“Docket.” My voice couldn’t be heard above the clanking and hammering, but as soon as I spotted the bottom half of him sticking out from a familiar cabinet I didn’t bother to shout again. I did rap my knuckles on the side of the HangItAll to get his attention.
“What the devil is it now?” Docket emerged, his face shiny with sweat and patches of black grease. “Oh, Kit, fabulous. I’m just putting the finishing touches on—”
“—the HangItAll. Problem is that the boiler steam will soak all the garments you put in it, so best you call it the WashItAll.” I paused to catch my breath. “Docket, I need to borrow your carri for a few hours.”
“WashItAll. That might work.” As he looked at me, his grin turned upside down. “Sorry, my dear, but the carri’s done for. Took it apart last week to repair the boiler.” He squinted at me. “What’s the matter? You look white as a wedding frock.”
Without a carri I’d never get there. “I have to go.” Wouldn’t be the first time I’d stolen one. I hurried outside and looked down both sides of the street. No carris in sight, and the trolley wouldn’t reach the corner stop for half an hour. I felt so desperate I even thought of the tubes, but even if I could survive the pressure of being shot through one, I’d never fit inside.
I sat down on the curb to prop my head against my fists. I would not wail or weep or otherwise make a fool of myself. I would think of a way.
The clop of hooves came toward me, growing slower until they stopped. I raised my head to see a big black horse looming over me. He had been bridled but not saddled, and his sides were sweaty, as if he’d been on a long run.
“George, what are you doing here?” The horse dropped his head to nudge my shoulder, and I automatically caught his reins. “You can’t be here. You weren’t here that day. This day. We haven’t met.”
He snorted and tugged, pulling me to my feet. I had to hike up my skirts to mount him, which bared my legs almost to the knee as I rode down the street. Decent men stared, decent women turned away, but a few clerks and cartlasses laughed and waved me on.
I guided George across the city, out to the farmlands, and down the long road to my destination. The black iron gates were closed, of course, but George leapt over them, as quick and nimble as a hare.
I reined him into a respectable trot—dashing up to the great ugly place would only alarm the hooligans guarding it—but took him straight to the front of the house. Connell appeared before I could dismount, but as soon as he saw my face he turned and hurried back into the main house.
“Well, we’re here, George,” I said as I dropped to my feet. “One of us has to go in there.”
The big black horse eyed me before he turned and trotted off toward the stables.
“Coward.” I shook out my skirts and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as I walked up to use the knocker. But the door was already opening, the man inside stepping out.
“Charmian.” Lucien Dredmore, resplendent in his usual silver and onyx, surveyed me from toe to crown and back again. “Am I to understand my man correctly? You’ve stolen one of my horses?”
“No, sir.” He was alive. “I am returning it.” He was himself again. “It ran away and came to my building in the city and I have to sit down now.” I was going to cast up my accounts, all over his boots.
The marble step felt so cold it was like perching on a block of ice. That was why I was shaking so badly. I felt a strong hand at the back of my head, an arm under my knees, and then he was lifting and carrying me through his dark dungeon of a house to a softer spot, a chaise lounge by a sunlit window. I heard him call for brandy, and then he was putting the rim of a glass to my lips.
“Drink.” When I didn’t, he took hold of the end of my nose and pinched it shut.
I drank, and coughed, and felt the fire in my throat spread through my insides as it settled to an agreeable warmth.
He made me take another swallow and then he watched me until the shaking stopped. “Should I call for the smelling salts, Charmian, or is that the end of it?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve never been in shock before now. I’m so sorry.”
“You are apologizing. To me.” He put his hand to my brow. “You’ve no fever. Were you thrown from my horse?”
“George would never unseat me,” I said, and took a deep breath. “This morning I was tossed back through time. I’m here because of that. Because I’ve seen the future, and I need your help to change it.”
“You
“Wait, please.” I considered what to tell him. I’d killed the man, or rather his body; he deserved to know at least that much. But he had no memory of the wonderful or terrible things that had happened to us—or hadn’t yet done them, now that I’d thrown us all back in time—so he would think me terribly addled, or even perhaps gone mad.
Unless I offered him evidence to the contrary. “No one knows about your life before you came to Toriana, do they? You’ve never confided it to anyone. Certainly not me.”
“What are you about now, Charmian?” he asked, his voice going soft and lethal.
“You were five when your parents sent you away to school. They didn’t tell you that you would be kept there, that you wouldn’t go home for holiday like the other boys.” I looked round at his things. “You’ve always had the best that could be provided. They paid for you to have a private room, the finest tutors, the most expensive garments. But there were no letters, Dredmore. No birthday cards. No visits. Nothing. They wouldn’t even permit your nanny or valet to write to you.”
His eyes took on a dangerous glitter. “Who told you this?”
“You did, or more precisely, you will.” And I proceeded to tell him the rest. I spared him no detail, and when I named the exact sum his mother had offered him to leave England forever, he turned his head and stared into the fireplace.
It wasn’t anger or wounded pride. He was ashamed of what they had done to him. Perhaps because they had felt no shame in doing it.
Once I had finished, I picked up the glass of brandy I disliked so intensely and took a large swallow. After another round of coughing, I handed the remainder to him. “In fourteen days there will be an invasion of Rumsen. Talian Reapers will come here with an army, led by the agents of an Aramanthan warlord called Zarath. They plan to use the dreamstone they’ve hidden all over the city inside phony wardlings to turn our people into puppets.”
He drained the rest of the brandy. “I don’t know how you found out about my boyhood, but dreamstone and time travel are myths. The Tillers would never permit the Reapers to set foot on Toriana soil.” He regarded me carefully. “You haven’t been trifling with poppy dust, have you?”
“The Reapers have already infiltrated the Tillers,” I assured him. “They’re controlling Lord Walsh.”
“Nolan Walsh, the banker?” When I nodded, he made a dismissive gesture. “The man is nothing but a pompous ass.”
“Takes one to know one, does it?” I asked sweetly. Before he could reply, I added, “In a little over a week, that pompous ass will capture you and me at Feathersound. Yes, I know you own it. To save my life, you’ll swallow a spirit stone, Walsh will kill himself, and your body will be possessed by Zarath. The warlord needs your mind power to remove the final obstacles and set off the dreamstones.”
He stared at me. “You’ve never in your life believed in magic.”
“That reminds me.” I smiled. “Your current suspicions about me are correct. I am a spell-breaker, Lucien. That’s why your magic has no effect on me.” I didn’t have to tell him that his spiritborn gift of enchantment worked extremely well; that little detail could remain between me and the future Dredmore.
He came to me and jerked me to my feet. “If what you say isn’t some bizarre fancy you’ve dreamed up to confound me, and by some impossibly wild chance you have returned from the future, then why didn’t you stop the Reapers while you were there?”
“I did.” I rested my hand against his chest. “Just before Zarath cast his spell over the city, I drove an iron spike through his heart and killed him.” I looked up at him and let him see everything I felt. “Which was, coincidentally, your heart.”
“You
I nodded. “Before you surrendered your body to Zarath, you made me promise that I would. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I expected. Really a lot of blood.”
