Damn. Who would know how to help her? They couldn’t stay here in Carthage; they didn’t speak the language, they didn’t know how to find another physician, and it would be too easy for them to be tracked.

A crack of thunder cut through the clear morning sky; Nicholas jerked at the drumming beat that muffled the crackling pops of the fire, rivaling the sound of the Romans hammering out in the harbor. The other passage.

No time, he thought, no time—

He dove toward the ground, scooping up his possessions and stuffing them into Sophia’s bag, looping it over his shoulder. He turned back to see her struggling to compose her face and failing.

“Pardon me,” he said, bending down to scoop her up off the ground. One of her hands came up, smacking him in the face in protest. “I wasn’t aware you walking out of here on your own was still an option, but if you think you can fly out on pride alone, by all means…”

She went very still.

“I thought not.”

He rose onto unsteady feet, his vision blacking out as the blood left his head. He wasted precious seconds waiting for his exhausted body to steady before carrying her to the door. Her skin had gone the sickly shade of a fish left too long out of water, and her trembling hands…

Medicine. Surely they wouldn’t have made the poison without an antidote? Surely there was something here if Fitzhugh Jacaranda truly was a healer? Surely?

Nicholas carried her over to the worktable, setting her down only long enough to pick up the man’s bag and cinch the opening closed. He had them to the door in two quick strides when he doubled back to the chest, where he’d seen the small wooden box. With a huff, he plucked the harmonica out of its bindings and slid it into Sophia’s bag. They wouldn’t need it now, not with the passage bellowing loud enough for all of creation to hear, but he couldn’t trust the future to bring the next one to him so easily.

He kicked the door open, shifting Sophia from his arms to over his shoulder. She hit him weakly in protest.

“Be easier to run—” The words died in his throat. From his vantage point on the second story of the building, he could see over the courtyard’s wall into the street below.

Four figures were shouldering quickly through the milling crowds—four men, in a sea of women and children. The one leading the way at the front wore a faded blue tunic, his head ringed with blond, strawlike hair, clearly older than the rest. He looked to be in danger of being trampled by the men charging up behind him. Their “tunics” were poor imitations of togas, with sheets likely stripped off a nearby bed in a hurry—worse, their hair was still parted and slicked down in the style of the nineteenth or twentieth century. One even had a dark, neatly trimmed mustache like a slug above his upper lip.

It was a surprising lack of planning by a group of Ironwoods, who usually prided themselves on prudence and an overabundance of caution to avoid tampering with the Grand Master’s timeline.

Not for the first time, Nicholas wondered what price Ironwood had put on his life. Most travelers wouldn’t risk the old man’s wrath, or throw away decades of conditioning and training, for anything less than a tidy sum. He felt a foolish swell of pride at that.

“It’s just up here,” he heard the old man in front—Fitzhugh?—say.

“Your tip better be good, old man—” groused the traveler behind him. Miles Ironwood, of course. The last time he’d seen the man, Miles had been ordered by Ironwood to pummel him with his fists for Julian’s death. What a charming reunion this would be.

No time.

“Who…?” Sophia asked.

“Miles Ironwood,” he said.

“Always…wanted to…stab him.”

“Well, here’s your opportunity,” he said. “Don’t die before you give me the pleasure of watching you do it.”

The house had the same problem the city did: if the Ironwoods were coming through the courtyard, then he and Sophia had run out of exits. Unless…

Nicholas made for the stairs that led up to the next level, and the next one after that. Sophia went alarmingly slack against his shoulder. “Sophia? Sophia!”

“Hey!” The shout rose from the street, cutting through the din of voices. “Carter!”

His legs burned as he raced up the uneven stairs, Sophia bouncing against his shoulder, his whole body quaking with the effort of keeping them upright. Third story, fourth, fifth—he nearly lost his footing as they reached the roof, momentarily distracted by the heavy pounding of steps behind him. He swung them both around, scanning the roofs around him for the nearest one to jump to.

His breathing was so labored, tearing in and out of him, that he didn’t hear the whistle of the arrow at all—only felt the pain of it slamming into his shoulder. Nicholas staggered forward, knocked off-balance by the force of the blow.

“Carter, stop!” one of the men shouted. “You’ll only make it worse for yourself!”

Make it worse how? As far as he was concerned, these men would only be taking him back to Ironwood one way: dead. And he still had too much to accomplish before he’d ever let that happen.

He still had to find Etta.

Nicholas dug deep into the well of his strength, moving to the far end of the roof, trying to judge whether or not the distance would be too great to throw Sophia, when he heard a sharp whistle.

It took him a moment to locate the source: a small, dark-robed figure, crouched on the roof just beyond the one he’d been studying, waving him forward. His heart surged with the hope that it was Rose, that he might finally achieve the dream of strangling her for this mess she’d tossed them all into—but he wasn’t, to his surprise, disappointed to realize that the mystery figure was Li Min. If the choice was between Ironwood’s men and a thief who was at least clever enough to find them a way out of Carthage…well, the choice was rather simple.