Invictus

by Ryan Graudin

  Daylight was murder on the retinas, but Far did as instructed.

  “Who is this? I do not like surprises, Captain McCarthy.” The words held poison, the slow kind that killed you as soon as you thought you might be fine. “Nor do I like the noticeable lack of a package in your hands.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Eliot stepped forward, so that Lux had no choice but to see her. “My name’s Eliot. I’m the newest member of the Invictus’s crew.”

  “You’re nothing until you sign my contract,” Lux said, though his voice wasn’t nearly as strychnic as before. “Have we met? You look familiar….”

  “I have one of those faces,” Eliot told him. “It makes me very effective at what I do.”

  “What do you do?” the black marketer asked.

  “I’m a Renaissance woman. Dabbling here, meddling there. Recording, observing, snatching.” She held her palms aloft, wiggled her fingers. “Captain McCarthy is good at what he does, but I’ll make the team even better. You get one shot at each disaster because of timeline crossings, right? With twice the hands, you get twice the loot.”

  “A compelling argument. Or it would be, if you had any loot to deliver.” Lux stood. “Where’s the Rubaiyat?”

  Far’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He looked at Eliot, who was so hashing bright—white suit in sunlight—he had to shut his eyes.

  More fragments: Imogen’s smile when she first held the fluffball that would become Saffron. That time he played a game of chess with Gram and won—though there was a 99.9 percent possibility the Engineer had conceded the game to make Far feel better. Silver letters—I-N-V-I-C-T-U-S—engraved onto the hullplate, shimmering along with the realization that the ship was his, ready to go to anytime. Crux, what a moment. He could live in it forever. He could die in it now.

  Might as well get the unpleasant parts over with. “I—”

  Eliot cut in. “We have delivered it as promised.”

  Far’s eyes opened, unable to believe what they were seeing. An oak case. The oak case. Same size, same lock, perfectly polished. Eliot held the item in both hands, offering it to Lux.

  When Far was younger, he used to beg his mother to stop and watch the street performers in Zone 1’s piazzas. If you deposited a few credits into a living statue’s outstretched palmdrive, it moved: a sweeping bow, a wink. Do the same for a musician and they’d strum any song you wanted. There was an old man with an even older word processor who sat by the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi and wrote custom poems for wooing lovers-to-be. Far’s favorite performers were the magicians. They could make almost anything vanish—flowers, scarves, doves, playing cards—and reappear in the strangest places. As a child he’d been awed, filled with the wondrous sense that the world really was a place of magic.

  All of this washed over Far once more as he stared at the oak case. How was this possible? Lux accepted the item without comment. The book’s cover sprayed shine across the room when he opened it, glitter glancing off the villa walls. Imogen might’ve ooooohed and called them fairy lights; there was still enough magic in Far’s thoughts to agree with her.

  Three peacocks. Gold-lined pages. Jewels. All of it seemed to be there. Lux wasn’t a fan of seems, though. His inspection was thorough—involving tweezers and gloves and a magnifying glass that made his nose look comically large from the other side. Far kept waiting for him to cry foul, but the book was undeniably the book.

  Eliot had been telling the truth. She hovered by Lux’s shoulder, sending Far a smirk and wink in turn. He was too verklempt to gesture back. It occurred to him that he should be angry, nay, raging, but relief was the emotion of the hour. How couldn’t it be? Priya, Gram, and Imogen were safe. The Invictus remained his. Nothing was ending today.

  Lux set down the magnifying glass; his scrutiny refocused on Eliot. “Where did this come from?”

  “The Titanic’s cargo hold. London’s Sangorski and Sutcliffe bookbinders before that.”

  “Not historically,” he snapped at her answer. “Presently. There was nothing on your person when you walked in this room. How is it you pulled something out of thin air?”

  “I’m a smuggler,” Eliot said. “I smuggle things. The how would take all the fun out of it. My secrets make me the best in the trade, and if that doesn’t suit your operation, I’ll take my services elsewhere.”

  “Elsewhere?” Lux was caught off guard. His pause teetered. “I am the trade.”

  “If that’s what helps you sleep at night,” Eliot said, dismissive. “The world is a large place and time is even larger. The question is, do you want my skills working in your favor? Or beyond it?”

  It made Far feel slightly justified, that he wasn’t the only one Eliot threw for a loop. That she could make Lux Julio—a man whose very presence invoked a baseline of terror in his subordinates—go splotchy at the neck.

  “What might such a favorable alliance look like? I’m assuming you have a proposal.”

  “I do, in fact.” Eliot nodded. “I have a buyer interested in several artifacts from the Library of Alexandria that were destroyed in the siege of 48 BC. I’d take the job as a freelancer, but they want more scrolls than I can recover during the burn window solo. With Captain McCarthy’s assistance, I can get everything I need and more besides.”

  “The cut?”

  “Fifty-fifty. You. Me.”

  “Those aren’t my usual terms.”

  “It’s that or nothing,” Eliot told him. “The Invictus’s crew might be the best, but they certainly aren’t the only Academy graduates chomping at the bit for a spin through history. Consider my portion a finder’s fee.”

  The silence that followed made the room feel very fragile. Floor tiles, vases, the glass of half-drunk wine by Lux’s armchair—all of it quivered in anticipation of an answer. Far found himself shaking, too, a shiver that couldn’t be seen, only felt, taking root beneath his toenails.

  “Sixty-forty. Me. You. As long as you sign my contract.”

  “Fifty-five–forty-five,” she shot back. “I sign nothing. My clients remain anonymous. This is the best you’re going to get.”

  The mogul’s stare could break glass. Eliot’s could crack worlds. Far stood off to the side, watching what passed between them. All the fear and frustration this girl had stoked inside him had transformed into something else entirely. Admiration? Awe?

  “Captain McCarthy,” Lux addressed him without looking. “What say you?”

  “Two pairs of hands would snatch up more than one.” This conversation was a minefield—pocked with Lux’s anger and Eliot’s endgame. Far navigated his response with tiptoe words. “Eliot seems to know her way around history, and the Invictus is always game for a good disaster. From what I’ve heard about Alexandria—the salvage we get there could be invaluable.”

  “Invaluable. Yes…” Greed dripped down Lux’s lips. “Though I don’t like entering into agreements without a form of insurance.”

  “You have my image on your security feeds. That’s enough collateral to make anyone amenable, wouldn’t you say?” More magic: Eliot’s hand emerged from behind her, clutching a bottle of port. Its scripted label looked old but unaged. 1906. Fresh as yesterday. “Also, I picked this up from the Titanic’s first-class dining saloon, as a gesture of my goodwill.”

  Lux accepted the bottle, examining it like a second relic: blood-dark contents, cork made of actual cork wood, glass the color of deep-sea sorrow wherever daylight struck. “From the Titanic’s menu? Truly?”

  “Vintage and morose,” Eliot assured him.

  “Extraordinary.” The mogul turned back to the vista wall, where the city hummed through the afternoon’s golden haze. “Your goodwill has been noted. We have ourselves an agreement: fifty-five percent to me. The Invictus’s cut will come out of that.”

  Far glanced behind Eliot to get a glimpse of the port’s origins, but there was nothing to see. Strap-backed jumpsuit, crossed hands. Once more she’d put Far to shame—he’d thought
himself a master negotiator and here she was a sorceress, her sleight of hand so distracting that Lux hadn’t even done a background check. Shazm. If Far had known a vintage bottle was all it took to transform the black marketer from a kill you in your sleep control freak to a pat you on the back boss, he would’ve become a hashing sommelier ages ago.

  “We’ll get started with mission prep,” Far said, fighting back the urge to upchuck his hangover nerves into the nearby potted bougainvillea. Lux’s goodwill probably wouldn’t extend to vomit on his houseplants.

  The mogul ignored him. His stare slid from the wine label to Eliot. “Excellent haul. I’ll inform Wagner about the updates to our business agreement and have the payments processed accordingly.”

  There it was, said and done. Eliot had become a part of the crew. Far was still alive, thank Crux, but now he’d have to walk back through the cellar and draw his line into a life he had no agency over. One that spun at her whim, leaving him fearful, always fearful.

  What kind of future was that?

  24

  AN AGREEMENT

  ELIOT’S STEPS FELT KILOS LIGHTER WHEN she climbed back in the magcart. The meeting had gone as well as possible. Subject Seven hadn’t thrown any tantrums—a good thing, too, since it would have ended badly for him. He’d just stood there glowering as the drama unfolded. Oh, and what drama! Men like Lux were easy to bait; she’d given him everything he wanted—the Rubaiyat, some wine, the promise of more—all while upending his authority through technological trickery. Eliot acted on every cue, tossing breadcrumbs to get the scene to end the way she wanted.

  READINGS ARE 57% COMPLETE. REMEMBER CHARLES.

  So far she was on course.

  Seven reclaimed his magcart seat. His aviators were back on, making him look far more suave than he likely felt after so many vodka shots and a face-off with Lux. “Some warning wouldn’t have gone amiss, you know. Maybe a ‘Hey, Far, I actually do have the Rubaiyat and I’m not going to let Lux rip out your entrails and roast them for breakfast.’”

  “Lux is too refined for that.” Eliot clipped her safety belts into place. “I imagine he only eats eggs Benedict with a silver spoon.”

  The boy smiled. Eliot could tell he was trying not to—the fight of it all wrinkled his cheek. “Fine. My guts would be hors d’oeuvres, then, right before he’d drink my blood as an aperitif. Why didn’t you just tell me you could magic things into existence? It would’ve saved me a hundred gruesomely imagined deaths.”

  “Would you have believed me if I had?” Eliot traced the bracelet-that-was-not-a-bracelet on her wrist—holding everything, the least of her secrets.

  “I don’t know!” Seven’s expression snapped with his voice. “Maybe if you’d slice the shazm with all this cloak-and-dagger business and talk to me, we’d get somewhere. Hades, I’m not asking for a bottle of wine, just some goodwill explanations!”

  Subjects like Seven were harder to wrangle once they caught the scent of the truth. Eliot would need to feed him some, if they were to keep moving forward. “I don’t travel as light as I look. I have a—well, it’s kind of like an invisible, bottomless bag.”

  Far’s brows twitched over his glasses. “Got any mints in there?”

  “No.” Though there were plenty of other items: wigs, eyebrow pen, outfits for a vast array of times and occasions, extra storage for the memories she kept losing, a first aid kit, her laser knife, her gun. Thinking about the last item always made her stomach clench. “I keep it to the essentials.”

  Seven exhaled, and Eliot realized that mints actually were essentials. His was a special kind of halitosis. Hangover, stress, and morning breath all in one. “Anything else you feel like sharing? Like why we’re really going to Alexandria? Or why I keep forgetting what happened on the Titanic?”

  “You remember that?” Eliot figured he’d had enough Belvedere in his bloodstream to forget what he’d forgotten. She hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol and even she needed Vera’s prodding to gather what was being lost.

  “Hard not to. Usually you’re so composed, and the look on your face…” Far paused. A frown slashed his lips. “Ever seen your life flash in front of your eyes?”

  Eliot stared at the boy on the other side of the magcart. Her reflection stared back through the silver of his glasses, smaller than life, hardly recognizable with a fresh wig and What Abyss Waits shaded eyebrows. What could she say that was true? What could she tell him that he would believe? Nothing Agent Ackerman would clear, that’s for sure.

  Far went on. “I used to think it was a line poets pulled out of their tails when they couldn’t come up with something better. But this job gets dangerous: bullets, flames, the works. Once I started getting shot at on the regular, I realized there was truth in the saying. When you start facing death, all you can see is life. That was the feeling I just had in Lux’s villa. That”—he pointed at her—“was the feeling on your face last night. When you appeared on the Invictus, I thought maybe you were running some sort of con. But that wobbly landing, the memory gaps, your fear… those things add up to something bigger.”

  Their magcart sped along. Earth’s darkness cut through its windows again and again as they passed the tunnel’s lights. Bright, shadow, bright, shadow, life, death. The Eliot trapped inside the aviators flickered and squirmed.

  “When you showed up on the Invictus, you claimed you wanted a fresh start, which makes me think you’re running from something,” Far said. “You want to work with a crew? Well, here’s your chance. Take your thumb off my operation, come clean about what’s going on. Gram, Priya, Imogen, and I… we can help you.”

  Help? Had any of the other subjects been so generous? This olive branch was a stretch for him, Eliot knew. What a shame she had to spit on it.

  “What’s happening—you’re right. It’s big and very, very complicated. I can’t fill you in on the details.” There were too many holes and forgettings—all following her—and talented though this crew might be, they couldn’t stop what was coming. “I didn’t tell you about my storage situation because I wanted to demonstrate that I’m good on my word. I told you I’d deliver the Rubaiyat to Lux and I did. Trust is falling. Now you know I’ll catch you.”

  “Trust isn’t a plunge off a cliff,” Seven countered. “It’s something you build.”

  “Then consider this the first brick.”

  “No.” His voice edged to a shout. “Trust is a two-way street, Eliot Antoinette. Give and take. All you’ve done, from Versailles to Vegas, is the latter.”

  Eliot couldn’t stand her own stare anymore. Her gaze cut to the window. “When’s the soonest the crew can get prepped to depart for Alexandria?”

  “So that’s how it is? You’re gonna keep dragging me and mine through the dark? Use Lux to make us your compliant puppet ship?”

  “I need a timetable, Captain.”

  She watched the boy’s window face—just as transparent as hers. Bright, shadow, still, motion, bright, shadow, spite, surrender. “Depends on the mission. Imogen likes to get the lay of the land before we go tumbling into a new era. That means wardrobe, proper translation equipment, building schematics, a timeline down to the second, a backup wardrobe. All that can take from twenty-four hours to a week.”

  “She’s a good Historian. Thorough.” Perhaps too thorough. They didn’t have a week to spare. Even twenty-four hours was a stretch, though it was impossible to establish parameters within the Fade’s whim. “Could she get it done in twelve?”

  “Assuming this is just a snatch-and-grab?” Seven prefaced. “Yeah. Imogen might not think she can do it, but she can. It wasn’t just nepotism that got her a spot on the Invictus.”

  No, Eliot thought. It was trust. Thicker than blood, made of years and tears and toil. Seven was right. The feeling—though was it a feeling? It seemed to her more of a mandate—had to be built. But no matter how firm your bricks, no matter how high your wall, there was always a part of the act that became a plunge, because though your trust might
be steady, the world never was.

  Trust is built. Trust is falling.

  Give and take, take, take.

  Who would catch her?

  Ache curled over Eliot’s left lung as the magcart slowed into the light. They were back dockside, where the Invictus’s hull shimmered like a waterfall’s fringe. Gram waved through the vistaport, calling behind his shoulder to Imogen. Home filled Far’s sunglasses as he lifted a hand and waved back.

  No matter how long Eliot stared, all she saw was a ship.

  25

  CLICKS AND SWIRLS

  INVICTUS SHIP’S LOG—ENTRY 4

  CURRENT DATE: AUGUST 22, 2371

  CURRENT LOCATION: CENTRAL. HEART OF THE WORLD, BOTH ANCIENT AND NEW.

  OBJECT TO ACQUIRE: CLOTHES. LOTS OF THEM.

  IMOGEN’S HAIR COLOR: CELESTIAL NEBULA ’DO

  GRAM’S TETRIS SCORE: 380,000

  CURRENT SONG ON PRIYA’S SHIPWIDE PLAYLIST: “JAI HO” BY A. R. RAHMAN

  FARWAY’S EGO: ADRIFT. NOT UNLIKE A TOY ROBO-BOAT ABANDONED IN THE FONTANA DI TREVI.

  ELIOT: ISN’T HALF BAD. MAGICIAN STATUS VERIFIED BY FARWAY. DRAWS KILLER EYEBROWS. POSSESSES INVISIBLE BAG? OTHER DETAILS TBD.

  IMOGEN HAD TWELVE HOURS TO INGEST an entire civilization’s worth of knowledge. No biggie.

  [Insert maniacal laughter/endless weeping here.]

  The feat would’ve been easier if it had involved a more recent century, where documentation abounded. The 1990s with its addictive sitcoms and newspapers. The 2170s with its virtual reality chambers and pictogram feeds. But 48 BC had little to offer when it came to primary source material. Sure, Julius Caesar wrote a firsthand account of the fires he set to his enemy’s ships in Alexandria’s harbor, but even that was vague, stopping at the very flammable docks before the library’s destruction could be pinned on him. It was a frustrating endeavor—depending on the fallible accounts of victors to create a portrait of past events. Imogen couldn’t imagine how historians such as her great-great-grandfather Bertram managed it.