23

MAGIC E VINO

AS THE CROW FLEW, Lux’s villa was a good ten kilometers away from the TM warehouse. This distance was best conquered by underground magcart, which could make the journey in under two minutes and often did, zipping past the catacombs of Old Rome and the skyscraper pilings of Zone 2. Safety lights flickered every half kilometer, the sole sign of speed. Far counted them through his sunglasses to keep insanity at bay. The tactic only half worked.

The magcart exited into Lux’s wine cellar, where bottles of the mogul’s favorite port were stacked by the score. Far ran a finger along their necks as he passed, the way he did every visit, carving a line through velvet dust. The walks he’d made before were still there, in varying states of waning. Dustfall come again.

He left his mark—bold and unbroken—all the way to the stairs, wiped off the grime on his shirt, and headed up. Eliot followed, a specter he couldn’t shake.

Lux’s villa was the kind of place only reckless money could afford. It had the skeleton of a grand house, though many of its original amenities had been altered to accommodate state-of-the-art everything: auto-dimming windows, hologram platforms, a hovercraft landing pad. Even though there were pollution filters around the windows, the smell of city emissions was unmistakable: home, hazy home. Today Far’s lungs refused it, as if his organs knew the end was nigh and decided to get a head start. Respiratory shutdown. His heart threatened to do the same when they entered the mansion’s main room. Lux sat where he always did—in a high-backed leather chair facing the vista wall. His was an opportunistic view of the skyline, the New Forum’s gold gleaming through his eyes like some strange pupil.

“Run into trouble, Captain McCarthy?”

That’s one name for her. “Not trouble, exactly…”

“Lux.” Nothing about the figure in the chair seemed to intimidate Eliot. Far wasn’t sure if it was sheer bravery or a not-so-blissful ignorance. “Can I call you Lux?”

Hades’s clangers in a hashing bluebox. Far’s too-short life flashed before his eyes, best-of reel bouncing off his sunglasses. Piggyback rides with Burg. A sweltering summer day visit to the Colosseum with his mother. His first kiss with Priya, after their second heist, his back to the old Forum stones; testosterone swam through his veins, and her lips tasted like moon rays made human: silver light secrets.

“Take those things off.” Lux waved the aviators away. “I like to see eye-to-eye.”

Daylight was murder on the retinas, but Far did as instructed.

“Who is this? I do not like surprises, Captain McCarthy.” The words held poison, the slow kind that killed you as soon as you thought you might be fine. “Nor do I like the noticeable lack of a package in your hands.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Eliot stepped forward, so that Lux had no choice but to see her. “My name’s Eliot. I’m the newest member of the Invictus’s crew.”

“You’re nothing until you sign my contract,” Lux said, though his voice wasn’t nearly as strychnic as before. “Have we met? You look familiar….”

“I have one of those faces,” Eliot told him. “It makes me very effective at what I do.”

“What do you do?” the black marketer asked.

“I’m a Renaissance woman. Dabbling here, meddling there. Recording, observing, snatching.” She held her palms aloft, wiggled her fingers. “Captain McCarthy is good at what he does, but I’ll make the team even better. You get one shot at each disaster because of timeline crossings, right? With twice the hands, you get twice the loot.”

“A compelling argument. Or it would be, if you had any loot to deliver.” Lux stood. “Where’s the Rubaiyat?”

Far’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He looked at Eliot, who was so hashing bright—white suit in sunlight—he had to shut his eyes.

More fragments: Imogen’s smile when she first held the fluffball that would become Saffron. That time he played a game of chess with Gram and won—though there was a 99.9 percent possibility the Engineer had conceded the game to make Far feel better. Silver letters—I-N-V-I-C-T-U-S—engraved onto the hullplate, shimmering along with the realization that the ship was his, ready to go to anytime. Crux, what a moment. He could live in it forever. He could die in it now.

Might as well get the unpleasant parts over with. “I—”

Eliot cut in. “We have delivered it as promised.”

Far’s eyes opened, unable to believe what they were seeing. An oak case. The oak case. Same size, same lock, perfectly polished. Eliot held the item in both hands, offering it to Lux.

When Far was younger, he used to beg his mother to stop and watch the street performers in Zone 1’s piazzas. If you deposited a few credits into a living statue’s outstretched palmdrive, it moved: a sweeping bow, a wink. Do the same for a musician and they’d strum any song you wanted. There was an old man with an even older word processor who sat by the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi and wrote custom poems for wooing lovers-to-be. Far’s favorite performers were the magicians. They could make almost anything vanish—flowers, scarves, doves, playing cards—and reappear in the strangest places. As a child he’d been awed, filled with the wondrous sense that the world really was a place of magic.

All of this washed over Far once more as he stared at the oak case. How was this possible? Lux accepted the item without comment. The book’s cover sprayed shine across the room when he opened it, glitter glancing off the villa walls. Imogen might’ve ooooohed and called them fairy lights; there was still enough magic in Far’s thoughts to agree with her.

Three peacocks. Gold-lined pages. Jewels. All of it seemed to be there. Lux wasn’t a fan of seems, though. His inspection was thorough—involving tweezers and gloves and a magnifying glass that made his nose look comically large from the other side. Far kept waiting for him to cry foul, but the book was undeniably the book.

Eliot had been telling the truth. She hovered by Lux’s shoulder, sending Far a smirk and wink in turn. He was too verklempt to gesture back. It occurred to him that he should be angry, nay, raging, but relief was the emotion of the hour. How couldn’t it be? Priya, Gram, and Imogen were safe. The Invictus remained his. Nothing was ending today.

Lux set down the magnifying glass; his scrutiny refocused on Eliot. “Where did this come from?”

“The Titanic’s cargo hold. London’s Sangorski and Sutcliffe bookbinders before that.”

“Not historically,” he snapped at her answer. “Presently. There was nothing on your person when you walked in this room. How is it you pulled something out of thin air?”

“I’m a smuggler,” Eliot said. “I smuggle things. The how would take all the fun out of it. My secrets make me the best in the trade, and if that doesn’t suit your operation, I’ll take my services elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere?” Lux was caught off guard. His pause teetered. “I am the trade.”

“If that’s what helps you sleep at night,” Eliot said, dismissive. “The world is a large place and time is even larger. The question is, do you want my skills working in your favor? Or beyond it?”

It made Far feel slightly justified, that he wasn’t the only one Eliot threw for a loop. That she could make Lux Julio—a man whose very presence invoked a baseline of terror in his subordinates—go splotchy at the neck.

“What might such a favorable alliance look like? I’m assuming you have a proposal.”

“I do, in fact.” Eliot nodded. “I have a buyer interested in several artifacts from the Library of Alexandria that were destroyed in the siege of 48 BC. I’d take the job as a freelancer, but they want more scrolls than I can recover during the burn window solo. With Captain McCarthy’s assistance, I can get everything I need and more besides.”

“The cut?”

“Fifty-fifty. You. Me.”

“Those aren’t my usual terms.”

“It’s that or nothing,” Eliot told him. “The Invictus’s crew might be the best, but they certainly aren’t the only Academy graduates chomping at the bit for a spin through history. Consider my portion a finder’s fee.”

The silence that followed made the room feel very fragile. Floor tiles, vases, the glass of half-drunk wine by Lux’s armchair—all of it quivered in anticipation of an answer. Far found himself shaking, too, a shiver that couldn’t be seen, only felt, taking root beneath his toenails.

“Sixty-forty. Me. You. As long as you sign my contract.”

“Fifty-five–forty-five,” she shot back. “I sign nothing. My clients remain anonymous. This is the best you’re going to get.”

The mogul’s stare could break glass. Eliot’s could crack worlds. Far stood off to the side, watching what passed between them. All the fear and frustration this girl had stoked inside him had transformed into something else entirely. Admiration? Awe?

“Captain McCarthy,” Lux addressed him without looking. “What say you?”

“Two pairs of hands would snatch up more than one.” This conversation was a minefield—pocked with Lux’s anger and Eliot’s endgame. Far navigated his response with tiptoe words. “Eliot seems to know her way around history, and the Invictus is always game for a good disaster. From what I’ve heard about Alexandria—the salvage we get there could be invaluable.”

“Invaluable. Yes…” Greed dripped down Lux’s lips. “Though I don’t like entering into agreements without a form of insurance.”

“You have my image on your security feeds. That’s enough collateral to make anyone amenable, wouldn’t you say?” More magic: Eliot’s hand emerged from behind her, clutching a bottle of port. Its scripted label looked old but unaged. 1906. Fresh as yesterday. “Also, I picked this up from the Titanic’s first-class dining saloon, as a gesture of my goodwill.”

Lux accepted the bottle, examining it like a second relic: blood-dark contents, cork made of actual cork wood, glass the color of deep-sea sorrow wherever daylight struck. “From the Titanic’s menu? Truly?”

“Vintage and morose,” Eliot assured him.

“Extraordinary.” The mogul turned back to the vista wall, where the city hummed through the afternoon’s golden haze. “Your goodwill has been noted. We have ourselves an agreement: fifty-five percent to me. The Invictus’s cut will come out of that.”

Far glanced behind Eliot to get a glimpse of the port’s origins, but there was nothing to see. Strap-backed jumpsuit, crossed hands. Once more she’d put Far to shame—he’d thought himself a master negotiator and here she was a sorceress, her sleight of hand so distracting that Lux hadn’t even done a background check. Shazm. If Far had known a vintage bottle was all it took to transform the black marketer from a kill you in your sleep control freak to a pat you on the back boss, he would’ve become a hashing sommelier ages ago.

“We’ll get started with mission prep,” Far said, fighting back the urge to upchuck his hangover nerves into the nearby potted bougainvillea. Lux’s goodwill probably wouldn’t extend to vomit on his houseplants.

The mogul ignored him. His stare slid from the wine label to Eliot. “Excellent haul. I’ll inform Wagner about the updates to our business agreement and have the payments processed accordingly.”

There it was, said and done. Eliot had become a part of the crew. Far was still alive, thank Crux, but now he’d have to walk back through the cellar and draw his line into a life he had no agency over. One that spun at her whim, leaving him fearful, always fearful.

What kind of future was that?