Nico’s eyes narrow. He gets up, stretches, and glances around the cabin before thumbing through some papers on a clipboard. He gives me a sideways glance full of meaning before his eyes flit to the corner above my head; my eyes follow his to the corner, too. The cameras.
They’re watching us.
“Maybe the Benefactors want you to understand how good your life could be if you behave yourself.” He pauses, then asks, “You hungry?”
“Starving,” I say, playing along as I follow him to the shuttle door. Right now, I’m not sure I could choke chocolate down past the lump in the back of my throat.
“Me, too,” he replies, grasping my hand and giving it a squeeze.” Betty, lock up for me, huh?”
“Sure thing, Hot Stuff,” Betty replies.
Once we’re on the out of the hangar, Nico pulls me aside. “In the last twelve hours, we got a state-of-the-art Timeship and the Benefactors fired a warning shot over the bow at you with the consigliere visit. How did you get on their radar like this? It’s gotta be more than being late to extraction points a few times.”
“How the hell should I know? Maybe we’re overthinking this. There are some expensive artifacts we’re bringing back. Maybe they want the fastest, most technologically advanced ship for this job.”
“We steal priceless artifacts on every mission. They wouldn’t give us the first ship to broadcast live action feeds from the other side of the time vortex without a damn good reason. Why us? Why now?”
“Maybe all the junkers are assigned to other missions.” Even as I say the words, I don’t believe them.
“They could have given this luxury liner to a sanctioned Observer mission instead of us,” Nico replies. “We need to tread very carefully. Do you understand?” He looks me dead in the eyes and there’s no mistaking the seriousness in his face.
The Consigliere’s warning to get my shit together rings in my head.
“I’m gonna look for a way to encrypt or distort the data feed, on demand, so we can have private conversations when we need to. Your job,” he plants a finger softly in my chest as he holds my gaze, “is to stay under their radar. As far as they’re concerned, the Consigliere’s visit scared you straight.”
I take a steadying breath, an attempt to squelch the panic jacking up my heart rate. I put my hand on his chest. His heart is hammering as fast as mine. “I’ll try.”
“Gotta do more than try, babe. One warning is probably all we’ll get. And they’re watching us.”
Chapter 8
For weeks, Queen Elizabeth fills my nightmares in bizarre snippets reflecting the milestones of my life: Elizabeth is there when Papa is murdered. She herds hundreds of Acadie refugees, including Maman and me, onto a doomed ship sailing for the American colonies. Elizabeth sells me into indentured bondage to the captain of a merchant vessel in New Orleans.
Like grainy, imperfect spools of film from an ancient newsreel, pockmarked with dark spots and blurs, her image runs on a loop through my head while I’m awake. Her shadow is in every face I see; her voice is the echo thrumming beneath every conversation. She’s a ghost that has destroyed my life in a million ways.
This morning, as Fagin and I worked through more mission details, I could have sworn I caught a glimpse of her watching me from the shadows—smug satisfaction blazing in her steely eyes.
The center of the room is clear of furniture, leaving space enough for multi-character holographic recordings, queued up from the Observer’s Renaissance archives. A series of French court vignettes, circa 1532, rotate in the sequence Fagin designed to complete our initial entry into Calais. Par for the course in this mission, Fagin and I find ourselves on opposite sides of the initial rules of engagement.
We’ve been arguing strategy all morning, and Fagin dives into her usual modus operandi when faced with an intransigent opponent: She attacks with a barrage of words, intending to overwhelm me with the sheer volume of information. It doesn’t take long before my attention wanders.
Fagin discusses the rhythm of French court life: the hierarchy of the nobility, who we must befriend to get close to the king in the shortest time possible, the criticality of getting the all-important invitation to meet King Henry and Lady Anne. On and on and on she talks, until her words run together into a jumble. Meanwhile, I can’t tear my thoughts away from Elizabeth.
CRACK!
The sound jolts me out of my daydream and propels me over the armrest of my chair and onto my feet. “What the hell was that?” I gasp, trying to steady my pulse to a rhythm slower than light speed.
Fagin leans forward and places both palms on the thick leather-bound portfolio she used to pound the wood table and glares at me. “Now that you’re back in the present,” she says, not bothering to smooth the irritation in her voice, “recite back everything I said in the last two minutes.”
“You’re kidding,” I say, feeling more wounded at being treated as though I need a nursemaid than feeling guilty at being called out. “We’ve discussed mission strategy options backwards and forwards and sideways for six weeks. If we’re not ready to decide—”
“Recite the last thirty seconds back to me. I’ll settle for that much,” she says. “This isn’t a game. They have called me into three meetings with Consiglieres because of your attitude. What must I do to get through this thick skull of yours?” She thumps her knuckles against the middle of my forehead; an attention-getter is what she called it when I was a child and had lost focus or misbehaved during training.
There’s silence. The kind of quiet where the undercurrent in the air is charged with anger and frustration. For Fagin, the
