she sniffed the air. A small village, but ripe with prey. The shoreline alone might have fed her for years. She could leave the Shonla and his cloud of frigid vapor, and remain here. It was new, different. It might hold her interest for a time.

  Not long ago, that would have been enough.

  Do I love him? Can I love?

  The questions burned in her chest like those torches on the distant ships. Fear and mist and cold might dampen the light, but they couldn’t extinguish her curiosity. She had been driven from her home by the need to know, the desire to test the limits of what she might be, and might become. Finding a replacement for Trevynisle wouldn’t content her. Neither would simply finding Tobias. At some point, over water and land, in darkness and damp, with a song on her lips, she had resolved to become something new. Not merely to seek change, but to become it. What began on the promontory of Trevynisle as a notion, had coalesced into purpose. She would do this, or spend her life in the pursuit.

  First, tonight, she would hunt. What she had in mind would demand years, not in duration, but as a means of altering herself. She needed strength, which meant nourishment.

  So she crept to the pier, her steps silent, her body conforming to shadow. Sniffing the air again, she caught a scent. Young, female, nearby. Once more, Tresz had said. Before light and leagues. Ever closer to what she hoped to become.

  The Sea Dove was still on oars as the sun rose. In the eastern sky, dawn’s light limned the clouds from the previous night’s storm, like fire burning the edge of parchment. The sky overhead had cleared, and the surface of the Gulf of Daerjen reflected azure like a mirror.

  Mara stood with Tobias and the princess at the bow, hands on the rail, a soft breeze stirring her hair. She hadn’t spent much time at sea, and she feared that the pitch and roll of the ship would become unsettling once they cleared the gulf.

  If they made it that far. For what might have been the hundredth time, she checked the water behind them. Tobias did the same. Larr’s oarsmen had given them a substantial start, and the weak wind would keep Sheraigh’s warships from pursuing them at speed. But how long would they remain safe?

  Captain Larr said nothing to them after taking them aboard. The men and women of her crew watched them as they might looming storm clouds. For now at least, they eschewed the celebrations of the Goddess’s Day, and there could be no doubt as to why. Those working the deck would blame them.

  Tobias’s concerns about the captain’s motives, which Mara thought fanciful in the dark of night, became weightier as they settled on her mind.

  At Tobias’s insistence, Larr had introduced them to the men and women on the ship as a family, using Mara’s surname: Lijar. Tobias admitted he had used the name with others, which both flattered and alarmed her. The princess would go by the name Nava.

  Mara wasn’t surprised to find herself a fugitive. Given what she had Walked back through the years to do, it seemed inevitable.

  But she felt unmoored, adrift. No longer a girl, not even terribly young. A Walker now, as well as a Spanner, and more valued as the former. Far from Windhome, and the life she had known in the northern isles. Bound to a man she had sought of her volition, but didn’t know at all. After the stability of her life in the Travelers’ palace, change threatened to overwhelm her.

  Yet the sense of wrongness that drove her to leave her old life had receded. Perhaps this was only because she had left that misfuture behind. Or maybe – a slim hope, but not beyond all bounds of possibility – whatever she had done, whatever Tobias and she had done together, was already changing the world back to what it ought to be.

  “You’re quiet.”

  Tobias’s words roused her, as from a dream.

  “I’m thinking of Windhome,” she said

  “Do you miss it?”

  “Do you?”

  His eyes followed a flock of cormorants, black against blue. His scars appeared less prominent in the soft light. “It’s been so long. At least it seems that way. I miss feeling safe, and having the freedom of not being responsible for anyone. Mostly I don’t think about it.” He shifted the princess in his one good arm, and toed his pack, which held all their valuables. He hadn’t let it out of their sight. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I do miss it,” she said. “It hasn’t been so long for me, and these past few days have been… unnerving.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I made the choice to come back. I know you’re responsible for–” She stumbled on the name, something she couldn’t afford to do. “For Nava. But you’re not responsible for me or my decisions.”

  “Fair enough.”

  She gazed toward the mouth of the gulf, which loomed before them, framed by massive stone cliffs and twin mountain ranges to the north and south. Beyond the crags and the gap between them lay the Inward Sea and the Ring Isles.

  “Where do you think we’ll go from here?” Mara asked.

  “I don’t know. I suppose we’ll get to Aiyanth eventually. The captain will want to see that Binder she mentioned. After that?” He lifted his good shoulder. “We have to keep moving. Orzili will be looking for us. Filt will Bind more tri-sextants for him soon enough. But we also have to find a place where we can be a family and raise Sofya. Living like a hunted animal is no way for a child to grow up. We have to find a home. I just hope the captain doesn’t tire of us before then.”

  He said this with a smile, but fear tightened his voice.

  She had no reassurances to offer, and she wasn’t sure he would have believed them if she had. But she grasped his good arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. After a moment she leaned against his shoulder, and he rested his cheek against the top of her head.

  Together, they waited for open water.

  Glossary of Terms

  Aperture – A Bound device used by Crossers. An aperture is a golden circlet that expands and contracts according to the needs of the Crosser. When placed against a wooden or stone surface, it creates a portal that allows the Crosser to move through that surface.

  Arrokad – Creatures of the sea, they are considered by humans to be demon-kind. They take human form and possess magicks that remain poorly understood. Capricious, sexual, powerful, dangerous, they can be reasoned with and bargained with, though their tolerance for human interaction is limited.

  Bell – A measure of time equal to fifty spirecounts. There are twenty bells in a day.

  Belvora – Also known as magick demons, they are winged predators, tall, muscular, lethal, but slow-witted. They are found mostly in Northern waters, near the Labyrinth and the Sisters, the isles from which Travelers and Seers hail.

  Between, The – The space traversed by Walkers as they navigate from one time to another. A place of intense sensory stimulation, totally lacking in breathable air.

  Binder – A crafter, usually employed in noble courts, who shapes and imbues with power the gold devices (apertures, chronofors, and sextants) used by Travelers.

  Chronofor – A Bound, golden device used by Walkers. A chronofor resembles a chainwatch, but has three dials on its face, and three corresponding stems to set those dials, which represent turns, days, and bells. A fourth stem activates the device.

  Crosser – A Traveler who can move through solid matter – stone or wood – with the use of an aperture. A Crosser who encounters metal or some other material created by humans during a Crossing risks injury or death.

  Fivecount – A measure of time equal to counting to five.

  Gap, The – The space traversed by Spanners as they navigate from one location to another. A place of significant sensory stimulation and stinging wind.

  Ha’turn – A measure of time equal to fifteen days.

  Kant – A small- to medium-sized merchant ship made in Kantaad.

  Healers – Most similar in their magick to Binders, Healers ca
n mend wounds and ease illness, though their powers are limited and they are not proof against death.

  Kheraya – The Goddess, who represents birth, war, sexuality, water, the heat of summer.

  Magi – Also known as Seers, they include those who can divine the future, perceive truth or falsehood in the words of others, and remember in perfect detail everything they see or hear. For their ability to manifest, they must constantly imbibe (through drink or vapor) Tincture, a highly addictive spirit.

  Marauder – A large warship made in Oaqamar and used by Oaqamaran navy.

  Press, The – The traverse experienced by Crossers as they move through matter, which can include painful compression of the body, blindness, and deafness.

  Quad – A square brass coin, the least valuable piece of Islevale currency.

  Qua’turn – A measure of time equal to approximately seven days.

  Round – A round, gold coin equal in value to twenty silver treys.

  Seer – Also known as Magi, they include those who can divine the future, perceive truth or falsehood in the words of others, and remember in perfect detail everything they see or hear. For their ability to manifest, they must constantly imbibe (through drink or vapor) Tincture, a highly addictive spirit.

  Sextant – A Bound, golden device used by Spanners to cover great distances. A sextant includes an arc for plotting distance, an eyepiece for selecting a route, and a trigger for activation.

  Shonla – Also known as mist demons, they only exist within clouds of vapor, though not all mists carry Shonla. They are vaguely human in form, smell of must, and bring cold. They are linked to one another and have knowledge of events occurring all through the world. They swallow sound and can be bribed with song. They disorient those at sea and even on land, feeding on screams. But they are not truly deadly.