Ten Thousand Skies Above You (22 page)

As in my universe, he's a hipster on the outside, pure science geek on the inside. “Not very well. But I'll try.” I don't know what else to say. “Why did the grand duchess contact you?”

“To see if my impressions of December's events matched her own. She did not share my total amnesia, but as outlandish as her explanation was, I came to believe it.”

In other words, she had to check to make sure she was sane. The letters I exchanged with Theo last December were the only proof she had that the shadow worlds were more than a delusion.

Amazement has animated Theo, turned him into a guy closer to one I know. “Do you perhaps have one of those miraculous devices?”

“A Firebird.” I snag my finger under the chain. It takes him a moment to focus on material from another dimension, but his expression lights up when he does. I add, “If you ever need to check whether someone is native to this dimension, you can look for a Firebird. They'll almost certainly have it on.”

I tug at his collar, as an example of how to check, but to my shock, I see another Firebird chain.

“Your Imperial Highness?” Theo says, still unaware anything is hanging around his neck.

I snatch up his Firebird, hit the reminder sequence, and—

“O
wwww!”
Theo pushes back, grabs his chest, and then looks around at our opulent surroundings. “Whoa. Okay, I don't know where we are, but I like it.”

“What are you doing here?” I demand. “Did you already talk to Conley?”

“Hello to you, too.” When I give him a look, he sighs.
“No, I didn't go to the coordinates you gave me. Instead, I followed you.”

“We were supposed to go to him after we were done!”

“Which we will. He never said we couldn't take a short detour first.”

Frustration tightens my fist around the lace handkerchief I'm still clutching. “What if Conley thinks we're skipping out on him? He could splinter Paul into another four pieces—” Or four dozen. Or four million, so I'd never get him back again.

“Hey,” Theo says sharply. “You're the one Conley's after. This train doesn't move forward unless you're aboard. Besides, as far as Conley knows, we've been good little soldiers so far. He's not going to break the deal yet.”

He doesn't know that any more than I do. Still, I sense he's right—for now. Conley won't put up with a delay for long. “You understand why I came to this dimension, right?”

Theo nods, but his smile fades. “Yeah, I know. You needed to get your head together. What happened in New York—that was intense.”

“More for you than for me,” I say.

“We can save the Most Traumatized competition for later, all right? Okay, you wanted to rest someplace—luxurious, I guess, someplace where you knew you'd be safe.”

“You think I came here because it was ‘luxurious'?”

Theo holds out his hands in a way that takes in the crystal chandelier above us, the painted murals on the walls, all of it, like,
Am I wrong?
But he adds, “And you needed to be safe.
Right? Otherwise it has to be sad for you, remembering—you know. The other Paul.”

He honestly doesn't get it. “Theo, I came to this dimension because it's the only one where I knew I wouldn't see Paul. I couldn't even
look
at him, not after what he did to you.”

Theo winces; he covers one knee with his hand. “That sucked beyond the telling of it. But it's not like
our
Paul shot me.”

“The different versions—they're more alike than unalike. Don't you see that?”

“What, so, if one Paul did something crappy to me, I should hate every version of Paul from then on?”

“That's not what I meant.”

The flickering gas lamps on the walls no longer seem to shed enough light. Instead of appearing luxurious, the heavy wood carving and enormous overhead chandelier begin to make me feel claustrophobic. A gilded cage is still a cage.

Slowly I say, “Theo, the first time I came to this world—this is where I began to believe that no matter how different we are in each dimension, something within us is always the same. Call it an eternal soul, or a spirit, but whatever it is, it's the most important thing about us, and that's the constant. That's the part that never changes, no matter what.”

“The soul,” Theo says, in a tone of voice I've heard my whole life from my parents and every single one of their grad students; it means,
This is not science.

Sometimes they think nothing but hard, empirical fact matters.

Which is total crap.

“Yes,” I shoot back. “The soul. And I thought I knew Paul's soul even better than I knew my own. But when he shot you, I realized there were ways I don't know him at all. I've seen darkness inside him. True darkness. And I still love him, which is scarier than anything else. But I don't know what to think or what to do—”

My throat closes up, and I blink back tears.
Pregnancy hormones
, I think.

Theo doesn't even know about the baby yet.

I look up at him for comfort, then pull back, because at this moment Theo is
furious
.

“One eternal soul,” he whispers. The very quietness of his voice cuts me, as it's meant to. “Only one self, across the countless dimensions of the multiverse, and we all have to answer for each other's sins. Which means, to you, I'm still the Theo who helped kidnap your dad, and framed Paul for murder. The one who betrayed you. When you look at me, that's all you see.”

I want to say,
No, that's not true.
But I can't. Still, when I look at Theo, I feel a flicker of doubt.

Only now do I realize that I'm the one who betrayed Theo. By refusing to see him for himself, to respect the choices he's made and the loyalty he's shown, I'm betraying him this very second.

“That Paul isn't our Paul,” Theo says. By now he's so mad he seems to be staring through me, like I'm beneath even being noticed. “Just like I'm not that Theo. He didn't blame me for something an entirely different Theo did, and I won't blame him for what happened in New York. Dammit, Marguerite, I'm the one who got shot! If I can let it go, why can't you?”

He rises to his feet and shoves his chair to the table. Apparently the grand duchess will dine alone tonight.

Theo continues, “Believe what you want to believe. Doubt me, doubt Paul, hide in fin de siècle Paris if it makes you feel better. But if you won't save Paul, I will.”

With that, he stalks out of the private dining room.

Now it's just me and the flickering gaslight. I lost Paul three times over—when Lieutenant Markov died in this dimension, when Wyatt Conley splintered his soul, and when I saw Paul shoot Theo. Now I've lost Theo, too.

Never, in any world, have I been so alone.

WHEN DAWN BREAKS THE NEXT DAY, I HAVEN'T SLEPT MORE
than a few hours. Exhaustion weighs down my body and paints dark circles beneath my eyes.

Partly this is because of my pregnancy. At least I assume that's why I have to get up to pee about every two hours.

I thought babies only kept you awake
after
they were born
.

Mostly, though, my insomnia comes from guilt. The many reasons boil inside my mind, hot and agitated, and as soon as I've set one aside, another bubbles up to take its place.

I got the grand duchess pregnant.
The worst thing I've ever done. Hopefully the worst thing I'll ever do. How much worse than that could I even get?

Theo thinks I've spent the last three months hating him
. I could never hate Theo. Not even after what the other one put me through, with his careful lies, the way he set up my entire
family and Paul too, or how he cozied up to me by flirting and leaning close and calling me “Meg.” (Even the thought of that nickname makes my skin crawl.) After the past few days, I know more than ever how much Theo's done for me, how much more he would give. How could I ever have doubted him because of something that happened to him? He was the main victim of the Triadverse's Theo—not me, not my mom, not even my kidnapped father.

Theo and I didn't move on to the home office. Conley probably thinks we've abandoned Paul.
I haven't—I never would. Even if I'm not sure how to be with him again, there's no way I'm not going to bring him home.

I'm letting the actions of another Paul affect my emotions about my Paul, the one I love.
After Theo's blistering lecture last night, I realize how cruel and unjust that is. Yet my heart remembers the homicidal dullness in Paul's eyes as he shot Theo over and over again.

After what feels like an endless weak sunrise, I finally accept sleep isn't going to happen. I wrap myself in the velvet robe and wander through the palatial Suite Imperial, wishing for some way to kill time. Sure, there are books on the shelves—histories and encyclopedias of this alternate timeline that would probably fascinate my parents. The kind of thing I ought to take notes on, but I can't, not with my mind racing like this.

No TV or computer, obviously. Life before Wi-Fi was a barren time.

Finally, I look at the grand duchess's sketchbook and pastels. I've avoided opening the sketchbook, because I'm completely certain Paul's portrait is on those pages. I'm not ready to see his face looking up at me, not yet. But I remember Lieutenant Markov giving me the box of pastels—the light in his eyes as he realized how much I loved his Christmas gift. Surely I could draw one picture with them, just one.

I pick up the sketchbook, determined to flip through quickly to a blank page so I won't see anything drawn within. But as soon as I take it from the desk, folded papers fall out onto the floor. As I squint down at them, I see how many of them are letters.

Am I violating the grand duchess's privacy if I read them? Compared to the fact that I'm walking around in her body, which I also
got pregnant
, going over the mail doesn't seem like a big deal. Besides, maybe the letters will tell me what she's planning—what's going to become of her.

The first one I open, written in badly blotted ink, is from Katya, the bratty little sister who might have saved my life during the rebellion by tackling an enemy soldier twice her size:

I told you to be quiet about that “shadow world” stuff, but you never listen to me. Simply tell them it's all a story you made up, so you can come home. Papa says it's not proper for me to attend balls while you're seeing your French doctor, and I'm tired of sitting around every night. Will you at least
be home by the time we go to Tsarskoye Selo for the summer? You always enjoy that.

I smile softly; Katya misses me, though she won't admit it. I've missed her too.

But—summertime. I do what the other Marguerite must have done the first time realization set in, counting off weeks and months to late September. How can I possibly hide this pregnancy for so long?

If I could solve these problems for her, I would—but I can't. I'm not sure anybody can.

The next letter turns out to be more comforting; it's from my little brother, Peter.

Margarita, I wish you were here. I'm studying hard and Professor Caine is helping me draw a map of Africa. Papa
has a lion skin from the time he went shooting in
Africa when he was young, but I think it was mean to kill the lion just to take its skin. If I ever go to Africa, I'll take photographs of the animals, because that way the animals will be happy and I can still look at them forever. Also the lion
skin smells nasty now. Please come home from France soon. I
love you.

A laugh bubbles up in my chest as I envision Peter's sweet little face while he labored to write each word. He's so tiny for his age, or he was; maybe he's grown since.

I pick up the next letter, relieved and grateful to recognize my father's handwriting. Though, of course, this letter is signed from my “tutor,” Henry Caine.

Your Imperial Highness,

I'm glad to hear that your time in Paris has proved beneficial, as we discussed. Although the tsar has expressed impatience, I've endeavored to convince him that psychotherapy has genuine medical value, and that your convalescence should not be rushed.

As we speculated, the king of England appears to have turned his attentions toward the Rumanian princess for his son's bride. The tsar feels this keenly, but your health outweighs all other considerations. Besides, now that Vladimir is courting that Polish princess, I suspect Tsar Alexander has matchmaking enough for now.

I admit, I can't help sympathizing with his eagerness to have a grandchild.

By all means, rest and take care of your health. Let me know how you're feeling, and whether I can send you anything you might need.

This letter says far more than it first appears to.

If this world's Marguerite remembers her night with Paul, that means she also remembers the truth about her parentage, which was the result of a brief, clandestine affair between the late tsaritsa, my mother, and the royal tutor, Henry Caine. She's kept the secret, and she and
Dad have built a relationship.

The Grand Duchess Margarita finally has a dad who loves her. I cling to this, the one thing I've given her after taking so much else away.

Dad clearly knows about the pregnancy, too.
A grandchild
, he wrote. Probably he helped devise this plan to get the grand duchess out of the tsar's sight for a long while.

But if my father has any ideas about what happens next, they're not in this letter.

Hearing from Katya and Peter warms me more than I could have anticipated. I've missed them ever since I left the Russiaverse, which was one thing none of the others ever fully understood.
You only knew them for a month
, Josie said once, irritated.
They weren't your siblings like I am. Come on!

They weren't, and they were. There's a kind of magic to seeing yourself reflected in this entirely new person. When you're related to someone, you wind up sometimes connecting in ways that go beyond logic. I didn't just fall in love with Paul in Russia; in some ways, I fell in love with my other family, too. All of them.

I go through all the fallen letters time and time again, searching for one from my older brother, Vladimir, heir to the throne. It breaks my heart when I don't find one.

He'd write. He
would.
Vladimir's kindness was nearly the first thing I noticed about him. Whenever I wished I had a protective, loving big brother instead of the big sister who wouldn't let me use her skateboard, I envisioned someone exactly like Vladimir. And this Marguerite is close to her
brother—that was obvious from the beginning.

They're close enough that she would have told him about the pregnancy.

And he's said . . . nothing.

Vladimir hardly seems like the
Scarlet Letter
type, but I have to remember what a different world this is. Their morality resembles that of a century back, when people thought racism was A-OK but freaked out about premarital sex. Would he hate her for that? Even if he didn't, Vladimir might feel that he had to cut her off, possibly forever.

Did I cost this Marguerite her brother, too?

Throughout the day, I keep expecting Theo to call—not literally, as the Suite Imperial doesn't have a phone, but by sending a message via the hotel. I check the appointment book, hoping to see more restaurant bookings, but there's only one note, and that's for tomorrow:
Word from Cousin Karin.
Though I search my memories, I can't recall writing a note to any “Karin” when I was in this dimension in December; then again, I'm supposedly related to half the royal families in Europe, so that could be anyone.

Not one line tells me when—or if—I'll see Theo again.

Could I ask one of the security guards to track down the chemist Theo Beck? Maybe. But I'm not sure how much they know about the grand duchess's friendship with this world's Theo, or how much they'll report back to the tsar. I need to be discreet if at all possible. If only I had some idea where Theo might be, or when—

—but then I realize, I do know. Really, I should've been able to guess on my own, but Theo himself told me in one of his letters in December.

So when night falls, I eat an early supper in my room and have my maid fix me up to go out (this time a dress in dark red velvet, with kimono-style sleeves, subtle gold embroidery on the chest, and black fur trim at the hem). Then I call for my car.

“Where to, Your Imperial Highness?” the chauffeur asks.

It's kind of a thrill to reply, “The Moulin Rouge.”

When we drive up, I hardly know what to look at first: the red windmill sign, the mix of hoi polloi and bohemians streaming through the doors, or—holy cow, a ginormous statue of an elephant with a pagoda on its back. I thought that was something made up for the movie. Guess not.

As I walk inside, I spot clues that I haven't merely stepped back in time. I see several people of color—black, East Asian, Indian—and while a few are obviously entertainers, others are well-heeled guests. I bet that wasn't as common back home; points go to this universe for not being as racist. Plus there's a vivid poster on the wall in a kind of Art Nouveau style, featuring a beautiful woman with dark skin wearing a golden dress that glitters with a thousand lights; her hair curls around her in sinuous curves that remind me of Medusa's snakes. The name written at the top, in flowing elaborate type, is
Beyoncé.
At the bottom of the poster are the dates of her next performance.

Mostly, though, the scene is pure bacchanal. The club is
enormous—and hundreds of people dance on the wooden floors or cheer from the balconies. A full orchestra crashes its way through a number that it takes me a moment to recognize as a Taylor Swift song, which in this universe she apparently wrote for the cancan.

My guards don't look thrilled to have escorted me anyplace so bawdy, but at least one of them has fetched a person in charge. I nod politely as he welcomes me, then say, “Can you show me where Mr. Theo Beck is? The chemist? I know he comes here often. Is he in tonight?”

“But of course! Let me show you to the
Jardin de Paris
.”

This turns out to be the back patio of the Moulin Rouge. The elephant towers over the scene while frilly-skirted dancers cavort on an outdoor stage, brightly colored feathers in their hair. Everyone around us is eating, drinking, laughing, smoking cigarettes, smoking stuff that might not be cigarettes . . .

Sitting at the end of the farthest table with nothing but bottles and a glass for company, is Theo. His ascot is askew; his hat is missing. I'd guess he's already sampled the bottles.

I motion for my guards to step back. They're not thrilled, but they obey. Alone, I go to Theo's table and take the seat closest to him.

He doesn't look at me as I approach, but he must have recognized me just from the corner of his eye. “Interesting place,” he says. “Paris.”

“If you know where to go,” I reply.

Theo points at the elephant. “For the price of one
franc—just one franc!—I can go inside the elephant. It has stairs in one of its legs, you see. If you climb up there, you're entertained by belly dancers who'll give you all the opium you want.”

“You've gone up already?” The last thing I need is Theo getting high while we need to concentrate.

But he shakes his head. “Just what I've been told.” Then he pulls himself together, or tries to. “Can I fix you a drink?”

Instinctively, my hand covers my stomach. “No, thanks.”

“C'mon. You'll never have another chance to drink absinthe like this. Yeah, you can get it back home, but they don't brew it the old way, with the wormwood. So you don't get the hallucinogenic quality.” As if he hadn't heard my refusal, Theo slides his empty glass between us, then pours in what I assume is absinthe—a pale green liquor the exact same shade as peridot. Then he puts a strange, perforated piece of silver atop the rim, and sets a single sugar cube atop that.

“Next comes the ice water,” Theo says as he lifts a bottle, frosted by its inner chill. “You have to go slowly if you want to do it right. Drop by drop, until the sugar cube dissolves.”

“How long have you been practicing this?” I demand.

“Most of the night,” Theo admits. Though he never takes his eyes off the water dripping onto the sugar cube, he adds, more quietly, “Listen—some of the stuff I said yesterday—I was out of line.”

“No, you weren't.” After I finally admitted it to myself, admitting it to Theo is easy. “I've been unfair to you. I let the things that other Theo did keep me from seeing you.
The real you, I mean. This whole trip, you've proved that you're one of the most courageous, loyal,
good
people I've ever met.”