A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones (22 page)

He slammed the wall again, cursing aloud.

Lily stepped out onto the Pilot Grid, clicking the door closed behind
her. “Greyston, I don’t think Jean is going to make it.” Her voice was low, a
confidential whisper of urgency. “You need to take us back.”

He pushed his hand through his hair. “I can’t time-run again so soon.”

“I don’t care about any stupid laws of nature.” She stopped toe to toe
with him, her head tilted so she could glower up into his eyes. “You have to
try.”

“You think I haven’t?” he ground out. “I need to grab hold of the
memory I want to go back to, but they’re slipping through my fingers when I
reach for them. It’s like trying to catch a ripple of water in a pond. My
memories are useless for at least another twelve hours and by then it’ll be far
too late to undo anything. I can’t step back further than thirty minutes.”

“Oh.” She shrank from him, against the wall, the
glower draining visibly as her shoulders bunched. Then her hazel eyes sharpened
on him. “What about me? You said your memories are useless, but maybe mine
aren’t.”

“Your memories?” He shook his head. “I can’t use someone else’s—”

“No, not that,” she cut in. “Kelan McAllister indicated we might both
have some ability Duncan was interested in. What if I can also time-run? What if
those laws only restrict an individual’s memories?”

Dismissing her bizarre suggestion was on the tip of his tongue, but
Greyston kept his mouth clamped. It wasn’t as if they had anything to lose.

“Tell me what to do.”

“Close your eyes and blank out everything around you. Concentrate on a
memory, something recent…maybe just before we turned from the river to sail in
for William and Ana.” He watched her do as he’d instructed, her forehead
furrowed as she squeezed her eyes tight. “Now reach for yourself in that
memory, grab hold of an arm, a shoulder, anything you can anchor yourself to,
and pull yourself in. You want to be in that moment, you need to be there more
than life itself…” His voice trailed off as her eyes opened.

She glanced around her and saw nothing had magically transported them
anywhere. “Perhaps I’m doing it wrong.”

“I’ve never tried to show another person how to do this. I can tell
how it first happened for me. That might help.” He moved to the staircase,
sitting himself down on the lower rung.

He’d never shared this with anyone, but if the emotion that had
strangled him was the key, he had to do it now. He owed Jean that much.

One elbow on his knee, he pushed his fingers through his hair, his
every breath filled with lead. He was about to bare himself to the rotten core.
“It was a couple of weeks after the gas explosion. Neco and I had made our way
to the dockside at Leith.”

He’d gone home first, to Forleough, but he hadn’t even made it past
the front entrance. His father had met him halfway across the courtyard, eyes
sunken deep into a haggard face. “Ye canna be here. Ye canna be real.” He hit
out, a striking glance off Greyston’s shoulder.

Neco stepped forward, but Greyston quickly stopped him. “I’ve come
to see Aragon. I want to talk to my brother.”

“Yer nigh impossible ta kill,” his da went on, spitting fury with
each word. “I shouldha known. From vermin ta vermin and ye’ll take us all with
ye. Get from here, do ye hear me? Be gone with ye and yer evil.”

Greyston took a slow, steadying breath, his gaze on the meshed floor.

“We were living on the streets, taking shelter in the alleys between
the warehouses, earning an odd shilling here and there.” He heard her little
gasp, still didn’t look up. “When the lad came at me, the alley was so dark, all
I could see was the glint of steel in the moonlight. He must have been
watching, waiting for Neco to leave.”

Neco had taken to ruffling down the occasional unsuspecting sailor on
his way to or from one of the many taverns that thrived along the docks. It
wasn’t noble, and the poor bastards never had more than a couple of shillings
on them, but most days that was all that stood between survival and starvation.

“He demanded I empty my pockets, which I did, but then he wanted to
know where we’d stashed our money. Said he’d seen what the big fellow could do,
that he’d been watching us work the docks for weeks and he wanted his cut. I
had nothing to give him, of course, and that’s when he jumped me.”

Three weeks living it rough hadn’t toughened him at all, not with Neco
looking out for him. Greyston had flung himself aside, somehow tripped the lad
by pure luck and then he was straddling his attacker, trying to restrain the
hand that grasped the hilt of a dagger.

The lad had bucked him easily and next thing Greyston was the one in
the dirt, kicking and hitting and squirming long after the boy had stopped.
He’d collapsed beside Greyston, the point of the blade stuck into his throat,
his eyes glassy and blood spurting like a fountain.

“I don’t know how I killed him. One of my kicks must have driven the
blade into his throat, but he was dead and I’d done it.” And when he’d looked
more closely, he’d seen that the boy was even younger than him, not more than
ten or eleven.

Greyston looked up, expecting to see horror in Lily’s eyes and finding
it. “I retched and cried and shook and cursed, but he was still dead.”

“Greyston, it wasn’t…” Her voice faltered, then came back stronger.
“You were defending yourself.”

He wasn’t so sure about that. The boy had come at him, threatening
with a dagger, but it was Greyston who’d inadvertently tripped him. Greyston
who’d flung himself on top of the boy. Greyston who’d hit and kicked out in
terror.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Every bad thing ever said about me,
every accusation of evil thrown at me, I was that. I was all of that and more.”
He’d killed his mother. He was Lucifer’s runt and only hell awaited. “But I
couldn’t be that, Lily. I watched the blood spurt from that boy’s throat and I
knew I couldn’t be the one to have done that. If I could just go back a few
minutes, even one minute, if I could just change a single action, a word. I
reached into my mind, tormenting myself with the deciding moment where I could
have crawled to my feet instead of kicking out, wanting to have that moment
over again so desperately…”

Since then, he’d trained his brain to time-run without the emotion.
All he needed was a moment of concentration and a memory. But emotion had been
the initial trigger, the awakening of his ability. The same might be true for
Lily.

“And?” Lily prompted as he fell silent.

“And I was there, in the memory of the boy bucking me from him.
Instead of kicking out, I scrambled to my hands and knees and shot off down the
alley.”

“He lived?”

“I sneaked back a short while later and there was no body, no blood.”
Greyston rested his arms on his knees and leaned forward. “That’s the place you
need to find inside yourself, Lily.”

She gave him a weak smile. Took a deep breath. And closed her eyes.

He waited, the seconds ticking by slowly as he watched the intensity
play out on her face. Should he be holding her hand, ready to go back in time
with her? He didn’t want anything to distract her. He didn’t really have much
faith that she’d succeed. She’d tell him everything, anyway, the instant she
stepped back into whatever memory she’d chosen. Not that he believed she could.

Her eyes blinked open.

His jaw tensed.

“Did I…?” She cast a slow look around.

Greyston’s jaw went slack with disappointment. “That’s that, then.” He
pushed to his feet.

Her eyes turned down. “I honestly thought…”

“It’s okay, Lily.”

She peered up at him, lashes glistening with tears. “It’s not okay. I
thought nothing terrible would truly happen, that we—that you could avert
anything too horrid to bear. It’s not okay. Jean won’t be okay and there’s not
a thing we can do to change it.”

“Lily, don’t…” He stepped toward her, his arms reaching to comfort,
then dropping heavily to his side. He wasn’t a natural comforter or
sympathiser. In his world, it was each man, woman and child for themselves. He
didn’t trust this urge she invoked in him, didn’t know what he was supposed to
do with it.

She released a shuddering sigh, but her shoulders straightened and her
head lifted. “Are we still taking Jean to Edinburgh?”

“The Red Hawk will take Jean and everyone else. You and I are setting
down at Cragloden. It’s on the way.”

“I want to go with Jean. I won’t be able to think straight until I
know she’s going to be okay.”

“Jean’s best odds are without us, especially while I can’t time-run. We’re
the death trap, Lily,” he said softly. “The demon’s after us and it will stop
at no one and nothing.”

“The demon’s after us,” she repeated numbly. “That’s straight from a
grim fairy tale, usually followed by a sentence containing brimstone and
sulphur. I don’t know what scares me more, Greyston, that demons truly exist or
that I so easily believe they do.”

He gave her a reassuring smile. “I tried to resist believing, and that
didn’t get me very far. Be scared of the demons, but never of yourself.”

She tilted her chin, looking into his eyes. Her lips moved, perhaps to
form a smile, but never quite made it. “What are we going to do?”

“Kelan said Cragloden is a safe haven. Considering how well informed
the McAllisters appear to be on all things demonic, I hope to high hell he
meant Cragloden is a refuge of sorts. Failing that, at least he claims he knows
how to fight the damn beasts.” He made his way to the Pilot Cabin, issuing, “Go
back to the others. I’ll join you in a moment.”

Jamie wasn’t happy about the change in plan. “I don’t like leaving you
stranded without the Red Hawk, Grey, not after what I’ve seen today.”

“She needs to be repaired.” Greyston stood behind his chair, his gaze
on the ragged cliffs battered by roiling white-created waves below. The ocean
was on their left, which meant they were already on the stretch down the
coastline with a good south-easterly wind on their tail. “Ferdie will want to
get spare parts in Edinburgh anyway. I need you to wait there, to bring Paisley
and Jean back.”

“We should make for
Es Vedra
and be done with this godforsaken
land.”

Greyston couldn’t fault the sentiment, so he said nothing. He released
the hatch that provided emergency access to the captain’s cabin directly above
and caught the ladder as it unfolded.

Jamie raised a shaggy orange brow at him. “Avoiding someone?”

“Just in a hurry,” Greyston shot over his shoulder as he climbed the
rungs.

At the top, he flipped the hatch down and started packing some
essentials and a change of clothes into a cloth sack he dug up from the storage
units beneath his bunk. The carpetbag he used for travelling, as well as his
pair of Foggles, had been incinerated along with Forleough. He tied a knot in
the cloth and slung the bag over his shoulder, making his way along the narrow
passage and then down the steel rung steps to the Galley Grid, entering the
boarding cabin through the stern-side doorway.

He found Evelyn and William bent over Jean.

“I want you to go along to Edinburgh,” Evelyn was telling him, “and
stay with her.”

“Yes, Lady Eve.”

Which sounded very much as if Evelyn was coming with them. When he’d
said everyone but him and Lily were going to Edinburgh, he’d meant
everyone
.

He grimaced, was about to reject her assumption flatly, but hesitated.
He’d made the decision for Jean, and look at her now. He didn’t know what was
best. He didn’t know if whatever protection Cragloden had to offer outweighed
the threat he and Lily posed. He didn’t know a bloody thing.

“She must have the finest surgeons, you tell them that,” Evelyn told
William.

The poor lad blanched. “I’ll try, Lady Eve, but I don’t—”

“Yes, you do.” She removed her ring, her wedding ring, and slipped it
on Jean’s finger. “That ring has the ducal crest on it and the inside is
engraved. I’ve heard some horrendous stories about neglect and carelessness in
the general hospitals, but they wouldn’t dare give a duchess second-rate care.”

“I must pretend that she is…” William’s frown intensified. “You?”

Evelyn nodded. “Make sure they understand. The wrath of England will
come down on their heads if the Duke of Harchings’ beloved wife dies in their
care.”

Greyston didn’t intervene. Her ruse would get Jean exemplary
treatment, save her life if at all possible, and maybe it was. He walked around
them—noting that William had strapped the puppy’s mouth with part of the
material leash, muting its uncontrollable yap—and over to where Neco and Lily
were crouched over Ana. “Where’s Paisley?”

Neco rose to his full height. “Ian took her to the galley for a dram
of whiskey.”

“He’s a good man, he’ll keep her there for as long as possible.” He
indicated at Ana, still slumped against the wall. “How bad is it?”

“A shard of aluminium pierced her chest,” Neco said.

No small feat, considering the celludrone’s chest was a solid cage of
steel. Then again, a shard of anodised aluminium was the equivalent of a
diamond spear.

“I don’t understand why she’s deteriorating.” Lily glanced up at him.
“First she stopped talking, and now she isn’t moving.”

“We’re programmed to shut down systematically when our energy source
is compromised,” Neco said. “The progressive deterioration indicates a slow
leak, a ninety-eight percent probability her life cell has been fractured,
although not completely shattered.”

Lily jumped to her feet. “How does steel fracture?”

“Glass,” Neco corrected.

“Are you saying the heart of her mechanics is that fragile?” Lily
exclaimed. “Why would anyone design anything that stupid?”

“You could ask God the same thing of our human hearts,” Greyston
muttered.