But Alice had loved her enough to still fight to keep her from having to travel, or at least travel without knowing the truth. Maybe that’s why her mom had been so firmly against telling Etta; she could be unsentimental when Alice and Etta couldn’t.
“She doesn’t want me to save her.” Etta wiped at her eyes, surprised to feel the wet tracks of tears dripping down off her chin. “Sorry…I’m just…a little overwhelmed. And tired.”
All I wanted was to save you. What was she even going back to now? Was there a point to performing in any kind of debut, having any kind of career, if Alice couldn’t see it?
She knew Alice had been in what Rose called the “twilight years” of her life—she’d lived a long time, and even as a young student, Etta had understood that she wouldn’t be around forever. But she couldn’t reconcile herself with this. She couldn’t understand how any of this was fair.
I’ll see her again, she thought. Not in my time, and maybe not even soon, but one day…
“There’s nothing to apologize for. We’ll rest as soon as it’s safe, but we do need to keep moving,” Nicholas said.
Etta nodded and followed.
The line of his body was rigid, poised to strike. Sharp, cutting dark eyes assessed each person who passed them. Now and then he rubbed at the broken skin on his bruised knuckles, and she knew that while she was thinking about Alice, his thoughts were locked on what had happened behind the house. She reached over to brush her fingers over the back of his hand, trying to break him out of what looked like a vicious cycle of thoughts. They’d already lost a day trying to solve this clue; they couldn’t waste a second more on regrets.
Etta began walking faster, nearly at a jog, but he kept up easily with his long strides. Sweeping her gaze around the street, she tried to identify the source of the uneasiness rippling down the back of her neck.
“What do you think the man who grabbed me was going to say—he wasn’t a what?” she asked. “An enemy? An Ironwood?”
“If Miss…Alice…is right, and he’s not an Ironwood, then it’s likely he’s a Thorn,” Nicholas said slowly. “Equally dangerous, considering they want the astrolabe as well.”
Rose. The man had called her Rose.
“He used my mom’s name,” she said. “That man had clearly seen her before if he mistook me for her.”
He gave one of his curt nods. “Alice implied that your mother was tied to the Thorns at one point or another.”
Etta frowned. Something about all of this was rubbing her the wrong way, brushing up like sandpaper against her attempts to puzzle this out. Her mother had wanted her to travel; she’d known it was inevitable. Etta was beginning to think the “consequences” Rose had referenced in her fight with Alice had to do with trying to change the timeline by keeping Etta from going. So why would Rose join a group that wanted to use the astrolabe for itself—and would stop Etta from getting it? Had she pulled the same kind of con on the Thorns as she had on the Ironwoods?
Rose could be cold, guarded, but Etta hadn’t realized before now that her mother could also be ruthless. It gave her hope that, if her mom really did believe she could handle this, she recognized there was fight in Etta, too.
They were going to have a long conversation when Etta found her. Starting with why she hadn’t just destroyed the astrolabe in the first place, and saved everyone the grief.
The sun was setting, and the mood of the city was shifting into something that made her stomach churn. Heavy curtains were being drawn behind windows, and cardboard was being placed in the flat windows of storefronts. The streetlamps remained off. The crowds of people began to disperse, breaking off in clusters and heading up the side streets, jumping in whatever bus or taxi was passing by. It was like the city had sucked in one last, enormous gasp and was holding its breath. Etta felt as though she were walking along a crack that was threatening to cave in on itself.
“I thought they had…elect—electricity?” Nicholas said quietly. The leather satchel at his side bounced between them, but every now and then the back of his hand would brush hers and break the rhythm of her pulse.
“They do,” Etta whispered back, glancing back at the milky pink of the sunset. Was this part of the “rationing” Alice had mentioned, or was this some kind of power blackout?
They passed Leicester Square; couples dressed up in furs and hats were loitering outside of the theaters, sharing cigarettes as if it were any other day in any other year.
Almost there, almost there…
“May I ask you something?” Nicholas said into the darkness gathering around them. A midnight blue clung to the air, that last gasp of afterlight before nightfall. Without any illumination, Etta’s other senses came into sharp focus. The smell of gasoline and smoke. The sound of their footsteps. The dryness of her mouth as she tried to swallow.
“You can ask me anything,” she told him.
“What will you do when you find the astrolabe,” he asked, his voice reserved, careful, “knowing what it truly does?”
Etta didn’t want to lie. “Whatever it takes to save my mom. My future.”
“Are there any circumstances in which you’d give it to the old man?” he continued.
What a strange question—was that some kind of test?
She raised an eyebrow. “Would you?”
His lips parted, but just as quickly, he turned his gaze up toward the sky as it bruised under the night.
“I can only imagine what he’d do with access to more of the future,” Etta continued. “It’s how badly he wants it, and how far my mom had to go to protect it, that scares me. It definitely makes me second-guess giving it to him. Nothing about the old man makes me want to play nice.”
“But isn’t it the easier solution—give it to him, and get your life back? Your mother? Perform at your concert?” he asked, his voice strained.
“What’s left of my life at this point, you mean. Whatever parts of it he hasn’t torpedoed.” Etta didn’t want to continue down this line of conversation, not when her own thoughts were still too frustratingly tangled. Her mom was safe for now, and would be, so long as she could get to the astrolabe before Ironwood’s deadline.
He gave her a helpless look. “‘Torpedoed’?”
“An underwater missile that…You know what?” she said with a faint laugh. “I’ll explain later. I’m not so sure it wouldn’t be a good idea to torpedo the stupid astrolabe and just be done with this.”
“That would be unwise. The whole business of getting home could be made considerably easier by creating a passage, rather than sailing to the one in Nassau,” Nicholas said. “I hope you’ll take this as the compliment it is, but I imagine Ironwood will be eager to see you and your mother as quickly as possible. He might even create one for you.”
“We are talking about Cyrus Ironwood, right?” Etta said, brows raised at this little fantasy. “The one who told me he was going to leave me so destitute I was going to have to resort to prostitution?”
Nicholas groaned. “We will create one for you and your mother, then.”
“If we can figure out how to use it,” she pointed out. The thought made her feel tired all over again. In truth, at that moment, all she really wanted were two things: her mother and a hot shower. And toothpaste. Three things. The last should have been easy enough to find, and maybe it would have been, if every store they passed hadn’t been closed for the day.