Yes, it was beautiful. Yes, it was wise. But to Eliot, it was so much more.
She paused by the Grand Staircase, watching Subject Seven as he descended to B deck. Her heart rattled over the steps. What a wonder it kept beating so fiercely when her weariness went so deep: down to the level of atoms and quarks, to fraying threads of fear and an always dreamless black sleep.
Disaster was exhausting. She’d lived so much of it.
And now, through Subject Seven, she was about to live it again.
Far was only too glad to ditch the first-class getup. He didn’t even wait around to watch them hit the water as he tossed the clothes overboard: Good-bye, bird-tail jacket! Peace out, top hat! Vale, gentlemanly cane!
The second outfit, with its trousers and rough shirt, was much more flexible. No one looked twice at a scuffed-up workman windmilling down five flights of stairs to the orlop deck. He was deep in the ship now, beneath the waterline, where engines hummed like warring whales and the dim lights served only to silhouette the mountains of crates and luggage. There were ranges of wooden boxes, leather wardrobes, even cars.
“Now what?” Far asked his cousin.
“You’re looking for a small oak case. Probably near the top of one of these piles.”
“Probably?” Far walked toward the nearest pile. Boxes on boxes on boxes, all netted together like a bunch of king mackerel to keep from tumbling with the ship. No small oak case here. Unless it was buried deep.
T minus one hour and ten minutes.
“It’s the best I can do, Farway.” Imogen sounded as stretched as Far felt. “You’ll find it.”
He moved to the second pile, using a Louis Vuitton trunk as a launch point for his climb to the top. Once there, Far pulled aside some crates, peering into the maze of leather and wood. Nothing of note. It was on to the next stack. And the next. He scaled mound after mound of expensive luggage, his stomach shrinking a size with every overturned crate, every passing minute.
T minus one hour and five minutes. T minus fifty-five minutes. T minus forty minutes…
Though Far kept searching, his mind was starting to wander—picturing his own empty hands outstretched, and Lux before them. Even in imagination the man was cold—no sneer on his face, no rageful tone: I gave you a 1.2-billion-credit TM and three million credits’ worth of fuel and you’ve brought me nothing. What am I supposed to do about that, Mr. McCarthy? What forfeit is equivalent to this loss?
The answer that was sure to follow made Far search harder, but this mission had turned into a handful of dust and the tighter he gripped, the faster everything slipped. The Rubaiyat wasn’t in this stack or the next or the last, and what else could he do except swear?
“We are so hashed.”
“There’s another cargo room with a lot of first-class luggage one deck up,” Imogen told him. “The Rubaiyat’s probably in there.”
True or not, this didn’t make up for the thirty-minute countdown. Twenty if you counted the time it’d take for him to return to the Invictus—
Far halted, trying to understand what he was seeing.
An entire ship away, Imogen processed the same image. “What’s a first-class lass doing in the cargo bay?”
The girl in the door was decked out in first-class frippery—floor-length daffodil-colored gown; chestnut hair coiled and pinned—but just from her stance Far could tell she was out of her era. She stood with her shoulder to the doorframe, elegantly slumped, an oak case propped on her hip. Far was a universe and a half certain this box contained the Rubaiyat, but it was what he saw on the girl’s face that rendered him speechless. Or rather, who he recognized there.
Marie Antoinette.
The queen of France was on the hashing Titanic.
It was her, and yet… it wasn’t. There was no beauty mark. No beehive wig. Her eyebrows still appeared scripted, the product of a pen nib. The gaze beneath was unmistakable: dark as glistening.
“You,” he croaked.
Marie Antoinette—Far was certain that wasn’t actually her name, but what else could he call her?—smiled and opened the case. Peacock jewels gleamed under the cargo bay’s flimsy light. “Looking for this?”
“Um.” Imogen’s bewilderment was palpable. “Who is that? And why does she have the Great Omar?”
Far wanted these answers, too, but with T minus twenty-seven minutes to disaster and the Rubaiyat in the hands of another, there was only one question that mattered: “What do you want?”
The girl shut the box and tucked it under her arm. “To get your attention.”
“Consider it obtained.” Far took a step forward. “Now can I have the book?”
Marie Antoinette didn’t move. Her smile was as unnerving as it had been in Versailles, just a twitch away from becoming a snarl. “You didn’t say the magic word.”
“Now can I please have the book?” he tried.
“You’re going to have to work a little harder than that.”
“Pretty please?” Far raised both eyebrows. “With a cherry on top?”
She winked.
And then she ran.
9
RACE AGAINST TIME
YOU’D THINK A FLOOR-LENGTH DRESS, BUTTON-UP boots, and a hefty oak box combined with five flights of stairs would put a damper on someone’s running skills. This didn’t seem to be the case. Hash it all, this girl was fast! She leaped up the stairs with a springbok’s grace, two flights to Far’s one. He was still huffing up the third level when she slipped out of the stairwell.
“I told you we need to get a walkabout machine. Cardio is important. Your exercise routine can’t be all pull-ups and push-ups and up-ups.” Imogen’s nervous chatter filled Far’s ear. He wanted to tell her to stop, but he couldn’t gather the breath for it. Every gram of oxygen in his lungs was dedicated to reaching Marie Antoinette before she disappeared altogether.
Where was she going? Far supposed she’d gotten here by means of a different TM. But TMs were crewed by many bodies, and the heat scans Gram ran only detected the two of them as anomalies. This girl was here alone. But to what end? If it was the Rubaiyat she was after, why dangle it in front of him like bait? If it was his attention she wanted, as she claimed, why run? And why run so fast?
Far panted through these questions, step by step. Nothing made sense, but it didn’t have to. This girl wasn’t going to ruin his life again! Come Hades or high water or stupid cardio staircases, he was going to get the Rubaiyat!
When Far blasted out into the cold night, he found C deck deserted. Two cranes bent like a giant’s skeleton fingers, propped on glossy lengths of pitch pine. Marie Antoinette was nowhere in sight.