He needed a bird’s-eye view.
There was no convenient aerial rope like the one he’d used in the circus, but Graham had long since learned how to use his surroundings to launch him higher. He ducked back in the direction he had come, found the first empty alley, and began to run down it as quickly as he could.
He launched himself into the air and touched his right foot to a wooden crate, then his left atop a dusty barrel. The toe of his right boot grabbed purchase along a slender doorframe, his left a particularly jutting brick. With one final leap, his hands gripped the edge of a cornice, and he swung himself atop the roof. All without ripping a stitch in his well-tailored coat.
Hunching low to the roof, he traced his steps back, this time with the advantage of two stories’ height. He could see over the river of pedestrians, over the slow moving sludge of London traffic, and into the grand residence opposite.
The gardens were empty of everything but grass and meticulously tended flowers. The doors and windows were shut, but the curtains had been parted to let in sunlight. No terrified faces peered from the glass. No hulking villains dragged their captive through the roses.
Graham crouched on his heels in frustration. How was he supposed to save the missing woman if he couldn’tfindher?
There was no sign of—
Wait.
There, on the corner diagonally opposite from his perch, across the street from the terraced home. A beautiful woman stood in shadow, scribbling furiously in a small book.
It didn’t just look like a surveillance operation. He recognized the pretty young lady. She had been amongst the passersby thelasttime he’d gone looking for his soon-to-be client.
This could not possibly be a coincidence.
From this angle, the brim of her bonnet blocked his view of her face, but he remembered it perfectly from the day before. The bonnet’s ribbon was an unusually bright purple-pink, but that wasn’t what had caught his attention. He’d walked past her—then did so again, slower— because of her beauty.
Soft, flawless skin in a rich, smooth brown. Wide-set eyes as dark as the black hair disappearing beneath her bonnet in elegant braids. Curling black lashes. A mouth that pouted adorably, lost in concentration on whatever note she was jotting. Tall, for a woman. Well-formed. Sturdy and capable, as though she spent her days jousting, or some other equally improbable venture.
She had intrigued him so thoroughly the day before, he’d forgotten his mission for a full five minutes before he recalled himself. He’d spent the afternoon scouring the grounds of the next residences listed in the guidebook, in hopes of finding his quarry.
She was the one, Graham was sure of it. He had found her at last!
He had no idea what difficulty she was in, but he was here to solve it. He turned and raced back across the roofs to the alley where he had ascended.
“Fear not, fair maiden,” he called as he leapt through the air to the empty alley. “Your devoted knight has come!”
2
Kunigunde de Heusch would not permit anything to stand in her way.
Not the oppressive gray skies threatening rain overhead. Not the harsh language the Londoners spoke in too many accents, either speaking too fast to comprehend or mumbling too low to pick out any words at all. Not this huge, overwhelming city with houses scrunched against each other and crowds of people so dense one could be carried along for a hundred meters without one’s boots scraping the ground. She definitely would not allow herself to be cowed by the two Royal Guardsmen hunting her down to cart her back home.
Kuni rubbed her arms. She had never felt more out of place than in the moment she’d stepped off the boat and onto the pier. Everything was so different! The sights, the smells, the weather, the architecture. Things were new when she expected old, old when she expected new, big when she expected small, small when she expected big, bright when she expected sedate, and dull when she was hoping for a splash of color.
Andshewas different from everyone else. Years of practicing grammatically perfect upper-class English could not fully erase her natural accent. When she opened her mouth, she received one of two reactions. Either an exclamation ofOoh, where areyoufrom?or else,Netherlands! I met a fellow from Amsterdam once! He’s called James. Perhaps you know him?
Balcovia wasn’t part of the Dutch empire, and hadn’t been for over a century, not that anyone here seemed to care about those details…or much of anything. The London sky was sooty, the streets dirty, people and livestock darting every which way in front of horse-drawn carriages without a single care for their lives or for Kuni’s constantly pounding heart.
How she missed Balcovia’s wide, open vistas, its rolling hills and endless fields of green grass or yellow tulips, and its brilliant orange and pink sunsets! That was her view from the tower. Until this past week, Kuni rarely left the vast royal grounds for more than a few hours, unless it was to travel from the Winter Castle to the Summer Palace in a luxurious carriage fit for a princess.
Here, she was on foot. On foot! It sounded so simple. Kuni trained in every spare moment—blades, combat, maintaining stiff military posture for hours on end. At court, she danced until dawn. And yet her feet had never been in greater agony than now. The muscles of her thighs and calves twitched in protest whenever she paused, begging her to stop this madness and spend a few days reclining on plush cushions with nothing more pressing to do than sip chocolate by the fireside.
She could not indulge such slothful whims. Kuni had precisely forty days to achieve the impossible, and she’d used ten of those days already. Time was against her.
So were Balcovia’s two best Royal Guards. Several times, they’d almost caught her. She’d managed to evade them purely by luck.
“Not luck,” she muttered in Balcovian. “You’re just as talented as they are. That’s why you’re here.”
“What’s that?” said an unkempt red-haired man with uneven whiskers, whose fetid breath smelled like some sort of alcohol that wouldneverbe served in a royal castle. “Are you lookin’ for some private company?”
“N-no,” Kuni stammered. “Carry on, good sir.”
