Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (13 page)

“
Why do we have to do this
over and over again?” Mom said. “It’s the same every
time.”

“
Maybe it doesn’t have to
be,” Anna said.

“
What do you mean?” Mom
said.

“
I know that two years ago
MI-5 agents sold David to the Dunland Group, but most of the time
the people chasing him or you—the vast majority, in fact—were just
doing their jobs. Like Callum was doing his when he organized the
hunt for you and Papa. These aren’t bad people. There’s no good
guys and bad guys here. Just guys.”

Callum rubbed his chin. “It is kind of you
to suggest that MI-5 would do the right thing if it had the whole
picture.”

“
It did have the whole
picture,” Anna said. “Your office is proof of that, even if the new
Prime Minister has lost his nerve.”

Mom nodded. “Callum was in charge of all of
this, and even if it’s fallen apart now, it indicates that some of
these people want to do the right thing.”

“
It’s a nice thought, but
we can’t take the time to explain it to Director Tate,” Callum
said. “If he refused to listen to reason, the consequences would be
too severe.”

Anna let out a breath, trying to put aside
her disappointment. She’d had a hope there for a second that
reasonable people could find reasonable solutions, but maybe she
was too used to dealing with David and Papa.

“
Why would CMI still be
pursuing us if your government isn’t?” Mom said to
Callum.

“
Their priorities and
pressures are not the same,” he said.

“
You may be right about
individual choices,” Cassie said, “but everything else has become
about money. The Middle Ages has plenty of corruption, I know, but
in this century it has only gotten worse.”

“
We could go home,” Mom
said. “Stop this before it starts.”

Anna started to say, “We can’t—” but Cassie
looked at Callum and said, “The whole crash-the-car thing could
work just as well in my grandfather’s truck as in any other
vehicle.”

“
And if it doesn’t?” Callum
said.

“
We won’t know until we
try,” she said.

“
We need to think hard
about the how and the why before we throw ourselves over a cliff,”
Callum said. “We have to be sure.”

“
We can’t ever be sure,”
Cassie said. “You know that.”

“
But we can minimize the
risk,” Callum said.

“
Like Meg did at Chepstow
when she jumped with Goronwy and Llywelyn?” Cassie said.

“
Exactly,” Callum
said.

Cassie rubbed the back of her neck, and
Callum tapped on his lip with one finger. He knew more than Anna
did about the danger they were in, and if they needed to go back to
medieval Wales now, she would go. But she had David’s vision in her
head too. It wasn’t just his. It belonged to all of them. Anna
decided to say it:

“
I know you want to get
home, Mom, and you want me safe. I want to be safe. We’ve all had
enough danger for one day, and it would be great to make it home
almost in time to finish that meal and to put my boys in bed. But
we can’t. David’s agenda is too important.”

“
Agenda?” Callum
said.

Anna pulled out the list and handed it to
him. “We don’t want to waste this trip if we can possibly help
it.”

Callum unfolded the paper. While he read it,
Mom said, “If we don’t try to return right away, where should we go
and what should we do? I don’t think it’s safe to stay here.”

“
It isn’t.” Callum spoke
absently, still studying the list. “We have to assume the worst,
not the best.” He looked up. “We shouldn’t put Cassie’s family in
the crosshairs of either the government or its subsidiaries more
than they are right now by association with us.”

“
Are they in real danger?”
Anna said.

Cassie’s brow furrowed. “Not for their
lives.” She shot a quick glance at Callum. “Not that, but they
might find themselves answering uncomfortable questions—and with
the anti-terrorism statutes, those questions could get quite
uncomfortable indeed.”

“
So we go.” Anna didn’t
feel up to asking about anti-terrorism statutes.

“
I don’t disagree. But I
repeat: go where?” Mom said.

“
You need glasses, Mom,”
Anna said.

She rolled her eyes. “That’s the least of
our worries.”

Cassie looked at Mom. “How bad are your
eyes, Meg?”

“
It’s nothing—”

“
She can’t see anything
anymore unless it’s five feet in front of her,” Anna said. “Or
maybe three. She needs those progressive things, which we don’t
have the technology to make back at home.”

Callum looked up from the list. “Strangely,
I’m thinking that this time around you’d be safer in the UK than
here. If we can get you there, we can find ourselves a nice castle
with a moat to fall off of.”

Anna laughed.

“
Anna and I don’t have
passports,” Mom said, ever practical.

“
We can get them out on a
diplomatic visa, can’t we?” Cassie said to Callum.

He rubbed his chin.

“
You’ve had an idea, I can
see it,” Cassie said.

“
There’s no reason not to
bring the rest of you on the plane to Cardiff too. Until then,
we’ll stay out of contact with anyone from our government or
yours,” Callum said.

“
Not even Mark?” Cassie
said.

Callum held up one finger. “With the
exception of Jones.”

“
How are you going to work
that?” Anna said.

“
He and I have a backup
plan,” Callum said, “saved for just this type of
occasion.”

Cassie made a ‘hm’ sound and fluttered her
eyelashes for a second. She looked pleased. “As do we.”

Callum nodded. “We may get to that.”

Anna didn’t know what they were talking
about and guessed that she wasn’t meant to. And least not yet.

“
I’m impressed. You’re
going to pull us in under the radar,” Mom said. “The bombing is the
perfect excuse. Nobody is going to question you as long as you look
serious and make noise about national security.”

Callum canted his head. “Exactly.” And then
he added, “It helps that I am serious about national security.”

Then his attention was caught by something
behind Anna. She turned to see Art coming down the hall, followed
by one of Cassie’s aunts, who held a stack of clothing in her
arms.

“
We guessed your sizes as
best we could.” She held the pile out to Anna, who took
it.

“
Thank you.”

Cassie’s aunt turned away without another
word. Art made a small movement with his mouth that might have been
an apologetic smile. “She’s worried that you have brought down
trouble on the family.”

“
I don’t think we have,”
Callum said, “especially if we leave within the hour. Only Jones
knows we’re here, and he’s scrubbing any trace of our conversation
as we speak.”

“
Good.” Art gestured to the
bathroom. “Use whatever you need.”

“
Thank you,” Anna said
again.

But Mom stepped forward and dipped her head.
Anna had honestly never seen her do that, since nobody in the
Middle Ages held a rank higher than hers except possibly her son,
and he didn’t count.

“
We really appreciate your
help,” Mom said to Art. “I’m sorry for whatever inconvenience we’ve
caused you or your family.”

Art looked back at her, his face impassive.
And then he said. “You are family to Cassie.” As if that made all
the difference. To him, it seemed it did.

Mom and Anna crowded into the bathroom,
which was long and narrow, wallpapered in shades of brown and
yellow, a fashion that predated Anna’s birth. Art and his sister
weren’t wealthy by any means, which only made it more generous of
them that they were sharing what they had.

“
Do I have time for a
two-minute shower?” Anna said.

Mom nodded, and Anna turned on the water,
stripping down while she waited for it to warm up. The sight of
water pouring from the showerhead had tears pricking at the corners
of Anna’s eyes. It was silly of her to have missed showers enough
to cry over them. Though, after a moment’s contemplation, Anna
could see that she wasn’t crying about the shower as much as
feeling overwhelmed by their circumstances.

She didn’t make the mistake of washing her
hair, because that would ruin the balance of natural oils that had
taken years to achieve, but she scrubbed at her scalp with her
nails and soaped up the rest of her. The two minutes went by far
too quickly, and then she was out, and Mom was in.

Anna stood with the towel wrapped around her
body and stared at the long mirror above the sink. She hadn’t seen
herself properly in nine years. Most mirrors in the Middle Ages
were simply highly polished metal circles of bronze, tin, or
silver. Mirrors made of thin sheets of glass backed by metal had
been invented, but they were expensive. Anna had a small one at
Dinas Bran, but she’d grown used to not seeing what she really
looked like.

The woman who stared back at her was hardly
recognizable as the seventeen-year-old girl she’d last seen.
Leaning forward, Anna inspected her face. It was thinner than she
remembered, and when she smiled, tiny crow’s feet appeared at the
corners of her brown eyes. She hadn’t cut her hair in nine years
either, and even with the curls, it fell past her hips, dark on her
white skin.

“
It’s weird to see
yourself, isn’t it?” Mom stepped out of the shower. “I thought so
too when I came back the first time.”

“
I’m not even the same
person,” Anna said.

“
I would hope not,” Mom
said.

Anna turned to look at Mom, thinking about
the girl her mother had been—and she herself had been—the first
time they’d time traveled to the Middle Ages. “I’ll just ask this
once because it needs to be asked: are you sure you want to go
back?”

“
Do you?”

“
Yes.”

“
Showers, sugar,
antibiotics—they don’t draw you?” Mom said.

“
Of course they draw me.”
Anna snorted laughter. “But hot showers are hardly what living is
about.”

“
It may take some effort to
return,” Mom said. “And it will be dangerous.”

“
I know. And you didn’t
answer my question.”

Mom blinked. “I didn’t think I had to. But
I’ll say it out loud if you want: yes. My life is there, not here.
I spent every moment since your brother was born trying to get back
to Llywelyn. I’m not leaving him now.”

“
It would be
easier.”

“
Would it?” And then Mom
nodded. “It’s hard work caring for other people. Being a mom.
Sometimes you just want to go to bed and sleep for a
week.”

“
But you never can,” Anna
said.

Mom smiled. “Living isn’t for the faint of
heart, is it?”

Chapter Eight

November 2019

Meg

A
nna had taken a shower first, but Meg was ready before she
was. While Meg was waiting for her daughter to come out of the
bathroom, Callum pulled her aside. “Do you trust me?”

“
Of course,” Meg said. “Why
do you ask?”

“
There may come a moment
when I will need you to do what I say, when I say it, without
asking questions,” he said.

Meg raised her eyebrows. “You forget who
you’re talking to. Llywelyn has asked that of me more than once.”
She looked down at herself, arms spread. “The modern clothes are
just a cover for the medieval me.”

He coughed and laughed at the same time.
“Are you saying you’re a submissive medieval woman now?”

“
It hasn’t been my
experience that medieval women are all that submissive,” Meg said
dryly. “Uneducated and without rights, yes.” She paused. “What I
meant was that taking orders won’t offend me—you know more about
what’s going on than I do. I don’t have a problem with
that.”

He nodded.

Meg looked at him carefully. “Don’t think
for a second that Anna and I aren’t aware what you’re risking for
us.”

Callum didn’t try to deny it. “It’s my
job.”

“
Your job is not to smuggle
us out of the United States. You could lose everything if you
do.”

“
Not everything,” he said.
“I went down on one knee before your son and swore my allegiance to
him. If smuggling you out of the United States is the best way to
serve him and keep you safe, then that’s what I’m going to
do.”

He was sincere and serious, and Meg fumbled
for a reply. David was her son, and she adored him, but because he
was her son, the fact that he was the King of England too usually
passed her by. “I’ve watched him grow into the leader he’s become,
but it’s so strange to me how he manages to turn everyone around
him into loyal followers.”

Callum’s brow furrowed. “Is that what you
think I am? Some sycophant?”

“
No-no!” Meg put out a
hand. “I didn’t mean to insult you at all. We all follow
him.”

But Callum was still shaking his head. “You
really don’t understand, do you?”

Meg eyed him. “Understand what?”

“
Who David is.” When Meg
didn’t answer, he added, “His rule isn’t about accruing
followers.”