The room coiled around him, nearly unrecognizable from the vantage point his height gave him; he knelt, trying to reclaim some semblance of memory, to understand why this room had once felt like a kingdom. There had been so many times he’d sat beside the room’s low window and watched the wide, pale sky above the townhomes, tantalizingly endless beyond the glass. Nicholas wondered if that was the reason Ironwood had given them this room and not the cellar—to show them that everything in their lives would remain just as far out of reach.

The lacework of spiderwebs spread from corner to corner, catching the fragile moonlight. Time began to slip around him, peeling back the years, mending the cracks in the floor and the scuffing on the wall, filling the room with soft candlelight and whispers of life. The bed linen still smelled as he remembered it, of starch and leather and polish. Even in this small sanctuary, they hadn’t been able to fully escape their work. They lived it.

He sat on the bed and, using his left hand, finally went about writing a short missive to Hall. But after the salutation he stopped, uncertain of what to say, beyond, I am well. I will find you when I am able. Both were lies, and he couldn’t abide the thought. But if Ironwood himself didn’t break the seal to read it, one of his men would, and report on its contents. So, instead, he gave Hall all that was left to him now: gratitude.

For all that you have done for me, I thank you. I have been warned of the regret of being too sentimental in the face of an uncertain outcome, but I would be remiss not to take this opportunity to say this to you, if nothing else. I have lived a life of vast fortune owing to the generosity of your heart. I will never cease fighting to be the sort of man who will honor those values which you have so graciously bestowed by example. If there is a way back, I will find the bearing and come posthaste.—N.

Nicholas folded the paper and stowed it inside of his coat.

How strange it was, to be near the end of one’s journey, and to find oneself back at the place one began and see it as if for the first time. To remember that small rebellion that had lived inside him at the thought of the untraveled world that lay beyond these walls.

The name Carter had come from his mother’s first master, and he had kept it, even as he’d chosen a new given name for himself at Mrs. Hall’s suggestion. It had been the sweet lady’s idea, a way to make him feel as though he had some mastery over his life. But he had kept the surname as a way to honor all that his mother had endured, and all that she had risked in hiding him. If Ironwood had sold him away down to Georgia with her and the others, he knew he likely would not have survived it.

This was the bed he’d slept on with his mother. Here she had cradled him in her arms, her scarred hands smoothing his hair, soothing his spirit. Here she had sung that song from her faraway home, thousands of miles from the cramped, dreary room. It had filled his ears like a fervent prayer, the only weapon she’d had to drive the darkness away from him. It had breathed life into his unconquerable soul.

He had lived so many lives, and yet the sum of his existence felt like so much more than any one part of his history. Even now—even now, in the face of the poison he felt inching through his veins, that same rebellion burned inside of him. That same demand for the distant horizons summoned him to fight.

Nicholas, he named himself on the deck of that ship, in the light of a sea of stars.

Bastard, the Ironwoods declared.

Partner, Etta swore.

Child of time, the stranger beckoned.

Heir, the old man vowed.

But here, in this hidden place, he had only ever been Samuel, the son of Africa, the legacy of Ruth.

Your presence is requested at the auction of a rare artifact of our history: one astrolabe, origin unknown. October 22, 1891, at the cusp of midnight. Kurama-dera Temple, north of Kyoto. The entry fee remains a hundred pounds of gold or jewels per bidding party.

Etta read the note again, ignoring the soft patter of freezing rain on her hair and face. They’d gone upstate, to a cabin that sat like an afterthought in the woods, and waited a day, watching its doors for any Ironwoods. Hungry and frustrated, she’d broken away from Julian and gone to where he said the key would be: buried beneath the root of a nearby tree.

By the time she’d gotten the door open, he’d been brave enough to join her in sorting through the endless piles of letters and notices that had been slipped inside of its mail slot. Some were torn, clearly battered by their delivery; others showed the era in which they were written by the quality of the paper and the ink. Most were sealed with the same wax seal, bearing the sigil of the Ironwoods, except for one: blank wax, marked with a B that rested inside the curve of a crescent moon. Julian had picked it up between two fingers and shaken it, as if afraid it might suddenly reveal a set of teeth.

He had gone through his travel journal to try to locate the nearest passage, but she’d found a small reference book of passages, left on the empty cabin’s table for anyone who dropped in and needed help in navigating away. A passage in Brazil would take them directly to Mount Kurama, but one rather weighty problem remained.

A hundred pounds of gold or jewels—not just difficult to locate, but difficult to carry to the auction site.

“I don’t want to alarm you,” Julian began. He pulled back from the hulking outcropping they’d hidden behind, observing the black beach below. “But there seems to be a gaggle of Vikings rowing up to shore.”

That startled her out of her thoughts. Etta pulled him back by his simple tunic and took his place, scanning the fog spreading its pale hands across the sea. A carved wooden face appeared ahead of the rest of the ship, slicing silently through the heavy cover of gloom.