Passenger

by Alexandra Bracken

  He began to measure his hours by the calls to prayer he heard. Every time he sensed someone near him, his body instinctively tensed, trying to reach beneath his pillow for a knife that was not there.

  Nicholas woke to the sound of soft humming and ripping fabric, and turned his head to the side to see who it was. A young man sat on a nearby bed, a basket of what looked to be either white linen or rough silk resting beside him. The bolts of fabric were ravaged, ruined by gaping holes and tears; perhaps they had been donated to the hospital for bandages, or perhaps they had once been old bedclothes, repurposed now and given second life. The young man didn’t struggle in the slightest as he worked, tearing each into long strips. The holes had weakened the fabric, making it vulnerable to the force of his strength.

  Nicholas’s mind could not follow a straight path, navigate a single thought, without losing it to the burn of fever. But the image stayed with him, even as his eyes struggled with the weights dragging him back down. What was it about this simple task that spoke to him?

  Money…power…

  Tearing. Rending. Fabric. Time.

  The reason he was here.

  The reason Etta had been forced back.

  Time—they were nearly out of time—Etta—

  Etta. He needed to speak to Etta.

  It was night before his chance arrived, and a familiar voice filled the air. Nicholas cracked an eye open, watching Hasan speak to a barrel-chested older man in pristine robes. He tried to open his mouth, but the sound that came out was a pathetic whimper. Neither heard him until he cleared his throat.

  “My friend, let me bring you some water—” The older man, his hair as gray as the inside of Nicholas’s head, left with a brief look in his direction. Nicholas caught hold of Hasan’s robe before he could pull away.

  “Etta,” he said, carefully forming the word. “Bring…bring me Etta.”

  “It is late,” Hasan said, lightly scolding. “Would you wish for her to see you like this?”

  So she hadn’t been there at all? “Now,” he said harshly. He thought twice of it and added a softer, hopefully not desperate, “Please.”

  “Yes, all right,” Hasan said. He started to rise from where he had knelt beside Nicholas, only to return to his original position, leaning over his face.

  “Baha’ar,” he began, his voice soft; grave. “Do not die so far from the sea.”

  Nicholas closed his eyes, waiting, and did not open them again until he heard Etta’s familiar gait hurrying across the tiled floor. It was dark out now, the day edging into evening. Candles glowed around him, warming his bed with their light. He thought of their night together—the expression on her sweet face as she had gazed up at him—and felt his whole chest tighten.

  Her steps slowed, and he knew that he must have looked as horrendous as he felt. Her expression tore at his heart, made him want to take her pain away. He wished he could see one last smile before he told her the truth.

  “How about a kiss, hey?” he whispered.

  She seemed to smile in spite of herself, and slowly lowered herself to the floor so that she could press her soft, cool lips against his. When Etta pulled back, she left her hands on his skin, easing them along his cheeks, his forehead, his scalp.

  “Where?” he asked, clearing his throat again.

  “Qaymair—a hospital here in Damascus,” she said quietly, curling her legs beneath her. “I wanted to take you back to the house, but Hasan was worried about bringing strangers into it. And you needed a doctor, badly.”

  Nicholas made a sour face and she let out a light laugh. “Hasan has been standing guard. He barely let me in to see you before now. I had to sneak in under the cover of darkness last night.”

  “Alone?” He gave her a disapproving look that she ignored.

  “I got caught, and he dragged me off back to the house. You’ve been sleeping for most of the past two days.”

  Two days. Holy God. Only three days, then, to meet the old man’s deadline? His heart stirred with fear—for her, the woman responsible for this mad chase.

  “The men, were they caught?”

  Her hands stilled, and he leaned into her touch greedily to keep her from pulling back. “No. I’m sorry. Do you think they were guardians?”

  They must have been, if they had been tailing Rose and realized they’d stumbled onto an equally great bounty with Etta. Bloody hell, they hadn’t even managed to go a full day without being caught. What a worthless protector he’d proven himself to be.

  “You’re sorry I was hurt, not that you ran after her,” Nicholas said pointedly, grateful for the steadiness of his voice. “Was it really Rose?”

  “Yes—my own mother threw a knife at me.” Etta shook her head. “I can’t wait to tell her.”

  “Did she say anything to you?” he asked.

  “Just that she’d never let Cyrus or someone named Henry have the astrolabe,” Etta said. “I didn’t even have time to explain that we weren’t giving it to either of them.”

  Ah.

  He knew it was time. He knew that, aside from simply wanting to see her, he had brought her here to finally speak the truth. But now that Etta was with him, with her lovely face and bright heart, he found himself stalling.

  There is no way around, he thought. Only through.

  She’d pulled back his blanket enough for him to finally free his arms; he used his newfound mobility to reach up and take her hands, press them against his chest. Nicholas knew that she could feel his heart galloping.

  Her brows drew together sharply. She looked so tired to him, and he had little doubt as to who was the cause. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve something to tell you,” he began. “You must let me speak the whole of it. It’s imperative, you know.”

  “Can it wait until morning?” she asked. “You need your rest.…”

  It was just like her to see evidence that his light was fading, and deny it to the last. “I have not been honest with you. It cannot wait.”

  Etta leaned back, but he held her hands to him, anchoring her.

  “I didn’t simply come after you through the passage.…I was worried that, yes, you do seem to invite a considerable amount of danger into your life, but…after you went out that first night, went to sleep, Ironwood negotiated new terms with me.” His throat ached so badly, and he lost his train of thought momentarily to the searing pain in his side. “That I would go with you, attend to this matter, and ensure you did not try to make off with the astrolabe or cross him. It was my intention to bring the astrolabe to him, Etta, whether you agreed or not. In exchange, he would surrender his holdings in the West Indies to me, a vast fortune. Now I know the vast fortune will no longer exist once he changes the past and creates a new future.”

  Etta shook her head, her fingers loosening around his. For several moments, he was sure she was about to speak, but it could have been a trick of the candlelight.

  “Say something,” he whispered. “Please…say you despise me for withholding the truth, that you’ll never forgive me…say anything, just don’t hide your thoughts from me.”

  “I will,” she said evenly, eyeing him past a loose strand of hair that had fallen across her face. “Once I figure out the best way to cut out your heart and eat it.”

  The laugh that burst from his chest was little more than a weak chuckle. “I wish you would. At least then you might see the whole of the sorry thing, the absolute mastery you have held over it from the moment I saw you.”

  Etta’s eyes slid closed and she turned, trying to hide her expression—as if she could hide from him, after all this time. “I don’t want you to…to say something like that because you feel bad about keeping that secret. Do I wish you had told me from the beginning? Yes. But I kept the truth about not giving the astrolabe back to Ironwood from you for a long time. And it’s not like you’ve already given Ironwood the astrolabe.”

  “I lied to you.…” He couldn’t make sense of this reaction; he’d steeled himself for t
he inevitability of her rejection, her hatred, once she knew what he’d been planning. Nicholas could scarcely bring himself to breathe, lest he shatter the unreal quality of the moment.

  “But I know why you did. I know that much money would allow you to buy your ship, a whole new life. That’s what I want for you…to have the things you deserve. I want you to have that, and not feel guilty about how you got it. You told me the truth. You don’t have to give me poetry to ease the blow.”

  “I wasn’t motivated to take the deal solely for the reward,” he said. “You must know this. I thought I owed it to Julian to finish what we’d begun, and…I wanted to…I wanted to be near you. Protect you.”

  “Nicholas…”

  The truth, stripped bare to its bones, was that if he had cared for her any less, he would have walked away. Not even the full weight of Ironwood’s fortune would have been enough to tempt him alone.

  It was the quality of her feelings that shattered him—the pure belief and care that she had for him. He’d underestimated her, and he was more the fool for it, for denying this regard…this love for him. There was no other word to describe it. It truly was the same for her. The thought flooded him, filled his veins with equal parts relief and agony.

  He tugged her forward, until her resistance faded and she curled against his side.

  “Would poetry convince you of it? And now good-morrow to our waking souls,” he began, reaching into his memory for the rest of the lines. “Which watch not one another out of fear; for love all love of other sights controls, and makes one little room an everywhere.”

  “Now I know you really are unwell.…” she began, but he wasn’t finished. He could stave off sleep a little while more, for these last few necessary moments. If his own words failed to convince her, Donne’s would not.

  “Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone; let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown; let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.”

  “Just so you know, I’m expecting another recitation of this when you’re feeling better,” she informed him. The tremor in her voice stole some of its cheekiness. “Can you try for a time you don’t think you’re dying?”

  “Listen to me,” he said, hearing the way his words were beginning to slur. The heat she added to his already-burning skin could have set a man on fire. “You’ve already been delayed too long. Ask Hasan to take you to Palmyra in the morning. It’ll be a hard ride, a long one, but I know you can make it. I know you’ll make the right decision about what to do with it. I trust that your heart will know the right way forward.”

  “No,” she said. “I won’t go without you—”

  “Can you not bend your will to mine, just this once?” he said. “You know what’s at stake now. You must go.”

  “You’re my partner,” she said, her voice pitching higher. He tightened his grip around her. She was upset now, but only because she could see the truth of his words, the truth of his fate. “Don’t you dare abandon me now. I won’t go without you. I won’t leave you behind.”

  “You cannot go back,” he told her. “You must go forward—always forward now.”

  Etta pushed herself up, far enough to look him in the face. The tears collected in her pale lashes, but she did not let them fall. Instead, he saw her determination bloom again, and he understood himself so well then, how she could inspire the two warring parts of himself—the half that wished to be the proper gentleman she deserved, and the rogue that wanted her no matter the cost.

  “You are going to be incredibly embarrassed when you survive this, and I come back to make you answer for all of that poetry,” she said. “I swear, you eighteenth-century men are so dramatic.”

  “It’s…” he struggled for the word, rasping it out. The pounding in his head had only grown worse as his heart had sped up. He wanted to hold her in silence, know the planes of her soft shape again in these last few hours. “I wish it were as simple as choice.”

  Did people not die of fever in her time? Truly?

  “You sound like you’ve already half given up,” she said. “You have things to do for yourself! You’re not going to die here—I won’t let you!”

  The breath wheezed out of him, into him, but his tongue couldn’t form the words. He was fighting now to stay above the silver, silky call of oblivious sleep. His strength ebbed, pulling him back, past the point of choice. There was no choice. As much as he wished to strike back, to cling to this life until he wore his fingertips down to the bone, he had seen too much death to believe he could escape. Even with trickery and luck, a man only survived so many fevers before one finally claimed him in the end. But surely, if ever there were a reason to try, it would be her.

  Exhaustion crept over him, banished only for a moment as she kissed him fiercely.

  “I won’t leave you here,” she swore. “Promise me that you’re going to fight.”

  “I love you.” For whatever small comfort it was worth, he would have the truth between them now. “Most desperately. Bloody inconvenient, that.”

  “Promise.” He felt the first of her tears fall, slide down the length of his cheek. Panic made her tremble, so he drew her close to him again, hoping to steady her. He’d never felt time’s grip so acutely; there was so much he wished to say to her, and his chance was slipping away.

  “You will live.…You must live,” he continued. “I think you know…the truth of it is…I wanted to go with you. I wanted to see your home. I wanted to find that place for us, the one you spoke of.…”

  “It’s waiting,” Etta told him. “We just have to go.”

  She could shatter him with so few words.

  “When you play your violin, will you think of me?” he asked softly. “Sometimes…not always, or even often, but perhaps when you hear the sea and you remember…I should like to have heard you…just once.…”

  “Nicholas,” she said sharply, holding his face between her hands, drawing him back from that steep, dark edge again, “if you die, I’ll never forgive you. I don’t care if that’s selfish—I don’t. Fight.”

  Love was selfish, wasn’t it? It made honest men want things they had no right to. It cocooned one from the rest of the world, erased time itself, knocked away reason. It made you live in defiance of the inevitable. It made you want another’s mind, body; it made you feel as if you deserved to own their heart, and carve out a place in it.

  You are mine, he thought, watching her, and I am yours.

  “Tell me…just one thing…about your time?” he managed to get out.

  “Of course,” Etta said.

  “Do you remember…that couple in London, in the station?”

  “The ones who were dancing?” she asked. “What about them?”

  “Would we…be able to dance…that way?” he said, finding it harder to catch his breath. “In your time?”

  Etta pressed her lips together, clearly fighting to offer him a smile. “Yes.”

  “Thought so. Will you stay…until I sleep…?”

  She kissed his cheeks, his eyelids, his forehead, leaving behind a burning trail across his heart. His breathing slowed, his heart seemed to murmur an apology in response…a slow thump thump thump in his ears that reminded him of a ship’s rudder changing course. A gradual slowing, and then…

  Not like this.

  Not a whisper, please God, but a roar. He needed to finish this journey before beginning the next.

  “Fight,” she whispered one last time, breath warm against his ear.

  For you, his pulse throbbed back, for me.

  NICHOLAS WAS ONLY DIMLY AWARE OF ETTA AS SHE PULLED AWAY; he was locked somewhere between sleep and the fiery hell of fever. There was no feeling left in his arms to reach for her, and his legs might as well have been cut away for all he could shift them. All that was left to him was pain, alternating between the agonizing row of stitches in his side, and the beating inside his skull.

  He slept hard, his dreams scalding and bright. He dreamt of the house on Queen Str
eet, that path he took between the kitchen and the hidden door in the dining room to serve the family their meals. Stay out of sight. Stay in the dark. Stay silent. He dreamt of his mother’s hands—how strange it was to remember their shape and weight and touch when her face was so far away. The pink scars and burns that covered the back of them, evidence of her endless work in the kitchen.

  She was always smoothing him—his shirt, his hair, the dirt and blood from his face. He remembered her hands, hideously deformed and hardened by work, but warm, and there when he reached for them—

  Nicholas dreamt of burning the house to its bones and pissing on its ashes.

  And so it was somewhat startling to be suddenly ripped out of sleep by a splash of warm water.

  “Baha’ar! Wake! You fool!” Hasan was bellowing, his voice nearly unrecognizable as he slapped a hand down onto the center of Nicholas’s chest. He used a word he assumed was a rather violent oath, because it made the solemn doctor standing nearby gape.

  The shock of it cleared the smoke clouds from his mind. Nicholas felt much like a cloth that had been wrung out and left in the sun to dry. Every muscle in his body screamed in protest as he drew himself up ever so slightly and leaned against the wall.

  “What is it?” he rasped out. “Why are you ranting like—”

  “Fool!” he barked again. “What did you tell her?”

  He missed a breath. “Etta?”

  “Who else?” Hasan cried. “Why did you tell her to leave?”

  It was at that precise moment that Nicholas knew that he would survive, if only to have the pleasure of throttling her himself. And, well—yes, he was mildly embarrassed by the show he had put on the night before.

  “First, you should know it is bloody well impossible to compel her to do anything she doesn’t wish to do. I told her to ask you to take her—that she should leave by morning.” It was morning now, early morning, before the sun was even ripe in the skin. The darkness diminished with each passing second.

  His anger, that immediate, swift response, was fading with it. Etta could be impulsive, yes, but she was not so reckless as to try to make a journey across a desert alone. And even if that were the case, where would she have gotten herself a horse? How would she know where to go? Etta didn’t speak their language, she didn’t have a map.…