Page 103 of No Place in Time

“Or maybe,” added Cecily, “it slipped accidentally when we were dragging it.”

“It could be anything,” Anton said. “But the result is that the machine is not here.”

“Is there a way to get it back?” asked Finn.

Anton sighed. “Not unless someone in 1301 activates it. If you’ve changed that future by coming back, then the machine may be sitting on your family’s estate, where you left from. Or Julian and Benedict, if they’re alive, could have it. Everything depends on whether your return to this time has actually changed the future.”

Finn met his eyes. “Has it?”

Anton spread his hands. “I don’t know. I can’t know. The change doesn’t become certain until the thing you’re trying to change actually happens, or doesn’t happen.”

“Until my father dies,” Finn said. “And I inherit instead of Geoffrey.”

“Yes.” Anton said it plainly, the way he said most things. “Until then, you can’t be certain that the future you came from is the one that gets prevented. There may be…” He paused again, tilting his head, the way he did when he was trying to simplify something that resisted simplification. “Think of it as a river. You’ve thrown a stone in. But you won’t know if you’ve changed the course until the water reaches the bend.”

“So all we can do is wait,” Finn said. “We came back to 1239, we live our lives here, and we wait for my father to die.” He knew how cold it sounded.

“Yes, you wait,” Anton agreed. “How long?”

Finn pictured his father, not his face, but the back of his head, always turned away, bent over some ledger. He could hear his voice, not speaking to him, but to a servant, crisp with command. His lack of warmth as Finn grew up in the care of servants and tutors. His mother.

“The monastery records say he died—dies—in the year 1241. Two years from now.”

“Then you have time.” Anton looked at Cecily. “Your situation right now is the more immediate one. If your family intends to marry you to Alard—”

“I should have trusted them,” Cecily cut in, her voice low. “I was so afraid, I didn’t give them time to find another way.” She glanced at Finn. “I just ran.”

“Then it shouldn’t be difficult to get them to agree to a delay,” Anton said. “I’ll tell your parents you were upset about the marriage and came here to stay. That you needed time to think. I’m sure Beja will go along with the story to keep you out of trouble.”

Cecily placed a hand on Anton’s. “Thank you, Grandfather.”

Then Anton turned to Finn. “And in the meantime, what story do you tell?”

“The simplest one,” Finn said. “That I’d gone hunting, got turned around, maybe I met some friends and stayed with them for a day or two. I’ve done it before. My father will be irritated, but not suspicious.”

Anton considered this, then nodded once. “Simple is best. Don’t embellish.”

Anton’s gaze moved between them, then fell to their hands, still linked on the table. He said nothing, but the barest hint of a smile touched his lips before it vanished. It was enough.

“You did well,” Anton said after a moment. “Both of you.”

“We don’t know that yet,” Cecily said.

“No,” Anton agreed. “You don’t know if you changed the future. But you found your way back, and in a machine that is finicky at best. That’s the part that was never guaranteed.” He picked up his diagrams and tucked them under his arm. “The rest is just time. And time… time we have.”

“Grandfather, we lost your machine.” Cecily had a grip on his arm.

Finn cut in, “To be more accurate, we lost both machines. Don’t forget the one hidden in the woods, though we don’t know it survives if—when—we change that future.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Cecily.

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. Then, after a pause: “Come with me.”

He crossed to the far corner of the workshop, where a small chest sat beneath a length of oilcloth. Finn hadn’t noticed it before. At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a carpenter’s box, tucked behind a stack of timber offcuts. Anton lifted the oilcloth, turned a key he wore on a cord at his wrist, and opened the lid.

Inside were more more rolls of parchment, bound tight with cord. Beneath them, nestled in a fold of dark cloth, was a device roughly the size and shape of a large fist. It was metal—iron and brass, from the look of it—with a small cluster of dials on its face and a single lens at its center, no larger than a coin, that caught the candlelight and held it.

“What is that?” Cecily asked.