A GENTLEWOMAN’SGUIDE TO THEWORLD
The smuggler was, in my not uninformed opinion, certainly a mage. His eyes were too keen in the night, his movements too quiet. When he cast a long look across the black gloss of the river, I could have sworn I glimpsed silver markings on his throat, between his high collar and unruly reddish-brown beard—silver that appeared only in the thin light of the moon perched above the warehouses and chimneys at our backs.
A lone mage in a disreputable line of work. Worn, laborer’s clothes. No Guild ring on his finger, no partner in sight, in a city that would string a mage from a lamppost without the slightest provocation.
A Separatist? A Rogue?
I discreetly tilted my head, feeling the reassuring brush of my high collar, and stopped before him.
“Mr. Harden?” I inquired.
The smuggler flicked his cigarette into the water beside the quay, where it joined a lapping line of refuse. “Who’s asking?”
“Miss Fleet, associate of Mr. Stoke. You have an item for us?”
“Ah. Illing’s girl.” Mr. Harden appraised me down the length of his nose as the wind gusted between us, cold asthe coming winter. He had a fine nose, I noted, statuesque, in a face that looked to be perhaps thirty. “Your boss is late.”
“He will be along presently,” I assured him. “In the meantime, you may show me. Where is it?”
The smuggler shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels, nonchalant and self-assured. “I’ll not be doing that. What are you, to our dear Detective Stoke? ‘Associate’ being rather vague, you understand. Daughter? Secretary? Bodyguard? Lewis sends his regards, by the way. I offered to pass on a kiss, but he declined. Now, if you’d like to send him one, I won’t be back south for some time, but a good, solid kiss will keep.”
“I am the detective’s secretary,” I interrupted. I considered him dryly for the span of a few lapping waves before the thought of Lewis made me ask, “Did Lewis seem well?”
The way Mr. Harden eyed me made me feel utterly transparent. I suspected Lewis had told him far more about me, aboutus, than he’d told me about Harden—first and foremost, that the man was a Guildless mage.
I trusted Lewis, but that did not sit well.
Mr. Harden said, “As well as anyone is, down there. Times are not what they were.”
I pressed my lips into a thin twist of agreement.
The sound of footsteps drew our attention down the riverside. There, a shadow separated from an alleyway and moved purposefully towards us, walking stick carried brusquely in one hand.
“Harden,” Mr. Stoke, my employer, greeted the other man. In his late fifties with a well-tended moustache, slightly melancholy eyes, and a decidedly average frame, his voice was his most notable quality. It was low and smooth and gentle, turning Harrow’s clipped, bitter dialect into a soothing rumble. “Good to see you again. I’ve your money, and apologize for my tardiness. Where is it?”
“Detective.” Harden tugged his forelock. “Follow me.”
With that he moved off down the walk, his strides long and easy. Mr. Stoke and I followed, falling into step with one another.
“You should have waited for me,” Mr. Stoke murmured, keeping his gaze on Harden’s back. “Do not tell me you walked at this hour.”
“I took a hackney,” I soothed as Harden stopped by a large warehouse door, barely a pace from the river’s edge and shadowed by block and tackle for unloading the long, narrow riverboats.
Mr. Stoke’s lips momentarily flattened into a line. “Please wait for me, in the future.”
Future. The word burrowed under my skin, stinging with guilt, as we followed Harden into the warehouse and the light of a pungent oil lamp. If electricity had reached this quarter of the city, the warehouses’ owners had yet to take advantage of it.
The space was large and vaulted, evidenced by the echo of our footsteps, but so dark and packed with crates, bundles, and barrels that I could not see far. I eyed gaps and shadows, all too aware of how many enemies could be hidden just out of sight.
“This is it,” Harden said, dividing my attention. He wove his way to a long worktable, gouged and smoothed by decades of use. A nondescript crate sat atop, with a waiting crowbar. “The latest spoils of revolution. Lewis assured me this is what your patron requested.”
My employer fished into his pocket for an envelope and relinquished it. Harden glanced inside, then tossed the envelope on the table and shoved the crowbar under the crate lid.
He pressed down, encountered resistance, and tried again with a muttered curse. My gaze slipped to his throat as he adjusted his grip, but the silver threads I had glimpsed under the light of the moon had faded in the lanternlight.
I startled as the lid yielded with a crack. Harden sniffed in apparent satisfaction and stepped aside to allow us to peer into a nest of raw cotton.
I pulled off one glove, revealing the simple engagement ring on my fourth finger, and brushed the top layer away. As I did my fingers skimmed the surface of something below—hard wood, smooth and carved.
