“What are you…?” she mumbled.
He held a finger up to his lips as he stood, sliding the leather bag over his shoulder. Etta took the hand he offered to pull herself up off the ground, swaying. Holding her steady, Nicholas wrapped his jacket over her shoulders. It was only after they started to make their way along the edge of the track, skirting the sleeping Londoners, that he realized he was still holding her hand.
Nicholas gestured toward the other end of the raised platform, and Etta nodded—he was headed the right way, then. Good. Once he lost sight of the sky, it felt impossible to tell north from south, east from west. He found the experience of being underground about as pleasant as being blown to bits, like the ship in his dream. There was something unnatural about not being able to feel the sunlight on your skin in the morning.
The platform ended abruptly; he was forced to release Etta’s hand and jump down onto the tracks. His shoes butted up against the raised metal beams running along the ground. Etta sat on the edge of the strange cold, gray, stone ledge and slid down into the dark with him, careful to avoid the clusters of families packed between the tracks. Determination and focus sharpened Etta’s features in the glow of the lights. She turned toward the dark tunnel and led the way.
The air smelled vaguely of fire; his frown deepened, a new uneasiness stirring in him. He kept close to Etta, forcing her to slow her pace. When he turned, there was a man leaning over the platform, peering down the tunnel. At first, he thought the man had skin darker than his own, but the truth came like a swift blow: the man’s face was stained with soot, but his features were recognizable. He’d shot at them the night before as they’d run toward the station. How the bloody hell had he found them already?
“One of the Thorns,” he said. “We need to move faster—”
“I see something,” she said. There was a light up ahead, a break in the tunnel. “It must be the next station. We’re getting close.”
Without breaking his stride, Nicholas reached into the bag and pulled out the harmonica. He put the instrument to his lips and blew softly.
The note was nothing but a faint gasp of sound. In return, they were showered with such clapping thunder and monstrous shrieks that Etta instinctively pulled back against him, trying to escape it. They had come up just short of what had to be the Elgin Marbles. Indeed, he saw the top of a white chiseled head over its wooden shelter, the lifeless eyes tracking their path through the thick darkness.
“Stop!” the man cried.
Never.
“There! Right there.” She pointed toward the wall, where the air seemed to ripple in the darkness. The rattling screams reached a fevered state, making the blood pound inside of his head as he crossed through first, Etta at his back.
The momentum launched him out through the gate at the other end of the passage. He felt his breath catch, the hammering pulse of his heart. The world dissolved into pure darkness, the squeeze of air around him popping the bones in his stiff back. And, as quickly as he had leapt into it, Nicholas was spat out through the other side.
BIRDS AND INSECTS SCREECHED FROM THEIR PERCHES IN THE FLESHY green trees and brush around him. There was always a moment of blindness as his eyes adjusted to being inundated with light. He pressed his face against the wet earth, trying to clear the fog in his mind. No sooner had he started to get up, when a weight crashed into his back and sent him sprawling down into the mud again.
“Sorry!” Etta gasped, rolling off him. “Oww—”
He sat up, his vision swinging back toward the passage’s entrance. When it became clear that the other man wasn’t about to follow them through—that if he was indeed a Thorn, he was a guardian, rather than a traveler—Nicholas began to look beyond it. Jungle—a vast, thick shield of green and brown around him. The air was heavy with the contradictory scents of rotting vegetation and floral blooms, lit green by the screen of bright leaves and tangle of thin branches overhead.
“Are you all right?” he asked, the words scratching out of his dry throat. “Etta?”
She was flat on her back, the sky-blue dress splattered with mud. Before he could stop himself, he began to pluck the long, green leaves out of her hair, flicking them away as the girl groaned, shaking madly.
“You’re all right,” he told her. “Look at me, just for a moment—just a moment, pirate.”
It had taken him at least five trips through the passages during his training before he’d worked the last of the traveler’s sickness out of his system. He knew too well how she was feeling: the weakness, the way every sound was battering her skull, the blood that was turning to ice in her veins. Etta opened her eyes, but they were unfocused. A soft sigh escaped her lips, and her eyelids fluttered shut.
“’S fine,” she said. “Just…need…moment.”
They didn’t have a moment, and they wouldn’t, until he figured out where the passage had brought them and whether more guardians were near. The man in London would report what he’d seen to any nearby traveler, and he or she would be sent to follow them. They’d need to find the next passage immediately, and be gone before they could be tracked again.
Nicholas would bring Ironwood his damned astrolabe, but he wished to do it on his own terms, and keep Etta well out of Ironwood’s grasp. He needed to keep her from sensing that this journey would have a very different end than the one she imagined.
He looked down at her grimacing face, and swallowed the burn of bile in his throat.
After another look around to ensure there was no one nearby, and that the only immediate threats were hunger and dehydration, Nicholas gathered her up into his arms and began to walk.
There was no trail, no evidence of human touch. He strained his ears, trying to hear above the rattle and buzz of the insects, and—there—he heard what he hoped was the sound of rushing water.
Etta’s weight felt good and solid in his arms; but the feel of her in his arms, Nicholas thought with some uneasiness, was getting a bit too familiar. He stepped over the powerful arm of a root jutting up out of the soft soil. He let the branches blocking their way do what they would to his neck and face, and did the best he could to shield Etta.
“Where…?” she asked, already coming around. He fought a smile. The next time would be easier on her, then.
“Not entirely sure, to tell you the truth,” he said.
“Put me down,” she said. “I can walk, I promise.”
His hands tightened around her waist, her legs. The air had grown warm, and he knew he must smell worse than whatever ungodly rotting stench the jungle was belching out, but reluctance tugged at him even as he set her down on her feet.
She can look after herself. Etta knew herself well enough to know what she could and couldn’t fight through.
But that, of course, didn’t preclude him wanting to take care of her.
Etta looked around, taking in the knot of green foliage, the way the canopy shielded them from the sun’s glare. “Well…this is different.”
He snorted. “Come, let’s see what we can find in the way of water and food.”
His ears hadn’t failed him—there was a stream nearby, and it moved quickly enough for him to feel mildly comfortable drinking it. Whenever he and Julian had tried to survive in the wild, they’d carried packs stuffed with supplies. Pots for boiling water and cooking. Blankets for freezing nights. There had been matches to start fires, hooks and lines for fishing. It had been Hall who’d taught him how to survive with none of these things.