Prologue
Zurich, December 1909
The ball was in full swing. Hundreds of colourful dresses whirled past one another, shoes tripped across the dark parquet, and laughter — sometimes loud, sometimes soft — rang out from every corner of the great hall of the Red Castle.
In the middle of the swirl of dancing couples stood a woman in a white lace dress, trimmed with golden floral embroidery that ran from an old-rose fabric panel — designed primarily to emphasise the waist — all the way down to the floor. The gold flowers and heart-shaped ornaments of silver thread looked, with every turn, like stars dancing wildly across a night sky.
The young woman was popular with the gentlemen who gathered around her like vultures, eager to claim the next dance. Her dark brown hair had been pinned up in a bird’s nest of a chignon from which individual strands had come loose, beginning to curl at her neck.
Then the notes of the white piano — which had been playing for over an hour — came to a stop.
Just as the dark-haired woman was trying to make her escape, she was intercepted by a gentleman in a dark grey suit. He held out a glass of red wine to her, smiled shyly, and prompted another attentive observer of the scene to roll his eyes in irritation. The man then crossed the room toward the woman in the white dress.
“Sophia?”
At his words the dark-haired woman turned around. A relieved laugh stole onto her lips.
“Theo!” She gave the man who had just handed her the wine glass an apologetic smile. “This is my older brother Theodor. Theo — this is Doctor Jakub Janiček, a professor at the University of Brno.”
Theodor felt the doctor’s gaze on him and saw how the man studied him searchingly over the rims of his round spectacles.
“You are Theodor Slavic? A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” His hand extended in greeting — but Theo ignored it, which unsettled the older man. “I must say, your sister is a delightful creature. She dances like a queen and is so cultivated!”
“Oh, delightful!” Theodor didn’t bother concealing his sarcasm. “How fortunate that these days a woman needs nothing more than a queen’s charming manner and a passing interest in culture to wrap married men like yourself around her little finger. Your wife will surely be thrilled!” Theo watched the highly regarded Professor lose his composure, so he added a swift “Unfortunately we must be going now.”
“You’re leaving already? What a pity.” The doctor released a deep sigh.
“No — we’re leaving you, not the party.” With those words Theodor drew his sister away with him, while she gave the university professor a brief shrug of farewell. The moment they were out of the old man’s line of sight, the siblings burst out laughing.
“We should move on. No one here is going to be of any help to us. Besides, I can’t stand any more talk about chemistry and physics.” Theodor’s voice sounded more tired than his face showed. “I doubt Tia Willems would be present at a party like this one.”
They had arrived from Berlin only the previous day, where the two of them had spent a week hunting for information, dancing in the evenings, and setting off for the next townhouse the following morning.
Theodor had grown weary of this life. Always the same music, the same food, the same conversation about how beautiful this dress was or how improper those manners were.
Yes, he was thoroughly tired of it all — but his little sister seemed to bloom only more brightly with every piece of detective work they did.
As children, the siblings had always been mistaken for twins. The same brown, curly hair framing oval faces, the same hazel eyes with long lashes, the same dimples beside narrow lips that only showed when they smiled. But they were not twins — that became apparent at the latest when Theo at fifteen looked like a grown man and Sophia, aged ten, was mourning her favourite doll.
One thing, however, never changed: the love the two siblings had for each other.
Theodor had thrashed the first man who broke Sophia’s heart. She, in turn, destroyed the wedding dress of the woman who cheated on her brother and ran off with his friend — the night before their wedding. For each other the two would do anything. Even die.
He looked across at his little sister, who was already chatting to her next admirer, and wondered — not for the first time — whether this was exactly how their mission would end. Perhaps someone would die — preferably one of his sister’s countless admirers — though it had all begun so harmlessly.
A time traveller in the Anchor Family’s house was not unusual — but this man, Frederik Tyler, was. He had arrived without a mission, with no greater goal than one: to tell a story.
The story of a single woman who had philosophised about dreams and peace — and died for it. The Syndicate, which had tried to rescue this woman at the cost of its own anonymity and its members’ lives — and had failed regardless. The story of Tia Willems, yes, but also of Ana Chevalier, the French Anchor Woman who had allowed herself to be deceived and died as a double agent. It was a story of courage and of hatred — but also of betrayal and trust.
A year and a half had passed since that fateful day, and everything seemed to have changed.
Belgium and France had been uprooted. Barely two weeks after the burial of Ana’s mortal remains, the Syndicate seized both countries — only to lose France quickly to the Searchers. Constantin Charron, the Impresario who had ordered Tia Willems’s execution, was killing anyone he no longer trusted. Time traveller or Anchor Family — it made no difference. The moment you made a mistake, your body was thrown to the sharks.
And yet Theo’s sister had fallen in love with the idea born from this brutal act of judgement: neutrality. A beautiful notion — especially for the Slavic siblings, who had witnessed since earliest childhood how their family was pushed around by Impresarios. So they had set off on their hopeless search for Tia Willems, the woman who had sent this idea out into the world. Because certain Searchers who liked to drop in on the Anchor Family were convinced that Tia was alive. No one had ever been able to find her body — despite searching everywhere, combing every centimetre of the ocean floor.
Today, many months later, only a handful remained who were still pursuing this search.
From time to time theories circulated claiming that Tia had travelled through time and was now living somewhere in hiding — among ordinary people. A heroine in peasant’s clothing. It was these theories that the siblings had been following ever since they first heard them.
Europe in 1909 was their territory. Since the beginning of the year they had searched every city, met with time travellers and Servants, and questioned the civilian population at parties about anyone who simply didn’t seem to fit the picture. People who had appeared without a plausible history, or who had gone from peasant to king within days. People like Searchers — appearing and vanishing in the blink of an eye.
And yet Theodor was slowly beginning to doubt all of it. When the siblings had started their search, barely three months had passed since Tia’s execution.
Three months in which the woman, if she was still alive, could have gone anywhere — or even died. After all, some decades were more dangerous than others. By now it had been years.
Even if Tia was dead, her vision had grown more powerful with each passing day.
Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, and the Kingdom of Austria-Hungary — the birthplace of the Slavic siblings — had all declared themselves neutral in the year and a half that had passed.
All these Anchor Families had thereby freed themselves from the bondage of the Impresarios, only to be regarded by them as fair game. Any time traveller could kill the siblings without being punished — and yet they lived safely in their Prague townhouse. Nobody appeared to want to harm them. Because of Tia.
Sophia still firmly believed Tia was alive, but Theodor was wavering more with each day. As an Anchor Man he was supposed to be in Prague at all times, managing Searchers and ensuring missions were fulfilled — but since he was wandering through Europe like a migratory bird, the Prague townhouse stood empty.
Catastrophic — especially now that one of the four Impresarios, the supreme dictators of the time travellers who assigned everyone their tasks, was dead.
Chaos had broken out within the Searcher community, which had always thought a little too highly of itself. Everyone was desperately looking for the next Impresario, while Constantin Charron killed his way through his own ranks and the Syndicate waited like a patient cat for someone to make a mistake.
Sometimes Theodor found a grim satisfaction in watching these arrogant elitists get crushed by the Syndicate like defenceless ants. Countries like England, Ireland, and Iceland were fiercely contested. Across every century, members of the Syndicate and Searchers were killing each other without pause.
Carton and Alfarsi — the revolution’s leaders — always struck exactly where no Impresario would ever have thought to build a defence. Montenegro and Greece were the first casualties of this war that now seemed to have truly erupted — a war fought largely in the past.
1909 was quiet, yet the two of them were informed of every shift. When the Syndicate seized a country in 1845, they moved swiftly into the future to expand their victory. What use was a conquered country if your enemy could exploit it in the near future for their own purposes?
“I don’t know where to go from here,” Sophia’s words made Theodor prick up his ears. Her brown eyes sought his, but he contented himself with looking around the hall in bewilderment, watching couples whirl to the music. Her doubts would take away his last remaining courage, and that was a risk he could not and would not take.
“She doesn’t seem to be here — and yet I would so dearly have found her.” She sighed with exhaustion. “It’s tragic, isn’t it — that a woman could reach so many people, only to become unreachable herself.”
“Isn’t that how it usually is with legends? They only grow truly great once they’ve finally vanished?”
At his words Sophia let out a deep sigh. “It isn’t right that she’s dead — and that’s why I refuse to believe it.”
He understood his sister, even though he knew it wasn’t about what they wanted. They had given everything to help — but it was time to go home, and more importantly, to stay there.
Theodor took the wine glass from his little sister’s hand and emptied it in one go. Frustration was spreading through him. Losing was never easy — but in this particular search, if only for Frederik’s sake, he would have wished for success.
The Argentinian Searcher was a regular guest in the Slavic household. Theo knew perfectly well that his little sister was hopelessly in love with the South American charm of the time traveller, but he couldn’t bring himself to be happy about it. Two siblings in love with the same man — that was not something you came across every day, and when you did, it never ended well. Especially since neither of them had ever truly been able to understand Frederik. It was like trying to make sense of a wall — a pointless endeavour. And yet they loved him, each in their own way.
Frederik — whom both siblings had initially considered an intruder in their lives and a risk to their own safety — appeared to have no problem with the Anchor Family’s wish to remain neutral. Quite the contrary. Freddie never said anything political, never cursed the Impresarios or the Syndicate. Only one thing had he ever told Theo: he had known Tia, missed her enormously, and didn’t believe she could have survived the fall from Charron’s ship — which had been nearly sixty metres above the water.
Even though Frederik Tyler kept himself largely out of all military action, the siblings knew full well that in an emergency he would side with the Syndicate.
Theo often had the feeling that Sophia and he were only safe because Frederik was watching over them. The Anchor Man couldn’t prove this claim, however.
“We should go home.” His sister’s tired voice pulled him from his thoughts. A heartfelt yawn on her part underscored the desire for her own bed.
He smiled and put his arm around the shoulders of Sophia, who was seven centimetres shorter. “Your wish is my command, my oh-so-cultivated queen.”
And so they went to the cloakroom of the castle, collected their winter coats, and stepped out into the icy cold of the Swiss winter. Not knowing that so many answers would soon find their way directly to their doorstep.
