Page 122 of Never a Hero

Joan found herself staring at him.

‘What is it?’ Aaron said.

Nothing’s going to happen until 1923. It hadn’t worked like that last time, though. ‘When I changed Nick’s life—’ Joan felt Nick’s eyes on her and faltered for a second. ‘When I changed him, it wasn’t just the future that changed. The past changed too. All at once.’ Joan had unravelled Nick’s whole life. She’d erased all his past actions and brought her family back. The new timeline had swallowed up the old in an instant, head to tail.

‘What are you saying?’ Aaron said, frowning.

‘She’s saying that we don’t have until 1923 to stop this,’ Tom said. ‘This timeline could be replaced at any moment, without warning. None of us would even know, except maybe Jamie.’

Nick sat forward at that. ‘When Eleanor spoke to us, I had the impression she was already on the cusp of doing something.’

‘She said it was already in motion,’ Joan remembered. She pictured Eleanor in 1923, making a change that rippled out along the timeline, supplanting all this in an instant with a crueller and more terrible world.

‘Guess we don’t sleep, then,’ Nick said.

As the bus rattled through Limehouse, they wrote down a list of essentials. Tom ran a finger down the page. ‘We’ll need a pretty shady market for some of this.’ He read out a few items. ‘Clothes, weapons, surveillance equipment …’ He scratched his neck. ‘And time,’ he added. ‘If we’re all going to 1923, we’ll need human time.’

Joan felt sick suddenly. She’d known that they’d have to travel thirty-two years—each—to get to 1923, but she’d pushed the thought so far down that she hadn’t let herself think about where they were going to get the time.

Nick felt it too. His breath hitched, just a slight jolt against her arm. Tom couldn’t have heard it, but his gaze flicked to Nick; Tom had been suspicious of him since the boathouse.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask,’ Nick said to Aaron. ‘You dragged me to this time with this golden tattoo. Is that the only way a human can time travel?’

Ruth frowned. ‘Strange thing is, I didn’t think humans could travel at all. Cuff or not.’

Joan took that in. Nick had travelled in the previous timeline, but she’d never seen a cuff on him. He’d never disclosed the method, other than saying that he’d travelled in a different way than Joan. He hadn’t stolen human time.

‘How does the cuff actually work?’ Joan asked Aaron.

‘There’s time embedded into the mark,’ Aaron said. ‘Much like a travel token.’

‘There’s human life tattooed onto my skin?’ Joan stared at her wrist in new horror. She’d been thinking of the mark as just a handcuff. She’d already hated it; now, she wanted to take a knife to it. She wanted to tear it off with her nails. ‘How much life?’ Whose lives?

Aaron’s gaze was almost too penetrating for a moment. ‘I can’t tell how much is left without the controller,’ he said. ‘But as I recall, neither of you had much left. We’ll need to obtain more.’

Joan turned her wrist over so she wouldn’t have to look at the thing. Without the controller, she was still mired by the tattoo. Even if they managed to somehow acquire another one, though … She really did feel sick. The last two times she’d travelled—to the future, and then here to 1891—she’d been dragged involuntarily. This time, though, it would be her choice to use human life.

She could feel Nick’s tension. Against her arm and thigh, his muscles felt like stone. What was he thinking?

They got off the bus at the Regent’s Canal Dock, a chaotic throng of barges, sailing ships, navy uniforms, and dock workers, all muscling in on each other for the limited space. Timber and coal and heavy stone moved back and forth from deck to dock as workers shouted instructions.

Tom headed straight for the colourful mess of Hathaway boats at the edge of the dock. Within ten minutes, he had a horse-drawn narrowboat named Cornflower.

The boat was bright blue and decorated with roses and castles, along with the more familiar double-headed hound of the Hathaways. The roses seemed to be a common motif on narrowboats of this time, but Joan thought uneasily of Eleanor’s sigil—the thorned rose stem.

Tom hitched a placid white mare with huge dinner-plate hooves to a tow line. ‘Easiest route is up the Regent’s Canal.’

‘I wondered whether the Hathaways kept a boat in every time period,’ Joan said curiously. She should have realised there was a pool of shared ones.

‘The Hunts sometimes help us push our own boats through time,’ Tom said. ‘But usually it’s easier just to borrow one—especially when you cross between horse-drawn and engine periods.’

Ruth had been looking at the boat; now, she did a double take. ‘Wait, what?’ she said. ‘The Hunts do what? Who does that?’

‘Just some of the Hunts in some of the times,’ Tom said, shrugging. ‘They charge a bucketload. Your family drives a hard bargain.’

‘Didn’t even know we could use our power on anything as big as this,’ Ruth muttered, almost to herself. She sounded intrigued.

Joan boarded the boat. The space was comfortable, but tiny compared with the luxurious width of Tom and Jamie’s barge. It was ingeniously furnished with hinged chairs and a table that could be flipped down after use. In one corner, a tiny pot-bellied stove radiated warmth.

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