The Isis Knot (39 page)

Like a puzzle, he’d been completed.

And then Amonteh just…disappeared. The Spectre retreated into a small space at the back of his mind, leaving William alone with Sera.

He tightened his embrace as the sensation of being inside her flooded back from memory. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t lain with a woman in a decade, because no pleasure would ever—
could
ever—compare. She’d ruined him for the rest of his days.

She stirred, her face brushing his bare chest as she turned her eyes up to his. She looked fragile, haunted…and so beautiful the sight pounded emotion into his chest. He slipped a hand under her hair.

Yes, Amonteh. I know very well what I’ve found. And I thank you for it.

Delicate fingers touched his lips. “That wasn’t a dream, was it? We weren’t asleep. It had been real once.”

His throat was as dry as the desert. “Yes.”

She rose up to her elbows, her hair falling in a mess around her face. Her eyebrows drew heavily together, and he knew what she was about to say.

“It’s still us,” he told her fervently. “You and me. Here together now.”

The lines across her brow smoothed a little. She linked her fingers with his and gave them a squeeze. “Yes. It’s still us. But—”

A voice drifted up from the staircase. That was nothing new—scattered folks had come and gone below all evening—but it was the distinct sound of this voice that made him hold up a hand and whisper, “Shh.”

He scrambled to his feet and pulled on his trousers, tugging the rope tight at his waist. He slipped beneath the glassless window that looked directly down on the courtyard.

It was dark, but Waldgrave had lit an oil lamp outside his door. An unmistakable lanky man entered the courtyard and loped through the lantern light.

Something about Jem seemed off. His shoulders weren’t lowered in his typical, self-conscious fashion. He walked quickly now, with purpose.

“Thank God he’s safe,” Sera murmured. She, too, had slipped back into her clothes and now wedged herself next to him at the window.

Elizabeth swept into the courtyard and stomped after Jem, her dirty yellow skirts flying. “James.
Wait
.”

William’s heart took a sickening dive. Sera made a choking sound.

Jem headed straight for the door to the hidden room and opened it in plain sight of Elizabeth. He reappeared seconds later. “They’re gone!”

The two words sailed clear and loud through the Rocks.

“No no no no no,” Sera mumbled. He could feel her shaking, but his attention and rising anger were focused solely on the scene below.

Elizabeth flew into a rage, lunging at Jem, striking him with an open palm. The lad flinched back, his arms going up in defense.

“…told me they’d be here!” Elizabeth shrieked.

Jem had betrayed them.
Betrayed
them. Why? After all that William had done for him, after all he’d protected the lad from? Despair and confusion hollowed him out. Fury raced in to fill up the vacant spaces.

Jem was saying something to Elizabeth, but his meek protests were lost to the volume of her wails and the way she backed him against a wall, pummeling his chest and arms.

“Where would she be?” Elizabeth screeched.

She
.

“I told you. She doesn’t want you,” Sera said.

“But why would he
do
that? I thought things had gotten better.”

Her face was grim. “He wants me away from you, and he was willing to give me up to Elizabeth to do that. He wouldn’t have to know who she is or what she wants. He probably doesn’t even care, only that you and I are separated.”

Frustration boiled up. “But he knows how important you are to me. Hurt you and he hurts me.”

There was great apology and heartbreak in her eyes. “But I hurt him first. I said something to him earlier…”

“What? What did you say?”

She licked her lips, rolled them together, then looked him straight in the eye. “I asked if he loved you. He got very angry with me. But he didn’t deny it.”

William sagged heavily against the wall.

“You had to have known,” she added quietly. “You had to have at least suspected it.”

He sighed deeply and again looked down into the courtyard. Elizabeth was in Jem’s face, shaking a finger like he was a child. Which he still was, to a certain extent. And William had been the older, stronger man who’d saved him, given him a chance, presented him with a sliver of life.

“Perhaps I did,” he murmured.

And perhaps he should have paid more attention to it, to the hurt in Jem’s eyes when Sera had joined them, and the way he’d continually tried to place himself between them. Jealousy was a terrible, powerful driving force, and William had been too lost in his own directive, too lost in Sera and his Spectre, to give Jem’s emotions the credence they deserved. Not because the lad deserved coddling, but because at least William should have been more aware and more intelligent about what could happen.

He tried to feel sorry for Jem right now, but found his pity weak and lacking. That madwoman had tried to kill Sera and had shot him…and now Jem had betrayed his only friend and ally to her. Bitterness created a sour taste in William’s mouth.

The Waldgraves’ door opened, throwing the tanner into light as he stormed out. He waved his arms, shooing Elizabeth and Jem away, and shouting something about the constables.

“I want to get closer,” William said. “I want to hear what they’re saying.”

Sera was already on her feet. “Be careful. I heard that part about the constables.”

He nodded, took her hand, and led her out of the half-finished house. They snuck quietly down the steps, taking new refuge behind a tenement just one level up from the courtyard. Now he could see for himself the crazed swim of Elizabeth’s eyes and the fearful disappointment in Jem’s. The latter made no sense—why on earth would Jem be disappointed in failing
her
?

“I’m sorry, Lizzie,” Jem kept saying. “I’m sorry. I tried. I really did.”

He was apologizing. To
her
. And he’d called her Lizzie.

“Where are they? Where would they go?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” Jem whimpered. “I truly don’t know. They stay here.”

“You’re no help to me, James. No help at all.”

William was still holding Sera’s hand and she gave him a tight squeeze.

Two constables veered around the corner, paused at the sound of the commotion, then hurried into the courtyard. Their voices were too low to be heard beneath Elizabeth’s bellowing.

When she saw the constables, panic flashed briefly across her face, only to be replaced by calculation and bitterness. Her bony finger thrust into Jem’s chest. “This one’s a bolter!”

“Lizzie…” Jem exhaled, his massive eyes widening in disbelief.

“A bolter, he is,” Elizabeth went on. “Good for nothing but running. Goes by the name of Jem.”

The constables exchanged a knowing look and William’s gut flipped. They edged closer.

“Where’s your friend?” one of them asked. “The one with the yellow hair and the quick fists.”

Sera pressed closer to William, her fear palpable.

Jem held up his hands. “I don’t know. I swear.”

One constable reached for Jem. Elizabeth gleefully stepped back, allowing him access. The constable wrenched Jem away from the wall, and even though the lad tried to fight, it was a pitiful effort and the constable soon had him subdued. The other uniform tied Jem’s wrists behind his back with rope, then pulled him to his feet.

“Who are you?” one constable asked Elizabeth.

She fanned a hand in front of her face, as though she’d been the one to have been attacked. “Wife of an emancipist, sir. Heading home.”

“This was my fault,” Sera murmured. “If I hadn’t—”

“Don’t.” William’s throat tightened. “This was his own doing.”

The constables pushed Jem out of the courtyard, his shoulders curved forward and down, his head nearly parallel to the ground, his feet shuffling over the dirt. Elizabeth taunted him until he disappeared.

“Where will they take him?” Sera asked.

“Hyde Park Barracks, likely.”

“Will they…?”

After a moment he nodded. “I would imagine so. Bolting means hanging.”

“You know, we have a saying in my time. ‘If you make your own bed, you have to lie in it.’”

He glanced at the sky, considering that. “Your time sounds wise.”

She clamped the fingers of one hand around his arm and pointed with the other. Elizabeth’s skirts flittered around the corner and out of sight.

“The rings,” she gasped.

William blinked. “The rings?”

She spoke quickly, almost too quickly for him to follow. “Those rings Tuthotsut wore, the ones with Seth’s image. I know them. Well, one of them. Malik Elsayed was wearing one when I met him, when he made me go into the cave. I didn’t put two and two together until now. And when Elizabeth attacked me she was screaming about some ring.”

William jumped to his feet. “Bloody hell. She’s Seth. The
ka
inside Tuthotsut—”

“Where are you going? The constables just left. There could be more nearby.”

“I’m going after Elizabeth. Now we both want information.”

She grabbed his hands, held him steady. “You’ve got to be careful.”

“I will. I promise.” The depth in her dark eyes made him want to remain by her side, but anger and desperation drove him elsewhere. “Meet me at Fort Philip. When I’ve got her, I’ll bring her there.”

She threw herself at him, wrapping one arm around his neck and kissing him, hard and brief. “Don’t let her get away.”

He loved the iron-strong glint in her eye, the confident set to her jaw, the way her narrow shoulders pressed back with certainty and confidence in him. It enhanced her unconventional beauty. It differentiated her from every other woman on Earth or in the heavens, in the past, present, or future. He loved how she trusted him.

He loved
her
.

“I won’t.” He darted into the Rocks, on the hunt.

#

Sera watched William bound down the staircase on bare feet and slink after Elizabeth, who had sidled out of sight.

Worry rose up like a ball in her throat. She kept seeing those constables take Jem away. She kept hearing them call him a “bolter,” and then asking specifically for William because he was one, too.

And now William had run off in their very direction.

He would find Elizabeth and get her to Fort Philip without anyone knowing. Sera had to believe this, or else the sense of loss swiftly eating at her mind would take over.

Fort Philip stood on the bluff behind the Rocks. Once she went there, she couldn’t ever come back to Waldgrave’s room, because who knows what Elizabeth had told other people? Or if the constables would return? Or if Waldgrave himself would sell out his tenants?

Sera ran down the steps into the courtyard. It was clear of shadows and quiet of voices, so she slipped into the hidden room. It had never been theirs, truly, but there in the corner was the set of blankets she and William had covered themselves with, staring at each other over the ragged hems deep into the night. And there was the paper and ink and quill Jem had used to teach William letters.

She quickly grabbed what little food was left behind and a water skin, and then turned to leave for the last time. The table caught her eye again and she gave it a long look. It was difficult to think about Jem now. He’d been so skeptical of and harsh with her at first, and then when she’d figured out his secret he’d managed to make her pity him, and then he’d gone and betrayed the one person he supposedly loved, all to get back at her. He was a sad creature, made sadder by this awful night.

A small part of her felt sorry for him.

She knew that even in his anger, William, deep down, was also saddened by Jem’s actions. She suspected that William would even let part of himself think that he’d failed the boy somehow. But, as she’d told him, Jem had made his own bed.

She clutched the food and belongings to her chest and shut the door behind her for the last time. It felt so final, so scary. She climbed the stairs again, stopping at the unfinished house at the top to retrieve William’s boots and slip on her own, and then headed straight into the unsettled darkness that surrounded Fort Philip.

Walking alone through New South Wales, heading away from the dirty, ugly Sydney civilization, she had never felt so alone or out of her element. She had never felt the time shift between her past and her present more profoundly.

Up ahead rose the incomplete Fort Philip. One of the papers Jem had read to William told of how Macquarie had halted the fort’s construction since he believed the colony’s earlier unrest to be over, and that it wasn’t needed. The three completed walls faced the Rocks and the rest of Sydney. The guns had been removed, but she could tell where they had once sat.

With a shudder, she realized the half-formed walls weren’t ruins. There were no phones out here to use if she was attacked. No 911. No true recourse or punishment for rape. Out here, alone in the black, the centuries between her birth and now were terrifyingly apparent.