I examined his snow-white waistcoat. It fastened with a single column of seven oyster-shell buttons. Each button had grooves dividing it in quarters. All the buttons were oriented identically, one groove precisely vertical. I exhaled a long breath as the last crawling twinges of my panic cooled.
This could be a good day. A day with no need for deception. London might be more tolerable than I thought.
A sharp motion drew my gaze to the salon’s doorway. The dour maid had her arm extended, blocking the entrance of two rough men in leather cloaks. I recognized the stubbly man from the protest on the street.
One man grabbed the maid and dragged her aside, his hand stifling her mouth. The other man strode into the unaware crowd.
“Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy!” he shouted. “Where is she?”
Shocked faces turned to him, but also to Lizzy. The man’s gaze followed, and his eyes narrowed. He drew his hand from his coat pocket. Steel and brass gleamed as he pointed his arm at Lizzy. He held a pistol.
Mr. Darcy wrapped his wyfe in an embrace that drove her against me. We stumbled sideways in a tangle. The pistol flashed dirty-orange with an ear-thump of sound, blowing a ragged hole in the wall a foot from my shoulder. Plaster dust stung my face. Settled on my eyelashes.
Mr. Knightley charged at the gunman. They collided with a yell, then pushed across the room to slam the wall. A painting fell, and they fell on top of it, wrestling and shouting. Mr. Darcy ran to help.
Like a choir after a synchronized breath, a chorus of ladies’ screams sounded. Pastel and print dresses retreated to press walls and chairs. The center of the room emptied other than the sulfurous smoke from the pistol shot.
The second man stood unnoticed by the entrance, the silenced maid struggling in his arms. He shoved her viciously, banging her head into the doorframe, and she collapsed, skirts askew. He strode across the room, his eyes on Lizzy.
Lizzy was beside me, her gaze on her scuffling husband. I shouted, “Lizzy! Run!”
Her eyes turned to me, then she saw the other man. Her empty hand rose, a finger outstretched as if to point.
Authority hammered my awareness. Command drove the air from my lungs. I had never felt this. I did not understand what I felt.
The man reached the abandoned center of the room. He pulled his cloak aside and reached for a huge pistol on his belt. The barrel was flared like the blunderbusses favored by coach drivers.
The broccworm ran forward and gaped its jaws, throwing a raging wall of blue flame between the man and us—inches from the man’s hands and so hot that it scalded my face a half-dozen yards away. The man fell backward, his arms flailing. The edge of his cloak swung through the flame, and the heavy leather crisped and blew away like paper in a bonfire.
The man sprawled hard onto the floor, and the broccworm’s fiery breath stopped. The ceiling above flashed into a sheet of orange fire, then extinguished itself to oily smoke.
Lizzy walked forward to stand over the man. Smoldering curls of burned paint fell around her like black snowflakes tipped with sparks. They alighted on her hair and dress, cooling and staining her shoulders with ash.
The broccworm jumped onto the man’s chest, snarling. Unnatural blue flame flickered with each growl.
The man drew his pistol, but the tykeworm ran from Lizzy’s side to catch the man’s wrist in obsidian-black teeth. The tyke was small, no bigger than a Yorkshire terrier, but even the smallest draca has teeth sharper than razors and harder than steel.
“If you wish to keep your hand,” Lizzy said, “you should drop that.”
The man splayed his fingers, and the pistol clattered to the floor.
Even the scuffling men by the wall had frozen at the spectacle. Now, Mr. Darcy rolled their cowed opponent onto his belly. Mr. Knightley produced a coil of peculiarly fine string from his pocket and wound it around the man’s hands.
Mr. Darcy joined his wyfe. He kicked the discarded pistol across the floor. The broccworm, tyke, and roseworm spaced themselves around the terrified man’s head.
“Are you hurt?” Mr. Darcy asked, his voice tight with concern.
Lizzy looked up. She seemed impossibly calm. “I am unhurt, but…” She turned to a window. To the north. “Yuánchi heard me. He comes. I must stop him.”
Scarlet flared and faded in my mind. This time, I felt the thread of their binding stretching far, far to the north. How could a distant draca feel sopowerful? And there was something more… a vitality in the binding that tugged at my soul. A familiarity that drew me.
Roiling, acrid smoke swirled through the room. Women coughed and sobbed. Harriet was comforting a crying woman beside me.
I remembered the maid at the door. I had seen her injured. I saw her fall.
I ran to the entrance. The miasma flooded the floor, clutching at my shoes with every step. The maid, a woman of forty or fifty, was a senseless heap in the doorway. I knelt by her, my hands trembling.
I had to help her. Save her. I placed my gloved fingers on her unconscious brow, as useless as when I had comforted Papa.
