With the coins the old man had given her, and some careful gesturing, she was able to buy a loaf of bread and a small glass of lemonade from a vendor. A sympathetic man was willing to move the queue behind her along by translating, and giving her the last bit of money she needed.
By the time she had made it back to Nicholas and the fountain, he’d come back to himself and was on his feet, pacing—looking for her. The relief that crashed over his features made her rush over to him, careful not to let too much of the lemonade slosh out onto her hand.
He pulled the food and drink out of her hands, setting them aside, and wrapped his arms around her. She did the same, standing on her toes, arms locked around his shoulders, and did what she’d wanted to do from the moment she’d left him there: hold him until he finally stopped shaking.
She didn’t care about witnesses. When she rocked back onto her heels, releasing him, she gestured to the bread. “I paid good money for that! You’d better eat every last bite.”
“Every last bite,” he promised, even as he tore a piece off for her. He took his seat again with a sheepish look around them. “I have to confess, I’m surprised they haven’t marked us as vagrants and thrown us out yet.”
Etta decided not to tell him where the money for the bread and drink had come from. Instead, she watched his fascinated, puckered reaction as he took a sip of the lemonade.
“My God,” he coughed, pounding his chest. “When does it stop burning?”
“In all of your travels, you never had lemonade?” she asked. “What? Only beer and wine for you?”
“Better than diseased water.” He tore the small loaf in half, bringing his piece up to his nose to smell it. The obvious pleasure on his face gave her a flush of happiness, too.
“What happened?” she asked softly.
He took a steadying breath, looking out over the water again. “I thought that woman…I caught a glimpse of her as she was hurrying across the park, and for an instant, I truly believed she was my mother.”
Etta felt the world shrink around them painfully, tighten around her shoulders, until it hurt even to breathe.
“I know it sounds mad, that it was bloody reckless, but the resemblance was uncanny. Of course it wasn’t her. She’s long dead by this year. I know it, but it was as if—” He folded his hands in his lap, shaking his head. “It was as if, for a moment, the clouds of the past cleared and gave her back to me.”
Etta leaned against his shoulder, wishing there was something she could say. “Did you ever find out what happened to her?”
He nodded. “While I was gallivanting with Julian, Hall finished the work I’d begun in searching for her—she died in South Carolina, in 1773, of a fever.” Nicholas managed to choke out one last word. “Alone. I’m not even sure where they buried her. Hall thought that, even with my papers, it was too dangerous to attempt to find the grave.”
“I’m so sorry,” she breathed out.
He rested his face against her hair.
“I haven’t many regrets in my life,” Nicholas said, “and I suppose I should be grateful that there’s just the one. As much as I do blame Ironwood, I can’t divide myself from the guilt. I should not have accepted Ironwood’s offer, and left the sea to travel. Then, perhaps, I might have found her in time, and purchased her freedom. Julian would not have fallen; I’d be free of every shackle this family has tried to place on me.”
Etta understood all too well what this kind of regret felt like as it burrowed deep inside of you. She would do just about anything to relive those last few moments with Alice, but even traveling was out of the question. She couldn’t exist in the same place—the same year—twice.
But Nicholas hadn’t been in 1773. At least not all of it. She was almost afraid to ask.
“Isn’t there a passage you could take to that year? I know you can’t save Julian, that it would change too much. And if she was sick, not even you could have kept her alive. But maybe…maybe it would bring you both some peace?”
He shook his head. “There isn’t a passage to that year. I’ve thought this through a thousand times—I’ve considered how I could get a message to Hall in the past, to keep myself from going. But as much as I wish I’d made a different choice, I can’t bring myself to be quite that selfish. To risk all of those changes rippling out.”
“When you told me I couldn’t save Alice, you spoke from experience.”
“I should have told you the whole of it,” he murmured.
This memory was clearly something he kept buried deep, a dagger he kept wrapped in layer upon layer of distraction, to avoid cutting himself by brushing up against it. She understood and respected that.
“That’s an easy fix, though,” Etta said. “Before, you didn’t have the astrolabe.”
He sat up, pulling away. She’d managed to shock him again. “Etta—”
“No—don’t shake your head like it’s impossible. It isn’t. We could take the time to create a passage for you, before we…”
“Before we give it to Ironwood?” he prompted, with obvious suspicion in his eyes.
She nodded, hating the lie. “This is all simpler than you want to think it is.”
His lips compressed into a tight, unhappy line. Why couldn’t he believe that this was a true possibility, that he could have everything he wanted? Why was he reluctant? Nicholas didn’t want to continue traveling; but one last trip to see his mother, to be with her and ease his mind—wouldn’t that be worth it?
“Regardless, we need to find the bloody thing first, which means that it’s especially lucky that I’ve figured out the clue.” Nicholas spread his hand out on the stone banister that ran along the water’s edge. “You brought us right to it.”
“You mean…” Etta followed his gaze back to the fountain. “Bring a coin to the widowed queen.”
“This is the Medici Fountain, built by Marie de Medici, the widow of Henry the Fourth of France, isn’t it?” Nicholas gestured to the fountain. “Julian brought me here to chase the skirt of some girl he’d seen on the street. If there’s one thing that’s true of all Ironwoods, they love to lecture and give unsolicited history lessons.”
Etta nodded. The stone on the fountain had been carefully worked; two figures sat atop columns that were interspersed with more sculptures. At the very center were three more statues: Polyphemus Surprising Acis and Galatea, with the hulking bronze cyclops, Polyphemus, peering over a boulder, and the ill-fated lovers carved out of white marble. Her mother loved and specialized in the conservation of works from the Italian Renaissance, and this fountain had used elements of that in its classic grotto style. To Etta, it was an obvious connection.
Nicholas blew out another ragged breath, burying his face in his palms. Etta reached over, stroking his hair in reassurance. She wasn’t sure what was upsetting him more: that he had drawn so much unwanted attention to himself, or that he’d let himself get his hopes up. When he still seemed distraught, his muscles tensed, she took his hand and threaded their fingers together. He returned her soft squeeze with one of his own.
“Bring a coin.…” she muttered. Of course—you brought coins to fountains to make a wish. “I think you’re right.”
She pulled the harmonica out of the bag again with her free hand and brought it to her lips. Her shoulders locked as she braced herself for the deafening ripple of noise to wash over them.
“Wait,” he said before she could blow into it, his hand closing over her wrist. “Etta, I need to tell you something—”
The sudden crack of the passage sent them both to their feet. The harmonica skidded to the edge of the water, forcing Etta to dive in order to save it. Nicholas’s arm lashed out as she started to rise, keeping her down as he craned his neck around.
“I didn’t—” she started to say. I didn’t play the chord. But if the passage was letting out its usual blistering cry, then—
Two figures stepped out from behind the fountain, dropping bags and shrugging out of black tuxedo jacket
s. One, a tall chestnut-haired man, clawed at the bow tie around his neck, laughing deeply at something the shorter, blond young man beside him was saying. Both were handsome, and there was something familiar about them—Etta couldn’t place it, not until the one with dark hair looked up, and his icy blue gaze fixed on her.
In that moment, she wasn’t sure who was more shocked: Nicholas, who sucked in a sharp, alarmed breath; her, as she realized that this man had the same eyes as Cyrus; or the man himself, as he went chalk white and called out, “Rose?”
Nicholas hauled her up from the ground and said a single word: “Run.”
Nicholas’s longer legs ate up the ground with ease, forcing her to double her speed just to keep up with him. The men and women taking in the sunset scattered.
“Rose!” the man shouted. “Rose!”
“Damn it all,” Nicholas swore.
The gunshot sent the Parisians scattering in every direction like a colorful array of feathers. Another shot rang out, blistering the skin of the tree beside Nicholas and sending down a shower of leaves and bark.
Before she could think about why it was a bad idea, Etta reached across Nicholas into the leather bag. She closed her fingers around the handle of the gun and whipped it out. The back of the gun’s body had a kind of hook—Her thumb caught it, pulled it back, and with the slightest pressure on the trigger, a bullet exploded from the gun.
The reverberation shot up through her bones; her eardrums winced at the deafening sound. But it had the desired effect. The travelers broke off from behind them.
“Bloody hell!” Nicholas swore, spinning to look at her. “You liked that, didn’t you?”
She shrugged. Maybe a little. Enough to want to try again, and actually aim this time. Wisdom, however, prevailed, and she surrendered the gun to the more experienced marksman as they ran.
Nicholas led them across the garden’s green lawn and through the trees, until they were outside of the park and darting across the street. He followed the curve of the road, shouldering through startled onlookers, and ducked into a tight alley. When he crouched down behind some stacked crates, she followed, her chest burning so fiercely she was afraid she’d be sick.
“Bloody hell,” he said again, shaking harder than before as he touched a cut on his shoulder. Had the bullet actually grazed him?
“Who?” she panted, leaning forward, trying to see around the crates.
Nicholas leaned his head back against the dank stone wall behind them. “My father. Augustus Ironwood.”
Etta had suspected—she’d seen those eyes and recognized the look of Cyrus, his nose, his brows, on the younger man. But more than that, she’d seen the flash of anguish cut across his face as he’d called her by her mother’s name.
“Are you all right?” she asked, touching his arm.
“Not the first time that man’s nearly killed me,” he said offhandedly, “but hopefully it will be the last. Christ, I didn’t think I’d ever see him again. Bloody time travel, bloody—”
Oh my God—Etta thought she’d understood this before—that, even after a traveler died, there was still the chance of bumping into them again at some point in history. Each passage was fixed to a specific year and location, but not a date. What were the chances that they’d managed to land on the exact time that a past version of his father had decided to show up?
“The irony of seeing him…” Nicholas shook his head, accepting her touch as she ran the backs of her fingers down his face. He caught them, twining them between his own. His gaze was on the opposite wall, but she saw the emotions storming within him.
Why would her mother hide the astrolabe in a place where the Ironwoods clearly had access to the passage?
Because she hadn’t.
When Etta closed her eyes, thought of the wall of paintings, traced the line of her mother’s stories to the last one she could remember, it brought her here; it was about her being accepted at the Sorbonne for art history. That was the last piece on the wall.
No.
Etta sat up so suddenly that Nicholas turned to her, worry etched on his face. The painting of Luxembourg Garden wasn’t the last one on the wall—or at least her mother had told her she was planning to switch it out, for—for that new painting, the one she had done of the desert in Syria. She had told Etta she was going to replace it. She had woven in that story about the earrings, the market in Damascus, the woman who had sold them to her. And, as Etta was discovering, her mother apparently wasn’t the type to do something for no reason.
Are you listening, Etta?
You won’t forget, will you?
“Remember, the truth is in the telling,” Etta said slowly. In other words, what she told me overrules anything she’s written?
Maybe her mother had moved the painting at some point after writing the clues out—or had it been meant to be a false lead, on the off chance that Ironwood figured out her set of clues, and picked up her trail? In either case, they were in the wrong city, the wrong time.
“We have to go back,” she said. “We missed something. We’re not supposed to be here.”
“But you said…” Nicholas’s brow wrinkled. “Are you certain?”
“Positive,” Etta said. “Can we get back to the passage to Angkor?”
“We can damn well try.”
AS THEY BOTH FEARED, THE AUTHORITIES HAD BEEN CALLED TO Luxembourg Garden after the disturbance, and Etta felt a shiver work through her at the thought of it being written up in the papers—of there being a witness, a record of the event. They’d been so careful until now.…
“I wouldn’t worry,” Nicholas said. “I think…perhaps this was supposed to happen.”
She looked up, startled. They were keeping to the very edge of the garden, weaving in and out of the outer ring of trees. The uniforms of the police blended in with the dark suits of the men giving their statements and accounts, offset by the pops of vivid color that were the women.
“In Virgil’s letter he referenced a sighting by my—that Augustus had, of Rose in Paris. Perhaps this was it?”
Perhaps. But that was almost too insane for her to accept. It took away the idea that she had free will in any of this; it seemed to suggest there was a set path that they were already on, and had been on from the beginning.
“Or perhaps it’s only a coincidence,” he said.
The passage was only humming by the time they found it, rippling in the darkening air. Nicholas forced her to wait a moment while he prowled through the trees, his pistol drawn, to make sure they were alone. When they finally stepped through the passage, the crushing pressure felt familiar, like a too-tight embrace, but not like an attack against each one of her senses.
The entrance spit her out at full speed, and Etta found herself slipping forward onto the stone, pinwheeling her arms to try to slow down. Her weight carried her forward until her toes hung over the edge of the terrace, forcing her to sit to avoid falling on her face.
“Etta? Where are you?”
The darkness in her vision wasn’t from traveler’s sickness, then—the sky was as black as coal around them.
Same day, she thought wearily. Different time-zone.
A heavy set of clouds blocked out the moonlight and the stars. In response, her other senses came alive again: the sweet, rotting smell of the jungle as it decayed and bloomed in turn. The sound of small raindrops striking the stones and leaves. Nicholas’s hands brushing the top of her head as he felt around in the darkness.
“I am praying to God that that’s you and not another tiger.”
Etta laughed. As if in response, a cloud peeled back just enough for a thin shaft of moonlight to sneak down and make the puddles glow.
“Quick—where’s the harmonica?” said Nicholas.
He released a single, powerful breath and winced as the passage screamed back in response.
Her ears, already sharp, were beyond sensitive when all of her other senses were swamped; it reminded her of all of the times that Oskar had
demonstrated a technique and asked her to close her eyes to truly focus her ears on the difference in tone or sound quality. The layers she heard before were easier to separate now, like sections of an orchestra.
There. She’d been right before.
“Do you hear that?” Etta asked.
Nicholas said, “All I hear are Satan’s hammers and the war drums of hell, thank you.”
Etta shushed him.
He fidgeted impatiently. “I mean no disrespect, but perhaps…”
“Listen,” Etta said, and then began to hum, matching the pitch of the low, growling snarl. It changed without warning; she adjusted the sound until it was sharper, higher, a match to a trilling his ear had ignored.
Each gate seemed to deliver a veritable mess of sounds as they struck the air, but these two were so different in their nature, cast at such different pitches, that she was angry with herself for not investigating it before. There were two calls woven together. Two passages.
“So there is another one here,” he said. “I can hardly hear it.…”
Etta turned, trying to decide where it was coming from; the stones bounced the sound around, disguising its true source.
Nicholas swung his gaze around wildly, searching for the ripple of air, the glimmer of the second passage’s entrance.
When he turned back to her, he was smiling. “I know where it is.”
“You do not!” Etta said, standing on her toes and searching herself.
“I do believe that one goes under my tally,” he said, obviously enjoying her outrage.
“Have you been keeping score?” she demanded.
“You haven’t?”
All right, fine. “I figured out how to find the one in London.”
“We found the passage to Paris together, and the old man figured out the location of the passage in my time,” he said, “so, no points awarded for those. We’re one for one, pirate. An even draw.”
That…didn’t sound so terrible after all. “How are you so sure?” she asked.
“You may be a lady with the ears of a dog, but I’ve the eyes of a hawk,” he said, pointing up at the top of the Phimeanakas, the temple across the way. Hundreds of steep stairs led up to the grand entrance…and to a wavering blanket of air that sparkled like its own starry sky. “And I do believe that is the passage we’ve been searching for.”
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