London, September 2, 1885
A hand on his shoulder woke him. His dry eyes blinked open, flinched closed again at the glare from the candle. Kent shifted without speaking, interposing his cool shadow between William’s eyelids and the attack of the light, and William was sufficiently grateful to attempt opening his eyes again. The light was mostly behind Kent now, lighting his tawny hair with a halo of gold and shrouding his face like a veil. He waited a moment or two, fingers still warm on William’s shoulder, watching William’s face. Then, apparently satisfied the younger man would stay awake, Kent removed his hand. William brought the words from what seemed an immense distance: “What—time’s it?”
Kent did not move to consult a pocket watch. “About an hour after sunset.”
Just over halfway into William’s selected sleep period, which went a long way to explaining the difficulty he was experiencing in rousing himself. So why was Kent rousing him? He looked at the older man more sharply, but Kent was not nearly agitated enough for there to be an emergency. So why—?
“My people have brought me a list of three likely theaters featuring newly hired dark-haired singers,” Kent said in a whisper calculated not to disturb the sleeping Elizabeth next door. “I want you to come with me tonight.”
“You want me to come?” William repeated. “Why?”
“It’s asking for trouble to go walking alone in that part of the city,” Kent answered. “I need a companion—a stirrup-man, if you will—and Schwieger is out scouting again.”
“I can’t do anything to help you in a fight,” William pointed out, struggling upright. “I thought you had an organization full of bodyguards?”
Kent sighed. “Not any I particularly want to witness the conversation I must have with Katarina if we catch her. You already know the worst of what lies between us; you saw it yourself. Indeed—” The intense blue eyes narrowed, shrewd and considering. “—by your own account, you came closer to changing her mind than I would have imagined possible. It might be better that you approach her tonight, since you seem to know how to reach her.”
“I did a poor job of it last time—” William said in automatic self-deprecation, but he was already levering himself up off the mattress. By chance or by design—probably the latter—Kent had offered bait he found irresistible. Yes, William wanted to talk to her again. He had to talk to her again. He had to know how badly he had misunderstood her, how badly he had overestimated his new skill at persuasion, how badly he had failed in that first attempt to reach her.
“Elizabeth is asleep,” Kent continued, still softly. “Maxwell is on watch and, for a wonder, sober, perhaps because we’re out of brandy. He can look after her.”
William paused in the act of reaching for his boots. “They are not to come along?”
Kent leveled a look at him. “There will be enough quick tempers in this confrontation already—enough hotheadedness in Katarina’s skin. I don’t need to double or triple my chances of disaster, and I could hardly bring a girl like Elizabeth to theaters like this in any case. No. They stay here.” He turned for the stairway. “Step lightly. That fourth step creaks, remember.”
William did remember. He managed to avoid creaking the fourth step by skipping it entirely, and he otherwise moved as silently as he could manage.
Which was apparently not quite silent enough. Halfway down the stairs, he heard movement behind him.
“William?”
Damn.
He turned enough to look back up the stairs. Elizabeth stood just at the top, blanket wrapped around herself, curls in wild disarray, feet bare. Her voice was smeary with sleep, and he wasn’t sure her eyes were all the way open. “Where are you going?” she asked, sounding very uncertain. “What’s happening? Is there something wrong?”
William hesitated. Kent, a step below him and likely invisible to Elizabeth’s limited range of vision, reached out in the darkness to give William’s forearm a silent warning squeeze. William looked back at him, and saw Maxwell watching the entire scene from the lamplit corridor below. The white-haired man shook his head once.
He didn’t like lying to her, but they were right, both of them. William turned back. “Nothing’s wrong,” he soothed. “All’s well. Go back to sleep.”
She frowned at him, rather vaguely. He was becoming more convinced every instant that she wasn’t in any meaningful way awake. “Yes,” she said after a moment, and turned back. He didn’t breathe again until he heard her lie down.
And then he almost called her back. It hardly felt right, after all they had done together so far, to tell her an untruth now, even one so passive. He stood irresolute on the stair for a full count of five before Kent’s quiet voice recalled him to himself. William hesitated one breath longer, then followed Kent to the door. Very likely they would return before Elizabeth had awakened in any case.
l
A second thunderstorm had passed through the previous afternoon, leaving pools of stagnant water to warm on the streets and yet still doing nothing to break the heat of the air. William walked straight through a rain-puddle before Kent could stop him, and bit back a curse at the water splashing his trousers. Kent unsheathed the dark lantern—a little late, from William’s perspective, but at least the rest of the journey would not be hazardous. The streets were as dark as London in some other century. The lantern-light pricked out a pattern in the water on the cobblestones. William followed where Kent led.
Once out of the warehouse district, the streets proved livelier than they had been in the deathly still early morning. Curfew had not yet chimed, and the few patrolling soldiers William saw did not seem disposed to prevent those men with coin to spend from spending it in any manner they chose. Not that there was much to buy—the shops Kent led him past had largely bare front windows, largely empty shelves. Only here and there did unappetizing foodstuffs stare back at him—limp-looking fish, pale pigs’ feet, skinned sheep’s-heads. Perhaps because of this scarcity, the tavern at the end of the street appeared to be doing a thriving business. By the smell, it was offering some greasy meal to go with the gin. Outside, girls dressed in nothing to speak of called to passers-by. William found himself profoundly grateful not to hear Katarina’s throaty tones issuing from any of their painted mouths. At least they weren’t searching for her among that company.
Kent led him under the torch that blazed out front and through a cloud of cheap tobacco smoke generated by the loafers bantering with the painted girls. A faded sign proclaimed the tavern to be the something “and Bottle”; William didn’t have light to see the top word. The window facing the street was papered with bills he also had no light to read properly, but they seemed to have something to do with promising a performance. So this was the music hall. No, they could certainly not have taken Elizabeth here. Not dressed as a boy, not dressed as herself, not in any guise.
Immediately within the door, a steep and narrow staircase loomed. Kent mounted it without hesitation, and William followed. At the turn halfway up, a man in clean, if cheap, finery presided over a box half full of coins. “’Evening, gents, fifty centimes for the dress circle,” he greeted them. “Or pay a franc and enjoy the pleasures of the box seats.”
Kent rummaged in his pocket, clicking coins suggestively. “I heard you have a new singer,” he said. “Dark-haired girl?”
“Indeed we do. Pretty lass, well worth hearing. Fifty centimes for the dress circle, franc for the box seats.”
Kent handed him two silver coins, and the man lifted the barrier. “Right this way,” he said, bowing them through and gesturing up the staircase. “First show’s just about to start.”
Rowdy voices drifted down the stairs, and at the top they found their way blocked by a chattering crowd of men in laborer’s clothing. Kent shouldered briskly through, and none of them appeared to take offense to being jostled. William followed in his wake. Kent turned abruptly right and ducked into a partitioned recess, where two benches sat on either side of a rather battered-looking table. The benches boasted neither cushions nor backs, but Kent gestured him to sit. These were apparently the box seats. William gingerly lowered himself onto a bench, half expecting it to give way beneath his weight, relieved when it responded with nothing more disastrous than a creak. He looked around and identified the stage, presently draped with a dingy blue curtain. Behind him, the standing crowd—occupying what apparently passed for a dress circle—pushed and called greetings to each other and took occasional, furtive puffs of pipes. The smoke twined up into the still air and hung there. William had been to fine theaters and—er—less fine ones, among genteel crowds and unruly brother soldiers, in England and abroad, but he had never been to one so depressing.
It was better once the show began. Accompanied by a jangling pianoforte and rather better-played fiddle, singers dressed in something approximating cheap finery offered a series of comic songs no more offensive than any William had heard at music halls in his own time. A pair of good-looking redheaded girls performed a step dance; the fiddle player gave a solo; and then, with some fanfare, announced their “new talent, the lovely Miss Alice Yates.”
It wasn’t Katarina. This girl was younger, pretty rather than possessing anything like Katarina’s elegant beauty, singing in a sweet and tuneful and utterly unremarkable voice. Kent stayed until the show was over anyway—out of politeness to Miss Yates, William assumed, although it might also have been due to a reluctance to push back through the dress circle or a fear that there might have been two new dark-haired singers debuting this night. He was on his feet almost as soon as the curtain touched the dusty boards of the stage, however, and William followed his long strides down the stairs and out of the theater.
“One down, two to go,” Kent said. “We’ll try The Eagle and Crown next. Quick march, and we’ll be able to reach it before the second show starts.”
The name ought to have told him what to expect, but William did not make the connection until they topped the stairs of the second establishment and beheld their way blocked by a crowd of men in blue coats. He felt himself stiffen all over, and Kent, beside him, closed a hand over his arm.
They didn’t shoulder through the crowd this time, William noted distantly, mostly preoccupied with the effort of keeping any reaction from reaching his face. Instead, Kent ducked through gaps and offered apologies in French whenever his shoulder happened to brush that of a man in uniform. He had not reserved a box seat this time either; William, looking around, observed all of those to be taken by soldiers. Right—so they must take care not to draw undue attention. William therefore set his feet, set his teeth, and turned his eyes toward the stage. Blue uniforms pressed against him on every side. French conversations rose around him, smothering.
The girls who tripped out onto the stage were attired as one might expect would appeal to a houseful of soldiers, and gave a performance that raised raucous calls from their audience. William had not previously observed any young lady raise her foot to the level of her eye—certainly not a row of them, in time with music—and other under circumstances might have found the sight diverting, but he disliked exceedingly playing a member of a French audience watching English girls disport themselves so. The next act seemed at first to be better—a duet of girls, one fair and one dark, singing some fairly innocuous song that had the audience joining in for the chorus—until something in the quality of their faces made William start to wonder. Were they—could they possibly be—
“Yes,” Kent murmured in his ear. “They’re boys. Don’t react.”
They were followed by a girl who was indisputably a girl—she removed enough of her clothing over the course of her song for William to be absolutely certain of that fact. Also dark-haired, but not, thank God, Katarina either. Then came a comedic sketch, mostly in French, which William followed well enough to wish he did not.
When the program moved on to the singing of patriotic songs—involving all of the singers so far presented, boys and girls, and prompting the audience to roar back during the chorus—Kent squeezed William’s arm, and they escaped.
“Well,” Kent said, sucking in air as though his throat pained him or perhaps his gorge was rising, “that’s degraded some since last I attended a performance.”
“Did you really expect Katarina to take employment here?” William demanded.
“Who do you think has the money to hire new performers?” Kent said. “I expected her to take employment at The Bridge and Bottle, frankly. I was clinging to the hope we would not have to go to the Ten Bells. She’s too good for that place. But if she needed work and they were hiring—” He sighed, and started down the street. “It’s worth a few minutes, if we can get in while the show is still on.”
The third tavern proved to be a fair walk from the second, and down streets it became clear Kent did not know well. He had handled himself with easy confidence as they approached the other two music halls, but in this part of town his confidence was more of a deliberate projection. His eyes flicked incessantly to alleyways, storefronts, street signs, and he let out a mostly stifled breath of relief when the tavern rose up before them at last.
It had not been painted any time this century, as far as William could tell. The sign had nearly rotted away, displaying only “ell” to his questing eyes. “Hell,” perhaps. Even the torch stuck outside smoldered in a sullen way.
Inside was even worse. The fine decorative tile that had once graced the entryway was now stained and cracked. Guttering candlelight hindered rather than aided attempts to see further than a hand span before one’s face. At least the disgruntled mutter of voices enjoining Kent to close the door were all speaking English.
Though the second show of the night was halfway through, the tables were nothing like fully occupied. Kent’s coin bought them one in a discreet corner with a reasonable view of the raised platform that served as a sort of stage. Upon it, a blonde woman well past her first youth was singing some maudlin love song in a cracked soprano. She was followed by a mouse-haired girl who didn’t look more than fourteen and didn’t sing any better than her older counterpart. Kent ordered two glasses of gin, perhaps because he needed the fortification for what lay ahead, and they settled down to wait.
William knew it was her the moment she stepped onto the stage, despite the unhelpfully guttering candles. He was somewhat surprised to find he could recognize her silhouette when she had bound and padded it to make it male, but apparently he could, for he was sure of her before she opened her mouth. The husky rich voice was an unnecessary confirmation.
She was dressed in clothing that appeared to be intended to represent a wealthy gentleman’s evening dress, and she performed a sketch, parts sung and parts spoken in an exaggerated French accent, about the lazy and luxurious life it was her—his?—privilege to lead. The meager audience chuckled in parts, but overall seemed too resentful of the truth behind the comedy to remember to find the exaggeration amusing.
They liked it better when she got to the end of the description of her persona’s daily life, and began to mime undressing for bed. Some of the men dispersed about the tables might well have not recognized her for a woman in disguise until that moment. They laughed and applauded as she stripped off the bulky coat, undid the tie, unbuttoned the shirt almost to its midpoint, and as a final touch, pulled off the topper and shook down her cascade of dark hair.
Kent’s fingers drummed the table before them. “She’s too good for this,” he muttered.
With her hair down, her coat off, and her shirt half-unbuttoned, Katarina embarked upon the second song in her repertoire. In this, she portrayed herself as a woman—a daring woman, holding up an invisible skirt to go wading in the sea, inviting the audience to imagine her trousered legs bare. The skirt went up—and up—and up—and the men in the tables leaned forward as though she were indeed about to reveal something indecent. She did not, even in mime, dropping the invisible hem chastely back to her ankles just as the song ended. The audience grumbled and laughed in equal parts, leaning back in their chairs and exchanging remarks with each other.
So it went on. Her next two songs were recognizable as versions of the ones that had been sung in the “Bridge and Battle,” but with hand motions and inflections that rendered them tawdry instead of sweet. As a finale, she offered something that sounded for all the world like a children’s song, resuming with startling ease the posture of a young man, though she left her coat off and her hair unbound.
“Half a pound of tupenny rice,” she sang, picking up an imaginary bag with her right hand and setting it in the crook of her left arm. “Half a pound of treacle.” Another bag added to the first. “That’s the way the money goes—” Her left hand pulled her pocket inside-out, proving it empty. She shrugged, and picked up her abandoned coat from the chair she had flung it over. She held it out as though to the audience. “Pop goes the weasel!”
“Weasel and stoat,” Kent murmured inexplicably. “‘Popping the weasel’ is slang for pawning one’s overcoat. Usually to buy food.”
Katarina had set down her imaginary bags of provisions, and now sauntered down the stage with her coat over her shoulder. “All along the City Road,” she said, and William recognized the words of the rhyme she had made brief reference to in Yorkshire. “In and out the Eagle.” She tipped the contents of an imaginary glass down her throat. “That’s the way the money goes—” The proof of empty pockets again, and once more she held out her coat. “Pop goes the weasel!”
The audience chuckled its understanding and approval. Katarina flashed them all a suddenly very feminine smile, and set the coat down. She minced back across the stage, clearly as a woman, hips swaying, finger teasing the unbuttoned edges of her shirt. When she opened her mouth again, even her voice had changed—still throaty, but now with a velvet edge. “Up and down the City Road…”
William was reminded of the women on the street corners outside the Bridge and Bottle and the Eagle and Crown. The rest of the audience was apparently reminded of the same thing, judging from the comments they called.
Katarina grinned, picked up the chair on which she had draped her coat, swung it around so that its back was toward the audience, and straddled it. “Up and down the Eagle.” The audience roared. “That’s the way the…money comes.” She grinned as they laughed. “Pop goes the weasel!” It was very obvious that she was no longer speaking of pawnbroking.
Kent drummed his fingers harder.
Katarina jumped up again, recaptured her masculine posture, and propped one foot on the chair. “All along the eastern coast, the lion blows the bugle. That’s the way the Eagle falls—”
William froze.
“Pop goes the weasel!” Katarina’s smile was steely edged now. Her hands mimed settling a rifle against her shoulder and firing it, and William thought of Palmer, fighting for five years all along the eastern coast.
“Half a pound of tupenny rice,” she finished. “Half a pound of treacle. Cockerel for Sunday tea—”
“Is the cockerel still the symbol of France?” William asked in a whisper.
Kent’s teeth flashed white in the dimness. “Not of the Empire, but of France herself—indeed it is.”
“Pop goes the weasel!”
Most of the audience seemed to appreciate the sentiment, applauding and muttering, but a few shifted uneasily. Katarina’s eyes swept over them, and she laughed, feminine once again. “I’ve no time to plead and pine. I’ve no time to wheedle. Kiss me quick and then I’m gone—” She blew an exaggerated kiss to the audience, and caught up her coat. “Pop goes the weasel!” She was off the stage almost before the last syllable left her throat.
“Get up,” Kent said, just loud enough to be heard over the wave of applause. “We’ll wait for her by the stage door out back.”
l
Elizabeth stared at Maxwell over the globe of the lamp. “Gone to find Madam Katherine? But—but I asked him and he said—William lied to me?”
“He said what was needful to keep you safely here,” Maxwell told her. The lamp light glinted on the chain of the pocket watch at his waist, his to care for. His folded hands rested atop Viktor Frankenstein’s journal. A teacup—not a brandy glass—was just visible in the outermost ring of light. Maxwell was washed and brushed and neat today, and his calm brown eyes regarded her with the air of a schoolmaster—the air of the man in command. He had looked that way in the alley the first night, and she had taken the act for truth then, but much had happened since.
“He lied,” Elizabeth repeated. “So did you. So did Frederick Kent. How dare you?”
“I believe Kent phrased it as not wishing to have a loose cannon aboard his ship,” Maxwell replied. “Clever turn of phrase, that. If you had known, you would have wanted to come. If he had denied you permission, you would have taken matters into your own hands. And we really can’t afford to hand any more victories to the French.”
“I’ve done nothing you have not done,” Elizabeth shot back, “except to succeed where you failed. You don’t know better than I what is best to be done. Your judgment is not more valuable than mine—”
“I am three times your age at least,” Maxwell snapped. “I have been traveling for longer than you have been alive.”
“—fine, then perhaps it is now, but it certainly wasn’t when you first began traveling. You think you know better than everyone. You thought you did even at the beginning. I’m not a pawn in your chess game, Mr. Maxwell, or don’t you understand that? You can’t move me into position, assume I’ll stay there, and declare your aim achieved! I’ve as much soul and mind and heart as you, as much right to move myself about the board!”
“Because that worked so well at Waterloo?”
“You were the one who insisted on handling Waterloo in a twenty-four-hour scramble! William and I both wanted to arrive earlier, find a way to talk with the Duke, and explain to him what actions of his would lead to the future we had seen! But you assumed—implied—you said we could not trust him to act as he ought. And by that you meant, we could not trust him to act as you wanted him to. As though the Duke of Wellington were a pawn on a chessboard too, to be coaxed into position with a carrot or bludgeoned from behind with a whip. Have you ever dealt straightly with anyone? You sent me a pocket watch but chose not to share your knowledge of its power. You chloroformed John Freemantle rather than sharing knowledge with the man who commanded him. You tried to kidnap Brenda Trevelyan instead of delivering a plain warning—”
Maxwell slammed closed Frankenstein’s journal and stood up with a suddenness that knocked his chair to the floor.
“—you blindfold all of us and tie our hands and push us into place, and then you’re surprised when we react by fighting for freedom! You’re angry when our struggles unbalance your idea of—”
He was already through the doorway. His boots struck the stairs with furious emphasis. If there had been a door upstairs, he would surely have slammed it.
“—of what should be,” Elizabeth finished, addressing the empty room. “I am so tired of everyone treating me this way! Petting and tricking and deceiving me into doing what they think I should.” She jerked Maxwell’s abandoned chair upright, plumped herself down in it, and flipped open the cover of Frankenstein’s journal.
l
When Emil Schwieger returned some three-quarters of an hour later, Elizabeth was still sitting furiously upright in Maxwell’s chair, turning each leaf of the notebook after an angrily precise interval.
Schwieger paused in the doorway, a greeting on his lips, then stopped short. “Has something happened, Miss Elizabeth? Where is everyone?”
“‘Everyone’ is pursuing plans from which I have been excluded,” Elizabeth said. “That’s what has happened,” she explained, and Schwieger winced in sympathy.
His bright blue eyes moved about the room. “Where is the pocket watch? Is it not your turn to guard it?”
“Maxwell has it with him.” Elizabeth gestured to the loft above, and Schwieger followed the wave of her hand with his eyes. For a moment, she thought he would excuse himself and mount the stairs, but instead, after a slight hesitation, he entered the sitting room. He paused at the table, hand hovering as though to draw back the chair to her right.
“May I?”
“Oh, of course.” How nice that someone asked her permission for something. Schwieger drew the chair back, seated himself, and glanced at her reading material.
“Unfair of Herr Maxwell to carry off the pocket watch,” he offered. “Since it was first your possession, if I correctly understand?”
“No,” she admitted grudgingly. “That one is in fact his possession. I destroyed mine.”
Schwieger looked startled. “You did? How could you possibly?”
“It’s…rather a long story.”
Schwieger smiled a little. “I have an hour at least before I have to go back out on patrol.” He paused in an inviting sort of way.
Elizabeth hesitated, trying to decide if she wanted to begin the recital.
“I intended to make some tea, to have with my supper,” Schwieger added. “Would you like a cup?”
It sounded homey and comforting and very nice indeed. Some of the anger drained from her skin. “Well—thank you, yes.” She stood as he did, and began her story as they made their way to the scullery.
It was complicated enough to fill all the time it took Schwieger to measure tea and then all the time they waited for the kettle to boil. Elizabeth reached her conclusion just as the first whistle pierced the air, and Schwieger shook his head in wonder, pouring. He handed her one of the cups, and they returned to the table in the sitting room.
“These pocket watches,” Schwieger said, “they defy understanding. Where did you acquire such a magical device, if not through Mr. Maxwell?”
She started to say, In fact, it was through Mr. Maxwell, then decided she would rather not tread that story all the way through again. “It was sent to me at my father’s house in Hartwich. No letter of explanation, nothing to identify the sender.”
“Extraordinary. And where did Herr Maxwell acquire his?”
“He found it in a garret, he says.”
“Is that all the explanation he gave? He did not say where the garret was, or the year?”
Elizabeth shook her head, surprised at his intensity. “Why does it matter?”
“A device may be unique,” Schwieger said, “but if there are two, there are usually more than two. I cannot help wondering if there are objects of magic and power scattered throughout Britain—or Europe. In garrets, perhaps. If there are more to be found, I should rather like to know where. I should also like to know where they came from in the first place. Is it not a cause for your curiosity as well?”
“I suppose it will be eventually,” Elizabeth said. “My attention has been…consumed by more immediate problems.”
He smiles. “Fighting monsters and disarming constructs. A heavy burden for one so young.”
It would have annoyed her from Maxwell, and from Katarina it had made her throat tighten, but something in Schwieger’s voice made Elizabeth smile. “You’re no older than I am,” she pointed out, mock-offended. “Are you?”
“Ah!” He grinned a little. “I cannot tell. A great secret madame.”
For some reason that made her want to smile again, though she could not have said why it was amusing.
“It was really that bad, under the constructs?” Schwieger went on.
“Really truly,” Elizabeth said. She did not feel like smiling now. “And before that, it was really truly that bad under the monsters you wish returned to life.”
Schwieger’s smile took on a grim edge. “The monsters I once wished returned to life,” he corrected. “That option is no longer open to me, thanks to Katarina.”
“Or to some unknown enemy,” Elizabeth reminded him.
Schwieger nodded. “I am not sure which option I like less,” he said after a time, looking down into his teacup. “Is it worse to think our comrade could act so? Or is it worse to think some enemy of Palmer’s took the notes and the Imperials will soon be crafting monsters against us?” He tilted the cup so that the lamp-light gleamed against the tea, then rotated it slowly, watching the gleam trail along the surface of the liquid. “If the latter—perhaps it is just as well Trevelyan has started to walk his present course. You said, in the other London, his constructs were all that allowed Englishmen to defend themselves against the monsters?”
“No,” Elizabeth said, “no, no—that is, yes, you recall correctly, but that was how it all started in the other London as well. You must not return to that path.”
“But the path is malleable, surely? We might use Trevelyan’s tool differently. And it is just a tool, is it not? It matters for what purpose it is used. The evil is in the brain that directs the hand, not the tool in the hand’s grip.”
“Not this tool.” Elizabeth shook her head, refusing to yield an inch. “A tool that confers such tremendous power—it—it—summons men who will misuse it. The men of that other London, those who built constructs to fight monsters—Trevelyan himself—did not intend constructs to ever be used against Englishmen, but the ‘wheel turned itself,’ Lord Seward said.”
Schwieger studied her. “So you truly believe the only solution is to prevent the initial construction of the self-turning wheel. You truly believe that.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Yes.”
“I suppose I must trust your judgment,” he said, “since you observed the other London and I did not.” Had anyone ever placed trust in her judgment? Elizabeth felt a little dizzy, thinking about it. “You thought to do so by indirect methods,” Schwieger went on, “by recreating the sequence of events so no one would ever think to build the first construct. Kent is a great proponent of indirect methods—as is Maxwell, apparently. But you—” He smiled at her, blue eyes brilliant in the lamp-light. “I think you are more like me. I prefer direct action. I think you do as well.” He hesitated a moment. “The wheel does not turn itself yet,” he said. “It has not yet made its first revolution. Therefore, a direct act can still prevent that first revolution from ever taking place.” He set the teacup down. “I believe I can offer you a better alternative than Maxwell’s indirection.”
l
“Go around the corner and meet her at the back door,” Kent said as they reached the mouth of the alleyway that stretched behind the Ten Bells. “I’ll wait here.”
William stopped still. “You’ll what?”
Kent prodded him back into motion. “She might well run if she sees me, but she’s not afraid of you.”
No, William thought with an inward grimace, of course she wasn’t afraid of him. She had proven that outside Palmer’s house. Am I bait?
“You’ll be able to coax her into a reasonable state of mind,” Kent continued with another nudge.
Right, because he had done so brilliant a job of that back in Yorkshire. Yes, I’m bait. He considered telling Kent what he thought about that, but it was more important they talk with Katarina than that he stand upon his dignity. William gritted his teeth and stepped into the alleyway.
The torchlight of the street was dim enough, but he was night-blind without it. Anything at all could have been lurking in the darkness before him. He picked his way step by step over slimy cobblestone and piles of muck, eyes fixed on the small spill of light from the lamp in the Ten Bells’ back window.
The door beside it swung open while William had still half of the distance yet to traverse. Katarina, he thought, and made to quicken his step, but the figure was too short and slight. She turned her head, and the lamplight shone for an instant on her face. The little mouse-haired singer.
“’Evening, love,” a voice from the shadows greeted her.
Of course there would be other men besides William waiting outside the stage door. He should have expected that. Young men assembled outside stage doors everywhere, to meet the girls who had lately been performing and invite them out to supper. Of course it would be so here as well as everywhere else.
Not that this man seemed so very young, though. Something in the voice, and in the bulk, suggested middle age. Nor was he issuing anything so mealy-mouthed as a supper invitation. The girl shrank back from him, uttering what certainly sounded to William like a mew of dismay, and the man stepped to close the gap between them, pressing her up against the wall. The lamplight shone on his greasy black hair.
This is really no business of mine, William thought. Moreover, if he got into a fight with this man, he would surely lose, and might well cost them their only chance to speak with Katarina. It was not his business, and there were much larger problems to hand that needed his attention.
There had been much larger problems needing his attention when he escorted Christopher Palmer to the infirmary, too. And when he had fetched the child Meg out of Murchinson’s. William sighed, and lengthened his stride.
“All right there, miss?” he called.
The black-haired man jerked around, but without loosening his grip on the girl.
From the other side of the lamplight, a second man—just as large, this one with iron-gray hair—stepped into William’s range of vision. “Keep walking,” he advised.
William stood still. “If the young lady asks me to leave, of course I will.” He pitched his voice a little louder than was natural. They would probably take it for nervousness—and they wouldn’t be wrong, as far as it went, but he was also hoping to attract some attention. Kent’s, by preference, but someone from inside might do as well.
“I said keep walking,” the gray-haired man growled.
“I’m waiting for someone who sings here,” William said, still too loudly. He glanced from side to side as surreptitiously as he could. There was a small crate visible atop the refuse to his left side, empty, half broken, wooden slats splintered. Not much of a weapon, but it might do. “She’s a handsome woman, tall, dark hair.” Was there, he wondered with rising irritation, some reason Kent was not coming to offer his services? “Perhaps you’d like to wait with me, miss?” he added to the girl.
The little singer gave a gasp, and then all at once started to struggle. The black-haired man shoved her back up against the wall, holding her without effort, and his companion took a step toward William. His big hands balled into fists, and a smile showed more teeth missing than present. William tried not to break eye contact as he lunged to catch up the crate.
A crack like breaking ice split the stillness, and the iron-haired man jumped and swore, shaking his right hand as though something had passed close enough to sting it. William turned the lunge into a duck, folding himself against the wall, out of range. His eye just caught the glint of lamplight off the barrel of the pistol aimed through the window. The black-haired man saw it too and backed away, letting go of the girl so suddenly she almost fell.
The whip-crack split the air again, once, twice, and one of the men yelped with pain. Both of them took off running after that, and the mouse-haired girl scuttled off in the opposite direction. William scrambled upright just as Kent came pounding up behind him—finally—and the stage door opened to reveal Katarina’s furious set face and dead-steady pistol.
There was no sound except for three people’s quickened breathing, as Kent and his former lieutenant faced each other. The dark eyes did not flicker, and nor did the blue.
“Who were you aiming at?” Kent bit off at last.
For a moment, Katarina did not seem to understand the question, but then her eyes went wide. “I was aiming at precisely what I hit!” She added, “And you’re both welcome, I’m sure,” before deliberately lowering her arm.
“I think my confusion is understandable,” Kent said. He folded his arms for all the world as though there was not an angry armed woman just before him, for all the world as though there had not been a nearly deadly conflict in this alleyway a moment ago. “You seem to have declared yourself an enemy to me and mine.”
“Kent,” William said, “I thought we came here to talk reasonably—”
“Ask William Carrington here how he left Christopher Carter,” Kent barreled over him. “Ask him what effect your fire had on the old man’s health.”
“My fire?” Katarina stared at him. “Who’s been telling you lies? I never set it. Charles West knocked over his candle—”
Kent shook his head. “I might have believed that if your theft had not been discovered.”
“That—my—That was a different matter altogether.” The look on Katarina’s face was something between impatience and shame. “The fire was no help to me. It almost destroyed my chances of getting away clean. Why would I choose to give myself fewer hours of quiet in which to run? Yes—” Her eyes went to William. “—I picked the time traveler’s pocket. I confess that. I took the watch.” She did not look down to her belt, but the hand that did not hold the pistol dropped to caress something that hung there. “Quite a Celtic tale,” she added, almost conversationally. “I sold my honor for a worthless trinket. My entire life up in smoke and nothing to show for it but a broken thing I can’t even pawn. We walk forward blindfolded, always, trusting the path we walk to take us to the destination we’ve chosen, and sometimes we choose very badly indeed.” She sighed. “I certainly would not have chosen this consequence if I had been able to see it. Did you know the watch was worthless, Mr. Carrington, when you faced me in the garden?”
“I did,” William said.
“Was there some reason you did not say so at once?”
“I did not…” William hesitated. “I didn’t want that to be the reason you came inside.”
Katarina breathed half a laugh. The lamplight glinted on her loose hair, on the pistol in her hand. “Well, yes. I suppose I see that. You would hardly have been able to sleep easily any night following.”
“I don’t mean it that way,” William said. “Or at least, not only that way. I wanted you to come in because you—because I—Because you give people second chances. Children taken to match factories, Peninsula veterans with missing arms—And you deserved one of your own. I owed you at least that.”
Katarina watched him. He could not read her expression. “Then I think,” she said, “I must thank you for offering me the chance to choose differently.”
“Madam,” William said, swallowing, “it was the very least I could do.”
“Does that mean you trust my word, William Carrington?”
He met her dark eyes. “Yes.”
“For some unknown reason,” Kent cut in acidly. “He may, but I do not.”
“You don’t believe Wilton could have knocked over his own candle?” William protested. “Or that Palmer’s enemies could have—?”
“Not the latter, certainly. Think, Carrington. You went looking for Katarina after you tangled with Schwieger. You and Schwieger both went looking, outward from the house, trying to find her footprints by the rising sun.”
“We followed them for a short way,” William agreed, “but then she cut across a field.”
“But that short way was dirt, was it not? You saw her footprints leading away from the house. Did you find any others leading toward it?”
William closed his eyes, trying to remember. “No,” he said, surprised as the realization occurred to him. “I hardly thought about it at the time—I was thinking of following her—”
“No footprints,” Kent said. “No outside enemy to set the fire. It was set by someone in the house.”
“By Charles Wilton, then,” William argued. “As we thought at first. Wilton knocking over his candle.”
“That is possible,” Kent admitted. “I can see it. He knocked over his candle, he feared for the precious papers, he fetched them from their hiding place. Katarina might have taken them from his hands when she guided him out of the burning building—might not have even realized what she held until later. If that is the truth—” His eyes returned to Katarina’s face. “—if my former lieutenant is guilty of only opportunism, all she need do to settle her debt with me is hand me the Frankenstein papers.”
“The what?” Katarina’s eyes went from one of them to the other. “What,” she said then, very carefully, “are we talking about?”
“Chris Palmer hid something priceless in the sundial,” William said. “In the morning it was gone. We think Charles Wilton rushed to it when he saw the house in—”
“—house in flames,” Katarina finished. “How—odd that the trick should work on him of all people. I suppose he is not who he once was— Frederick.” She interrupted herself all at once, as though understanding had abruptly and forcibly descended. Her eyes were suddenly fixed upon Kent’s face. “Frederick, it was not I who played that trick upon him. Listen to me. I woke and smelled smoke. At the end of the corridor, I saw flame, and Schwieger getting Mr. West into the garden. I ran upstairs for Mr. Carter and Janet. I went nowhere near the sundial until we all assembled there. I didn’t have time.” Her words were coming faster now. “Frederick, I don’t have your papers. On my honor—what honor I have left, at least—it wasn’t I who took them.” Her eyes bored into to Kent’s. “Do you understand me? If I did not take them, and no enemy’s footsteps approached the house, you have a different problem.”
l
“We couldn’t go in there!” Elizabeth protested, aware even as she said it that her tone lacked something of the necessary conviction. Schwieger apparently heard the lack as well, for his eyes crinkled.
“But we could. We could slip in and away again, and leave behind a solution for this problem you have taken it upon yourself to correct.”
“I thought the laboratory was kept locked,” Elizabeth faltered.
“It is, but there are locks and there are locks. The proper locks are all on the front door. The one sealing the laboratory is a formality, and I could get it open. And then…only think.” Schwieger’s voice went low, persuasive. He leaned forward, and his hand went out, almost as if he would lay it over hers, but he stopped just short of that intimacy. “That great hulking enemy of yours has no power yet. It sits there waiting, quiescent. Helpless. We could do…something. Something simple, so that it will fail before the eyes of Trevelyan’s investors, so he’ll have no backing to build more.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “He will certainly repair it.”
“Materials are scarce,” Schwieger said. “And these emissaries from Russia are due in only a few days. Trevelyan himself does not return until tomorrow midday. In time, perhaps, other emissaries will come, but between now and then, no construct army will be built. Sometimes victory is achieved by holding the line against assault after assault, until reinforcements can arrive—no? Prevent him and prevent him and prevent him, and the terrible future you have witnessed will not come to pass. Come—we can do this now.”
“I—” The temptation was momentarily dizzying. So overwhelming was its pull that Elizabeth found herself on her feet without realizing she had made the decision to rise. “I—No. No, wait.” Schwieger waited patiently, as she had bidden him, while she struggled to form her thoughts into words.
“That would be as bad as what Mr. Kent did to me tonight,” she said. “It would be as bad as what Maxwell does. And what Maxwell does never works as he wishes it to. Of course it does not. Ruin his prototype, and Mr. Trevelyan will make another. Frighten Brenda and she will flee from rescue, thinking it abduction. The only way to change Trevelyan’s actions is to change his mind, surely. He must choose not to create the future I saw.”
“We all start so,” Schwieger said, not unkindly. “Everyone holds fast to ideals in the beginning. Later one realizes that it is sometimes necessary to force the change required, by fair means or foul.”
She shook her head, unable to summon an argument, knowing only she did not agree.
“You need not take any action you do not wish to,” Schwieger said, and turned away. But something in the briskness of the movement told her he was headed to the laboratory, to force change by foul means. She took a quick step into his path, throwing proper manners to the wind where they belonged and catching hold of his arm.
“Don’t,” she said. “Wait.”
He hesitated.
“Let us discuss it, at least?” she said.
He turned to face her, standing very close indeed. She knew enough of men and women now to read the look on his face. She dropped her gaze from his, trying to decide what to say next, and her eyes fell on the glint of gold at his waist, almost completely hidden by his ragged clothing. In her memory rang Kent’s impatient voice, telling Schwieger to leave his pocket watch behind if he was going on patrol dressed as beggar. Why would he take such an obvious risk in defiance of orders?
All at once she felt cold.
“What’s this?” she said, before she had time to be afraid of what would happen next. She reached for the glint of gold—trying to remember despite her racing pulse how Katarina might essay this touch, trying to make her questing fingers coquettish as well as curious.
His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. And then she was sure.
Elizabeth’s fingers closed over the watch as Schwieger pushed her away from him, and the timepiece came free with a ripping of cloth. Schwieger swore and grabbed for it, and Elizabeth twisted desperately to get free. Beneath her bandages, the blisters on her palms burned all over again, but she did not let go of the watch.
She got one good look at the golden orb between her bandaged palms—larger than was customary, too heavy for its size, carved with leaves and vines and a bird and the rising sun. Then Schwieger’s hand closed over her arm again. Elizabeth kicked at him—and missed—but did knock over one of the chairs, which was almost as good from one point of view, since the noise would surely attract the attention of her comrade upstairs. She would never defeat Schwieger in a physical contest, not without help.
She added her voice to the clatter of the falling chair. “Maxwell!”
Schwieger had her arms now, but she had both hands wrapped around the pocket watch. She bent over it, squirming and straining against the grip bruising her skin, drawing up her knees and folding almost to the floor to shield the watch from his grasp. No, no, I won’t give it back, I won’t let you use it here—I don’t know what you mean to do—who are you? “Maxwell!” she shrieked again.
“Elizabeth?” His boots thundered down the stairs. Schwieger got an arm around her chest and forced her upright, using his other hand to pry apart her fingers. She caught a confused glimpse of Maxwell appearing in the doorway, coat off and collar undone, white hair wild.
Elizabeth jerked and wrenched and managed one instant’s freedom of movement for her hands. She launched the watch into the air—not well and not far, but it skittered across the floorboards in Maxwell’s direction, and he lunged forward and caught it up.
Schwieger released his hold upon her wrists, and Elizabeth tried to follow the watch in a lurching, inelegant bid for freedom. But before she managed to get her stumbling feet underneath her, there was something cold and sharp against her throat.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” Schwieger’s voice grated against her hair. Maxwell had said those very words, that first night in the alleyway, but it hadn’t sounded like this. “Don’t make me hurt her,” he repeated, looking over her head at Maxwell. “Put it down.”
Maxwell hesitated what seemed to be an endless moment. He looked down at the pocket watch, open in his hand. The blade pricked against Elizabeth’s skin. Maxwell’s face tightened, and he tossed the pocket watch onto the dining table.
“Step back,” Schwieger ordered.
Maxwell took a step back toward the doorway, arms slightly open, hands held away from his body. “You have what you want,” he said. “Now let her go.”
Schwieger leaned forward, quick as a striking bird, and caught the timepiece by its chain. Elizabeth fought him for one instant before his grip closed hard again.
“Stop it,” Schwieger said to her. “I don’t want to hurt you. I didn’t come here to hurt anyone.” He held her against him with one arm, knife in the other, watch dangling from its chain in his knife hand. “I came for the monster notes. I never wanted anything more, and you locals were never meant to be involved.” Elizabeth could only just see how the light danced in little sparks off the watch chain looped over his hand. She could not see the knife at all, of course. “You have no idea what horrific a future this world is hurtling toward! It hasn’t happened yet, I can still stop it, you have no idea what we’ll start doing to each other twenty-nine years from right now unless someone stops it!”
“Then you have what you came for,” Maxwell said, almost calmly. “So let her go.”
Schwieger shook his head. “One thing more,” he said. “Your watch too.”
“That’s not yours to take,” Maxwell informed him.
The knife whispered against Elizabeth’s skin. “It very much is,” Schwieger said. “You must be mad if you think I’ll leave it in your hands and you free to do more damage. Put it on the table, or she comes home with me as hostage for your good behavior.” Maxwell hesitated. “Now!”
Maxwell sagged, dropping his eyes as though in defeat, his hand moving to unfasten the pocket watch from its fob.
But the rest of his body didn’t look defeated. Even as his hand moved toward his waistcoat, his shoulders were squaring and his knees bending just slightly, and Elizabeth knew exactly what he meant to do. Maxwell wasn’t William, not one to offer a stream of reasonable words until they weakened the resolve of the enemy holding the weapon—not even when the weapon threatened someone dear. Maxwell would act at once, would act boldly, would act before fear could make him hesitate and hesitation could strengthen his enemy’s position. It was not always the right approach—Katarina had been right; sometimes you needed to act fast, but other times you needed to take pains—but it was an approach Elizabeth understood without needing a pause for thought. She was exactly the same way herself.
Her boot heel connected with Schwieger’s knee at the same moment Maxwell launched himself through the space that separated them. Schwieger staggered, the blade scratched across Elizabeth’s skin, and Maxwell crashed into them. The three of them fell in a tangle of limbs. Elizabeth tried to kick free, but someone’s elbow drove into her middle, and she fell back, breath gone from her lungs, only dimly realizing it when Maxwell shoved her clear of Schwieger’s reaching hands. She heard a fist connect with flesh, and the knife clatter to the floor.
Elizabeth blinked tearing eyes. She saw Schwieger on his back, Maxwell atop him. The older man was trying to pin the young Prussian with his greater weight, but Schwieger had both his hands plunged into Maxwell’s collar, fastened around Maxwell’s throat. Maxwell’s breath came in little coughing gasps, and his face flushed red. He let go Schwieger’s shoulders with one hand, then the other, reaching to pry at the choking fingers. Schwieger snatched one of his hands away from Maxwell’s collar—and grabbed not for the knife, but for the pocket watch that had fallen beside it.
Elizabeth made a desperate effort to roll upright, retched, and sagged back. Somewhere behind her, a door slammed. She heard running footsteps, Kent’s voice shouting something.
Schwieger’s hand closed into a fist over his watch, his thumb pushing the side button twice in rapid succession. Maxwell scrabbled to free his own watch from his waistcoat, or his collar from Schwieger’s grip, but the young Prussian jammed the top button home. He and Maxwell vanished in a flash—not of light, but a momentary brightening of color, and then a movement as though the air around them had folded itself in half.
Maxwell’s locket fell through the space they had been, trailing its broken chain like a shooting star until it clinked to rest on the floorboards.