“Where’s Li Min?” he asked, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. With the storm clouds knitting themselves together so thickly, he couldn’t rely on the light of the moon.
Sophia glanced toward the rivers of rain pouring down his window. “Out…finding food.”
Suspicion stirred, rising in him like the winds outside. Somewhere, at some point on this journey they had undertaken together, he’d begun to develop the ear to pick out the subtle tones of her voice. He recognized this one all too well. It was the one she used when she was lying.
“Did he get the gold he needed?” she asked faintly. “For the entry?”
“That and a bit more to pay off the men for their silence on the cache’s location,” Nicholas said. “The old man assumes the astrolabe is as good as won, and has had us moving various stores and supplies to different locations. He wants access to them when he changes the timeline again.”
Sophia nodded, rubbing a finger over her top lip. “That makes sense…so it’s on, is it? Have you finally convinced him to let you accompany him to the auction?”
The old man had wanted to go alone with a small group of men and women for his protection. He claimed to need Nicholas to keep an eye on things at home, to fend off any attacks the Thorns might launch. Nicholas thought it more likely that some part of the old man still was struggling to fully trust him after what had happened with Etta, and did not want the astrolabe within Nicholas’s reach.
But it had been far easier than anticipated to prey on the old man’s rampant fears of theft or assassination. “He’s so suspicious of everyone that it wasn’t difficult to plant the seeds of the idea that he might need me to watch the guards watching him. With the twelve-hour time difference, Ironwood wants us to leave here no later than ten o’clock in the morning.” He added, “I would keep back at least ten minutes, in the event Ironwood tarries near the passage to see who his competition might be. I will find a way to move him along.”
“What’s the old man’s mood like? How has he been treating you?”
In the most disgusting way of all: like a prodigal son. “It’s as if the past few years never existed. He wants nothing more than to discuss his shipping fleet. He lies and dreams in the same breath—I hear all about how much wealth and power I’m to inherit and how best to manipulate those around me if I’m to keep it, and yet I know for certain he wishes to save his first wife. I am a placeholder in his mind.”
In truth, the man’s property was astounding, but his collections of rare books, ships, and artifacts from across the eras were breathtaking. And he could not deny how truly alarming it was to find himself seated at a candlelit, food-laden banquet table with the old man’s closest advisors and inner circle, when before, he had only ever been allowed to wash their plates.
Sophia hummed in thought, still fixated on the window, the swaying of the tree branches as they scratched against the glass. With all of the agility and strength of a man three times his age, Nicholas rose from the bed, ignoring the jabbing aches in his back and the hot blood needling through his veins. He felt himself on the hazy cusp of a fever, but the longer he remained awake and upright, the sharper it became. Using the bedpost for support, he came to stand directly in front of her.
“Have you seen any Shadows about?”
“No,” she said. “Now that everyone knows where the astrolabe is, I imagine they’ve finally turned their attention away from us. But if Ironwood could never find any of the witch’s hiding places, I doubt they will.”
Sophia still did not look at him, but he was seeing her now. The dark ring around her visible eye, the sunken quality of her skin. Either she had spent far too long in the cool rain and was shrinking, or there was a knot of something painful inside her, deep enough that her body was curling itself around it.
“Is that all?” he asked. “I’m glad to see you well, but…I thought we were in agreement that it was too much of a risk to meet unless there was some crucial bit of information to exchange.”
Sophia said nothing, only stood and wrung out the ends of her oversize coat, as if preparing to go. “You’re right. It was…it was very stupid to come. I think—well, I thought—that is, we should talk about what will happen in Japan. I’ll stay as close to the Ironwood bidding party as possible. If you spot someone about my size, do whatever you can to draw them toward the back of the group. I’ll try to pull him or her away from the others and take the robes that the Belladonna supposedly makes everyone wear to make the bidding anonymous.”
I’ll try to. Singular.
“That sounds simple enough,” he said slowly, waiting for her to continue.
She looked down at the back of her hands, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. Stepping to the right, as if to begin her usual listless pacing, she was startled back into place by the loud squeak of the floorboard.
“Sophia,” he began quietly. “Li Min is not out gathering supplies, is she?”
The girl swallowed. After a moment, she shook her head. His breath stilled in his chest. “Is she alive?”
The devastation on her face pierced even the numbest parts of him. She had gone a sickly shade of pale, one he associated with someone about to cast up their accounts or swoon. Nicholas took a stiff step forward as she swayed on her feet, and urged her to sit down in the chair again. Though it made his body speak in ten languages of agony, he knelt down in front of her, joints popping with the effort. Black spots swam in front of his vision at the movement, forcing him to shut his eyes tightly until they cleared.