Destroying the astrolabe would be her last resort, she decided. Some part of her was still hoping she could get through to Sophia, to convince her to come back to Etta’s own time and escape Ironwood once and for all. That way she could use the astrolabe, somehow, to create a passage directly to her time without needing to find the one in the Bahamas that led to the Met.
Etta slid the compass into the folds of her robe, just in case, and stretched out over her blanket. She forced her mind clear of all of the competing thoughts that sprang up when she closed her eyes.
It’ll be over soon, she thought. An ending must be final. She rubbed the raw markings around her wrists, and tried very hard not to wish that Nicholas was there. She didn’t need a protector, or a rescuer. But she did need him.
Sophia returned half an hour later by Etta’s guess, still grumbling as she sank down onto her bedding. Next door, the guardians were talking, laughing, and Etta caught a familiar word passing between them, one Hasan had used: a?waak.
A?waak…as in, Thorns?
There was silence between the girls as the last lights from the caravanserai were finally extinguished, dragging them into the darkness of night.
“Does the astrolabe really create passages?” Sophia asked suddenly. “Not read them?”
I’ll give you an answer if you give me one. Etta almost said it, but she thought of Nicholas then, and realized suddenly that she might not need to manipulate Sophia. Not when the truth was on her side.
“Yes. He wants to create a passage back to a point where he can save his first wife without losing his fortune, or his control over the other families,” Etta said. “He’ll destroy our future, I’m almost sure of it, just to rebuild something he thinks is better. You can’t let him have that much power.”
“Oh, I was never going to give it to him,” Sophia said. “Especially not now that I know exactly how powerful it is—thank you for that piece of information, by the way. My God, this is amazing. I won’t just be able to lord it over him—I’ll be able to burn his life down around him.”
“Sophia—” Etta tried to interrupt, but the girl talked over her, almost trembling with her excitement.
“This is the most powerful object in the world; the travelers and guardians won’t just align with me, they’ll kneel. I won’t need to be the heir—I can go back far enough to take him out of the game entirely.”
Etta was so stunned, she almost couldn’t speak. “You’d really kill him?”
“Not before he lived to regret not choosing me,” Sophia said, that false sweetness back in her voice. “I want him to suffer, to see me rise as he falls. So don’t worry, darling. He won’t change the future, because I’ll change it first.”
AFTER NEARLY SEVEN HOURS ON camelback, rocking with the animal’s slow gait, Etta was too focused on controlling her ride to notice when the sparse desert had begun to take on some green again. If she’d thought the first leg of their trip had been barren, this last section felt like they were seeing the dry, crumbling bones of the world. Etta’s eyes never once stopped watering from the sun’s glare cutting through the cloudless blue sky.
But then in the distance, something began to take shape. Not the city itself, but the crumbling fortress on one of the hills that flanked it. What was left after a thousand years of wear and wind looked distinctly Roman, a sea of pillars and columns, hundreds of them that looked like they were holding up the sky.
There was a green oasis nearby, a dense cluster of trees that seemed at odds with the stripped-down land stretching in every direction. But here and there, as they drew their camels into the city, Etta saw evidence of ravines and what looked like small canals.
Now that they were inside the boundaries of the ruins, and Etta had to crane her neck back to look at the carved reliefs on the columns’ heads, it was easy to imagine the magnificent scope of the city in its prime. Hasan had called it one of the most dazzling stops along the ancient trade routes between east and west, a once carefully cultivated jewel that had fallen into neglect, and then devastation, as new civilizations rose up and the roads redrew themselves. There was an amphitheater and a large, towering building that Etta assumed was some kind of temple, but for the most part, they were weaving through the remnants of the buildings’ foundations. Their footprints.
“Well?” Sophia said, turning her camel sharply to cut off the path of Etta’s. Daisy, as she’d started calling the camel, let out a growl and began to dance around impatiently.
“‘Well,’ what?” Etta asked, adjusting her hood. The sun was at its pinnacle, beating down on the top of her head, reminding Etta she needed to keep drinking the water in her rapidly shrinking goatskin.
“What was the clue? Where are we supposed to find it, now that we’re here?”