Through time II ; Flames of time

Searching

*Lily*

“Mary.“ Leo's voice cuts through my thoughts. “That will be all. You may return to the kitchen.“

I curtsy again. It is no better the second time. I turn and walk toward the door, and my boots make that heavy sound on the floorboards, and I am almost there when Eleanor speaks again.

“Oh, Mary?“

I stop.

“The linens,“ she says. “You have been holding them rather tightly. I hope they are not too heavy.“

I look down. My hands are clenched around the folded cloth so hard that my knuckles are pale. I loosen my grip, finger by finger, and the fabric slowly uncrumples.

“No, my lady,“ I say. “Not heavy at all.“

I make it to the corridor before my hands start to shake. I lean against the wall and press the linens to my face, and the starch smell is so clean and ordinary that I almost laugh. Or cry. I am not sure which. I stand there for a count of ten, and then I push myself upright and walk back toward the kitchen, because there is nothing else to do.

The kitchen is empty when I arrive. Cook and the red-haired girl have gone elsewhere, and the pots are scrubbed and the potatoes are peeled and the fire in the stove has burned down to embers. I set the linens on the table and I sit down on a stool and I look at my hands. They are still now. They look like someone else“s hands, pale against the dark wool of the dress.

The door opens. I do not look up.

“Lily.“

It is the first time he has said my real name since we arrived. I raise my head and Leo is standing in the doorway, and his expression is no longer composed. There is something raw around his eyes, a tightness at the corners of his mouth that was not there in the drawing room.

“I am sorry,“ he says. “I should not have brought you there. I did not know she would be… my mom invited her.“

“It is fine.“ My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “She seems very nice.“

“She is.“ He says it without hesitation, and the honesty of it is worse than any evasion would have been. “She is kind and good and she deserves better than a man who… this is not her fault.“ He stops. His hand moves toward the doorframe and then drops. “We have work to do. The archives. Augustus“s personal effects. If you are still willing… I understand if you prefer to….“

I stand up. My legs feel hollow, but they hold me. “I said I would help you. I meant it.“

He nods once, and something in his face shifts. Relief, maybe. Or guilt. With Leo it is often hard to tell the difference.

“The study is on the second floor,“ he says. “My father’s study. I have not been through all of his papers yet. There may be something there that explains the earlier temporal shifts, the ones that began before my own interference. If Augustus was involved, as we suspect, he would have kept records.“

“And the killer,“ I say. “The apprentice. He would have learned from the same records.“

“Yes.“ Leo“s gaze meets mine. “Which means we need to find them first.“

The study is a long room with a high ceiling and windows that look out over the bare garden. The walls are lined with bookshelves, and a large desk sits at the centre, its surface cluttered with papers and ledgers and a decanter of whisky that has not been touched. The air smells of old paper and dust and the faint, lingering trace of pipe smoke.

Leo closes the door behind us. “My father died six months ago. I have not had the heart to clear his things.“

I walk to the desk and look at the papers. Letters, mostly. Bills of sale. Correspondence with solicitors and estate managers. Nothing that suggests temporal manipulation or time-travelling stone arches or a methodical killer reshaping history. But then, I suppose that is the point. The real secrets would not be left on the desk.

“Where would he have kept private papers?“ I ask.

Leo moves to a cabinet in the corner and opens it. Inside are more ledgers, bound in leather and labelled with years. He pulls one out and sets it on the desk, and I see the date stamped on the spine: 1879.

“These are the household accounts,“ he says. “But my father was meticulous. He recorded everything. If he was corresponding with anyone about temporal matters, there will be a record of it somewhere.“

I open the ledger. The pages are filled with neat, precise handwriting: expenditures for coal and candles, wages for the servants, payments to a tailor in London. It is the record of an ordinary life, carefully documented. I turn the pages slowly, scanning for anything that does not fit.

Halfway through, I find it.

“Leo.“ I point to an entry dated March 1879. “This payment. It is made out to someone named Perrymore. Fifty pounds for ‘consultation services’. That is a lot of money for a consultation.“

He leans over my shoulder to look. I am aware of how close he is, the warmth of his arm near mine, and I force myself to focus on the page.

“Perrymore,“ he says slowly. “I do not recognise the name. But my father had many associates I never met.“

“Could he have been involved in the temporal research?“

“It is possible. Augustus was not the only one working on the problem. There were others, scholars and scientists, men who understood what the arches could do.“ He straightens and moves to the bookshelf, running his fingers along the spines. “If Perrymore was one of them, there may be more correspondence here.“

We work in silence for the next hour. I go through the ledgers while Leo searches the shelves, pulling down volumes and flipping through pages. The light through the window shifts from grey to a paler silver as the morning wears on. Outside, a bird sings three notes and stops.

I find two more payments to Perrymore. One in 1878, one in 1880. Each is for a significant sum, and each is listed under the same vague heading: consultation services. There is no address, no further explanation.

“He was paying this man regularly,“ I say. “For years. Whatever Perrymore was consulting on, it was important.“

Leo sets a book down on the desk. It is smaller than the others, bound in dark leather, and when he opens it I see that it is not a printed book at all. It is a journal, handwritten in the same neat script as the ledgers.

“My father“s personal notebook,“ he says. “I did not know he kept one.“

He turns the pages carefully. Most of the entries are mundane: notes on the weather, observations about the estate, reminders to write to this person or that. But near the end, the tone shifts. The handwriting becomes smaller, more cramped, as though the writer was trying to fit as much as possible onto each page.

“Here,“ Leo says. He reads aloud: “"Perrymore advises caution. The arches are unstable. Any interference with a fixed point risks cascading failure. Augustus believes the risk is manageable, but I am not convinced. If the boy continues his experiments, there is no telling what damage he may cause."“

“The boy,“ I say. “He means you.“

Leo“s jaw tightens. “He knew. My father knew what Augustus was doing, and he knew I was involved. He was trying to warn someone.“

“Or stop them.“ I reach for the notebook and he lets me take it. The paper is thin and fragile beneath my fingers. I turn to the next page. “There is more. "Perrymore has devised a method of tracking temporal disturbances. He calls it a chronometric resonance detector. If it works, we may be able to identify the source of the anomalies before they spread. I have authorised the funding. God help us if it falls into the wrong hands."“

I look up. Leo is staring at the notebook with an expression I cannot name.

“A detector,“ he says. “If Perrymore built it, and if it still exists, we could use it to find the killer. To track his movements through the timeline.“

“Do you know where this Perrymore is now?“

“No. But my father’s correspondence might tell us.“ He moves back to the cabinet and begins pulling out bundles of letters tied with ribbon. “If they exchanged letters, there will be an address. A location. Something.“

I set the notebook down on the desk. The light from the window catches the gold lettering on the spine of one of the ledgers, and for a moment I am somewhere else entirely: a library in London, a different century, a different life. I think of my flat, my textbooks, my cat. I think of the exam I am supposed to take in three weeks, an exam that may not matter anymore if the timeline continues to fracture.

And then I think of Evelyn, standing in the drawing room with her cream-coloured dress and her sapphire ring, speaking of flowers and seating arrangements as though the future were a simple thing, a thing you could plan for and count on.

“Leo,“ I say.

He looks up from the letters.

“When this is over. When we find the killer and fix the timeline. What happens to her?“

He does not pretend to misunderstand. He sets the letters down on the desk and stands very still, and I watch his hands. They are motionless at his sides. Too motionless.

“I do not know,“ he says. “I have not allowed myself to think that far ahead.“

“She loves you.“

“I know.“

“And you?“

The question hangs between us. He does not answer it. He picks up the letters again and begins sorting through them, and the moment passes, and I do not ask again because I am not sure I want to hear the answer.

I turn back to the ledgers. The dates blur in front of my eyes: 1878, 1879, 1880. Years that are not my years, in a century that is not my century, searching for a man who may be long dead in a timeline that may not survive.

Somewhere in the house, a clock strikes eleven. The sound reverberates through the floorboards, and I feel it in my feet, a small vibration that travels up through my bones. I keep working. There is nothing else to do.