Wayfarer (Passenger 2)

She looked at Henry and made a promise. “I’m going to finish this.”

“No—no!”

She tore herself away from Henry, from the soldiers, and bolted down the wide hall, until only a trail of bloody footsteps on the carpet was proof she had ever been there at all.

Reaching down, Etta gripped where the hem of her dress was torn, ripping it further to give her legs a better range of movement. She made a sharp left around the next corner. Her ears had begun to pop and crackle in a way that frightened her, but the ringing was fading enough to give her a warning.

Her feet slid to such a sudden stop that the Oriental runner bunched beneath them. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of people were charging down the narrow hall toward her, chanting, shouting in fragmented Russian—“Ochistite dvorets!”—over and over and over. The man in front held a bloodred flag in one hand and a gun in the other. Behind him, a variety of tools and weapons were waving in the air.

They’re taking the palace, clearing it out. Etta struggled for her next breath, limping heavily. Ironwood’s plan here went beyond mere assassination. No doubt his men had been here all along, sowing the seeds of discontent, greasing the revolutionaries’ wheels before setting them on a path toward violence. Had he known Henry would come with the other Thorns? Had he ordered them to wait for his arrival?

She turned and doubled back the way she had come, taking a left rather than a right. Etta couldn’t stop herself from looking back over her shoulder one last time. But she could not make anything out through the heavy cover of smoke.

A hand reached out, snatching her arm. Etta felt a shriek tear out of her throat as she was yanked off-balance and dragged through a doorway. She kicked, clawing at whoever had grabbed her. The door slammed shut and she was slammed up against it, knocking the breath out of her again and smearing black over her vision.

“—ta, what’s happening? Etta!”

She jerked away from the hands holding her in place, rubbing at her eyes.

“What…that…can…me…?” The words were broken up by the pulsing in her eardrums. Etta looked up, surprised to find Julian’s face tight with worry as he touched the side of her cheek, his fingers pulling away red with blood.

“Explosion!” She had to shout the word to hear it herself. Julian cringed, nodding.

“Thought as much.”

Etta pulled away from him, going for the door again. “Attackers!”

He said something that might have been “revolt” or “revolting.”

“Run,” she told him.

“Where are you going?” he shouted back, finally loud enough for her to understand.

“Search the palace—find astrolabe—”

“It’s not here!” He grabbed her shoulders, turning her back toward him. “They found his body—stuffed in a bloody wardrobe, no astrolabe in sight. They were going to tell your father after dinner—”

If Etta had taken a knife and stabbed it deep into her belly, it would have been less painful than this. He’d killed his enemy; he’d taken what he wanted most. Her mind shaved down each of her wild thoughts, until only facts remained: Ironwood has it. Need to find Ironwood. Need to finish this.

Julian opened his mouth to say something else, but Etta pressed her finger to her lips and opened the door a crack, peering out of it. There was a dull roar coming from down the hall, but she couldn’t pick out any one word. Satisfied that the men and women who’d flooded the palace were heading toward the dining room, Etta grabbed Julian’s arm and pulled them both back outside.

Even before she began to run, she felt him dig in his heels, resisting. Etta sent him an incredulous look over her shoulder, which was met, to her surprise, with genuine fear. Julian seemed flummoxed by what was happening—at least until a man at the edge of the crowd turned and shouted something at them that made the others turn as well. Then survival instincts kicked in, and suddenly he was the one running, the one dragging her.

Etta wasn’t sure it mattered whether or not he knew where he was going. The palace was large enough for anyone to get lost on a good day, with countless halls and rooms and closets to duck into. But that didn’t seem to be the plan. Etta looked back again, just in time to see a man raise a gun. The bullet slammed into the face of a golden angel statue, splintering off the cap of its skull.

“Cripes!” Julian yelped.

How did anyone ever find their way out of this place without help? She blew the loose hair out of her face, trying to assess her options. They needed an exit, any sort of exit—a door, a window that could be smashed, a sewage pipe, she didn’t care, as long as it was in the opposite direction from the mob. Neither did Julian, who had taken to running blindly forward, his arm thrown up over his head like that could somehow protect him.

There were hallways that served as large arteries to the palace, but those seemed to be clogged with soldiers, staff trying to flee, and the plainclothes people who’d come storming in from the outside. Right now, the only thing guiding Etta’s steps was silence; she found herself searching for it beneath the throbbing and whistling in her ears, reaching for some part of the palace that was still, that hadn’t been engulfed by the fury pouring through its gilded veins like acid.

Revolution. Her mind spun the word out, with all of the disaster and destruction and promise it encompassed. In a different year, in a different form, but revolution all the same, this time stirred up by the Ironwoods.