Magpie shuffles under her, restive. Alice wheels her around in a tight alleyway, where they can watch the road. From here, she can see the hitching stone where they all gathered a few moments ago, but now it’s empty. Her friends are gone; Jane is gone; Alice is alone. She has neither belt nor time-wheel but she has a warm horse under her arse and the world before her. There is the small matter of the year, and an ocean, but she has her freedom, for the moment. And isn’t that everything she’s always wanted? Freedom to make her own life, as she sees fit?
She would find Jane again, surely. Some version of Jane, in some place, in some time. But there would always be a version of Jane whose face would bear the pain of her abandonment. Some version of Prudence who would be caught in a trap of her own making, never knowing the sister she will suddenly remember again.
Does any of it matter?
All things are true, might be true, have never been true.
Knowing that makes the warmth of Magpie’s neck, the flare of her nostrils, no less real. This life is all there is, all there ever is.
Alice sits taller in the saddle and peers forward to get a better look at the man on the dock. A formidable wig; clothing in hummingbird hues; a bunch of lace at his throat. That can only be Charles King. He is walking toward the Merchants—he is moments away from death—and her friends are still nowhere to be seen.
She leans forward and whispers in Magpie’s ear.
2071
Jane steps through the shimmer into 2071 and Captain Auden follows. There is the strange pedestal, just as Prudence described.
“And now?” Jane says, turning to him.
“And now we wait, I suppose.”
Can he be so obtuse? “I mean Alice.”
Captain Auden takes a deep, audible breath through his nose, and lets it out, his shoulders sagging. “Have you known all along, Miss Hodgson?”
When it began, it did not feel like the beginning of something. It was a lark, a lesson, an experiment. Revenge on a lecherous pianoforte instructor. “I’ve known, yes, and I’ve abetted. If you are going to take Alice to the magistrate, you will have to take me as well.”
He runs his hand through his sandy hair, so that the queue in the back shakes violently and the black ribbon tying it nearly comes loose. “But why, Miss Hodgson? Why, in God’s name?”
She gives him the most honest answer she can muster, out of honest affection for him. But it takes her a moment to find the words. “You may call it money, if you like.”
“Ah.”
But she isn’t finished. “The Americans began by calling it taxes, didn’t they? And they ended by calling it freedom. What it is, Captain Auden, is power. The French are killing each other in the streets over it. You went to America to kill men over it. Alice and I have killed no one. We have merely taken a small amount of power from men who have too much, and put it to our own use in our little corner of Hampshire as best we might.”
“No,” he says, shaking his head, imperilling the hair ribbon again. “No, Miss Hodgson, I must disagree. I fought to uphold the law. To prevent the world from falling into an anarchy where any man with a gun may make his own rules.”
She puts her head to one side. “Well. Not everyone agrees with the rules, I suppose.”
He throws up his hands. “You have so many talents! Both of you. Surely you could put them to better use than robbing—”
Her breath rises in her chest, her rage surprising her. “And what uses do you suggest, Captain? Shall I publish the results of my experiments in small and grubby pamphlets that no one will read? Shall Alice trick a man into marrying her to keep the roof on Fleance Hall? Shall we content ourselves with taking tea with the Bluestocking Society and knitting for the church bazaar?”
He’s right, damn him, he’s right. But what does he know about it?
And he’s ignoring her. Looking past her. She turns to follow his gaze, and sees that in lieu of the pedestal, there’s a tent bearing the address T30.
“The timeline,” he says. “It’s changed. Charles King is . . .”
“No longer alive in New York City,” she finishes. “One way or the other.”
2145
“Eighteenth century,” Almo says, looking Prudence up and down. “1785, give or take. Am I right?”
She forces a tight smile. “You’re always right, sir.”
He cocks his head, smiles at her, a real smile, or as close to it as he can manage. “No, I’m not. I was wrong to let you get so invested in that nineteenth-century mission. I was wrong to ignore your thoughts about going earlier, going deeper. I thought I’d lost you for good. But then—”
“But then Arthur of Brittany disappeared,” she supplies. “And you realized I was using time travel. That I’d gone rogue.”
He nods. “And now?”
“Now I’ve come back. I want my sister back, sir. I don’t . . . I don’t remember her, but I wish I did. And I’ve come to understand that I can’t accomplish anything on my own.”
“But you’re not on your own,” he says softly. “You’ve been working with naïfs.”
She swallows, nods. “Dumbest mistake I ever made. They don’t know what they’re doing. They’re reckless. Don’t understand consequences. I screwed up, sir.”
It was Almo himself who taught her that the best way to lie is to tell most of the truth. She steps closer to him, her right hand hanging close to her belt.
2071
The Prudence Zuniga who is with her sister in 2071 puts her hands on her hips and stops Wray and Miss Hodgson from entering the tent.
“Miss Hodgson, Captain,” she demands, scowling. “What’s happening?”
Wray stops, tries to think. She knows them. She’s already deserted the Farmers, already come to live in 1789. But this Prudence calls Miss Hodgson “Miss Hodgson.” Early, then. Her desertion is still fresh, her acquaintance with the people of Fleance Hall and its environs still new.
It’s strange to see her in drab trousers and a round-necked shirt, yet it suits her, somehow. Wray shakes his head. “There is no time to explain, but you sent us here to take your sister and her family to safety.”
Her scowl deepens. “I’m not letting you take her anywhere.”
“Damn straight,” comes Grace Zuniga’s voice, and she steps beside her sister, holding her pregnant belly.
“You gave us a password,” Miss Hodgson says. “Juniper.”
A shock passes over Miss Zuniga’s face, and vanishes again. “Safety. Safety from what? Is something happening here? And why didn’t I come myself, if it’s so urgent?”
“You are needed elsewhere, Miss Zuniga,” Wray explains. “We’ve given you the password. You must believe that we come from you.”
“You could have got that somehow. You could be anyone.”
God above, but she’s stubborn.
He steps closer to her. “On your arm, there is a tattoo, of a seedling. You told me once . . .”
“What? What the hell did I tell you?”
His face twitches. This is not a comfortable conversation, with everyone else looking on. “That you have never been able to keep plants alive. That you fear—” He stops there, doesn’t finish the sentence. Miss Zuniga’s amber eyes hold his gaze for a moment. She believes him, now.
“What’s the threat?” she asks, less belligerent now. “What’s going on?”
Miss Hodgson says, “General Almo is about to erase your sister out of existence.”
Grace Zuniga makes an exasperated expression. “I’ve told you, Prudence, I won’t—”
Prudence Zuniga holds up a hand. “Grace, if you go, the baby never exists either. Go. Get Alexei from the back and go.”
Grace closes her eyes, takes a deep breath.
“And what happens to you, Prudence?”
“I guess I’ll find out.”
1780
Charles King walks terribly quickly, despite his high heels. Alice waits, the reins in her right hand, her left free to help Prudence.
But Prudence has not arrived.
The moment has come; the moment has nearly passed. Alice can wait no longer.
Magpie responds to her like powder to a spark, cantering smoothly down the middle of the road, and there, there at last is the shimmer opening, just beside her. A man stumbles out through it, as if pushed, and lands on his hands and knees.
This must be General Almo.
And there is Prudence, behind him. She runs ahead of Magpie, and Alice slows Magpie to a trot as Prudence clambers up onto the hitching stone, and crouches, ready.
This is the moment when everything could fail. Alice breathes, keeps her fear out of her muscles and her pulse, for Magpie’s sake. She guides the horse to the hitching stone, feels Prudence’s right arm around her shoulders as Prudence’s left grabs the pommel, and Prudence’s weight suddenly on the horse behind her.
“Go!” Prudence shouts in her ear. But Magpie is already at a canter, and then a gallop, running toward Charles King.
The shimmer opens just beyond him, between him and the door of the Merchants Coffeehouse. The poor man looks up, sees that he’s about to be run down, and runs. Not into the road, but toward the coffeehouse. Into the shimmer.
Alice turns Magpie into it as well, and looks behind, sees General Almo running after them.
Then they’re through, and Magpie nearly tramples Charles King after all, who find himself in the main hall of Alice’s home in 1789. Alice pulls her back, the hooves striking the chequerboard floor.
Prudence closes the shimmer, but whirls to look at it anyway, as if afraid Almo might come through it.
On the other side of the hall, another shimmer opens, and four people come through. Jane, beautiful Jane, as calm as a summer day. A white man with a short golden beard, and a very pregnant woman in trousers.
“Prudence,” the woman groans. “Other Prudence. Later Prudence? I’m glad it was really you, anyway. But you’d better damn well know what you’re doing. This baby’s coming. Alexei?”
“I’m on it,” the man says. “We’re going to need some privacy. Somewhere where whoever owns this house won’t mind some blood.”
And Captain Auden, who looks up at Alice, in her borrowed uniform, on her borrowed horse. He is not smiling, but he says, “You did it.”
“We did it,” Alice counters, as Captain Auden offers Prudence a hand to dismount.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: A Dinner Party and What Comes After
1789
A week after the baby is born, and four days after her father is buried, Alice asks the cook to make a cold supper and lay it in the saloon, the long room up on the top floor of the house that occupies the same footprint as the entrance hall below.
It hasn’t been much used, this room, as her father left the top floor to the use of Alice and Jane, and they had little need of this part of it. Today, though, Alice wanted a different place. A place for not quite family, and not quite guests. The saloon is both spacious and private, tucked away up at the top of the house, and people can eat at the five little round tables scattered through it, more comfortably than at the grand table in the dining room downstairs.
The room is old-fashioned, the walls covered in faded brown-and-yellow tapestries and the ceiling in wood panelling, and the overall effect is too warm, too suffocating. She will have this room redecorated.
Still, it’s a good enough place to gather on this extraordinary evening, the first evening when all the residents of Fleance Hall are recovered enough from illness and grief to sup together: Grace Zuniga and her baby and husband, and the young man Arthur, who is well enough now to sit up and eat in company. A decision will have to be made, but for tonight, he’s here.
Charles King is recovering from nothing but extreme surprise and has been a whirlwind of activity Fleance Hall can barely contain, but there is nowhere else for him to go, at present, so Captain Auden has been occupying him with conversation. Captain Auden is here tonight too, the only person in the room who is not resident at Fleance Hall, although he might as well be.
Grace Zuniga and her husband don’t sit at a table at all but on a settee, picking at stewed fruit, nuts and bread, while Grace cradles her baby son. Prudence paces behind them, pausing in her path only when Alice interrupts it, hands her a glass cup of rum punch.
“We’re all still here,” Alice says.
Prudence nods. “It’s been a week. I keep expecting Almo to knock on your doors, nine years older and nine years meaner, having crossed the Atlantic in a ship. But he hasn’t. Maybe he’s mellowed. Maybe he died. Or maybe he found a TCC safe house and they figured out a way to let him shimmer again. I don’t know anything about this weapon they’ve developed, this shroud. The Black Spot, he called it. What an ass. I don’t like it.”
She looks up, across the room, and smiles. It’s a rare sight, and Alice follows her gaze, to the table where three men sit in strange conversation: the medieval princeling Arthur, a hunk of cold beef in his hand; Charles King, powdered to high heaven and sipping his punch with an arch expression; and Wray Auden, his own expression inscrutable.
Alice walks to them, and they all rise. “Please, sit.”
But Captain Auden stays standing, as if restless, and joins her at a little distance from the table. His face is even more animated than usual, a pregnant stillness that she can’t interpret.
She asks the boy Arthur, in her slowest and most careful French, whether he is feeling well, and he inclines his head, says something in response she can’t quite understand.
“His Royal Highness is nearly completely recovered,” Captain Auden supplies.
“And he truly wishes to stay . . . here?”
Captain Auden’s face goes pink. “The information Prince Arthur has, about the course of history in the twelfth century, does not lead him to want to return.”
“I see,” says Alice, with one corner of her mouth twitching to a grin at the information Prince Arthur has. “We must all make decisions about what seems most just, when our principles clash. Speaking of which, Captain, I did not have an opportunity to thank you for your presence at my father’s funeral, and for allowing me the time and freedom in which to bury him.”
“There is no reason to thank me, Miss Payne.”
“I can’t help but notice, Captain Auden, that I am still at liberty. May I assume this will be a permanent condition? I believe Jane kept the shackles from your medieval adventure. I can have her fetch them now for me, if you’d like.”
He swallows. “I have resigned my post as parish constable, Miss Payne. It seemed the only path open to me. The only path I was willing to take, rather.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says sincerely, her battle-grin dropping. “You were a magnificent constable. Truly. What will you do with your newfound leisure, Captain Auden?”
A small snort that might be a laugh. “New House needs my attention, as does the farm. I think I shall invite your Dr. Jenner to come and have a conversation with my milkmaids. Miss Hodgson is keen to encourage him to keep exploring the connection between cowpox and smallpox.”
“And what will Prudence say about that, I wonder?”
“She has given me her blessing, as a matter of fact,” says Jane, walking over to join them. “I am making plans to hold a regular salon, during which I will encourage England’s great men of science in ways that I suspect they will find profitable.”
Alice shakes her head. “Your knowledge should be profitable to you, Jane, not to them.”
“It will be.” Jane slips her arm through Alice’s and they look out over the room.
“Good God, this is a motley household, isn’t it?” Alice murmurs.
“It is a big old house,” Jane says contentedly. “I have a feeling we are going to put it to excellent use.”
The Most Recent Draft of History
1756: Alice Payne is born in Kingston, Jamaica
1759: Alice and her father come to England; he buys Fleance Hall
1778: Alice’s
father goes to America to fight (Alice is 22)
1783: Alice’s father returns, wounded
1784: Wray Auden buys New House
1788: The Earl of Ludderworth goes through a time portal
1889: Crown Prince Rudolf dies in the Mayerling Incident
1913: Franz Ferdinand narrowly escapes death while hunting in England
1914: Franz Ferdinand is assassinated and the First World War begins
1916: The Battle of the Somme
2038: Discovery of time travel
2040: Prudence and Grace Zuniga arrive in Toronto as child refugees from the future
2070: Prudence, Helmut and Rati set up Project Shipwreck
2071: Teleosophy begins
2091: The Berlin Convention on Organ Manufacture
2092: The History War begins
2131: Grace is born
2132: Prudence is born
2135: Invention of wireless remote EEG scanning
2139: The Anarchy begins
2140: Prudence and Grace are sent back in time by their parents
2145: Teleosophic Core Command
Acknowledgments
This book is dedicated to my parents, who have been supporters of my writing from the days when it was alarming my elementary school teachers. Their faith and wisdom made everything in my life possible.
It also honours Linda Nicholson-Brown, one of Alice’s first and most enthusiastic readers and a woman who brought joy and love to the world.
I’m grateful for the love and support of Linda, Shirley, Brent, Xavier, Ian and Jen, along with the rest of my wonderful family.
My thanks to my editor, Lee Harris, who believed in this book and made it better, and to all those at Tor.com and Macmillan who helped Alice step out into the world.
Hardly a day goes by when I don’t thank my lucky stars for the privilege of working with Jennie Goloboy at the Donald Maass Literary Agency.
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