Are you in league with the devil? He shoved the thought aside. Will you devour my soul like a tart?
The Belladonna snorted, puncturing the silence that followed. “Yes. All right.”
“Are the Thorns still in possession of the much-sought-after astrolabe, the one that used to belong to the Lindens?” Nicholas tried to be as specific as possible, so she could not twist her answer, or tell him the fate of a different astrolabe.
After a moment, with obvious reluctance, she said, “In the last report I received, yes, a Thorn was still in possession of the astrolabe.” Her veil ruffled as she took in a breath, sucking it against her lips. “Earlier, you mentioned the Jacarandas—I do not suppose you mean Remus and Fitzhugh, the traitors?”
Sophia glanced over at Nicholas before asking, “So what if I did?”
“If you are hoping to find the Thorns, the group’s last known location was in San Francisco, in 1906. They appear to be on the move, however,” she added, “and I’m not entirely certain of where they’ll settle next. And if I am not certain, those two toadstools have no hope of knowing, either.”
Nicholas’s brows rose. That was more information than he ever could have prayed for. He dared to test the limits of his luck by asking, “Do the Thorns have other times they frequent?”
“They do, but I’m certain they are investigating the changes to the timeline and will not be returning to any of those periods at present.”
Nicholas felt the knotted muscles in his shoulder ease. He gave her a curt nod of thanks, feeling more secure in his decision to proceed now.
The metal desk creaked as the Belladonna leaned her weight onto it, but before she could speak, Selene let out a sharp whine.
A warning.
Through the wall to his right, Nicholas could have sworn he heard voices shouting the word Revolyutzia! in the instant before the room blurred like fogged-over glass and began shaking violently.
Thunder stole through the air, deafening and absolute. The jars and display cases rattled, heaps of glass smashing into each other as whole shelves collapsed. Sophia stumbled hard into the edge of the desk with a startled cry. Nicholas jerked backward, but caught himself in time to avoid the section of ceiling plaster that smashed near his feet.
“What the devil was that?” he demanded. A mortar strike?
More voices now: “Za Revolyutzia!”
The Belladonna shook the dust from her hair and gown not unlike Selene, and began to sniff inquisitively at the air. Satisfied with whatever she’d discovered, she glanced at the small silver watch pinned to her hip. “Calm yourself, beastie. This room has withstood any number of revolutions and riots. The only entrance is the passage. We are quite secure.”
There were only a few moments of silence before the sound of heavy footfalls seeped through the walls, slashed through by the steady, racing sounds of shouts and gunfire. Voices were muddied, in a language he couldn’t speak—“Ochistite dvorets!”
The Belladonna rose, her gaze sweeping around her room, breath hissing from her. She stooped to pick a small silver bell and rang it. The longer it went without answer, the harder she rang it, until finally she heaved it at the passage. The young boy ducked as he entered, just missing a dead-on strike to the head.
“Clean up this mess,” she told him. “And take an account of anything beyond repair.”
The boy was sensible enough to wait until the woman looked away before sticking out his tongue.
“That’s another year you owe me,” she told him without taking her eyes off her desk. “Such ingratitude. And after I rescued you from my brother.”
The already-pale child turned the shade of chalk. With a nod, he went back through the passage, setting off its usual thunderous roar, and returned a moment later with a broom and pan.
“Now, where were we?” the Belladonna said pleasantly, ignoring the irritated sweeps of the boy. “Oh, dear—”
She picked up one of the skulls that had fallen from the netting, stroking the curve of its empty eye sockets lovingly. “I was rather fond of her. She used to bring me daffodils.”
“That was the timeline,” Sophia interrupted, her voice hollow. “It shifted again.”
Because someone used the astrolabe, or—? Nicholas had never experienced the sensation of time aligning from one version to a new one; by the time he’d begun to travel with Julian, it had settled into some stability under Ironwood’s rule.
But the woman had mentioned revolutions, riots, implying that one might very well be happening outside of these walls. Could it be that the explosion they’d felt had been the actual cause of the change, and not someone acting in an earlier year?
Which meant…what, exactly, for Etta?
“We weren’t orphaned,” he said slowly, trying to reason this out on his own. “Are we in the last common year, then? Was that the change itself, and not just a ripple?”
“Yes. But if that’s your attempt to get me to reveal our year and location, you will be sadly disappointed,” the Belladonna said, “I shall neither confirm nor deny we are in a year after both of your birth years.”
Meaning, by her sad attempt at a wink, they were.
“A change this large would impact the information we’ve discussed as part of the deal,” Nicholas said. “To locate the person in question, we’d need to know this year as well as the prior change. To ascertain if she’s been orphaned again, to this very year.”