“I know that now,” he said. “I’m sorry. But it felt like too much of a risk—I—”
“Needed to use me?” Sophia said. “To go after your person, to achieve your ends? My desire was to be heir, which might have gotten me treated like a whole person, not fodder for marriage. Julian was my friend. I cared—care—about him. But I decided in that desert, before you ever found me, that what I really wanted was the freedom to do as I pleased, with whomever I pleased. I wanted to move as freely as the wind, and not be called back into port against my will. That is power. Do you understand?”
He nodded, his throat tight. “Beyond measure.”
Their conversation had drawn the attention of someone outside the chapel. There was a pounding on the door, a muffled voice that called out a question. Li Min whirled back toward Nicholas.
“If you mean to complete the Belladonna’s task,” she said, “then I will be your guide.”
“No.” It was a terrible thing, and he wanted them far from it. “I need to see this through myself.”
She shook her head. “You will need someone to dig your grave, for even if you finish with the old man, the journey to that moment will end you.”
Sophia let out a harsh breath, crossing her arms.
“This is my path now,” he told her, using his left hand to lift his right, to show her the ring. “I am dead regardless. If I don’t kill him, the poison will take me; if I’m not quick enough arriving there, the poison will take me. If I succeed, at least there will be one fewer evil in the world.”
At least this way, I might yet live long enough to return to Hall and die at sea.
The pounding on the door grew louder, as if someone was throwing their weight against it.
“You’re not leaving us behind to sweep up your mess after you,” Sophia snarled, pulling him toward the shivering air of the passage. “You’d just better pray I don’t kill you first myself.”
THEY PASSED THROUGH A SERIES OF PASSAGES COBBLED together from their combined memories, leading, at various points, to a rather treacherous section of the Australian outback, a pristine glacier, and the most dire year of the Middle Ages that Austria had to offer, with countless small insignificant connections between each. When they encountered anyone, he and Li Min shrouded themselves, letting Sophia speak in the rare instances speaking was necessary.
Nicholas wondered several times over the course of this journey if a man could feel so hollow as to become invisible, or if people only saw what they expected to see—which, in the case of their situation, was not a Chinese woman or a black man. In any case, the silence suited him well enough. It was easier to keep his mind still and focused on the days ticking down.
On the night of the sixteenth, a few miles from the last passage on the outskirts of Mexico City, Nicholas began to sense Li Min and Sophia slowing, eating away at his own pace. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the young women exchange a look; not wanting to confront it, he dug his heels into his horse’s side to urge it forward. Before the mare could work herself back up to a gallop, a small hand lashed out and ripped the reins from his hands.
“What the devil—?”
“You will do what you have now attempted three times—you will ride that animal until it collapses and dies beneath you,” Li Min told him sternly, pulling the reins further out of his reach. “I do not intend to share my horse. Do you, Sophia?”
“Certainly not.”
“I have not—” he began.
“We haven’t slept in two days, Carter,” Sophia interrupted.
Surely not. “We stopped a night ago.”
“No. That was Austria. That scenic little spot you picked by the rancid moat. I’m sure one of us picked up the Black Death as a parting gift.”
Christ. She was right.
“Let’s move off the road. Camp for a few hours,” Li Min suggested.
Revolt surged inside of him, and must have been clear from his expression, because Sophia turned her horse and led them off the worn road and onto the lush, green earth. Somehow, Nicholas had always pictured this part of the world as entirely desert. But even this late in the year, there was life and vegetation sweeping up from their valley to the peaks of the mountains around them.
He counted the paces under his breath, from the road to where Sophia decided was far enough to drop her saddlebags, and decided it was two hundred paces too far.
He could go ahead. Let them rest and catch up to him later.
Before he could devise a course of action, Li Min led his horse forward toward the others and began to unhook its harness.
He breathed sharply out of his nose, but finally dismounted. “I’ll hunt.”
Shooting something sounded marvelous, now that he had gunpowder again. He could not shoot with his right arm, useless as it was, but he wasn’t a terrible shot with his left.
“Li Min is already going,” Sophia said, from where she was laying out the bedding. He turned, then turned again, surprised to find Li Min’s small form retreating into the distance. “You can find the firewood and kindling.”
“All right. But I’ll cook.”
Sophia made a face he didn’t understand.
“And water?”
“We’re fine for now,” she said, tossing away the wide-brimmed hat she’d found abandoned on the road. “Go. Before your expression finally does me in. For someone out for cold-blooded revenge, you’ve got the look of a sad, sorry bastard about you.”