Cheating Death Read online

  Devereux’s mouth was set firmly, and his eyes narrowed as he looked in the direction the young thief had taken. He held his hand out resolutely to shake Ringo’s. “Right, then. I believe I owe you my thanks. Winston Devereux, at your service.”

  I was actually impressed. My father-in-law had seemed like a pompous old windbag when he first spoke to Ringo, but he had just introduced himself with his first name. Ringo shook his hand.

  “Jonathan Starkey, sir, but I’m called Ringo.”

  I suddenly wanted to meet Winston Devereux, and I stepped forward. Ringo’s eyes widened briefly as I held my hand out to Archer’s father. “Your Grace, my name is Saira Elian. I am also a friend of your son’s, and I’ve heard quite a lot about you.”

  Devereux was clearly shocked to be shaking the hand of a woman dressed in men’s clothing, but I gave him credit for not faltering. He shook my hand and met my eyes. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Elian.” He held my hand a moment longer than was strictly necessary, and his voice had an edge that hadn’t been part of the windbag act. “Is my son well? Is he … happy?”

  The word, ‘happy’ sounded foreign to his tongue, and Devereux dropped my hand as if he couldn’t believe he’d just asked such a ridiculous question. I stumbled over the things I wanted to say to Archer’s father, so Ringo answered. “‘E’s in love, and ‘is lady loves ‘im right back. It’s as good a measure of ‘appiness as a man can find.”

  Devereux looked from Ringo to me, and the smallest piece of a smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “Hrmmph,” he said finally. “Quite so. If you see him, tell him I’ve left him the townhouse. If he sells it after I’m gone, he should know I’ve left something of his mother’s …” He shook his head sharply. “The townhouse. That’s all he gets. He’ll do with it as he sees fit.”

  He gave a quick bow to me, then shook Ringo’s hand again. “A good day to you both.”

  “It was nice to meet you, Your Grace,” I said quietly as he and Archer’s older brother walked away. And it was. No matter how Archer had felt about his father, this man had loved him.

  Ringo waited until they were out of earshot. “Ye alright?”

  I took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

  “Ye think Archer ever found ‘is mother’s things in the town’ouse before ‘e sold it to the Arman’s great-grandmother?”

  I shook my head. “No, he would have told me. He thought his father hated him for killing his mother with his birth.”

  Ringo snorted derisively. “More likely ‘e ‘ated ‘imself.”

  He led me down a different street, and then turned a corner into a narrow alley. Only half of my attention was on our surroundings – the other half was tied up in knots around our encounter with Archer’s father. He had been blustery and pompous, but underneath all the obnoxious trappings of nobility was a man who was actually noble. A man who hadn’t known how to deal with the pain of losing his wife, and had failed at showing his youngest son that he loved him.

  Ringo stopped at an old wooden door with sturdy new hardware. Ringo knocked twice, then once, then three times, and a moment later, the handle turned and the door was opened by a young girl. She was probably twelve years old and was dressed in trousers. She didn’t seem to be masquerading as a boy because her long hair was unbound and cascaded in beautiful dark waves down her back, so maybe her clothing choice was just about comfort or convenience. Something I could relate to.

  “‘Ello Maeve. Is Yaniv in?” Ringo stood perfectly still while the girl studied his face. I didn’t know what she finally saw there that convinced her to let us in, but when she closed the door behind us, she threw the bolt with a solid click. She led us up the stairs to a big open workroom filled with natural light streaming through an entire wall full of windows. A woman who might have been the girl’s mother sat by the window cutting a gemstone with a tiny chisel, but it was the older woman, possibly the grandmother, working at the big table in the center of the room who looked up at our arrival.

  Ringo caught her attention first, and I was startled to see that her eyes were covered in milky white cataracts. But then she smiled at him and held out her hand in greeting. “Young man, you’ve grown. You’re finally eating, then?” she said in a voice much stronger than she looked. He grinned and took her hand in both of his.

  “Ye’ve not aged a day, Yaniv,” he said warmly.

  This was Yaniv? The name was masculine, so I had assumed Yaniv was a man. But despite the trousers on every woman in the building, Ringo was the only male I could see.

  The old woman laughed in delight. “Found yourself a honey tongue, too. Is she the reason?” Her milky gaze found me and seemed to look beyond my face and into my soul. Her gaze tickled a little, but wasn’t unpleasant, and I instinctively stood very still so she could see whatever it was she was looking for.

  There was a smile in Ringo’s voice as he answered. “She’s one of them. Friends’ll do that to a bloke.”

  Yaniv shifted her gaze back to Ringo, and I was left with the sense that I’d just been scanned for the contents of my character. “Are you buying or selling?”

  He pulled the small velvet bag from his pocket and emptied it onto the table in front of her. “Selling,” he said. Maeve came over to stand behind her grandmother as the woman ran her fingers lightly over the stones from Archer’s box. Her eyes remained fixed on Ringo’s face, but I had the sense that her focus was all in her fingertips.

  She held up a ruby. “Old, this. Roman, I think.” She sniffed the stone, then touched her tongue to it. “Sweat and steel. From the hilt of a sword I’ll wager.”

  Yaniv was a Seer, and she seemed to know the minute I’d worked it out, because suddenly I had her attention again. “Surprises you, does it?”

  “I’ve never known a past-Seer,” I said simply.

  “Surprised my papa too. No one expected a girl, and sure as the sunrise not one with my skill. So, a boy’s name, and a man’s training for the girl-child of a master stone-cutter. Good thing my papa wasn’t so hidebound as others.” She said it with a wry smile, and I grinned back.

  “Good thing.”

  She made a lovely hrmphing sound and refocused her fingers on the stones. “It’s the history of stones I see,” she said. “Useful for weeding out the ones painted in blood.”

  I thought about the conflict diamonds of the twentieth century, but she wasn’t talking about African civil wars. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  She waved me closer and gestured for me to sit across the table from her. “These stones you have here – some are old, some are newer than they should be, but none have the taint of bloodstain around them. This,” she lifted the lid from a tray of cut sapphires on her table and plucked one out without hesitation, holding it out for me to see, “was mined by a child who was whipped for hiding it in his shoe. It has the taint of blood and pain, and you’d feel it if you wore it.”

  She dropped the sapphire back into the box and closed the lid. There were no fumbles in her movements and no pauses in the certainty of her touch. She plucked one of Archer’s diamonds off the table and held it to her nose. Then she handed it back to Ringo. “Keep this one, if the lady will let you. Your heart’s wrapped in it, and the bride you give it to will know it.”

  Ringo looked startled and glanced at me reflexively. I grinned and nodded. “Only if you invite me to the wedding.”

  He looked completely bemused at the two-carat stone in his hand, and he flushed slightly as he shoved it deep into his pocket. “Thank ye,” he said quietly.

  The old woman had separated out five stones from the small pile and replaced the others in the velvet bag, which she handed back to Ringo. “I’ll buy these from you. Standard deal – market price less ten percent.”

  She nodded at Maeve, who pulled a bag from around her neck and handed it to her grandmother. Yaniv counted out a fistful of gold coins, plus some bronze and copper ones. Ringo produced a small piece of fabric which he handed to the woman, and she wrapped
the coins in it tightly. “Smart lad. Keeps them from clinking.” I was impressed that he seemed to trust her, and I didn’t question her price, or her honesty. It made me pull the small velvet bag out of my own pocket and place it on the table.

  “I don’t need to sell these yet, I just wondered if you could tell me about them,” I said.

  The old woman swept Ringo’s stones into her own small bag and cleared the work table in front of her, then she nodded and gestured for me to show her.

  The big emerald winked at me from the small pile of gemstones I’d collected, and it was the one Yaniv went right for. “How’d you come by this?” Her tone wasn’t as sharp as her words were, but the question made me defensive nonetheless.

  “I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  The old woman tsk’d. “That wasn’t my question. I sold it last month. Young man said it was for the woman he loved.”

  My heart plummeted to my feet. Archer was here, in this time. How could I not have realized that?

  And he’d been right here where I was standing.

  I swallowed.

  “Does he come here often?” I asked quietly. “The young man you sold this stone to?”

  “Are you his love?” she countered.

  I nodded, and then finally answered out loud in case she really couldn’t see. “Yes.”

  “He comes every month.”

  I looked at Ringo, and the expression on his face mirrored the one I thought was on my own – something between shock, hope, and fear. And then he shook his head, and even though I knew he was right, it snuffed the tiny ray of light right out.

  If Yaniv knew about the roller-coaster ride my emotions were on, she didn’t show it. Instead, she caressed the emerald. “It once belonged to Artemisia Schiattesi. She was an artist in Rome, and some said the emerald was a lover’s gift. I prefer to think she earned the emerald on her feet.”

  I stared at Yaniv. “Earned it on her feet? That’s … vivid.”

  Yaniv shrugged. “Eh, a hard truth is still true no matter how it’s dressed.”

  Maeve snorted behind her grandmother, and I realized again how very remarkable this whole set up really was. Three women, working together in the jewelry trade during a time when men still controlled nearly everything.

  Yaniv held the emerald out to me, and I closed my hand around the warm gemstone. “I think I like having a stone that belonged to an artist,” I said.

  “Your man was pleased by that as well,” Yaniv said with a smile.

  Her references to Archer were unnerving, and I stood up to go as if he was going to walk in any moment and catch us there. We took our leave from Yaniv’s shop with a thank-you and promises to return. I felt Yaniv’s milky gaze on my back long after we left the shop, and it wasn’t until we were nearly back at Ringo’s that I finally spoke.

  “We shouldn’t see him,” I said. He knew I meant Archer because he answered quickly with a shake of his head.

  “There’s no point. ‘E can’t help us, and it’ll only confuse things later.”

  That was putting it mildly. Anything I did to change something in history – even something as simple as having an out-of-native-time conversation with Archer – seemed to send a ripple down the time stream and make a new memory that hadn’t been there before.

  I already felt like we were tap dancing in a minefield every time we Clocked, but part of me didn’t care what kind of damage we left in our wake as long as we could fix the time stream split and get back to Archer in the present – the right one, where he was safe and sound and waiting for me.

  The days were beginning to shorten, and it was already dusk when we got back to Ringo’s loft. The accountants had left for the day, so we debated whether to make a lot of noise or enter the loft silently. In the end, we opted for going in as if we owned the place, which, theoretically, Ringo did. Tom was the interloper in the scenario, and behaving otherwise would put us at a tactical disadvantage.

  We had stopped by the Sanda on our way to say hello to Gosford and warn him about the young thief who might come by. Gosford had given us haddock for our dinner and said he’d keep a lookout for the kid. We picked up a couple of eggs, oil, some herbs and day-old bread, and I looked forward to actually cooking a meal.

  Tom was sitting at the table staring out the window when we came in. He didn’t seem surprised to see us.

  “Hello, Tom,” I said. I tried to keep the wariness out of my voice, but I obviously failed, because Tom’s expression tightened as he turned to face me.

  “Thank you for coming.” The words seem to strangle in his throat, and my instinct was to growl at him for the cryptic message, so instead I fussed over the food we’d brought.

  Ringo nodded at Tom as he bent to light the stove. I found a cast iron pan, poured some oil in, and set it on the heat while I prepped the fish. I avoided Tom’s eyes until he finally spoke again in a tone that sounded vaguely normal.

  “Can I help?”

  I looked up in surprise at his offer. “Sure. Can you make breadcrumbs?”

  He nodded and started tearing up the bread. When the fish was deboned and chopped small, I mixed it with the egg and breadcrumbs for fishcakes. Tom didn’t speak again until the fishcakes were frying and Ringo had set the table.

  “I didn’t know you cooked.”

  I turned the cakes and shrugged. “Survival skills.”

  “I know about those,” he said quietly.

  I used cooking as the excuse to avoid Tom’s eyes, but when Ringo and I were seated across from each other with food on all three plates, there were no more excuses.

  “You know I’m not going to eat. Why did you put food in front of me?” There was an edge to Tom’s voice. It was the same edge he’d had when he thanked me for coming.

  I looked him straight in the eyes. “It’s called being polite, Tom. You don’t have to eat it. Archer always offers his to whichever person at the table looks hungriest. You can give it to Ringo or throw it away if you want, I don’t care. But it’s yours.”

  Ringo looked back and forth between us. “Ye used to be friends, did ye not? Ye might as well pick the scab off to let the fester out.”

  “Uh … eating?” I made a face.

  Ringo smirked and grabbed the half-eaten fishcake off my plate. “I’ll ‘elp ye with that, then. Fester gets ye every time, doesn’t it?”

  Tom pushed his own plate away, then shifted in his seat to face me, arms crossed, wearing an expressionless face. “You go first.”

  I was tempted to argue that he was the one who called me, but his attitude since we’d walked in had annoyed me, so I inhaled and tried to make my tone as neutral as possible.

  “You split time.”

  The Deal

  Tom glared at me. “No I didn’t. The time stream is just fine.”

  I scowled. “If you’ve gone forward, you know it’s definitely not fine. The bomb exploded right after you left 1944 and took Archer, George Walters, the Monger ring, and the world as we know it with it.”

  It was Tom’s turn to scowl apparently, and he turned the full force of it on me. “I was just there dodging zombie Londoners because of the Monger ring on Seth Walters’ hand.”

  “No you weren’t,” I said in a voice full of scorn.

  Tom’s eyes narrowed. “You Clocked me out of the British Museum station. It was your damn spiral I got shoved into – you should know where you sent me.”

  Ringo’s eyes got big and he stared at me. “Saira, that was before the bomb went off.”

  The anger drained right out of me. “You went forward? How do you know it was our time?”

  Tom’s voice was still growly and furious. “Because of the mobile phones. There was an explosion, and everyone had their mobiles out shooting video.”

  “But how did you know?” The edge of desperation in my voice made Tom look at me strangely.

  “Ava was there … and Adam. They knew me … knew what I’d become.” His tone was still brittle,
but some of the anger had gone from it, replaced by sadness or pain. “Adam said there’s a cure …” The strangled sound was back in his voice.

  “We looked for you,” I said quietly. “It’s why we went to Bletchley Park … to England during the war. We followed you to France so we could bring you back, but then …” My own voice trailed off and the tightness returned to Tom’s face.

  “But then you found me and I was the enemy, so you betrayed me instead.”

  “Oy,” Ringo said angrily. “Ye made yer choice, knowin’ full well what was right and what was wrong. Don’t wipe yer bloodstains on Saira. Ye earned those all on yer own.”

  I cleared my throat to make my voice stronger. “Yeah, we found you. And you know what, I wasn’t wrong when I said killing George Walters would split time, because it did, and now I can’t get back home. The spiral sends me to the wrong future.”

  Tom’s glare tried to burn itself into my skin. “Prove it.”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe he just said that.

  “Take me to that wrong future. Prove it actually exists, because I don’t believe we can change the past enough to split time. We don’t have that kind of power.” Tom’s voice was hard and so bitter.

  A million protests went through my head. How could he think that, after everything we’d gone through with Wilder, and after Léon’s death? But Ringo beat me to the punch.

  “Saira, ye can’t take ‘im to the wrong future. ‘E already exists there.” Ringo was angry, and I wanted to scream.

  I spun to face Tom. “Do you at least accept that the rules of time travel don’t let you be in the same place as you already are?”

  He nodded, seemingly reluctant to give me any concession.

  “Ringo’s right. If I take you with me to the other time stream, we’ll either land sometime before your mother gets pregnant with you, or we’ll get spit out after you die.”

  He set his jaw. “I’ll take my chances. But take me to school so I can see Mr. Shaw.”