Never a Hero, page 34
“You must know something of how this will happen,” Joan said to Ying. Astrid had never told the Lius that she’d sided with Nick, but it seemed she’d shared her memories of the future with the other heads of her family. And Tom had said that the Lius were the scholars of the timeline. They’d surely figured at least some of it out. “You must have some idea.”
“Of how the timeline will be changed?” Ying asked. He bowed his head, and Joan had the impression again of sorrow, of resignation. “Yes, we have our suspicions.”
Joan sat forward.
“You understand the theory of change?” Ying said. “That something of significance must be changed if the path of the timeline is to be altered?”
“Yes,” Joan said.
“The timeline resists change,” Ying said. “But the Lius believe that there are certain places where the timeline is weak. We suspect that when a significant event overlaps a weak area of the timeline, change is possible.”
And now Aaron was sitting forward with Joan, a frown on his fine-boned face. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Joan took in what Ying had said. Had she been at a weak place in the timeline when she’d unmade Nick? She’d taken time from herself to escape from Nick’s prison, but she didn’t know what time period she’d landed in. And Nick had followed her there. . . . Had they ended up in a weak area of the timeline?
“These are only theories,” Ying said to Aaron.
“Then theoretically . . . ,” Nick said intently, “do you know where we can find these weak areas of the timeline?”
“No,” Ying said, and Nick sat slowly back in his chair, disappointment tightening his mouth. “I’m sorry,” Ying said. “I cannot tell you what you wish to hear—that you can stop this. The truth is, we are already seeing signs that this timeline is coming to an end.”
A cold wind blew across the river, raising goose bumps on Joan’s arms. “Signs?” she said.
“Signs of disruption to the timeline; signs of a breakdown. Signs we saw at the end of the previous timeline.”
“What signs?” Joan asked.
Ying looked down at his tea, and shadows deepened the creases of his face. He sighed. “What do you know of fluctuations?”
Joan felt herself tensing, uneasy without knowing why. The term was familiar. Corvin Argent had spoken of fluctuations, and so had the gamblers at the Wyvern Inn.
Beside her, wool rustled as Aaron shifted his weight. She felt his eyes graze over her. Or thought she did—when she turned, he was sitting up, alert, looking at Ying.
“I don’t know what fluctuations are,” Joan said to Ying slowly.
“In general, they are a normal part of the timeline,” Ying said. “They are created by us. By monsters. We time-travel, and that means that the timeline must compensate for us. For example . . .” He thought for a moment. “If I were to hail a hackney cab right now, I would likely take the place of a human who would have hailed that cab. Imagine I caused that human to miss a meeting. And now imagine that it was a significant meeting. I would have altered the timeline just by going about my everyday life.”
It was how Aaron had described time travel at the boathouse—he’d thrown a stone into water and pointed out the cascading ripples. “But the timeline would smooth out your changes,” Joan said. “It would arrange for the meeting to happen at another time, or for the cab to drive past you without stopping.”
“Yes,” Ying said. “A cab driving past . . . a rescheduled meeting . . . These are examples of fluctuations. The everyday corrections made by the timeline.”
Joan swallowed. She did know that mechanism—only too well. It was why the timeline kept bringing her and Nick together. Jamie had explained it once: If people belonged together in the true timeline, then our timeline tries to repair itself by bringing them together. Over and over and over. Until the rift is healed.
Only for Joan and Nick, that rift could never be healed. Too much had come between them. . . .
“Why are we talking about fluctuations?” Aaron said. He was tense too, Joan realized then. He’d been wary at the beginning of this meeting, but the turn in the conversation had him leaning forward, fully attentive.
Ying put his cup back onto the tray. “The Lius remember what others don’t. We, alone of all the families, remember both the original events and the corrected ones. The cab arriving and the cab driving past.” He folded his hands together and sighed again. “At the end of the last timeline, we began to observe seemingly minor events—parties, appointments—shifting weeks, even months, from their original dates.” He was silent for a moment, staring down at the fire-made phoenixes behind their metal cutouts. Then he said, “It is a pattern we are seeing again now.”
Aaron whispered: “There have been rumors spreading among the Court Guards of unusual fluctuations . . .”
“Yes,” Ying said heavily. “I think the timeline is struggling to repair itself.”
Joan took a sharp breath. Signs of disruption. Signs of a breakdown in the timeline.
“I believe we are at the end of days of this timeline,” Ying said. “We are in a cup riddled with cracks.”
The words echoed in Joan’s head. She saw again the gaping wounds in the timeline, and caught Tom’s eye. His lips were pressed white. He was thinking of the same thing.
“We saw something,” Joan told Ying. Ying tilted his head in question, and she hesitated. “We think it was a hole in the timeline.”
There was a moment of silence while Ying took in her words. He didn’t seem to know what to say. “I don’t understand,” he said finally.
“We saw a tear in the fabric of the timeline itself,” Tom said. “It was concealed behind an Ali seal—we think the Court was hiding it.”
Ying opened his mouth and then closed it again. Joan had met him twice. This was the first time she’d seen him lost for words. “Describe this for me.” His face was carved stiff, but Joan had the impression that he was disturbed underneath.
They hadn’t really talked about it since they’d left the café. Joan looked around at the others and realized that there was a reason for that. Ruth had folded her arms around herself, and Jamie’s forehead was waxy—even the memory was making him sick. Tom’s usually invisible freckles stood out, russet on milky white. They’d all been deeply shaken by the thing.
Jamie answered. “It was like the timeline had been ripped open by a force. We saw a hole in midair with ragged edges.” He swallowed visibly. “We saw the void inside it—the black abyss of it.”
Ying took a long moment to respond. “You saw the void that surrounds the timeline?”
Joan’s skin crawled. The Monster Court had been surrounded by that shadowy nothingness. There’s nothing there, Ruth had said. It looks like there’s something there, but there’s nothing there. At the time, Joan had had the feeling that if she were to step from the grounds of the Monster Court, she’d have been lost forever.
“We only saw it for a minute or so,” Jamie said, “and then it was like—” He hesitated. Joan understood the hesitation. She still wasn’t sure what exactly had happened either. “It was like we saw a different timeline inside it,” Jamie said. “A timeline where monsters ruled.”
Ying’s face showed a hint of disturbance now. “You saw another timeline?”
“I didn’t think it was possible either,” Jamie said.
Joan bit her lip. Jamie had only mentioned the tear at Covent Garden. Hadn’t he seen the other one? Maybe not. The library had been full of smoke when he’d broken in. “There was another tear at the guardhouse,” Joan said.
And apparently none of the others had seen the tear at Holland House. Now they all looked dismayed. Ying actually frowned, and Joan’s stomach churned.
“This didn’t happen at the end of the previous timeline?” Joan asked Ying. “There weren’t holes in the timeline?”
“I have never heard of holes in the timeline outside of pure theory,” Ying said. “Outside of stories.”
“What do you think this means?” Jamie asked his father. “I’ve only ever heard of it in one story.” For a moment, his expression was almost childlike. “Finis saeculorum.”
Joan tried to translate that. Finis: Final? Saeculorum: What did that mean? All the monsters seemed familiar with it, though. Aaron made a soft sound. Ruth screwed her face up skeptically.
Tom reached for Jamie’s hand. “You’re worried about that? It’s just a story.”
“What is it?” Joan said uneasily. She’d once thought that the hero was just a story too.
She checked on Nick now. He’d turned to listen, head tilted, so that she could only see the edge of his face. His dark hair fell over his eyes.
It was Aaron who answered her. “It’s called the End of Ages. It’s about a kid who tears through the timeline, trying to find his lost parents. But instead, he tears the timeline apart. He falls into the void, and so does everyone else—every moment in history, every person who’d ever lived, are lost.”
Ying’s hands rose in a calming manner. “It is just a story.”
But Joan’s stomach twisted. How had the boy torn apart the timeline in the story?
“We did see holes in the timeline, though,” Nick said. “A fairy tale didn’t cause that damage. So what did?” Joan’s stomach twisted again. Nick added: “Do you think it confirms the theory that there are weak places along the timeline? That these holes have been torn in weakened areas?”
Ying took a breath, visibly trying to regain some equilibrium. “It’s possible,” he acknowledged.
“Then we just have to find other weak places in the timeline!” Nick said, sitting up. “We can narrow down where Eleanor might be. We can find her!”
For a moment, Ying’s gaze was pitying and old, and Joan remembered something Aaron had once told her: Everyone goes up against the timeline. It was a lesson every monster had to learn themselves; every monster tried to fight fate at some point, and every monster failed.
“You can try to stop Eleanor,” Ying said to Nick. “But Astrid is among the strongest of the Lius. If she says that Eleanor’s success is inevitable, then it is inevitable.”
“How can you say that?” Nick said. “Inevitable?” He didn’t sound angry exactly, but at his raised voice, Ying’s eyes widened very slightly. And Joan wondered suddenly if Ying had been at the Liu house during Nick’s massacre. Did he remember it? Was some part of him as afraid of Nick as Liam had been? “Humans are going to suffer in that timeline, and we can still stop it! It hasn’t even happened yet!” Nick said.
Those same words had come from Joan’s mouth last time. And she had changed the inevitable. She knew it was possible. It had to be.
Nick was right. Joan’s dad, her friends, her human family were not going to live in a world like the one they’d seen. A world of tangled bodies and terrified bystanders. “We have to do something!” Joan agreed.
“It is not that I wish it to be true,” Ying said to Joan, to Nick. “It’s that I know it to be true.” He sighed. “We must take the long view—we may have more freedom to act in the new timeline. And I promise you that the Lius will remember what has been done. We will carry the knowledge with us.”
“We may have more freedom to act?” Nick said. “You don’t even know that! And you just said there’d be many deaths!” Ying’s eyes widened more.
Jamie interjected. “Listen,” he said heavily. “We all had a long night and not much sleep.” To his father, he said, “We should get some rest.”
Ying nodded slightly and stood. Tom and Jamie took that as their cue to stand too. Ruth followed and then Aaron. Only Nick looked reluctant to leave. His jaw was set tight. Joan could read his expression completely for the first time in a while. He was going to do something about Eleanor, even if that meant doing it alone.
Joan took a deep breath. Whatever happened, he wouldn’t be alone.
She hesitated, though, as they all headed across the courtyard to the door.
“What is it?” Aaron said. When Joan had hung back, he had too.
The others were almost at the tea shop. “I’ll meet you outside,” Joan said to him. There was something she still needed from Ying.
Thirty-Three
Ying didn’t seem surprised that Joan had lingered. “You already owe the Lius a favor.” His tone was not unkind. “We do not allow people to owe two.”
Joan should have expected that. The last time she’d been here, she’d had to bargain for information. And Ying had just given up knowledge for free, but Jamie had been present for that. Ying wouldn’t require payment from his own son.
“There’s something I need to know,” Joan said to him. “Something unrelated to Eleanor.”
Rather than answering immediately, Ying gestured for her to sit on the wooden chair opposite him. He poured more tea for her. The fresh-grass scent of it mixed with the less pleasant smokiness of this time.
“What is your question?” Ying said. It wasn’t the promise of an answer, Joan could tell. Just an invitation for her to ask.
Some part of Joan didn’t want to articulate it. “The last time I saw you,” she said, “I offered you a necklace in return for information. You refused it.”
Ying gave her a searching look—one that reminded her of their conversation in that other courtyard. She hadn’t had his attention until she’d shown him that necklace, and then she’d suddenly had it completely.
“I remember,” he said softly.
Joan touched her collarbone, where the necklace had once sat. “There were dark patches on the gold chain.” She’d made those marks. As Gran had lain dying, Joan had clutched at the chain. It had been the first time her power had manifested—she’d reverted the metal to ore.
“I remember,” Ying said again.
Joan swallowed. She shouldn’t have been saying any of this to Ying, but she had to know. “Your expression changed when you saw those marks. You recognized them. They were made by a power, and I think you’d seen that power before.”
“You have not yet asked me a question.” Was there a gentle note in his voice?
If he were going to turn her in, he’d have done it last time. “It was a power outside of the twelve families,” Joan said. She saw again Edmund Oliver’s face, full of loathing. You don’t even know what you are. Joan braced herself now. “My gran gave me that necklace. It was untarnished when she gave it to me, but after I touched it . . .”
“It was marked,” Ying said. He had seen her power before. “Ask me your question, Joan.”
Joan wet her dry lips. “We told you that there were tears in the timeline—in a café and at Holland House. But there was something we didn’t tell you. Something that I didn’t tell the others.”
For the first time, Ying seemed puzzled by Joan’s line of conversation. “Go on.”
“Those tears in the timeline are in places where I used my power. I used it in that café—in the exact spot where the tear was. And I used it at Holland House—on Nick.”
“You think you tore those holes in the timeline . . . like the boy in the fairy tale?” Ying’s expression was hard to read.
Joan ducked her head. Ying wanted her to ask directly. A favor owed for a question answered. “Why is my power forbidden?” she said. And then she found herself blurting out too: “Why does the Court want me dead? What am I?”
“You say that as if you were some kind of aberration. Some creature that slipped out of the void itself.”
Edmund had once called her an abomination. You should have been voided in the womb, he’d said.
“I tore open the timeline like the boy in the story,” Joan said. “I damaged the timeline. I . . . I think Astrid’s warning could have been about me. Maybe I’m the cause of the cracks in the world; maybe I’m going to tear the timeline open and throw us all into the void.”
Ying regarded her. “Astrid’s warning was not about you. I do not believe you have been damaging the timeline.” He always looked sad, and right now melancholy hung over him like a storm cloud.
“How do you know?” Joan asked.
“Do you remember the children’s chant?”
“Olivers see. Hunts hide. . . .” Joan started. Ying had recited it to her last time. It was the chant that monsters used to teach their children about the family powers.
Ying completed the chant in his resonant voice: “Olivers see. Hunts hide. Nowaks live. Patels bind. Portellis open. Hathaways leash. Nightingales take. Mtawalis keep. Argents sway. Alis seal. Griffiths reveal. But only the Lius remember.”
“The twelve families of London,” Joan said, feeling uncertain. Why was Ying telling her this again?
“Yes,” Ying said, “but there is a secret version of that chant. One that only the Lius know. It has a different ending.”
Joan felt herself start to tense and wasn’t sure why. “What ending?”
“But only the Lius remember,” Ying said in his beautiful voice, “that there was once another family.”
The hairs rose on the back of Joan’s neck. “What?” she whispered.
“There was once a thirteenth family in London,” Ying said. “Your family. The Graves.”
His words seemed to echo through the courtyard, as if a gong had been struck. They seemed to echo inside Joan. Your family.
I’m not a Hunt, am I? she’d said to Aaron once. But confronted with Ying’s words, she found herself saying, “No.” Her families were the Changs and the Hunts. She’d had the Hunt power as a child.
Aaron had once said to her: As we get older, the only power that remains is the power of our true family. Still, she shook her head. “That can’t be true.” If it was true, Gran would have told her. Except . . . Gran had tried to speak to her before the attack on the bakery. Your gran wanted to talk to you about something, Dad had said.
“You reverted the necklace into ore,” Ying said. “That is the Grave family power. They could unmake things; turn back the clock on things. And . . .” His eyes softened. “You have the look of them, Joan.”
Joan had never even heard of the Graves. “I don’t understand,” she said. There was once another family. What had Ying meant by once? “Where are they now?”
