“Mr. Lewis Illing,” the headmaster of the men’s academy boomed.
A man with perfectly combed dark blond hair stepped forward. He wore a neatly trimmed moustache and there was gentleness in his resigned hazel eyes. He was not the tallest or the broadest among the men, but he filled out his uniform well and his bronze threads, tricked by the candlelight, glistened every so often.
Lewis walked down the line of mages and, with one arm crooked behind his straight back, offered me his free hand. I took it—a brush of warm skin—and we proceeded to one side. There we took up station next to one another, watching as the next couple was named.
We let go of one another’s hands. I resisted the urge to fidget. My mind churned, searching for something to say, but everything felt mundane. This man was to be my husband within the next year. We were expected to copulate, to produce children, to serve the Guild side by side for as long as the Guild saw fit. What if I hated him? He was handsome, but that meant little. He might have a temper, or unbearable habits, or unsavory expectations.
That was when his fingers brushed mine. It was a small movement and his head did not turn, his eyes did not leave the proceedings, but one of his fingers hooked through mine in a small, nearly imperceptible gesture of comfort.
“We shall be good friends, Miss Rushforth. Allies.” His voice was soft and genuine, and I could not help but believe him. “Pretoria sends her love.”
Present Day
Iunlocked Mr. Stoke’s office door and entered, pulling off my gloves and unpinning my hat as I adjusted to the dark.
Papers rustled beneath my feet, and the world froze.
The offices were a disaster. Books had been torn off the shelves, the desk emptied, and the grandfather clock smashed. My desk was fully overturned and papers had been scattered into the foyer where I now stood, interspersed with keys from my brutalized typewriter.
The only thing intact—or almost intact, rather—was a cup of coffee I had made Mr. Stoke before I left last night. It sat right where I had set it on his desk, the papers around it stained in scallops of brown where the liquid had overflowed.
I rushed in and jerked the curtains back, the scrape of rings nearly lost in the thunder of blood in my ears. Two terrors beset me—that the flood of light would illuminate Mr. Stoke’s body, and that the safe would be open and ransacked.
Light spilled across the carnage. Blood—no, a broken inkwell. A body—no, a toppled chair. A further snowfall of papers. The bookcase still stood against the wall, though its books had been hurled about the room.
A figure unfolded from the shadows. He was in his thirties, dressed in a three-piece suit of fine grey tweed, with a bowler hat and respectable moustache.
I lunged for Mr. Stoke’s desk, jerking out the drawer where he stowed an emergency pistol. The drawer was empty, save for a scattering of thumbtacks, which unhelpfully stabbed my scrabbling hand. I cursed and jerked back bleeding fingers.
“Miss Fleet, I presume?”
I looked up the length of a long-barrelled pistol. The make was familiar to me—I could not remember the name, but Lewis carried one similar.
The intruder’s narrow chin drifted slightly to one side. In his other hand, he held up the small revolver that should have been in the drawer, then returned it to his pocket. “There is no need for violence. I am here on behalf of Lord Stillwell. Where is the artifact?”
“Mr. Stoke handed it over last night.” Now that my initial shock had passed, I was more indignant than afraid. It was all I could do not to look at the bookshelf with my money, my hard-won freedom, supposedly in the safe on the other side.
The stranger eyed me, as if he expected I might burst into hysterics at any moment. I almost wished I would—a normal secretary might, I imagined. The more in control he felt, the less guarded he would be.
But I was too distracted to be properly afraid. When I held his gaze, he stepped back into a broad stance and clasped one hand on his opposite wrist, gun pointed to the floor.
“Let us begin again. My name is James Wake, and I am here on behalf of Lord Stillwell. Your employer, upon meeting with me last night, failed to produce the artifact he was contracted to recover. He said he would do so this morning, but”—he gestured meaningfully around—“he did not show.”
I slowly straightened, pulse thrumming against my collar. So, the boxhadbeen taken from the safe—it was the only explanation I could think of, just then. And now Mr. Stoke and I were facing the consequences of Pretoria’s theft.
For it had to have been Pretoria. The timing, her habits—it all lined up. And for Mr. Stoke, perhaps the consequences had already been dire.
Silently, vehemently, I cursed my sister.
“Are you injured, Miss Fleet?” Mr. Wake prompted, hisgaze lingering on a few small cuts from the riot that paste and powder had not been able to conceal. His eyes were grey, cool and stony.
“I was caught in the Communion Square bombing,” I said. “Where is Mr. Stoke?”
“As I said, he did not show,” Mr. Wake replied, his thoughts inscrutable. I was not sure he had blinked since the conversation began. “Fled, I presume. Either evading the repercussions for his negligence in losing the item, or perhapswithit? Did he, unwisely, field other offers for its recovery?”
I shook my head firmly. “No. No, he would not do that. Mr. Stoke is a good and dependable man.”
“You may not know your employer as well as you believe.”
