Random coordinate numbers wiped away Marin’s shout when she jumped, arranging a whole new scene. Well-groomed paths, hedges wrapped in the cool of the morning, sunlit quiet punctuated by birdsong. The garden Eliot had landed in seemed a peaceful place, somewhere to get acquainted with deep philosophical thoughts. Any other hour she would have taken a seat beside the marble peacock fountain, let herself get lulled by the water streaming from beak to basin.
But her bones could not be stilled, for five seconds later a new set of feet crunched the gravel. Electricity tugged at the air and sparks flirted with Eliot’s shoulder as Ackerman swiped his stunrod. She threw herself into some bushes, collecting a leg full of thorns. Nothing was singed. Not much was saved, either. The Bureau agent materialized in front of Eliot, causing her to double back.
This wasn’t a chase. She was already cornered.
“Can you turn off your beacon thingy?” Imogen asked.
Eliot dodged Agent Ackerman’s second jab by teleporting to the other side of the garden. “Dunno. Vera, shut off the beacon.”
I AM UNABLE TO COMPLY, the computer told her. TRANSFER OF “YOU RAT YOU BURN” FILE IS 93% COMPLETE.
Et tu, Vera? The interface wanted the Multiverse Bureau to track her down. As long as Vera stayed online, Eliot was a moving target. Jump, jump, always in the crosshairs. Shutting off her interface wasn’t an option, either—it would cut Eliot’s link with the Invictus, stranding her with no way to flee from Ackerman.
The agent appeared on Eliot’s side of the garden, stunrod in full swing.
She scrambled her coordinates.
Sparks showered across the frescoed wall, not a girl to be found.
The garden vanished, Eliot had landed… underground? She couldn’t see much in the swampy darkness, except for open-flame lamps lining tunnel walls. These offered more heat than light, temperatures that ripened the smells of urine, feces, and blood. Noise raged above, at a volume matching her nausea, which had already been stirred by the previous two jumps. Eliot’s insides boiled with bile as she stumbled down the passage. This place couldn’t get any more hellish—
She saw Ackerman’s stunrod before she saw him. The scepter’s crackling light cut farther than any flame, revealing cages filled with lions. A sure sign they were underneath the Colosseum. The beasts rippled behind the bars, muscles and honeyed fur; yawns peeled back into fangs. One of the big cats roared.
The Bureau agent froze at the sound. Eliot teleported behind him, managing a kick to the back of his knee. Ackerman yelled and a whole line of lions snarled, ready for this fight, any fight, fangs at the ready, take him down! Her second strike found nothing but air. The target had evaporated, realigning on her. She lunged two steps ahead, missing Ackerman’s reappearance by centimeters.
Run, jump, a bathhouse. Run, jump, a field. Run, jump, a temple. Wherever Eliot went, Agent Ackerman appeared five seconds later, automatically locked onto her coordinates. There was no way to shake him.
“I can’t keep this up,” Eliot croaked on the seventh jump. Her body wasn’t used to so much rearranging. She was an overloved ragdoll, limp and coming apart at the joints. “If he hits me with that stunrod I’m done.”
“Can you jump to a different time?” Imogen asked.
“That won’t help.” Not in the long run. Eliot might get a breather, but the consequences would be the same as shutting off Vera—Gaius wouldn’t get to say good-bye to Empra, the Invictus’s memories would not pass through the pivot point. Even worse, the Bureau agent might find his way into the next universe and kill the new Far. Countersignature or no. Who would’ve thought a man with fexing feathers in his hat could be so dangerous?
“This only stops if he does.”
44
INTERVENTION, MAYBE NOT DIVINE
RECORDER EMPRA McCARTHY SAT IN THE bleachers of the Amphitheatrum Flavium, her pregnant belly round as a globe under her indigo stola. The Colosseum was a frenzy of life around her. Everything had the sheen of a fever from the moment Empra had awoken in her bunk; the entire day felt warped. She’d been in such a daze walking here from the Ab Aeterno she thought she saw Edwin Marin, her tailhat of an ex-fiancé, studying the games’ red-letter edicta munerum announcement on the side of a building. She’d even paused, Marin’s name on the tip of her tongue, before realizing it was the wrong year, and this man was the wrong age. Silver temples, some twenty years Empra’s senior.
So much seemed off. Her thoughts were fuzzy, spinning her head into itself. Empra wasn’t sure if it was a side effect of pregnancy or heartbreak or the crowd’s chanting. The three were a trifecta for misery as she stared at the sands below.
Empra didn’t register the newcomer on the bench beside her until he spoke. “Cruenti sunt ludi. Oculo intimo spectare non sapiat.”
Translation: Bloody are the games. With the inmost eye to watch would not be wise. It was a strange thing to say, in even stranger-sounding Latin. Empra frowned, but didn’t break her gaze into the arena. Conversations with ancient Romans went against her Recorder training, and even though she’d already shattered these rules—off-record interview with a gladiator x 320—none of her felt like talking. She was here for one reason alone.
“I’m placing my bet on Gaius. What about you?”
Empra’s heart rate spiked. She wondered if Doc would notice—connect the reaction with the name. More pressingly, she wondered how this young man knew to say it. One look and Empra knew she was sitting beside a fellow time traveler. Plenty of others in the amphitheater had skin as dark as his, but her neighbor’s toga virilis was dated by over a century. Besides, how else would he know about Gaius? Or want her to know that he knew…. A whole new meaning slid into his greeting: With the inmost eye to watch would not be wise.
She cut off her feed. “Who are you?”
The teenager frowned, his silence carrying until Empra began to second-guess herself. Maybe he was from this time, unable to understand her Central dialect. Maybe this was all some fever-haze coincidence.
“I’m not recording,” she tried again. “You can speak freely.”
“I’m a friend. Call me Gram.” These words fit the newcomer’s tongue much better than his Latin. A learned language, not one cobbled together by translation tech. “I’m here to take you back to the Ab Aeterno.”
Again, her heart seized. “You don’t understand. I can’t leave—”
“Gaius isn’t fighting today.” Gram gazed down at the imperial box, where the emperor was arriving to a lash of cheers.
Empra wanted this to be true, which made the lie even worse. Gaius’s match was among the day’s first—he’d told her at the banquet last evening, unable to veil the fear in his voice.
“He is. And I—I have to watch.” The sob surprised Empra. Usually she was better at hiding things. She’d kept her pregnancy a secret from the Ab Aeterno’s crew for six months thanks to loose stolas. “I need to know how his fight ends.”
“We came to an arrangement with Gaius’s lanista. He’s free, and he’s waiting to say good-bye near the Ab Aeterno. I’m here to take you to him.”
“Free?” Empra’s dizziness was growing worse. Her hands fell from belly to bench, clutching through its splinters. “The Corps would never allow that.”