Here, the view down into the hall was much better. It was the ballroom of the mansion, the floor a black-and-white checkerboard, the walls papered in richly patterned green, covered with dozens of portrait paintings of all sizes. High windows—well above Billie’s position in the gallery—let in warm, bright sunlight, and high above, the hammerbeam roof was hung with myriad colored ribbons.
It was a celebration, and quite a formal one—and then Billie frowned, as she looked down over the people. She realized why their attire was strange. It was… well, old-fashioned. Billie had seen enough examples in paintings and even in newspapers, but she thought the scene looked at least—what?—twenty, thirty years before she had been born.
Where had the Shadow brought her this time?
Her eye was caught by two men below, dressed not in the rich velvet suits that looked far too hot for the sunny afternoon, but in sharp military uniforms, their jackets bright red, their tricorn hats trimmed with fur and a tall, colored pennant rising from the edge. They marched down the center of the room, the crowd parting with an appreciative murmur, and then did a smart about-face at the end. Stamping their feet, the one on the left drew breath.
“My lords and ladies, pray silence for his Imperial Majesty, Emperor Alexy Olaskir!”
As one, the crowd turned to face the ballroom’s main entrance, which was invisible to Billie as it was directly beneath the minstrel’s gallery. The string quintet, meanwhile, all stood and, with a couple of glances at Billie, began a much more strident performance.
The crowd below erupted in applause as a large man in an orange military jacket, which was festooned with badges and medals and crossed with a wide blue sash, strode out from under the gallery, acknowledging the crowd as he headed toward the two soldiers. Once in position, he turned to face the audience; Billie noticed a young woman with long black hair piled high above her head, red waistcoat bright under her black, high-collared jacket, move close to the Emperor, turning her body so she too was facing the audience.
Emperor Alexy Olaskir. Billie racked her brains. When had he ruled the Empire of the Isles? It had been in the late… seventeen-hundreds? Billie wasn’t sure, although she had seen his name engraved on a sizeable number of old coin, that was still used as viable currency in some of the more far-flung corners of the Isles. But that explained the clothing. She was in the past again—much further back, now.
As the Emperor spoke, Billie tuned him out, instead searching the room for the Shadow. But there was nothing, and no telltale drag on the Sliver, no flashing colors in her vision. Billie clutched tightly at the wooden rail of the minstrel’s gallery. The audience below laughed at something the Emperor said, dragging Billie’s attention back down to the room. She looked again at the young woman in the red waistcoat. Billie was sure she recognized her, but from where, she had no idea. This was, after all, at least thirty years before she had been born.
“Although she broke my heart,” said the Emperor, to another outburst of laughter, “it is with honor that I have accepted the kind invitation to officiate the wedding.” He raised his glass in the air, and turned to the woman in the red waistcoat. “Tomorrow, Vera marries Preston, and the houses of Dubhghoill and Moray are united at last. To the current Lord Moray and the future Lady Moray!”
As the audience repeated the toast and the string quintet started a new, celebratory number, Billie backed away from the gallery rail, allowing the Emperor and his host to vanish from her sight. She shook her head in disbelief.
Vera Dubhghoill. Soon to be Lady Vera Moray.
Better known to Billie as… Granny Rags. This mansion was the home of Lord Moray, and tomorrow she would become his wife.
Which made this the year… 1790? In twenty-seven years, the young woman would be a proud, middle-aged aristocrat, and she would join her husband on an ill-fated voyage to the Pandyssian continent. There she would meet the Outsider, and receive his mark, and Lady Vera Preston would become something else entirely.
Billie shuddered at the memory. She knew Granny Rags had been marked by the Outsider, like Daud. Years later, that same marked hand would become a powerful artifact wielded by Paolo, leader of the Howlers in Karnaca, granting him vitality, long life, and the ability to cheat death.
Now she knew why she was here. In Billie’s timeline, the marriage was an established fact, and set Vera Moray on course for her meeting with the Outsider.
The Shadow was going to stop it, somehow.
That was when the screaming began.
24
ESTATE OF LORD PRESTON MORAY, DUNWALL
25th Day, Month of Nets, 1790
Billie raced back to the gallery rail, pushing past the musicians who were fleeing in the opposite direction, half their instruments abandoned, half carried to safety. Below, the ballroom was filled with cries of terror as something attacked.
Billie watched in horror as the black smoke of the Shadow materialized around the Emperor, surrounding him in a spinning vortex of darkness. A moment later, it dissipated, and the Emperor, his face contorted in agony, collapsed to the floor.
His two bodyguards immediately sprang into action, with another four soldiers rushing onto the scene from somewhere beneath the gallery. But their efforts were fruitless. One soldier was tending to the Emperor, checking for any signs of life, while another had grabbed Vera and had shoved her behind him, trying to protect her as the Shadow attacked his colleagues. They fought valiantly, doing their duty to protect His Imperial Majesty, but it was to no avail; moments later, Vera and her protector lay on the checkered tiles next to the body of the Emperor. As the crowd of people crushed each other underfoot in the scramble for the exit, the soldiers fired shots wildly into the air, trying to hit the insubstantial form of the Shadow as it crawled through the air above their heads, diving down periodically to stab its blade-like claws into aristocrats and soldiers alike. But as the ballroom floor cleared, the Shadow spun and coalesced back into physical form, the strange, elongated body with wicked sharp-clawed limbs now stalking toward the soldiers as they protected the fallen Emperor and his dead host.
It was now or never. The Shadow was almost directly below the minstrel’s gallery. Maybe Billie couldn’t stop it. Maybe her knife would be as ineffective as the bullets from the soldier’s gun.
But she was going to try anyway.
She swung her legs over the gallery rail and, arms outstretched, leapt down onto the Shadow. As her boots connected with the thing, great clouds of black dust puffed out, stinging Billie’s human eye, cutting the insides of her nostrils like razors.
But she hit something. Somewhere, inside the arcane monstrosity, there was a physical form. As Billie’s full weight connected with it square in the back, it collapsed onto the floor beneath her, a great cloud of black dust exploding into the air around them.
Billie swung down, stabbing with the knife—and again, found some limited success as a splash of inky black liquid was sprayed across the white tiles of the floor. The Shadow roared in pain, the sound like the deafening crash of the ocean, and Billie’s head exploded in pain. All her muscles tensed at once, and Billie slid off the monster and lay, twitching and powerless, on the tiles. She managed to open her eye, and took a breath as the Shadow, dripping its foul ichor onto her, reared above, claw-hands raised, ready to tear her to pieces.
Paralyzed with pain, Billie could only watch as the Shadow raised one hand, curling its blade-like fingers into a crude fist, while keeping its index finger straight. That finger grew longer, the tip sharper, until it was a long spike. It held it in the air a moment, as if it was examining its new tool with its featureless, mask-like face, and then it lowered it, slowly, slowly, toward Billie’s face. A moment later, Billie felt the razor’s edge cut the skin below her eye—her right eye.
The thing was going to cut the Sliver out of her head.
Then the Shadow convulsed, and roared again. Hot, acrid liquid—the closest the creature had to blood—spat across her face, and then the pres
sure was gone as it lifted off her and spun around the room.
There was someone standing in front of her. Her vision hazy and sparking at the edges with the now-familiar red and blue aura, Billie couldn’t make out the figure completely. All she saw was a hand stretching down toward her.
Billie reached up and grabbed it, and felt an electric shock kick down her arm, jarring her senses. The person pulled her to her feet with one strong pull, and Billie realized the hand she was holding was hard, and cold, like it was made of…
She looked at the arm. It was a weird composite of freely moving shards, splinters of metal and wood, held together by some unknowable force.
Billie looked into the eyes of her rescuer—or rather, her eye. Because while one was human, the other was a glowing red ember in a dull, grayish silver surround.
The Sliver.
Her rescuer flipped the bronze Twin-bladed Knife around in her black-shard hand and the weapon dissolved into nothing.
“Come with me,” said the woman.
Then she—Billie, herself, somehow, impossibly—turned and jogged away. On the other side of the ballroom, beneath the minstrel’s gallery, was the swirling, shining form of a Void rift. Billie—the other Billie, the impossible Billie—paused at the threshold, her stern gaze fixed on the Billie being rescued.
Then she turned and walked into the rift.
And Billie followed… herself.
25
HOUSE OF THE FOURTH CHAIR, NEAR ALBA
Date unknown, Month of Darkness, 1853
The crypt beneath the House of the Fourth Chair was cold, shockingly so after the muggy warmth of Lord Preston’s mansion in that long-ago summer of 1790. Billie tumbled out of the rift, her knees hitting the hard flagstones. It hurt, and it felt good—the sudden shock, combined with the cold of the subterranean chamber, once more helping to clear her head.
And then she looked up. Her rescuer was standing by the empty tomb, arms folded as she leaned against it, ankles crossed. She watched Billie, her expression set. But Billie’s eye was immediately drawn to the weapon that was once again in her rescuer’s hand.
The Twin-bladed Knife, the parallel polished blades gleaming, sparking in the blue light from the rift.
Billie squeezed her human eye shut, and the Sliver likewise obliged. Except… she could see it, still, the Knife, a glowing yellow outline in a washed-out, magical view of the room.
Billie snapped herself out of it and stood. She watched her rescuer warily, her mind unable to comprehend what—who—she was looking at. She paused, trying to think of the right words, form the right question, but after a few moments she just shook her head. She was exhausted, her fight was gone, and events were spiraling well beyond the reach of her understanding.
The other Billie looked at her and nodded. She uncrossed her arms and pressed the heels of her hands against the tomb behind her.
“I’m sure you’re pretty confused about what’s happening,” she said.
Billie looked at her rescuer. Her face creased into a frown, and then she laughed. She couldn’t help herself. She felt tired. So very, very tired.
“You are me and I am you, right?” asked Billie. She paused. “I guess the rifts have done more damage to the world than I realized.”
“They have,” the other Billie said, “but it’s not just the rift. It’s you, as well.”
“What do you mean?”
The other Billie shifted her position and cocked her head. “Do you remember what the Outsider said? What was it, a year ago? More? From your point of view, I mean. But back then, when he visited us aboard the Dreadful Wale that night. When he took away our eye and our arm, replacing them with… this.”
The other Billie held up her black-shard arm, turning it in the air. Billie looked down at her own arm—the very same arm.
“He said that the world was wounded around me, and that I carried the scars.”
The other Billie pushed herself off the empty tomb. “And that time moves around us differently—that we now exist outside of it, part of this world and yet… apart.” She paused. “I came from another time—somewhere ahead of you, although it’s hard to tell how far now, as every moment I am here risks changing things. Time is malleable, and the more we push on it, the more it has the potential to change.”
Billie narrowed her eyes at her future self. “How did you even get here? Through the rifts?”
“I—we—can control them. You’ll learn how, soon.”
Billie blinked at that casual revelation. “Okay, so… what are you doing here? What’s worth the risk?”
“I saw what happened at the Preston mansion. I saw you—me—about to die there. I had to act, to save us. That seemed worth it to me.”
Billie chuckled. “Oh, trust me, I appreciate it. So that creature, the Shadow—what is it?”
“It’s the Queen of Morley. Or at least, a projection of her.”
“What?”
The other Billie nodded. “She has an artifact, something Void-touched. I don’t know what it is, or even where it is—that’s something I’ve never been able to find. But it’s given her power, the ability to see through the rifts into time. Letting her watch you. Watch us. That’s how she knows so much about us.”
Billie shook her head in disbelief—and yet, she believed every word of it. She stared at her future, possible, self. “And this artifact allows her to project herself into the rifts, as the Shadow?”
“Yes. It seems to be the only way she can move through time, in an incorporeal form. I—we—can travel a little more directly. I’ve been chasing the Shadow for months. It’s taking all my time and energy just to repair the damage that the creature is doing.”
Comprehension slowly dawned on her. “It’s changing history, isn’t it?”
The other Billie pursed her lips, and cocked her head again. “That’s one perspective. But for us, it’s not the only one. As the Outsider said, we exist outside of time—we warp it with our presence, time bending around us like a rock in a stream. So don’t think of it as history. Just think of it as time itself. That creature, whatever it is, is changing time.”
Billie looked around. The crypt was exactly as she had left it earlier. She assumed that the palace itself was still over their heads, that the strange Queen and King were still pacing the halls somewhere.
“But those things I saw, when I was dragged through the rift by the Shadow’s wake—they didn’t happen like that. If they did, well… I wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be here. None of this would be happening.”
“That’s true,” said the other Billie, “but like I said, I’ve been fixing it.”
Billie frowned. “So the changes are reversible? Time can be fixed?”
“While the Queen can only travel in her shadow projection, yes. But she has a plan to overcome that.”
Billie lifted her magical arm, and watched the shards of Void stone turn in the air.
“That’s why she brought me here,” she said. “She wants the Sliver and the arm. You said I’ll learn to control the rifts and how to travel through them. It’s to do with the Sliver, and the arm.”
The other Billie nodded. “Partly, yes. But combined with the artifact she already has, she’ll have full mastery of the rifts. She’ll be able to travel through them corporeally, and the changes she makes to time will crystalize, become fixed points on which the world pivots.”
“Okay, so, how do we stop her?”
“Not we—you.”
Billie stood, taking a hesitant step toward her other self. “You can’t be serious! You can’t leave now. You just said that time itself was in danger. We have to stop the Queen.”
But the other Billie shook her head. “Haven’t you been listening? The longer we are together, the more time bends around us. We are rocks in the stream. If I’m here too long, with you, then the divergence will become greater and greater as time pulls further and further away from its true course. More than that, it will become permanent. So I’m
sorry, but I can’t stay.”
Billie stared at herself, unsure what to believe, unsure what to do next. Her other self was… well, she was the same, wasn’t she? Her hair was shorter, as it was when she had saved Daud from the Albarca Baths. But it was grayer too. This Billie had come from the future to help her.
But which future? And how much help was she, exactly?
Billie sighed, and folded her arms. “I can’t do this on my own. If you haven’t been able to find the Queen’s artifact, how am I going to find it?” She gestured at the Twin-bladed Knife. “I’m not even sure you are from the right future. I can’t use the Knife anymore.”
The other Billie hefted the blade in her magical hand. “Yes, you can,” she said. “The Knife is part of you, like the arm and the eye—and you still have those, right? It’s true, none of them have quite the same powers they had before the Outsider fell. They are part of the Void, not him, and there have been other deities before and there will be new ones to come. But there was something different about him, and when he fell, the Void changed, as did those objects which are connected to it.”
Billie frowned. “I’ve tried to use the Knife a few times, but it never works. It’s like it is resisting me, fighting back.”
The other Billie looked nonplussed. “The only thing stopping you summoning the blade is your own fear. You think you’re different, that your powers have changed, and the Knife knows that.” Then she pivoted the grip in her fingers and the blade dissolved. A flick of the wrist, and the Knife was back in her hand. “You need to stop being so afraid. You’ve changed, but so has the world. The Knife is still part of you. So use it.”
Billie rolled her neck, then held out her black-shard arm. The other Billie watched, and nodded.
Billie narrowed her eyes, and called on the Void. For a moment, she realized she was afraid—of the pain, of failure, of being out of control of the powers she had been granted.
Dishonored--The Veiled Terror Page 19