The Isis Knot

by Hanna Martine

  Elizabeth peeked out from behind the corner of the bakery. Found Sera immediately. The crazy woman’s eyes were hard and focused. Her lips curled in a smile at the same moment her fingers curled around the edge of the stone building. She’d known where Sera had been all along. Which meant Sera was being hunted, and that Elizabeth’s wicked smile hid terrible things.

  William. She’d done something to William. The smugness could mean nothing else.

  Seth’s magic came alive inside Sera. Instantly, forcefully. The bloodlust Elizabeth had awakened up at Fort Philip tried to push Sera out of hiding. It wanted her to march right out in the middle of the street and face Elizabeth head-on as Sera dealt out death. A gunfight without guns, and no chance of survival for the madwoman.

  Sera closed her eyes, swallowing back the evil, pushing it far down inside. It worked for a second, but the moment she opened her eyes and saw Elizabeth stepping out from hiding and striding purposely toward her, the bloodlust came roaring back. Turned her body into a vessel for hate and killing.

  The face of Malik’s driver—the innocent soul who’d been hired off the street to take them up to the cave—came back to her.

  Never, ever again. Not even for Elizabeth.

  Sera charged out of hiding and into the open lane, but she didn’t head for Elizabeth. Didn’t allow the tunnel vision and death to channel toward the other woman. Instead Sera gritted her teeth, ignored the roiling in her gut and the shakiness of her legs, and veered to the right. Toward the barracks.

  “Help me,” she called to the pair of guards, waving her arms.

  The pace of Elizabeth’s footsteps picked up a fair distance behind.

  “Are you hurt?” one of the guards asked Sera, coming away from his lounge against the wall.

  Though a painful struggle waged inside Sera’s mind and she could barely see straight, let alone walk a line, she stopped and managed to get out, “I’m not, but that woman—”

  “No!” shrieked Elizabeth, her voice shrill and loud in the early morning. “Bolter! Bolter!”

  Now the other guard peeled away from the wall, frowning and starting for Elizabeth. Sera whirled to see Elizabeth’s reddened face contorted in rage, her finger jabbing right at Sera. “That woman is a bolter!”

  “That’s not true,” Sera tried to say. The sight of Elizabeth and the anger she created only made the bloodlust burn stronger. Her tongue felt three sizes too large, her head screamed, her hands ached from the strength of her fists.

  In light of Elizabeth’s accusation, the first guard now peered at Sera cautiously. All she could do was shake her head and wave her arms in protest. She could no longer look at Elizabeth for fear of what might be unleashed, and she couldn’t run, because that would only feed into the image of a bolter.

  “Calm yourself,” the second guard was saying to Elizabeth. “Speak plainly.”

  “She’s with them, the bolters. The ones you’ve been looking for,” screeched Elizabeth. “The tall one, Jem. And the other, William.”

  The guard near Sera looked up at William’s name, then furrowed his brow. “You know William Everard?”

  Again, she shook her head. Magic bubbled on her lips and doubled her over. If she opened her mouth to protest, Seth’s hell would break loose.

  “Liar!” shouted Elizabeth. “She bolted with them. Left her lawful husband, she did.”

  Sera drew several deep breaths. At least that was untrue. They could search for records of her sentence but they’d never find them, and Viv would never corroborate a story that she’d bolted.

  “And that William,” Elizabeth continued, her voice choking.

  Sera’s blood turned icy cold and then scorching hot.

  “What about him?” prodded the second guard.

  “He…he…” She cut herself off, breaking out in sobs.

  Sera started to shake, her heart feeling like it might vibrate out of her chest.

  “He…” blubbered Elizabeth, “…took me against my will.”

  No. Sera didn’t know if the word was a denial against the terrible lie, or if she was telling herself not to just kill Elizabeth this instant.

  “Did he now?” one of the guards asked. Sera didn’t know which. A hurricane roar had started in her ears.

  “He did. Up at Fort Philip. When he was done, when he released me, I hit him with a brick. I…I think I killed him.”

  Now Sera whirled. Now she could stand up straight. Her hearing cleared and so did her vision. Her eyes immediately found Elizabeth, who was smirking at her from the end of a long, narrow tunnel. Just like what had happened on the Parramatta street. Just like right before Malik had made Sera kill the driver.

  A gunfight without guns, and Elizabeth had just pulled the first invisible trigger.

  Elizabeth’s smirk said it all. It was hidden behind her woeful, tear-filled eyes, but her message was clear. Even though William hadn’t touched her, she’d done something to him. She really had hit him with a rock. She probably believed he was dead. And she didn’t care that she’d admitted it, because she knew it was the end for her, and she was taking down Sera as she fell.

  A whip of rage, violent and hot, lashed hard at Sera’s control. Snapped it easily. Her vision spun tight and narrow and Elizabeth stood in the eye of the storm.

  I want this, Sera thought peacefully. She hadn’t felt this before, this calm. It was alluring. It suddenly made everything easy. I want Elizabeth to die.

  An invisible wave of energy snaked out from her body. Mayhem loosed like a laser. So simple. Like a button she could push.

  The magic struck the scaffolding of the building under construction and folded one of the supports at a seam. The scaffolding buckled and broke. Right above Elizabeth and the guard.

  Reality slammed back into Sera. Maybe it was the sound of what she’d created, maybe it was the magic of Isis resisting what her enemy had made her do, or maybe it was just Sera becoming revolted at herself, but the dull, numb ease of the previous few seconds was cut away as she realized what she’d just done.

  “Look out!” Sera shouted, pointing, as the scaffolding collapsed. The bricks piled on top fell with loud, hollow clink clink clinks.

  The guard and Elizabeth looked up and saw what was happening, started to race out of the way, but Sera’s bloodlust took its own form, possessed its own mind. She tried to rein it in but it wasn’t working. The havoc was already out there in the atmosphere, still feeding on her anguish over what might have happened to William and her utter hatred for Elizabeth.

  A few bricks listened to the magic and the bloodlust, falling faster and harder than gravity should have allowed, their arc through the air turning unnaturally horizontal. One struck Elizabeth on the back of the head as she fled. Her body pitched forward. The guard caught her and dragged her away as the rest of the scaffolding fell down amid a swirl of dust. The other guard scrambled for them, taking Elizabeth’s limp arm and pulling her out of the destruction.

  Oh God, no. Sera had done it. She’d stolen another life, even though she’d tried to stop it. Too late, too late.

  She spun in the opposite direction, wanting nothing more than to get away, to sprint back to Fort Philip, but the magic was still active inside her. Another wave of poisoned energy lashed out from her, striking the pillar next to the barracks’ gate. The stone there dislodged as though an invisible giant had lumbered through and put his shoulder to the wall. The gate creaked and fell into the yard with a metallic screech and crash.

  Some convicts who’d come outside at the sound of the scaffolding collapse now pointed and whooped at the gate as if they’d pulled it down with their own hands. As if an open gate actually meant their freedom. More convicts poured out of the barracks and hopped up and down, waving their hats in circles above their heads, perverse glee filling the air.

  More voices, these ones worried and scared, rose up from behind Sera, and she knew that all of Sydney’s attention was on the barracks now. On the growing male mob that was filling the y
ard and climbing over the broken gate and spilling into the lane. It didn’t matter that they were allowed to roam Sydney during the day with tickets of leave. This disorder was a knife in the system that had changed their lives, and they were snatching their roles as criminals with both hands, releasing pent-up anarchy.

  Look what she’d done.

  Death.

  Chaos.

  Exactly what Seth wanted.

  Disgust doubled her over. The rage still twitched, wanting more. More tumult. More terror.

  Conversely, sorrow and loss and disappointment scooped her out, and she knew it was the despair of Isis over how she’d given in to Seth’s demands.

  Isis and Seth. Elizabeth and Malik. Ramsesh and Amonteh. William and Jem. Everyone she’d met and everything she’d experienced since the moment she’d bought that plane ticket to Cairo twisted together into a giant knot that lodged like a cancer in her soul. She wondered if she’d feel whole and normal ever again.

  Gathering all her strength, all her will, she caged the magic and straightened her crooked spine. Stumbled away from the dangerous pandemonium that was rising in volume by the second.

  The convicts spilled from the barracks yard and ran through the streets, down toward the water. Constables and British soldiers, and even colonists and emancipists fanned out to capture them. The awful sounds of fighting filled the air and made Sera nauseous.

  She had to get away. She had to get back to the fort and William. Elizabeth had hurt him, and Sera could heal. But if Elizabeth had killed him… God, she didn’t want to imagine it, but she had to. Could Isis’s magic bring someone back like that? Someone who’d been dead for longer than a second or two? Was she that powerful?

  And what if she wasn’t? What would Sera do then? Where could she go on this island of sin and crime?

  Maybe she should throw herself from the cliffs like William had hopefully done with Seth’s ring. There was no point to remaining here—in this place, in this time—if she had to live with this maddening tug-of-war meant for the gods for the rest of her human life.

  She was running now, sprinting past the barracks, racing for him. Racing to save him.

  He couldn’t be dead. She refused to believe it. She refused to believe that after all she’d been through, she’d be powerless to keep him safe and whole and at her side. She needed him. He’d been her sole piece of sanity since she’d awakened here, the only thing that had kept her calm, made her comfortable inside her own skin.

  No. That wasn’t quite true. He’d been the only thing to make her feel that way in her entire life.

  Not the guilty relief over her mother’s death. Not getting the hell out of Las Vegas. Not earning her GED or finally landing her first paying job. William had somehow managed to still the restlessness of her soul, and now he could be…

  A body flew out of the shadows, arms clamping around her and whipping her around. She was ready to fight again, and then she saw him.

  “You.” Shock and relief rippled through her.

  “Me.” That gruff English voice. That lined face. That presence that soothed everything.

  The chaos within her fizzled, diminished. Elizabeth hadn’t killed William, but a gash had been opened on his temple, blood wiped all over his cheek and chin and palms.

  “You’re alive. You’re…” she couldn’t finish.

  He smiled at her, but it was tight-lipped and grim, and dark worry covered his expression.

  “Hurry. Come with me.” He tugged her toward the wall that circled around the barracks, moving them away from the growing melee. “We need to get you away from here.”

  Needed to get her away from here? He was the one who’d been hit upside the head and left for dead. He was the bolter who’d walked right into certain arrest by coming straight to the jail manned by nearly every soldier or constable in the colony.

  He shifted his hold by interlacing his fingers with hers, and her mind circled back to everything that had happened since she’d left Fort Philip. “William. Wait. Stop.” She dug in her heels, making him turn back to her.

  Regret and guilt shuddered through her. “I think I killed Elizabeth. Seth…the magic…” God, she couldn’t even say it, let alone remember what that horror had felt like. How easy it had come to her and, for a second, how she hadn’t cared at all.

  He frowned down at her then glanced over her shoulder at the fighting and chaos eating away at the town. “You didn’t.”

  “But I did! This whole wall came down and some bricks flew at her like I’d thrown them at her myself and hit her in the head and I saw her go down.” She knew she was babbling, could sense how both her and Isis’s agitation were making her whole body shake. “I can go back. I can try to help her maybe.”

  He took her shoulders and turned her around. “Look.”

  Through the shifting violence of the mob, she could see where Elizabeth was still lying in the lane near the busted gate. One of the guards had run off, but the other, the one who’d first gone to her, had propped her shoulders on his lap. Her arm was moving in the dirt, and her head rocked slowly back and forth.

  Sera sucked in a breath.

  “You didn’t kill her,” William said in her ear. “Let’s go. Now.”

  She wriggled out of his grasp. “No. I said wait.”

  “Sera, don’t heal—”

  But she was already walking back toward the gate, crossing the fifty yards between her and the woman who’d dared try to take both the cuff and William away from her.

  The guard was talking to Elizabeth and gently shaking her shoulders. He looked up when Sera’s shadow fell over them.

  “I’m not a bolter,” Sera said. “I’m not even a convict. You can look in your ship records for Sera Oliver and you won’t see my name among the women.”

  He glanced around at the scene, where soldiers with bayonets were prodding some convicts back into the barracks’ walls, and constables were busy trying to repair the gate. The noise of the mob had spread closer to the water.

  Elizabeth was coming around and blinking blearily up at the sky. Sera crouched next to her but did not touch her. To touch her meant to heal, and it seemed as though Elizabeth would live.

  “You should know,” Sera told the guard, “that this woman is named Elizabeth and she killed her husband, Thomas. I’m sorry, but I don’t know his last name. Proof will be near Parramatta. She struck him on the head with an iron.”

  “Is that the truth?” the guard asked, his hands tightening on Elizabeth’s shoulders.

  “It is,” Sera replied. Justice was now in the Crown’s hands.

  Some sort of guttural moan came up from Elizabeth’s throat. Sera stood up, looked down once more on the woman who’d never leave this island alive, then pivoted and hurried back to William.

  He’d moved farther along the wall, away from the mob, and had wedged himself into the shadows between two long, low buildings that flanked the barracks. Another, undisturbed gate cut a barred hole in the wall, and William was standing, arms crossed, staring at it.

  “I’m ready. Let’s go.” She pressed herself against his side, pushing him out of Sydney.

  “Okay,” he said a delayed moment later, and at first she thought he was trying to be funny by using that word. But then she realized that all sense of rush had left his body, he hadn’t budged an inch, and that his voice sounded hollow and distracted.

  She followed his line of sight and her breath caught. There, on the other side of the gate, huddled away from the other convicts, his back set against the gate bars and his shoulders hunched over, stood Jem.

  CHAPTER 27

  Seeing Jem like that, alone again and contained within the Crown’s walls, made a mess of William’s head. He should be running now, taking Sera’s hand and guiding her far, far away from the mob, but the sight of the lad turned his boots to iron.

  “Do you want to talk with him?” she asked, coming to his side. Though she’d turned Sydney inside out with Seth’s magic, and threats to
her safety loomed around every corner, there was no fear in her voice. Only concern for what was right in front of her.

  Beautiful, fascinating creature.

  “No.” He extricated himself from her touch and started toward the gate. “I have something I want to tell him.”

  He didn’t bother to soften his footsteps. Ten feet away from the wall he called out, “Jem.”

  The lad stiffened then whipped around. Even though there were bars and bricks between them, when he saw William coming down on him fast, his eyes bulged and he took a fearful step back. His eyes darted to each side as though looking for cover—or looking for William, who no longer stood beside him.

  Jem could’ve run back into the barracks, but he didn’t. And the heartbroken look in his watery eyes told William exactly why. Sera’s assertion rang true. On another day he might have shifted uncomfortably beneath it, not knowing how to accept being the recipient of unrequited feelings. But today, right then, it no longer mattered. Jem’s heinous actions existed outside of that, and he would have to live with the consequences.

  “Will,” Jem croaked. “I—”

  “Things come and go in a man’s life, very little of which we can control.” He hadn’t known exactly what he wanted to say when he’d started over here, but now the words came frightfully easy. “But the one thing—the one thing—we have that is always ours, the one thing that no one can ever take away, is our honor.”

  Jem slumped and his chin worked back and forth.

  “I fought for you, I protected you, I guided you.” William gulped back the catch in his voice. “Someone once did that for me, and it made me a better person. It made me who I am. It gave me a life when I otherwise wouldn’t have had one. I looked up to that man, and yes, I might’ve loved him, but it was the strength he taught me to cultivate and hold on to that gave me a reason to live when so many times I would’ve given up. I never would’ve betrayed him. Not for a million pounds. Not in a million years.”