“There isn’t time for that,” Ash broke in, eyes moving to the window on the other side of the room. The sky outside had grown light around the edges, a ghost haze hovering on the surface of the still, black water. “Just . . . dumb it down for me, will you? What, exactly, are you saying will happen if the Black Cirkus travels through time again?”

Zora thought for a few seconds and then she swept some cogs and gears into a pile on the center of the kitchen table. “Think of it like this. Every time you go back in time, it’s like you’re stacking one cog on top of another, right?” She demonstrated. “And the more you do it, the more unsteady the tower gets.”

She added a few more cogs. The tower started to wobble. “See that there? How the tower wobbles? That’s like the tremors we experience. But you never know which cog is going to cause the tower to fall. It depends on the shape of the cog, whether you gave the tower enough time to stabilize before you placed it on top—”

“Whether someone knocks into the table?” Ash asked.

“It’s not a perfect metaphor,” Zora said. “All I’m saying is that every single trip we take through time brings us closer to the earthquake that could destroy the world. The next time the Black Cirkus goes into the anil . . .”

She placed another cog on the tower, and the entire thing toppled.

Ash released a ragged sigh. “You think the Black Cirkus’s next trip back in time could cause a massive earthquake?”

“Not just a massive earthquake—the massive earthquake.” Zora squeezed the bridge of her nose. “And I don’t actually know. My father’s calculations for when the earthquake would hit the city were based on a far less frequent use of the Puget Sound anil. But he was also using metrics from the Dark Star, and the Black Crow is a smaller ship, so it’s possible that it hasn’t been doing quite as much damage.”

“The size of the ship matters?” Ash asked.

Zora nodded. “Think of a smaller ship like a smaller cog on the tower. The smaller the cog, the less likely it’ll cause the tower to fall over, right? But every cog, no matter the size, makes the tower less stable. It’s the same with the anil. It’s still dangerous, but there’s no way of knowing how dangerous. . . .”

“They leave at dawn,” Ash said.

Zora fumbled with the watch at her wrist. “That’s not for— Oh, shit.”

Ash was already pulling his jacket off the back of his chair. “If we go now, we might still be able to stop them.”

29

Dorothy

NOVEMBER 8, 2077, NEW SEATTLE

It was early, and the Fairmont garage was cool and dark, only the thinnest glimmer of silver light making its way through the dirty glass. Dorothy stood beside a window, fingers twisting in the folds of her coat.