Stars of Fortune (The Guardians Trilogy, #1)(81)

“That’s more than a little.” Doyle held out a hand, examined the compass when Sawyer gave it to him. “How is it linked to you?”

“Whoever holds it can pass it to another. Not like I just did to you. It’s a formal deal. It’s mine until I pass it to the next. Traditionally a son or daughter.”

“You really save on airfare,” Riley commented.

“Ha. Yeah, it’s handy there. There’s actually a little more.” He took it back from Doyle, turned it over, ran his finger around the circumference.

A second lid opened to reveal a clockface.

“Man! You are not going to tell me it’s like a time machine.”

Sawyer gave Riley a weak smile. “Sort of.”

She leaped up, did a dance. “Oh, my Jesus, the places I could go, see. Mayans, Aztecs, Celts. The land bridge, the freaking pyramids. Where— When have you been?”

“Not that far back. Look, you’ve got to take a lot of care when you use it to time or place shift. A lot of care. Say you get an urge to watch the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. First, you’re dressed all wrong, and somebody’s going to notice. More, what if you drop down in the middle of the road and a wagon runs over you? Or you get hit by a stray bullet? Even if you live through it, you’ve changed something. And that can change something else, so when you come back it’s not exactly the way you left it. Now you’ve got to go back and fix it.”

“Space-time continuum. Got that, but you went there, right? Got a look at the Earps and Doc Holliday.”

“Yeah, and let me say it was fast and ugly—the gunfight. Time shifting’s tricky, and you learn really fast—because you’re taught and trained, but you have to learn by mucking up—not to use it for entertainment.”

“How far?” Doyle asked. “How far back can you go?”

“I don’t know if there’s a limit. I’ve heard stories—I was weaned on them—of people who didn’t come back. The compass always comes back, but some of the ones who held it haven’t. Because maybe they went too far, or they ended up miscalculating time or place just enough to end up in the ocean or in the middle of a battlefield, an earthquake.”

“And forward?” Bran asked him. “Is that part of it?”

“Even trickier. You want to see how things are going a hundred years from now? What if eighty years from now things went really bad? You figure to hit in Times Square, but instead there’s nothing. Or you drop down in the middle of a war, a plague. Even something as basic as that forest meadow is now a five-lane superhighway and you’re pancaked. You can calculate pretty well going back, but forward? You can’t calculate what hasn’t happened.”

Sawyer closed the lid on the clockface. “I’ve gone back and sideways and around in circles trying to get a handle on what we’re after. Before I got here, before I met any of you. I’d get bits and pieces, variations on the legend or the mythology, but nothing solid. And when the compass pointed me here, and now, that’s where I came.”

Annika touched his hand lightly. “Are you from now?”

“Yeah. Born twenty-nine years ago. And listen, if I knew how to get back to the when and where all this started, maybe I’d risk it. But that’s more than I’ve been able to do. And if I could, I don’t know if there’s anything I could do anyway.”

“Can you take anyone with you?”

“Yeah. I took my brother back to Dodger Stadium to see Jackie Robinson play. It was his birthday—my brother’s—and my grandfather okayed it. But I’ve only tried it with one person. Theoretically, I could take more. We don’t talk about this outside the family,” he continued. “It’s like your deal, Riley, sort of. I went over this with my grandfather and I was going to bring it up last night. But you had to wolf out.”

“Huh.”

“Something like this gets out and you’ve got all kinds of crap to deal with. This * got wind of it, and he’s been on my ass for five years now. Son of a bitch tried to ambush me last year in Morocco where I was following a lead. Gave up trying to buy it, and tried to shoot me instead. Fucking Malmon.”

“Wait a minute. Wait.” Teeth bared, Riley leaned forward. “Andre Malmon?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“I know him. Likes to bill himself as a rescuer of artifacts, as an expert on mythology, a consultant, adventurer, whatever suits his needs. He’s a thief, a cheat, and I can’t prove it, but I know he killed an associate of mine. He’s onto you—to this?” she added, tapping the compass.

“Yeah, he is. I lost him after Morocco.”

“He won’t give up easy. I’ll make some calls, see if I can find out where he is. If he’s anywhere close, we need to defend against him as much as Nerezza.”

“Does he know about the stars?” Bran asked her.

“Malmon knows something about everything.” She picked up her drink, scowled into it. “Son of a bitch Malmon. If he gets wind you’re here, Sawyer, that I am, that we are—unless he’s hot on somebody else’s ass, he’ll be all over us. He’d slit your throat for that compass.”

“Yeah, I got that loud and clear in Morocco.”

“For the stars?” She drained the rest of her drink. “He’d gut every single one of us.”