Never a Hero, page 35
Ying’s eyes were still soft. “The strongest of the Lius remember fragments of the zhēnshí de lìshĭ,” he said. “The true timeline. Collectively, we have some idea of what happened to the Graves.”
Joan stilled. Happened to?
“The ancient Romans had a punishment,” Ying said. “Damnatio memoriae. Have you heard of it?”
“No,” Joan whispered.
“Those punished with it were condemned to be forgotten by history,” Ying said. “Their statues were smashed, their portraits destroyed, their letters burned. Speaking their name was punishable by death.” His voice was gentler than his words. “But our King was more ruthless than that. We believe he erased your family from the timeline—he assassinated them, hunting down the earliest members of the family through history, so that their children and their children’s children were never born.”
Joan stared at him. She knew violent death. It looked like Gran covered in blood, her breathing hoarse; Lucien Oliver with a sword in his chest; Margie with her eyes wide open. “He killed them all?”
“We don’t know why the King did this,” Ying said. “We believe it was a punishment. We don’t know the transgression.”
Joan couldn’t take in the scale of it. What possible transgression could warrant all those deaths, the erasure of an entire family? She answered her own question. Nothing could warrant a punishment like that. “You said they were all gone. I can’t be a member of their family, then, can I?”
The deep lines of Ying’s face made Joan think of wood carvings. Of sorrowful statues. “I don’t know how you are here,” he said. “But you are a member of the Grave family.”
“Do you remember them?” Joan said slowly. The strongest of the Liu family remembered fragments of the true timeline itself. . . .
“I remember . . .” Ying wasn’t quite looking at Joan now. He was inside his memories, his eyes distant. “I was married to a member of the Grave family. I don’t remember her name. The Liu power is perfect memory, but I don’t remember my wife’s name. I don’t remember my children’s names.”
There was deep emotion in his voice, and Joan felt as if she were seeing him for the first time. This was the source of his ever-present sadness. Like Jamie, he’d been born with painful memories.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
“The Liu power has its burdens,” Ying said. “I think you understand.” He glanced in the direction that Nick had gone.
They were quiet for a time after that. The flame under the teapot flickered out. The weather was turning again. Storm clouds hung over the river, heavy and oppressive; the water whipped in the wind.
Ying leaned over to pour more tea into Joan’s cup and then his own. “It is a lot to take in.”
“I don’t know how to take it in,” Joan admitted. In a strange, guilty way, she felt worse for Ying than herself. Ying was grieving for the Graves, but Joan couldn’t remember them at all.
But as she thought that, something roiled inside her, as if some half-lost part of her did feel it. As if something in her did remember.
On the Thames, the tide was rising, along with the wind. The tiny red sails of the Thames barges billowed violently. Joan watched a man wind a winch in fast movements, pulling his sail down. She ran a hand over her face, trying to ignore the turbulence inside herself, more violent than the rising wind. She was in the shadow of an apocalypse. She didn’t have the luxury to feel this right now. To process this. And something else was worrying her. “What if the Graves were erased because they tore up the timeline?” she asked. “What if they were erased because they were a threat to the world?”
He would have stopped it, Astrid had said. But you stopped him.
What would Nick have stopped? Maybe he would have stopped Joan. Maybe that was how he’d have saved everyone.
Ying was silent for a long moment. “I do not believe that. There were no holes in the timeline when the Graves were here. No unusual fluctuations.” He searched Joan’s face. “You keep speaking as if you are some destructive force—some creature who deserves to be put to death by the Court. You are not. You are a member of a lost family.”
Joan swallowed hard at the kindness in his tone. “Then what damaged the timeline if it wasn’t me?”
“I do not know,” Ying said. He tilted his head, considering. “You told me yourself that you reverted that necklace to ore. Where did that happen?”
Joan was thrown by the question. “In one of the bedrooms of Holland House.”
“There is no tear in the timeline there,” Ying said.
Joan took that in. She’d also used her power in the boathouse without apparent consequence. And at the Wyvern Inn. “Maybe the Alis came in after me and sealed up any tears.”
Ying shook his head. “Only four Ali seals have ever been ordered by the Court.”
“Four?” Joan said.
“The Chicago Café in Covent Garden was sealed in 1993,” Ying said. Joan blinked at that. She’d used her power there in 1993. Surely she’d torn that hole in the timeline. Ying went on: “The former location of the library at Holland House was sealed in 2053.” And that had to have been Joan too. “There is also Seventeen Rainery Road, Sheffield, sealed in 2003. And St. Magnus-the-Martyr Church on Lower Thames Street, sealed in 1923.”
Whatever Ying believed, Joan had to have made those tears in Covent Garden and Holland House, but what was the one in Sheffield? What was the one on Lower Thames Street? She’d never used her power in either of those places. Then again, maybe she just hadn’t done it yet. . . .
Joan bit her lip. She needed to figure this out. She needed something else from Ying first, though. She looked up at him. “I know that I already owe you a favor,” she said.
“The information about the Graves requires no payment,” Ying said gently. “I am sorry that the King did such a thing.”
Joan looked at him.
“You need something else?” His eyebrows lifted slightly. “The Lius are never owed two favors from a single person,” he reminded her.
“But this is a new timeline,” Joan said, hoping. “One for each?”
Ying gave her one of his almost smiles at that. “What do you need?”
“Is there a trustworthy member of the Curia Monstrorum?” Joan asked. “Someone loyal to the King above anything. Someone unimpeachable.”
“Conrad,” Ying said.
Ice ran down Joan’s spine just at the name. Conrad. Ying had been unhesitating in his answer, but Joan pictured a man whose gaze had felt like the cold bite of winter. A man with eyes as pale as the dawn. Last time, Conrad had come after her—intending to execute her—when he’d learned of her power. His name alone had shaken Ruth and Aaron to the core.
The others wouldn’t like this idea, but the truth was, to fight a member of the Curia Monstrorum, they needed another member on their side. “Conrad,” Joan said, nodding. “I need to send him a message.”
Joan walked back out onto Narrow Street. It had started to rain in big heavy drops. The others were waiting just outside the tea shop, splotches falling around them. Tom had found an umbrella somewhere. He held it carefully over Jamie, but no one else seemed too bothered by the water.
“What was all that about?” Ruth said to Joan. She took a step closer then. “What happened?” Her forehead creased, and Joan wondered what her own expression was showing.
Of course Ruth could tell something was wrong—she and Joan had known each other their whole lives. Your family, Ying had said. The Graves. No, Joan thought. This was her family. Ruth was her family.
She shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. But she found herself swallowing around a lump in her throat. Keep it together, she told herself. This wasn’t the time to think about the Grave family. “I found out something that might help. Ying gave me some locations of Ali seals: St. Magnus-the-Martyr Church on Lower Thames Street, and Seventeen Rainery Road in Sheffield. Do they ring a bell?”
“Seventeen Rainery Road?” Nick straightened, looking disturbed and confused. “That’s my childhood home. Why would he give you that address?”
Joan stared at him. She’d blown a hole in the timeline when she’d unmade and remade Nick—at Holland House. But Nick had been unmade and remade before that—in the home he’d grown up in.
That meant that three of the seals on Ying’s list were accounted for. Only one was still a mystery. . . .
“What is it?” Aaron asked Joan.
“What’s going on?” Nick said.
“I think I know where Eleanor is going to change the timeline,” Joan said. “Where and when.”
Thirty-Four
“St. Magnus-the-Martyr Church,” Tom mused as they headed back down Narrow Street. “What could Eleanor be doing there in 1923?”
“St. Magnus used to be the entrance to Old London Bridge, right?” Joan said.
“By 1923, though, it’s just a church,” Jamie said. He frowned, thinking; Joan guessed he was running through his mental archive. “I don’t know how Eleanor could change the timeline there. Whatever event or person she’s targeting, it’s not obvious to me.”
“Did Ying say anything more specific than 1923?” Aaron said. “Did he have a date?”
“March fifth,” Joan said.
Nick lifted his head. He’d been gazing down the long street, tracking a man begging for coins, hat in hand; a little girl scooping something from the street into a basket. His 1890s outfit should have been nondescript—half the street was wearing the same style: shirt, waistcoat, trousers. Nick’s physique, though, made his ensemble look unassumingly dangerous. “Why did your father and Astrid say this was inevitable?” he asked Jamie. “That doesn’t make sense to me.”
“I have some theories.” Jamie glanced up at the thunderous sky from under the shelter of Tom’s umbrella.
Tom noticed the glance. “Let’s get a coach,” he said.
They ended up jumping on an empty omnibus, drawn by two plodding horses and emblazoned with an ad for Borwick’s Baking Powder: The Best That Money Can Buy. It was rickety and old, but fully enclosed, and Joan saw Jamie relax as he took a seat. There was just enough room for them to sit three abreast, and they ended up with Tom, Jamie, and Aaron on one side and Ruth, Nick, and Joan on the other.
Joan found herself pressed tight against Nick. When Aaron toed at the thick layer of straw on the floor, his knees brushed against Joan’s. A tiny jolt went through her at his touch. She was still getting used to him being here, she thought.
“What are you doing?” Ruth said to Aaron.
“Checking for fleas,” Aaron said, as if that should have been obvious. “What’s the point of straw without strewing herbs?”
“Insulation,” Tom said. It was a tight squeeze for the six of them, and Tom barely fit into his seat. Frankie stood on one of his knees, with the easy balance of a boating dog. She watched the rain-smeared street rattle by, huffing a yearning whuff as a horse passed them.
Aaron examined a frayed hole in the blue velvet of the seat with horror. “If you’d given me half an hour, I could have arranged for decent transport.”
“As if we’d let you send for an Oliver coach,” Ruth said. “Half the Court would arrive with it.”
“I’m not going to turn you in.” Aaron’s tone was impatient, but his gray eyes turned to Joan as he said it.
“I know,” Joan said to him. A vulnerable look flitted across Aaron’s face, followed by wariness. Even after their conversation, he didn’t quite believe she trusted him. He still thought he might be hurt at the end of this.
Joan bit her lip. He wouldn’t be safe if he went after Eleanor. None of them would be safe. She pressed a hand against her breastbone, trying to ease the tightness in her chest.
Nick shifted beside her. “So what’s the plan?”
“First up, sleep,” Ruth said. “You two were unconscious for most of last night. You need real rest.”
As Ruth said that, the background ache of Joan’s body throbbed to the fore. She was tired. She wouldn’t be able to rest, though. Not with so much going on in her head. There was so much to plan.
Nick said what she was thinking. “I don’t think I can sleep. There’s too much we don’t know. We have to figure out our plan of attack. And we’ll need clothes for 1923. . . .”
“We need to understand what we’re up against,” Joan agreed. “What powers does Eleanor have access to? What resources does she have? And what are we going to do when we actually find her?”
“We’re going to kill her,” Tom said flatly.
“Tom,” Jamie said.
Tom had never looked more serious. “If I get the chance, I’ll do it myself.”
Jamie took his hand. “She probably doesn’t even remember me.”
“That only makes me want to kill her more.”
Looking at their clasped hands, Joan had a flash of Jamie’s crooked, broken fingers from the previous timeline. Unlike Nick, Jamie remembered some of his torture.
“Nothing’s going to happen until 1923,” Aaron said in an even tone that reminded Joan of Ying trying to calm them. “That’s thirty-two years from now. There’s plenty of time to plan and rest.” He perked up as he said it. “Does this bus leave Limehouse? There’s a decent place in Mayfair, run by . . .” He trailed off at the unenthusiastic response from the rest of them. He muttered to himself, “Or I suppose we could just stay here with the fleas.”
Joan found herself staring at him.
“What is it?” Aaron said.
Nothing’s going to happen until 1923. It hadn’t worked like that last time, though. “When I changed Nick’s life—” Joan felt Nick’s eyes on her and faltered for a second. “When I changed him, it wasn’t just the future that changed. The past changed too. All at once.” Joan had unraveled Nick’s whole life. She’d erased all his past actions and brought her family back. The new timeline had swallowed up the old in an instant, head to tail.
“What are you saying?” Aaron said, frowning.
“She’s saying that we don’t have until 1923 to stop this,” Tom said. “This timeline could be replaced at any moment, without warning. None of us would even know, except maybe Jamie.”
Nick sat forward at that. “When Eleanor spoke to us, I had the impression she was already on the cusp of doing something.”
“She said it was already in motion,” Joan remembered. She pictured Eleanor in 1923, making a change that rippled out along the timeline, supplanting all this in an instant with a crueler and more terrible world.
“Guess we don’t sleep, then,” Nick said.
As the bus rattled through Limehouse, they wrote down a list of essentials. Tom ran a finger down the page. “We’ll need a pretty shady market for some of this.” He read out a few items. “Clothes, weapons, surveillance equipment . . .” He scratched his neck. “And time,” he added. “If we’re all going to 1923, we’ll need human time.”
Joan felt sick suddenly. She’d known that they’d have to travel thirty-two years—each—to get to 1923, but she’d pushed the thought so far down that she hadn’t let herself think about where they were going to get the time.
Nick felt it too. His breath hitched, just a slight jolt against her arm. Tom couldn’t have heard it, but his gaze flicked to him; Tom had been suspicious of him since the boathouse.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Nick said to Aaron. “You dragged me to this time with this golden tattoo. Is that the only way a human can time-travel?”
Ruth frowned. “Strange thing is, I didn’t think humans could travel at all. Cuff or not.”
Joan took that in. Nick had traveled in the previous timeline, but she’d never seen a cuff on him. He’d never disclosed the method, other than saying that he’d traveled in a different way than Joan. He hadn’t stolen human time.
“How does the cuff actually work?” Joan asked Aaron.
“There’s time embedded into the mark,” Aaron said. “Much like a travel token.”
“There’s human life tattooed onto my skin?” Joan stared at her wrist in new horror. She’d been thinking of the mark as just a handcuff. She’d already hated it; now she wanted to take a knife to it. She wanted to tear it off with her nails. “How much life?” Whose lives?
Aaron’s gaze was almost too penetrating for a moment. “I can’t tell how much is left without the controller,” he said. “But as I recall, neither of you had much left. We’ll need to obtain more.”
Joan turned her wrist over so she wouldn’t have to look at the thing. Without the controller, she was still mired by the tattoo. Even if they managed to somehow acquire another one, though . . . She really did feel sick. The last two times she’d traveled—to the future, and then here to 1891—she’d been dragged involuntarily. This time, though, it would be her choice to use human life.
She could feel Nick’s tension. Against her arm and thigh, his muscles felt like stone. What was he thinking?
They got off the bus at the Regent’s Canal Dock, a chaotic throng of barges, sailing ships, navy uniforms, and dockworkers, all muscling in on each other for the limited space. Timber and coal and heavy stone moved back and forth from deck to dock as workers shouted instructions.
Tom headed straight for the colorful mess of Hathaway boats at the edge of the dock. Within ten minutes, he had a horse-drawn narrowboat named Cornflower.
The boat was bright blue and decorated with roses and castles, along with the more familiar double-headed hound of the Hathaways. The roses seemed to be a common motif on narrowboats of this time, but Joan thought uneasily of Eleanor’s sigil—the thorned rose stem.
Tom hitched a placid white mare with huge dinner-plate hooves to a tow line. “Easiest route is up the Regent’s Canal.”
“I wondered whether the Hathaways kept a boat in every time period,” Joan said curiously. She should have realized there was a pool of shared ones.
“The Hunts sometimes help us push our own boats through time,” Tom said. “But usually it’s easier just to borrow one—especially when you cross between horse-drawn and engine periods.”
