But the softness and safety of the state between sleep and waking lasted only a moment. The ache in her bones and the pain echoing in her skull returned soon after, reminding her of what she’d been through. She felt soiled and wrung out, like an old rag not worth cleaning to keep. Even her bones felt like they would shatter if she moved the wrong way.
Distantly, she heard the soft snoring of the people in the small berth with her. North, propped awkwardly in a chair, and Maggie in the bunk above her. She remembered lying down next to Harte. The power he carried within him was quiet as she nestled next to him, trying to warm him and waiting for him to wake as she fought her own exhaustion.
But now the bed was cold and empty beside her.
She pulled herself up and looked around the small Pullman compartment, but there was no sign of Harte. After what had happened in the rotunda, North hadn’t trusted Harte not to do something rash. He’d lashed Harte to the post of the bunk, but the rope North had used was now hanging empty.
Worse, her cuff—the one that held Ishtar’s Key—was gone. In its place was a simple bracelet made of beads: the one he’d bought that first day at the fair. She reached for it, about to tear it from her wrist, but the moment she touched it, a jumble of images rose in her mind, and she felt an impulse so sure and clear that she knew it was a message he’d left for her, deep in her unconscious mind. He’d used his affinity on her, she realized. Rather than leave a note that could have been found or read by prying eyes, he left her a hope and a plea that only she could know.
He hadn’t left her completely, then. But he also hadn’t trusted himself enough to take her with him.
Cursing Harte for his heavy-handedness and herself for falling asleep, Esta stepped outside into the passage and then out onto the platform, where the prairie grass extended as far as the eye could see.
Harte was gone, but she wasn’t alone. There was a long, unknown road ahead of them, one that led to another ocean, a distant shore. She would do what Harte had asked of her, and then, when she found him, she would make sure he regretted leaving her behind.
There was work left to do. A demigod to destroy. There were still stones to gather, a future to make.
And on the inside of her wrist was a scar—a single word in the Latin she’d learned as a child. A command calling her back, to New York and to the past.
Redi.
DISCEDO
1904—St. Louis
As the train marched along the landscape he’d only ever thought to see in dreams, Harte Darrigan watched the horizon turn from the impenetrable blanket of night to a soft lavender glow as the stars disappeared one by one in the creeping light of dawn. He’d dreamed of this his whole life, the impossible open plains and the shadow of the mountains in the distance and the freedom of it all. But now that it was his, he was every bit as trapped—as imprisoned—as he’d ever been, only this time it was a prison he carried with him.
He’d woken in the dead of night when the other train shuddered to a stop at some unknown station. Esta had been curled next to him, her arm thrown over him in the narrow bunk and her face still tense despite being deeply asleep. He could hear the soft, steady breathing of others close by, and for a moment he didn’t know where he was or what had happened. Inside, the voice he carried was silent, but he could feel her there, breathing and licking her wounds.
And waiting.
It would have been easier, perhaps, to allow his eyes to close again, to allow sleep to pull him under. It certainly would have been more pleasant to stay there, close to Esta’s warmth, breathing in her familiar scent. Letting himself lean on her. But even at the thought of it, the power within him started to rouse itself.
For a moment he allowed himself to nuzzle against Esta’s neck and breathe. For a moment he allowed himself to wonder what it could have been like to stay with her like this, as though they were two ordinary people with their lives ahead of them and their whole future as a possibility. But though Harte was a liar and a con, he wasn’t good enough to fool himself.
If he stayed, Seshat would do everything she could to take Esta.
If he stayed, Esta would give herself to try to save him.
He couldn’t stay. But he would do what he could to save her. To save all of them.
REDITE
1904—New York
James Lorcan held the telegram between his fingertips and read it again, just to be sure of its meaning. Around him, the Aether bunched and shifted, the future remaking itself into the pattern of his design.
His agent in the West had two of the artifacts in their possession, and best of all, they had the girl. It was only a matter of time before everything fell into place.
He lit a match with one hand and ignited the corner of the telegram, watching it combust and transform into a pile of ash. Then he turned himself to the business of the day before him—the business of leading the Antistasi.