Текст книги "Return Once More"
Автор книги: Trisha Leigh
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
“I’m scared, Jonah. To use the cuff. If I get caught, if the sanction is bad … After losing you, it will break Mom’s and Dad’s hearts.”
“You shouldn’t use that cuff to travel, not to see your True or me or anyone else. You should forget him, and me, and any thought of messing with the past. But I know you. It’s dumb and it’s dangerous, and you don’t have all of the facts, but you won’t be able to resist. That chip works. They never guessed what I did.”
“Then that can’t be the reason you left.” He clamped his teeth together, staring back at me blandly. My hands curled into fists, frustration mounting so high I almost growled. “But how did you know you could save Rosie?”
“I can’t tell you that. I can say this, though: not everything you’ve learned at the Academy has been true, but one thing is. We can’t change the past without consequence. Every person, every event, affects at least one other. Be careful.”
We sat in the kind of silence that only exists between two people who don’t have to speak to understand each other. Jonah’s warnings rang loud and clear. The pain inside him translated as clearly as his fear and I knew one thing: he believed he had done the right thing in leaving.
My heart squeezed until my chest hurt, and against my best efforts, tears pricked my eyes. I reached out and grabbed his hand, and Jonah held on tight. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, Special K.” His voice shook and the sight of tears gathering in his eyes shook me to the core. “I miss you all so much.”
Analeigh’s light footsteps on the stairs ended the companionable grief a moment later, and she cleared her throat softly. “Kaia, we’ve got to go.”
I nodded and stood, throwing my arms around Jonah’s neck and giving him a tight hug. He had been more evasive than anything, but he was my brother and I loved him. In his own way, he had tried to help.
The Elders and their mysterious secret business didn’t strike me as interesting as the suggestion that I could at least try to save Caesarion. If Jonah wouldn’t tell me how I could verify the trajectories the way he must have before he saved Rosie, and then maybe I could figure it out on my own by spending more time with my True. If I could gauge the potential course of his unlived future, know his mind and his essence, maybe the answers would follow.
The chip my brother had given me burned hot in my palm as the blue, shimmering field surrounded Analeigh and me. Even if, in the end, I couldn’t be sure enough to save Caesarion, the chip meant that our story didn’t have to be over.
Not yet.
Chapter Twelve
Sanchi, Amalgam of Genesis–50 NE (New Era)
Three days passed before I found time to go see Caesarion again. We had the trip to observe the Louis XIV’s coronation, then a couple of days of mandatory reflection, and I didn’t want just an hour with my True this time. I wanted as much time as I could pilfer.
For every ten days of apprentice work we were granted one free day—not always a pass out of the Academy but time to spend as we chose—and that was today. Twenty-four wonderful, empty hours where no one expected me to be anywhere. Not showing up at meals didn’t raise any eyebrows, even, since we often chewed protein tabs or ate the snacks stowed in our rooms. We took advantage of the alone time if we didn’t score a pass to leave the grounds.
I told Analeigh and Sarah that I planned to spend the day in the Archives working on my Sun King—an affectionate term for Louis XIV, even if he did drive the monarchy into bankruptcy—reflection because the upcoming certification reviews worried me. I’d gotten enough things wrong in the last several weeks that it sounded plausible to me, but neither of my friends bought it. Analeigh didn’t push, though. She’d been tiptoeing around me since we’d seen Jonah and his pirate friends, maybe assuming time alone would shine old wounds. It sucked to leave her in the dark. I’d turned into one of those idiot girls who chose a boy over her best friend, but at least this was temporary. A twinge of regret in my chest at the thought of him dying very soon only strengthened my resolve to try to find a way to save him. Just him.
If Analeigh guessed my plan to use Jonah’s cuff to travel alone again, she didn’t say anything. Probably because visiting her True Companion with the idea of saving his life would never enter her mind.
But she didn’t know what it felt like to stare into the eyes of a person who felt like part of her. To know the grim details of his impending, senseless death but be helpless to intervene. Analeigh hadn’t lived with the empty hole Jonah had left in my house, or borne the weight of lost love, of bitter strength, soldered in the necklace hanging against my chest.
If Jonah could improve his True’s outcome, why couldn’t I?
Since secret travels and illicit contact seemed to be my life now, flying under the radar at the Academy seemed the best plan, so I had done better with my last recording. No one in the crowd at the coronation of Louis XIV distracted me—even Maude Gatling approved during our initial reflection. The less attention the Elders and overseers paid me, the better.
Of course, behaving didn’t stop me from checking on Oz in the Archives a couple more times, out of plain and simple curiosity. He, Levi, and Jess were assigned to observe part of the first Crusade yesterday and his bio information confirmed he’d joined them. It made me second-guess my instincts about him traveling on his own, but I dismissed the thought quickly. Rosie’s second life hadn’t been a comp error, and neither had Oz’s travel.
He was up to something, but I couldn’t worry about my problems and his, too. Not today.
This morning, all that mattered was that I could leave for most of the day and night without anyone thinking twice. According to Jonah, if anyone did go looking, my dot on the Archive floor would show me in my bathroom, where I currently stood—once I got up the nerve to use the device he gave me.
I took a shaky breath over the sink, grasping my brother’s tiny, metallic disk with a pair of tweezers, poised to jam it into the base of the golden barcode on the inside of my left wrist. This was the price. A little moment of pain, and I could be with Caesarion again. Figure out if saving him was an option.
I gritted my teeth, held my breath, and jammed the sharp metal under my skin in one rough shove. The faint glow of the golden threads under layers of skin flickered and dimmed, then went dark for the first time in seven years. A quiet groan escaped and I held still, both to wait out the wave of sweating and nausea and to make sure Analeigh hadn’t heard me.
No sound came from the bedrooms. My brother hadn’t lied about the chip hurting like a bitch, but the throbbing discomfort passed as I wiped up the drops of blood on the sink and cleaned off my wrist, marveling at the tiny gash left by the sliver of tech. The two hair-like strands for easy extraction trailed outside the wound, tickling the sensitive skin inside my wrist.
The question of who could have helped him create it remained unanswered. None of the other pirates were Historians, which meant someone else at this Academy knew the chip existed. Jonah’s class had been five years ahead of mine—his classmates were all certified Historians now, but none of them had been here long enough to be overseers. We didn’t interact, and I didn’t know any of them well enough to gauge their tech skills. It added to my curiosity over what exactly drove my brother onto that ship and out of civilization, but one obsession at a time.
Outside the air lock, I swiped my wrist tat and waited to see the effect of having the chip inserted. Instead of my name popping up, it registered one of the certified Historians. Clever, and less suspicious, for anyone other than an apprentice to be down here alone. They traveled alone all the time without being questioned.
The knot of tension between my shoulders eased. Being able to go without my movements being tracked made my decision easier, calmed the anxiety doing flips in my stomach at committing such a serious infraction for a second time. It might be too good to be true but for the moment, it seemed the chip allowed me to see Caesarion without consequences.
Now I could turn my attention to trying to find him.
Caesarion’s movements following Alexandria’s occupation by the Roman army were unconfirmed. We knew he left the capital city hoping to escape, eventually ending up in a city called Berenice, on the Red Sea. I set the cuff smack in the middle, hoping to catch the ousted Pharaoh after he’d moved south along the Nile.
He would soon be lured back to Alexandria by false promises of reconciliation and peace from Octavian. Then he would die.
The details of his death were unknown, with speculation by historians from Earth Before that he may have been strangled and then entombed with his mother and the rest of the Ptolemy ancestral line.
It had been a week since we’d met in the palace gardens. If he hoped to hide, he would have left quietly, without fanfare. Caesarion didn’t strike me as a man too proud to understand that, so I expected to find him keeping a low profile. They would be traveling on horseback or with a small envoy, perhaps on foot for part of the journey, and couldn’t have made it all the way to Berenice in fewer than seven days. Even on horseback that trip would have taken at least three fortnights.
I wanted to find him sooner than that, anyway. If it were possible to change his outcome, I would need as much time as I could get to figure it out, and I wanted our relationship to be linear for us both. Visiting him any number of times during this, the seventeenth year of his life, might be possible, but it felt wrong. If these were my only moments, reliving them—redoing them—felt like cheating.
Standing in the icy-cold air lock, dressed again in draped linen and scarves, but without jewelry or makeup, a thought came to me. I whispered Caesarion’s name into the cuff instead of a place, like the overseers typically did, hoping it would take me right to him. It had better work because twelve or so hours didn’t give me enough time to track down a guy on the move in an unfamiliar ancient world, never mind one surrounded by a devoted royal guard.
The blue bubble surrounded me. I crossed my fingers as the lights turned from red to green, and Sanchi disappeared.
*
Cairo , Egypt , Earth Before–30 BCE (Before Common Era)
The muggy air choking the Tropic of Cancer bathed my skin in sweat, offering a ton more heat and humidity than Sanchi, or even the coastal city of Alexandria. My mistake became instantly clear when the memory swam into focus.
The overseers never specified a person rather than a place because explaining how we bled into existence out of thin air might be a bit of a challenge.
Luckily for me the day had barely broken, and the room where I’d appeared filled with the blessed sounds of heavy breathing and light snores. Three guards slept on the open sides of the ratty, almost flat straw mattress. Their thick, strong fingers clasped the hilts of various weapons, ready to wake and defend their charge at the drop of a hat.
Caesarion slept, his narrow, handsome face relaxed. He appeared younger without the weight of grief and free of doubt about the future. My fingers twitched with the desire to touch his cheek, to wake him so those deep blue eyes could look into mine. I wanted to be alone in the room and find out what it felt like to be held willingly in his arms, to live in one of the moments people talked about, wrote about, sang about, when immersed in that elusive thing called true love.
But those guards wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if I tried to get anywhere near Caesarion, and we’d probably have to rehash his previous assumptions if he woke and found me in his bed. Instead of taking unnecessary chances, I snagged a money pouch off the stand by the door, backed out into the hallway, and tramped down the stairs, remembering at the last moment that only whores or servants would be conducting themselves with so little propriety.
The dining area would work as a place to safely pass the time until Caesarion woke and prepared to move on for the day. The inn was small and a little smelly—the floors were packed with dirt and straw and the wooden tables wobbled under my elbows. Early morning sunlight warmed the room until sweat coated my skin under the light tunic and skirt, but the smell of food coming from the kitchen kicked my stomach into a grumble. I’d skipped breakfast again.
No one spared me more than one curious glance. The innkeeper’s wife took my order and returned to plop down the food, mumbling something about milking the cows before leaving through the open door. My happiness at being out on an adventure in the fresh air of Earth Before, with no need to return to the Academy anytime soon, warred with my bubbling fear that the chip wouldn’t work. That I’d get caught. That I’d accidentally change something important. I shoved the worries down into my center and locked them away before panic could overtake my excitement. There would be plenty of time for regret later. I wouldn’t waste today.
Another patron joined me, an elderly man who slurped his broth and avoided eye contact, then left a coin on the table and shuffled out before the innkeeper’s wife returned from her morning chores. The denarius I’d swiped off the dresser bought me a bowl of broth and a hunk of bread, which I gnawed for the next hour, every bite ramping up the impressive headache my bio-tat imparted in exchange for my interaction with the past. The pain retreated with a poof when Caesarion appeared at the bottom of the wooden stairs.
The sight of his sleepy midnight eyes squeezed my lungs into oblivion, and even though staring was impolite, I couldn’t stop. When his gaze found mine, the delighted surprise that sprang onto his face pulled my heart into my throat. I could almost hear his thoughts from across the room, could feel the rush of relief that gushed through me at being in the same space as him pour through Caesarion’s blood as well.
Perhaps I’d imagined it and he felt nothing. Perhaps the True Companion calculations were nothing but parlor tricks and games invented to entertain us, to prove that true love wasn’t a necessary factor in human happiness. But right now, staring into his eyes while we both grinned like fools and my knees turned to jelly, my heart believed.
He waved his royal guard out of the room with instructions to saddle the horses. One older man, likely his personal servant, limped toward the kitchen. Caesarion crossed to my side, taking a seat across the table from me. His smile turned a bit shy, very unlike the first time we met, and infected my heart with a strange flutter.
“I dreamed I would see you again, mysterious Kaia. But I did not believe it would be in a ratty inn on the road to nowhere.”
My smile felt wobbly. Words jammed between my head and my mouth refused to be spit out. After a moment of silence he leaned forward, elbows on the table. My body responded almost of its own accord, and I copied his posture until our faces were close enough that we shared breath.
“All roads lead somewhere,” I managed, finally.
He gave me a sad smile. “That is true. Since the Hathors long ago foretold my untimely death, perhaps Tuat or Aaru has always been my destination.”
My bio-tat explained that ancient Egyptians believed the entirety of their lives were laid bare at birth to the Hathors—sort of like witches, or seven ladies akin to the Greek Fates—who predicted the high and low points of every child’s life until death.
“Is death not everyone’s destination?”
“You are beautiful and wise. I have had many years to come to terms with my fate, but after meeting you in the gardens I began to wish for more time.”
“Is that possible?”
“Inshallah,” he whispered.
“Inshallah,” the tattoo forced me to reply.
The phrase filtered through my ears and into my brain. The computer threaded into the base of my skull struggled with an exact translation. The term was a unique one that encapsulated a universe of beliefs into a single word, and the tat finally spit out a close estimation: If God is willing.
“Part of me wishes to demand you explain your reappearance, but the rest does not wish to know—there have been so few mysteries in my life.”
Someone cleared his throat behind me, saving me from having to comment. Caesarion tore his eyes from mine, irritation coloring his cheeks as he looked up.
“It’s time to depart,” the voice said, a whisper of apology beneath the gruff words.
The guards couldn’t treat Caesarion in a proper manner since he was in hiding and on the run. His fine fabrics and kohl-smudged eyes—not to mention his shaved head—all betrayed class, but certainly not to the degree in which Pharaoh would normally tour the countryside.
“I will be out momentarily.” The presence at my back receded and my True Companion’s gaze turned back to mine. “I have never believed that my fate could be escaped, or even that a reason existed to plead with the gods to consider sparing me.”
“Then why leave Alexandria at all?”
“The innate will to live, I suppose. Reconciling with one’s fate is not the same as standing passively by, waiting for a power-hungry man to end my life.” He paused, then reached out a darkly tanned hand to cover mine, adding a throbbing component to the stabbing pain in my temple. “Perhaps meeting you is reason enough to live these last days afforded to me.”
My heart flattened and tried to beat, aching in my chest. Nerve endings zapped a hopeless mass of confused emotions through me until I wanted to kiss him and laugh and sob all at once. His finger wiped the wetness from my cheeks and my skin ignited in its wake even as the painful fingers demanding I pull away reached further down my spine. It was strange, the pleasure of touching him combined with the pain that insisted it was wrong.
My own confusion was reflected in his dusky eyes, smothered in something like wonder. I pressed his hand against my cheek. “I don’t want to think about you dying.”
His gaze sharpened, probing mine for answers to questions he must have about my identity, about how I’d managed to find him here in this out-of-the-way place. “You do not seem surprised to learn of my fate.”
“I’m not,” I said simply. If he demanded an explanation I would be tempted to provide it, no matter that telling people in the past about the future was strictly forbidden. Putting lies between us left a bad taste in my mouth, but in the end, he saved me by not asking.
“I would like to stay and talk with you, but I must away, I’m afraid.” He dropped his hand from my cheek and stood.
“Could I travel with you? I can’t … I couldn’t stay much past nightfall, but I, too, like the idea of more time.”
“It is not appropriate for a lady of your station.”
His slight frown gave him a serious appearance, like a little boy who thought he was being tricked into doing something he shouldn’t. After his mistake regarding the reason for my presence in the gardens, I couldn’t blame him, but couldn’t suppress a giggle, either. “There is much you don’t know about me, Caesarion, but we can start with the fact that I am unconcerned with what others might think of our friendship.”
“Very well. I trust you can ride a horse.”
Well, hell.
*
My bio-tat struggled more than a little with forcing my limbs to ride a horse. The knowledge was there but felt rudimentary and awkward, as though programmed haphazardly on the off chance a Historian might need to mount a horse. It had been six hours since we left the inn just south of Cairo and my legs had numbed from hip to toe. They felt permanently bowed, and when Caesarion helped me down for a rest stop, my trek to the banks of a Nile tributary could have only been described as a waddle.
Fantastic. I finally got to spend a day with Caesarion and not only did I smell like horse, I had been reduced to walking like a penguin. Sexy.
The more we talked, and the more accustomed I became to the electric magnetism of being in his presence, the fonder I became of the person underneath his handsome exterior. He differed from me in so many ways, but now was acting less Pharaoh-ish than the boy I’d encountered during our first meeting in the gardens. Not less confident but less superior, as if he knew the life he’d been born into would never be the same. With every step away from Alexandria, he let the pretenses of Pharaoh go and slipped effortlessly into life as simple Caesarion.
He didn’t seem to notice my borderline paralysis as we dismounted, asking the older manservant who had gathered provisions this morning to set food out on a woolen blanket, then invited me to sit. The guards and servant left us alone, wading to their knees in the cool, burbling water. I was tempted to join them—the dust from the road clung to my sweat-sticky skin in multiple layers and there was no way my hair hadn’t poofed to three times its normal size.
In the end, talking with Caesarion tempted me more than cooling off and I dropped next to him, sticking my legs out in front of me to try to unglue my thighs. He noticed the black leggings that I’d tugged to my calves and reached out to touch them, but then stopped short, as though unsure I’d allow it. I had given him hell for grabbing me uninvited in the gardens.
Something like fear darkened his expression. “What are these?”
“Nothing.” I pushed my tunic and skirts back into place, and he frowned again like he had at the inn, as though he suspected some sort of trick. “Do you really want to talk about clothing now that we have a few moments alone?”
“I suppose not. It is curious, though. You are curious.” He opened a loose woven basket and extracted a bundle of linen, unwrapping a pile of dates and a flat chunk of bread. “Why were you in the gardens the other day? And why had we never met?”
“I thought you wished to leave me my mysteries.”
“I’ve changed my mind. It’s too much to bear, the curiosity.”
“I come from somewhere else. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
The system of planets that made up Genesis would not be discovered for thousands of years. The concept would be as foreign to him as a movie or bacteria or automatic weapons.
“Tell me something about yourself, then. That I will believe.” He popped a date in his mouth and offered the pile to me, his keen eyes never leaving mine.
My whole body wanted to smile; it felt swollen and lit up under his gaze. “I’m seventeen. I have wonderful parents and a brother and friends that are very dear to me.”
Caesarion waved a hand, dismissing my litany. “No. Something about you, Kaia.”
The touch of his fingers on my cheek startled me and I barely managed to stop myself from jerking away. Caesarion’s dark-blue gaze held mine as he brushed away errant hairs that had escaped the bun twisted at the back of my head. The sound and smells of this ancient world intensified around us; heady perfume infused the breeze wafting under my nose, the sound of the wide river tripping over its rocks became tinkling musical bells.
With the inappropriate physical gesture, Pharaoh emerged again. Unlike before, this time the power surrounding him didn’t scare me. It thrilled me. His hand lingered against my skin, the pain meds I’d popped managing to dull the ache as the bio-tat attempted to make me act according to custom.
All of the biological reactions in my body would be recorded. Which meant somewhere, a comp knew I was sweating, that my heart was racing, and that my skin felt alive for the second time in my entire life. But it couldn’t guess why.
“I hate watching terrible things happen and not being able to stop them. I can’t save anyone.” It was the truest thing about me. I wanted to save people, not watch them die.
The expression on his face shifted at my confession, moving from entranced to curious in the blink of an eye. The whispered revelation had surprised me as much as him.
Did it mean my aptitude had tested wrong? Or maybe it meant that, like Oz, I would get more satisfaction from studying how to use the terrible things that had happened to save people in the future instead of continuing to stand by and witness them in the past.
“We cannot be saved, Kaia. Our destinies are set as we take our first breath, and though we can decide how to live the years we’ve been afforded, we cannot change the events and people that will shape our lives.” He dropped his hand, picking up another date. “Like you. I think the gods have foreseen your entry into my life at this crucial moment.”
I wished I could believe in cosmic fate as opposed to science and human nature. Life would be simpler, perhaps, but that wasn’t the same as better.
“You believe in cruel gods, Caesarion, who would see fit for someone such as you—who has done nothing to deserve death—to be taken so soon.”
“I believe in gods. They are neither cruel not gentle, but simply other. They see the tapestry of life in a vast painting. We are specks, alive for a moment and then gone, like sparks off a fire. Do not fault them for not caring, as we do not take time to mourn the beetle crushed beneath our sandals.” His smile turned sad. “I am glad you are here.”
“I’m glad, too. Now, tell me something about you,” I said, trying for a lighter tone and crossing my eyes at him while I stole the pile of dates and tore off a piece of flat bread.
“I can’t believe there would be anything you do not already know about your Pharaoh,” he teased back, the sunlight dappling shadow across his tanned face.
“You would be surprised how little is known about you, Caesarion.”
“I am allowing you to remain mysterious because it pleases me to peel away your layers, Kaia, but soon I will demand answers.”
The idea of him peeling away anything shot hot desire through me, and pried a novel, throaty voice from my throat. “I prefer we enjoy the time we are afforded.”
“I will allow it. For now.” He slid a date into my mouth, fingers lingering for a moment on my bottom lip. They were salty next to the fruit’s tart sweetness. “Something true about me … anger aside, I would not rule Rome in my father’s place, given the chance,” he admitted.
“Why not?”
“My home is Alexandria. I know it would not make a difference to Octavian—he wants Egypt, too, and would not leave it to me, but I would let go the grievances of my past if he would let my people be.” Caesarion shrugged, his cheeks ruddy, and not from the sun.
“He wants Rome, and Rome wants the world. Egypt is an important conquest. If it’s any consolation, he’s remembered as a great Caesar. Not kind, but important.” My heart leaped into my throat the moment the words passed my lips, but they were too far away to suck them back in.
Caesarion tensed and electricity charged the air. “How could you know such a thing?”
Maybe I should have just told him the truth about coming from the future, about our connection. Caesarion believed in fate. What held me back even more than the rules was the fear that he would dismiss me as a raving lunatic and never wish to speak with me again. We still had weeks before his death, days that could be spent lazing by rivers, eating dates, and getting to know each other. I didn’t want to give those moments away, not even one.
I sat up straighter, brushing crumbs off my palms and scooting closer until our legs pressed together atop the scratchy wool, trying to forget that the time to leave stumbled closer with every breath. The day was too hot to be touching but the contact spread comfort through my blood, and Caesarion did not pull away.
“Would you believe me if I told you I have a feeling the world will be better off because of his reign over Rome?”
His forehead crinkled. “You are an oracle?”
“Something like that.”
We fell silent, our legs and arms pressed together, his hand covering mine. The food was gone and the horses would be ready to continue soon. The pull between us had settled into a thrumming, steady current. It heightened my awareness of everything around us; I felt the pulse in his wrist, heard breath pulling in and out of his lungs, smelled the salty sweat on his skin. His heartbeat twined with my own, our breathing synchronized, and our scents combined until we felt like one person instead of two. It was more than our molecules aligning. I loved everything I’d learned about Caesarion today—his intelligence, the way he talked about his people. That he didn’t fear death. I wanted to be more like him in the same moment as I wanted him to be more like me—to be willing to fight, to break the rules if it meant getting what he wanted—a longer life.
He didn’t necessarily seem to want that, though, and every last atom in my body, each one interlocked with this boy’s, screamed in protest.
Perhaps spending time with him would be enough, and my slide down the slippery slope toward my brother’s fate could be aborted before rock bottom rose up to crush me. Caesarion would die, as he was supposed to, and I would have my memories. My moments.
The guards waded to the shore and began to saddle the horses, and sadness sank into my bones until it seemed to fuse with a part of me people once called a soul.
Caesarion saw them, too, and turned to me with a rueful smile. “We must press on.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, my peculiar oracle—if that’s what you are—what caused you to seek me out?”
“We’re supposed to be together.”
“Be together.” He gave me a slight smile, suggestive enough to curl my toes. “In what way do you mean?”
I wanted to tease back, but emotion clogged my throat. Caesarion was my True Companion—as long as I lived I would never feel this innate connection with another person—and now the potential fallout of my impulsive decision to meet him became clear. Nothing would ever measure up again.
“In every way,” I whispered.
We stared at each other for several seconds. His eyes trailed to my mouth before traveling back to my eyes, and the pull between our bodies stirred, increasing with each passing breath. I needed him closer, to see what he tasted like, but now wasn’t the time or place.
