The Tropic of Serpents

ONE

Not long before I embarked on my journey to Eriga, I girded my loins and set out for a destination I considered much more dangerous: Falchester.

The capital was not, in the ordinary way of things, a terribly adventurous place, except insofar as I might be rained upon there. I made the trip from Pasterway on a regular basis, as I had affairs to monitor in the city. Those trips, however, were not well-publicized—by which I mean I mentioned them to only a handful of people, all of them discreet. So far as most of Scirland knew (those few who cared to know), I was a recluse, and had been so since my return from Vystrana.

I was permitted reclusiveness on account of my personal troubles, though in reality I spent more of my time on work: first the publication of our Vystrani research, and then preparation for this Erigan expedition, which had been delayed and delayed again, by forces far beyond our control. On that Graminis morning, however, I could no longer escape the social obligations I assiduously buried beneath those other tasks. The best I could do was to discharge them both in quick succession: to visit first my blood relations, and then those bound to me by marriage.

My house in Pasterway was only a short drive from the fashionable district of Havistow, where my eldest brother Paul had settled the prior year. I usually escaped the necessity of visiting his house by the double gift of his frequent absence and his wife’s utter disinterest in me, but on this occasion I had been invited, and it would have been more trouble to refuse.

Please understand, it is not that I disliked my family. Most of us got on cordially enough, and I was on quite good terms with Andrew, the brother most immediately senior to me. But the rest of my brothers found me baffling, to say the least, and my mother’s censure of my behaviour had nudged their opinions toward disapproval. What Paul wanted with me that day I did not know—but on the whole, I would have preferred to face a disgruntled Vystrani rock-wyrm.

Alas, those were all quite far away, while my brother was too near to avoid. With a sensation of girding for battle, I lifted my skirt in ladylike delicacy, climbed the front steps, and rang the bell.

My sister-in-law was in the morning room when the footman escorted me in. Judith was a paragon of upper-class Scirling wifehood, in all the ways I was not: beautifully dressed, without crossing the line into gyver excess; a gracious hostess, facilitating her husband’s work by social means; and a dedicated mother, with three children already, and no doubt more to come.

We had precisely one thing in common, which was Paul. “Have I called at the wrong time?” I inquired, after accepting a cup of tea.

“Not at all,” Judith answered. “He is not at home just now—a meeting with Lord Melst—but you are welcome to stay until he returns.”

Lord Melst? Paul was moving up in the world. “I presume this is Synedrion business,” I said.

Judith nodded. “We had a short respite after he won his chair, but now the affairs of government have moved in to occupy his time. I hardly expect to see him between now and Gelis.”

Which meant I might be cooling my heels here for a very long time. “If it is not too much trouble,” I said, putting down my teacup and rising from my seat, “I think it might be better for me to leave and come back. I have promised to pay a visit to my brother-in-law Matthew today as well.”

To my surprise, Judith put out her hand to stop me. “No, please stay. We have a guest right now, who was hoping to see you—”

I never had the chance to ask who the guest was, though I had my suspicions the moment Judith began to speak. The door to the sitting room opened, and my mother came in.

Now it all made sense. I had ceased to answer my mother’s letters some time before, for my own peace of mind. She would not, even when asked, leave off criticizing my every move, and implying that my bad judgment had caused me to lose my husband in Vystrana. It was not courteous to ignore her, but the alternative would be worse. For her to see me, therefore, she must either show up unannounced at my house… or lure me to another’s.

Such logic did little to sweeten my reaction. Unless my mother was there to offer reconciliation—which I doubted—this was a trap. I had rather pull my own teeth out than endure more of her recriminations. (And lest you think that a mere figure of speech, I should note that I did once pull my own tooth out, so I do not make the comparison lightly.)

As it transpired, though, her recriminations were at least drawing on fresh material. My mother said, “Isabella. What is this nonsense I hear about you going to Eriga?”

I have been known to bypass the niceties of small talk, and ordinarily I am grateful for it in others. In this instance, however, it had the effect of an arrow shot from cover, straight into my brain. “What?” I said, quite stupidly—not because I failed to understand her, but because I had no idea how she had come to hear of it.

“You know perfectly well what I mean,” she went on, relentlessly. “It is absurd, Isabella. You cannot go abroad again, and certainly not to any part of Eriga. They are at war there!”

I sought my chair once more, using the delay to regain my composure. “That is an exaggeration, Mama, and you know it. Bayembe is not at war. The mansa of Talu dares not invade, not with Scirling soldiers helping to defend the borders.”

My mother sniffed. “I imagine the man who drove the Akhians out of Elerqa—after two hundred years!—dares a great deal indeed. And even if he does not attack, what of those dreadful Ikwunde?”

“The entire jungle of Mouleen lies between them and Bayembe,” I said, irritated. “Save at the rivers, of course, and Scirland stands guard there as well. Mama, the whole point of our military presence is to make the place safe.”

The look she gave me was dire. “Soldiers do not make a place safe, Isabella. They only make it less dangerous.”

What skill I have in rhetoric, I inherited from my mother. I was in no mood to admire her phrasing that day, though. Nor to be pleased at her political awareness, which was quite startling. Most Scirling women of her class, and a great many men, too, could barely name the two Erigan powers that had forced Bayembe to seek foreign—which is to say Scirling—aid. Gentlemen back then were interested only in the lopsided “trade agreement” that sent Bayembe iron to Scirland, along with other valuable resources, in exchange for them allowing us to station our soldiers all over their country, and build a colony in Nsebu. Ladies were not interested much at all.

Was this something she had attended to before, or had she educated herself upon hearing of my plans? Either way, this was not how I had intended to break the news to her. Just how I had intended to do it, I had not yet decided; I kept putting off the issue, out of what I now recognized as rank cowardice. And this was the consequence: an unpleasant confrontation in front of my sister-in-law, whose stiffly polite expression told me that she had known this was coming.

(A sudden worm of suspicion told me that Paul, too, had known. Meeting with Lord Melst, indeed. Such a shame he was out when I arrived.)

It meant, at least, that I only had to face my mother, without allies to support her in censure. I was not fool enough to think I would have had allies of my own. I said, “The Foreign Office would not allow people to travel there, let alone settle, if it were so dangerous as all that. And they have been allowing it, so there you are.” She did not need to know that one of the recurrent delays in this expedition had involved trying to persuade the Foreign Office to grant us visas. “Truly, Mama, I shall be at far more risk from malaria than from any army.”

What possessed me to say that, I do not know, but it was sheer idiocy on my part. My mother’s glare sharpened. “Indeed,” she said, and the word could have frosted glass. “Yet you propose to go to a place teeming with tropical diseases, without a single thought for your son.”

Her accusation was both fair and not. It was true that I did not think as much of my son as one might expect. I gave very little milk after his birth and had to hire a wet-nurse, which suited me all too well; infant Jacob reminded me far too much of his late namesake. Now he was more than two years old, weaned, and in the care of a nanny. My marriage settlement had provided quite generously for me, but much of that money I had poured into scientific research, and the books of our Vystrani expedition—the scholarly work under my husband’s name, and my own inane bit of travel writing—were not bringing in as much as one might hope. Out of what remained, however, I paid handsomely for someone to care for my son, and not because the widow of a baronet’s second son ought not to stoop to such work herself. I simply did not know what to do with Jacob otherwise.

People often suppose that maternal wisdom is wholly instinctual: that however ignorant a woman may be of child rearing prior to giving birth, the mere fact of her sex will afterward endow her with perfect capability. This is not true even on the grossest biological level, as the failure of my milk had proved, and it is even less true in social terms. In later years I have come to understand children from the perspective of a natural historian; I know their development, and have some appreciation for its marvellous progress. But at that point in time, little Jacob made less sense to me than a dragon.

Is the rearing of a child best performed by a woman who has done it before, who has honed her skills over the years and enjoys her work, or by a woman with no skill and scant enjoyment, whose sole qualification is a direct biological connection? My opinion fell decidedly on the former, and so I saw very little practical reason why I should not go to Eriga. In that respect, I had given a great deal of thought to the matter of my son.

Saying such things to my mother was, however, out of the question. Instead I temporized. “Matthew Camherst and his wife have offered to take him in while I am gone. Bess has one of her own, very near the same age; it will be good for Jacob to have a companion.”

“And if you die?”

The question dropped like a cleaver onto the conversation, severing it short. I felt my cheeks burning: with anger, or with shame—likely both. I was outraged that my mother should say such a thing so bluntly… and yet my husband had died in Vystrana. It was not impossible that I should do the same in Eriga.

Into this dead and bleeding silence came a knock on the door, followed shortly by the butler, salver in hand, bowing to present a card to Judith, who lifted it, mechanically, as if she were a puppet and someone had pulled the string on her arm. Confusion carved a small line between her brows. “Who is Thomas Wilker?”

The name had the effect of a low, unnoticed kerb at the edge of a street, catching my mental foot and nearly causing me to fall on my face. “Thomas Wil—what is he doing here?” Comprehension followed, tardily, lifting me from my stumble. Judith did not know him, and neither did my mother, which left only one answer. “Ah. I think he must be here to see me.”

Judith’s posture snapped to a rigid, upright line, for this was not how social calls were conducted. A man should not inquire after a widow in a house that wasn’t hers. I spared a moment to notice that the card, which Judith dropped back on the salver, was not a proper calling card; it appeared to be a piece of paper with Mr. Wilker’s name written in by hand. Worse and worse. Mr. Wilker was not, properly speaking, a gentleman, and certainly not the sort of person who would call here in the normal course of things.

I did what I could to retrieve the moment. “I do apologize. Mr. Wilker is an assistant to the earl of Hilford—you recall him, of course; he is the one who arranged the Vystrani expedition.” And was arranging the Erigan one, too, though his health precluded him from accompanying us. But what business of that could be so urgent that Lord Hilford would send Mr. Wilker after me at my brother’s house? “I should speak with him, but there’s no need to trouble you. I will take my leave.”

My mother’s outstretched hand stopped me before I could stand. “Not at all. I think we’re all eager to hear what this Mr. Wilker has to say.”

“Indeed,” Judith said faintly, obeying the unspoken order woven through my mother’s words. “Send him in, Londwin.”

The butler bowed and retired. By the alacrity with which Mr. Wilker appeared, he must have sprang forward the instant he was welcomed in; agitation still showed in his movements. But he had long since taken pains to cultivate better manners than those he had grown up with, and so he presented himself first to Judith. “Good morning, Mrs. Hendemore. My name is Thomas Wilker. I’m sorry to trouble you, but I have a message for Mrs. Camherst. We must have passed one another on the road; I only just missed her at her house. And I’m afraid the news is unfortunate enough that it could not wait. I was told she would be visiting here.”

The curt, disjointed way in which he delivered these words made my hands tighten in apprehension. Mr. Wilker was, quite rightly, looking only at Judith, save a brief nod when he spoke my name; with no hint forthcoming from him, I found myself exchanging a glance instead with my mother.

What I saw there startled me. We’re all eager to hear what this Mr. Wilker has to say—she thought he was my lover! An overstatement, perhaps, but she had the expression of a woman looking for signs of inappropriate attachment, and coming up empty-handed.

As well she should. Mr. Wilker and I might no longer be at loggerheads the way we had been in Vystrana, but I felt no romantic affection for him, nor he for me. Our relationship was purely one of business.

I wanted to set my mother down in no uncertain terms for harboring such thoughts, but forbore. Not so much because of the sheer inappropriateness of having that conversation in public, but because it occurred to me that Mr. Wilker and I were engaged in two matters of business, of which the Erigan expedition was only one.

Judith, fortunately, waved Mr. Wilker on before I could burst out with my questions unbidden. “By all means, Mr. Wilker. Or is your message private?”

I would not have taken the message privately for a hundred sovereigns, not with such suspicions in my mother’s mind. “Please,” I said. “What has happened?”

Mr. Wilker blew out a long breath, and the urgency drained from him in a sudden rush, leaving him sagging and defeated. “There’s been a break-in at Kemble’s.”

“Kemble’s… oh, no.” My own shoulders sagged, a mirror to his. “What did they destroy? Or—”

He nodded, grimly. “Took. His notes.”

Theft, not destruction. Someone knew what Kemble was working on, and was determined to steal it for their own.

I slumped back in my chair, ladylike dignity the furthest thing from my mind. Frederick Kemble was the chemist Mr. Wilker had hired—or rather I had hired; the money was mine, although the choice of recipient was his—to continue the research we ourselves had stolen in the mountains of Vystrana, three years ago. Research that documented a method for preserving dragonbone: an amazing substance, strong and light, but one that decayed quickly outside a living body.

The Chiavoran who developed that method was not the first one to try. What had begun as a mere challenge of taxidermy—born from the desire of hunters to preserve trophies from the dragons they killed, and the desire of natural historians to preserve specimens for study—had become a great point of curiosity for chemists. Several were racing to be the first (or so they thought) to solve that puzzle. Despite our best efforts to maintain secrecy around Kemble’s work, it seemed someone had learned of it.

“When?” I asked, then waved the question away as foolish. “Last night, and I doubt we’ll get any time more specific than that.” Mr. Wilker shook his head. He lived in the city, and visited Kemble first thing in the morning every Selemer. This news was as fresh as it could be, short of Kemble having heard the intruder and come downstairs in his nightclothes to see.

I wondered, suddenly cold, what would have happened if he had. Would the intruder have fled? Or would Mr. Wilker have found our chemist dead this morning?

Such thoughts were unnecessarily dramatic—or so I chided myself. Whether they were or not, I did not have the leisure to dwell on them, for my mother’s sharp voice roused me from my thoughts. “Isabella. What in heaven is this man talking about?”

I took a measure of comfort in the irreverent thought that at least she could not read any hint of personal indiscretion in the message Mr. Wilker had brought. “Research, Mama,” I said, pulling myself straight in my chair, and thence to my feet. “Nothing that need concern you. But I’m afraid I must cut this visit short; it is vital that I speak to Mr. Kemble at once. If you will excuse me—”

My mother, too, rose to her feet, one hand outstretched. “Please, Isabella. I’m dreadfully concerned for you. This expedition you intend…”

She must be concerned indeed, to broach such a personal matter before a stranger like Mr. Wilker. “We will speak of it later, Mama,” I said, intending no such thing. “This truly is a pressing matter. I’ve invested a great deal of money in Mr. Kemble’s work, and must find out how much I have lost.”

TWO

Being a recluse is not good for one’s conversational agility. I was accustomed to thinking over my words, revising them, and writing fair copy before sending the final draft of my letter to its recipient. My comment accomplished its intended purpose—she let me go at last, with Judith’s polite farewells to fill in the awkward gaps—but my satisfaction faded rapidly as I went out into the street. “I fear I will regret that,” I admitted to Mr. Wilker, pulling on my gloves.

“I don’t think you’ve lost much of your money,” he said, raising his hand to signal a hansom on its way to the nearest cab stand.

Sighing, I drew his arm down. “My carriage is across the street. No, I don’t mean the investment; I don’t regret that in the least. Only that I said anything of it to my mother. She is determined to see bad judgment in everything I do nowadays.”

Mr. Wilker did not respond to that. Although we were on more cordial terms by then, we were not in the habit of sharing our personal troubles with one another. He said, “All is not lost, though. Kemble took his current notebook upstairs with him last night, so that he could read over his thoughts as he prepared for bed. His wife may deplore the habit, but in this instance it’s been a godsend.”

(To those of my readers who flinch at minor blasphemies of this sort: I must warn you that there will be more ahead. Mr. Wilker restrained his language around me in our Vystrani days, but as we grew more comfortable with one another, he revealed a casual habit of naming the Lord. If I edited his language here, it would misrepresent his character, and so I pray you pardon his frankness, and mine. We were neither of us very religious.)

Mrs. Kemble was no resentful housewife; she worked alongside her husband, handling the practical matters of ordering and measuring chemicals, while he spent hours staring at the wall and chewing on the battered tail of his pen, mind lost in theoretical matters. But she believed in a separation of work from daily life, and I—who, you may have noticed, am more of Frederick Kemble’s mind—blessed her failure to break him of his habits.

I said as much to her when we arrived at Kemble’s house and laboratory in Tanner Fields, and got a dry look that did not entirely hide the nervous aftereffects of the intrusion. “I appreciate that, Mrs. Camherst, but I’m afraid it didn’t save the glassware.”

“May I see?” I asked. Mrs. Kemble led us into the cellar, presently in a state of half gloom, the only light coming in by the street-level windows. It was enough to show the destruction: shattered glass everywhere, measuring instruments bent and smashed. A chemical stink flooded the air, despite the open windows and a boy outside cranking a device to ventilate the room. They had not merely taken Kemble’s notes; they had also done what they could to delay his further progress.

I held my handkerchief over my nose and said, “Mrs. Kemble, I am so very sorry. If you send a letter to my accountant, I’ll see to it that you’re reimbursed for what you’ve lost. It can’t restore your peace of mind, but—” I gestured helplessly. “It can at least replace the glassware.”

“That’s very good of you, Mrs. Camherst,” she said, mollified. “Kemble is upstairs; I needed him out from under my feet while I sort out what’s broken and missing. Lucy will make you some tea.”

Mr. Wilker and I went obediently up to the parlour, where we found Frederick Kemble scribing furiously onto a loose sheet of foolscap. Others like it were scattered across the table and the floor, and Lucy, the Kembles’ remaining unmarried daughter, was trying to find a clear space to set down a tray containing not only tea but a stack of blank paper. She saw us come in and touched her father’s elbow. “Papa—”

“Not now—let me—” He jerked his head in a motion I thought was meant to stand for a wave of his hand, his actual hands being occupied in note-taking.

Lucy retreated to our side. “What is he doing?” I asked, not daring raise my voice above a murmur.

“Writing down as much as he can remember,” she said. “From the notebooks that were taken.”

After three years’ work, the process for preserving dragonbone must have been engraved on the inside of his eyelids; I had it memorized, and I was not even chemist enough to understand what most of it meant. As for the rest—“Mr. Wilker said the most recent notebook was not taken, yes? So long as we have that, the older notes do not matter half so much.” Most of them were obsolete by now, documenting failed experiments.

Lucy spread her hands. “He says even the old notes are important—that he likes to look over them from time to time.”

She went off to fetch more teacups, and then Mr. Wilker and I settled in at the far end of the parlour to hear Lucy’s account of the break-in and the investigation thus far. By the time she finished, Kemble was ready to pause in his work and acknowledge the rest of the world.

“If they’d come before the Sabbath…” he said, clearly grateful they had not. His daughter presented him with a cup of tea, which he took and drained absently. “I was looking back through the old notebooks during lunch on Eromer, and something there caught my attention. Last year, I—”

Mr. Wilker, who had long since learned to recognize the warning signs, cut him off before he could descend into a thicket of scientific language I would not understand in the slightest. The body of our collective knowledge has grown so rapidly in my lifetime that although I am accounted an extremely learned woman, there are whole fields I know very little of; chemistry is one such. It was not a part of young ladies’ curricula in my youth, and my self-education had gone in other directions. Mr. Wilker therefore diverted our chemist to the points he knew I would care about. “You said something about that this morning, yes. It gave you an idea?”

“I think so,” Kemble said. “It’s only a thought so far; it will take a great deal of testing. But I may have an idea for synthesis at last.”

Had that not been the fifth time I heard those words from his mouth, I would have been more excited. It was, after all, the purpose for which we had hired Kemble. We knew how to preserve dragonbone; that was no longer a challenge. But Mr. Wilker and I, discussing the matter three years ago, had seen the peril in that knowledge.

Quite apart from the desire of hunters to preserve their trophies, and the desire of natural historians to study their subject at leisure post mortem, the qualities of dragonbone made it attractive to other kinds of person. Its mechanical properties were far superior to those of iron and steel, being both lighter and stronger—and as the easily accessible iron deposits in Anthiope and other parts of the world began to run dry, the value of any alternative grew by the year.

I could enumerate at length the drawbacks to the industrial use of dragonbone. Indeed, I had an article already prepared on the subject, ready to send at a moment’s notice to all the reputable publications. Dragons were even rarer than iron, and while it was true that they reproduced (which ore was not known to do), any widespread demand for their bones would lead to mass slaughter, perhaps even to extinction. The irregular shape of many bones rendered them less than ideal for the construction of machines, which would result in a great deal of waste. The expense and hassle of harvesting them from dead dragons (many of whom lived in locales as foreign and distant as those still rich in iron) rendered the prospect less than entirely profitable. It went on for pages, but the entire thing was flawed in its basic assumption, which was that people would consider the matter rationally before making their decisions.

The truth was that the idea would bring speculators flocking like vultures to a dead horse, ready to pick the bones clean. And if I tried to persuade myself that I was exaggerating—that such a doom-filled scenario would never come to pass—I had only to consider the Erigan continent, where the lure of iron had led several Anthiopean states to involve themselves in the affairs of the nations there. If Thiessin was willing to conquer Djapa, and Chiavora to encourage revolution in Agwi, and Scirland to insert itself between the Talu Union and the military might of the Ikwunde, for the sake of being able to build new steam engines, we would not hesitate to sacrifice a few dumb beasts.

I sighed and drained the last of my tea. “With all due respect, Mr. Kemble, I would almost welcome another set of eyes on the matter. I have every confidence that you can solve this riddle, given sufficient time—but that, we may not have. Sooner or later someone will figure out Rossi’s method, even without your notes. If we are to avert chaos, we need a way to satisfy the demand for this substance that does not involve butchering dragons.”

“I doubt we’ll be that lucky,” Mr. Wilker said, sounding bleak. “With the eyes, that is. How many people will go to the amount of effort you and I have, just to spare animals? We already butcher elephants for their ivory and tigers for their skins, and those are only decorative.”

He was likely right. Sighing, I said, “Then we had best hope the police recover the notebook—small hope that it is. Do we have any notion who took it?”

By the grim silence that fell, the answer started with “yes” and got worse from there. Mr. Wilker replied obliquely. “You know about the symposium, I think.”

A gathering of scholars, hosted by the Philosophers’ Colloquium, the preeminent scientific body in Scirland. Mr. Wilker had not been invited to attend, because he was not a gentleman. I had not been invited to attend either, because although my birth was gentle, I was not a man.

But we knew someone who met both of those requirements. “If it was one of the visitors, Lord Hilford might be able to find out.”

“He won’t have much time,” Kemble said, coming out of the reverie into which he so frequently lapsed. “Doesn’t that end this week?”

It did, and the scholars would be returning to their homelands. “Indeed. Then I suppose I know what I am doing with my afternoon.”

I was at the door to Lord Hilford’s townhouse before I remembered that I had promised to pay a visit to my relatives by marriage. I knocked on the door anyway, thinking to ask the earl whether I might send them a note. As it transpired, he was not yet home from a lecture, and so I had more than enough time while I waited for him in the drawing room.

If you find yourself thinking that I had enough time to make good on that promise, you would be more or less correct. The Camhersts lived not far from Lord Hilford, in Mornetty Square, and it would not have taken me above twenty minutes to get there and back. But I did not know how long they would keep me, and it was of the utmost importance that I warn Lord Hilford about the intruders at Mr. Kemble’s as soon as possible. If any of the visitors to the symposium were behind this outrage, we had limited time in which to find out—even more limited time in which to do anything about it.

So I told myself, at least. The truth is that, although I had told my mother that Matthew, my brother-in-law, had agreed to take in little Jacob while I was gone, I had neglected to mention his lack of enthusiasm for the entire plan. His wife did not mind the addition of a temporary child, but Matthew minded very much the possibility of keeping him permanently. He might have even been the one who spilled the secret of the Erigan expedition where my mother could hear. Drained by my morning confrontation and by the dreadful news of the break-in, I was not minded to face anyone I did not consider a good friend.

I therefore wrote out an excuse and had Lord Hilford’s boot-boy run it to Mornetty Square. Then I linked my gloved hands together and paced, and worried, and made a hundred different (and useless) plans, until Lord Hilford came home.

When I heard his booming voice in the front hall, I did not trouble to wait in the drawing room. He saw me as I came to the door, and the white tufts of his eyebrows rose. “Not that it is anything but a pleasure to see you, Mrs. Camherst—but I judge by your expression that whatever has sent you here is not good.”

“It is not,” I confirmed, and explained while he divested himself of overcoat and hat. His cane he kept; over the years it had become less of an affectation, more of a necessity, as his rheumatism worsened. Lord Hilford followed me into the drawing room and lowered himself into a chair with a sigh.

“Mmmm,” he said when I was done. “Makes me wonder if someone has been to Vystrana. I’ve heard nothing from Iljish in Drustanev, but you know what the post is like. And someone might have slipped past them.”

The villagers were supposed to protect the nearby cavern from curiosity-seekers. It was the preserved dragonbone in that great cemetery which had given the first clues to the role of acid in that process. “We said nothing of it in the book,” I reminded Lord Hilford, referring to the monograph we had published after our expedition. “Only that the dragons tore apart their deceased kin and took the pieces to a certain cave. No one could assume preservation from that—nor could they find the cave.”

The flapping of the earl’s hand reminded me I was saying nothing he did not already know. “Still, it’s a possibility, and one we have to consider. Another possibility: Kemble talked.”

“If he had talked, would they have smashed up his laboratory?” I said indignantly. Then I saw the flaw in my own logic. “Ah. You are not accusing him of selling the secret—only of letting slip some hint that might have allowed another to guess what he’s doing.”

“Any of us might have done it,” Lord Hilford admitted. “Including me. I’d like to think I’m discreet, but—well. Scholars drink a great deal more than anyone thinks, and I don’t hold my liquor as well as I once did.”

I thought that I, at least, was unlikely to have betrayed our secret. Not out of any particular virtue; only from lack of opportunity. I hardly spoke to anyone who didn’t already know. But it would do no good to say that, and so I said only, “Is there anyone among the Colloquium’s visitors that you would suspect? Or among its members, I suppose.”

Lord Hilford grunted. “Several, unfortunately. There’s a ratty Marñeo fellow I don’t trust in the slightest; he’s been accused of passing other people’s research off as his own. Guhathalakar openly admits he’s working on the issue of preservation. No one in the Bulskoi delegation is, but they have more opportunity than most to go poking around in Vystrana. The Hingese… I’m sorry, Mrs. Camherst, but without more to go on, all I can do is guess.”

“Well, Mr. Wilker is still at Kemble’s, and they’ve spoken with the police; we can hope for some kind of lead.” I got up and paced again, fingers twisting about one another. “I wish I could do something to hurry the research along. Money is only helpful to a point; it cannot make Frederick Kemble’s brain work faster.”

“Attend to your own research,” Lord Hilford said, very reasonably. “You may find something of use there; or if you do not, then every bit we know about dragons is one more bit we can use to protect them. But, ah—if I may shift us from one nerve-wracking topic to another—”

It was enough to stop me pacing. I tried to remember the last time I had heard the earl so wary, and could not think of a single time. When I turned to look, he was chewing on the drooping end of his moustache. I waited, but he did not speak. “Oh, out with it,” I said at last, quite sharply. “My nerves are no less wracked for being forced to wait.”

“Natalie,” he said, reluctantly. “Or rather, her family.”

His granddaughter was not ordinarily a topic of any tension at all. Nor were her family, but—“Let me guess,” I said with a sigh. “They have decided I am not fit company for her. Well, everyone else in Scirland has come to the same opinion; I am not fit company for anyone.”

“That isn’t precisely it. They think you eccentric, yes, but for the most part harmlessly so. The trouble is that an eccentric is not good company for an unmarried young lady—not if she wishes to change that state.”

I frowned at him in surprise. “But Natalie is only—” My arithmetic caught up with my words, and stopped them. “Nearly twenty,” I finished heavily. “I see.”

“Quite.” Lord Hilford sighed, too, studying the head of his cane far more closely than it warranted. “And so her family is quite adamant that she should not accompany you on this expedition. You are likely to be gone for six months at least, likely more; it would be ruinous to her marital prospects. Old maids and all that. I’ve argued, truly I have.”

I believed him. Lord Hilford had progressive notions of what ladies might do, and he doted on Natalie besides; but in the end he was not his granddaughter’s guardian. “Have you spoken with her?”

“She knows how her family feels. I was hoping you might approach her—woman to woman, you know—and see if you can’t reconcile her to the situation. They aren’t intending to shackle her to some brute.”

If she did not look herself out a husband soon, though, she might have trouble finding anyone other than a brute. “I will see what I can do.”

Lord Hilford sounded relieved. “Thank you. You’ll have to be quick about it, though. I was intending to write this afternoon, but now I can tell you in person: the schedule has moved up. Can you and Wilker be ready to depart in two weeks?”

Had I been holding anything, I would have dropped it. “Two weeks?”

“If you can’t, then say so. But it may be another delay otherwise. There’s going to be a changeover at the Foreign Office, and the incoming fellow is not very keen on travellers going to Nsebu, not with the unrest in the area.”

“Unrest?” I echoed, my mother’s comments rising to mind.

“Ah, yes—that hasn’t reached the papers yet,” Lord Hilford said. “I had it from our man in the Foreign Office. A group of Royal Engineers were ambushed while surveying the south bank of the Girama, which is territory that is supposed to be firmly in our control. It seems Eremmo has quieted sufficiently under the Ikwunde yoke for the inkosi to start looking outward once more. It has certain people rather worried.”

As well it should, given the military success the Ikwunde had enjoyed in the last fifty years, under one warlike inkosi after another. Still, I had faith in our soldiers there; and besides which, the river region between Bayembe and Eremmo was clear on the other side of the country from Nsebu. “One scare after another,” I sighed. “I am beginning to think this expedition will never happen.”

“It will, Mrs. Camherst, if we move quickly enough. Otherwise we’ll have to argue the new fellow around.”

We had already spent months arguing the previous fellow around. I reviewed the state of my affairs, and suppressed the unladylike desire to curse. I had counted on Natalie to be my companion on this journey. Would it be worse to travel alone—with an unmarried man, no less—or to find some other woman on short notice? Or rather, would suffering the latter be worse than suffering the consequences of the former?

Either way, I could not let it change my answer to Lord Hilford. “I can be ready, yes. You will have to ask Mr. Wilker yourself.”

“I know what Tom will say.” The earl levered himself up out of his chair. “Two weeks it is, then. I’m sure you need to prepare. And in the meanwhile, I will look into the matter of this break-in.”

THREE

“Miss Oscott is here,” the footman informed me when I returned home. “I believe she is in your study, ma’am.”

Natalie. I would have preferred to delay my promise to Lord Hilford, but if I was to leave in two weeks, I simply could not spare the time. “Thank you,” I said, distracted, and went upstairs.

My study had been my husband’s study, once. The servants had called it the study for a good two years after his death; it was not the sort of room women normally laid claim to. But eventually their speech had shifted. No doubt that owed a great deal to the amount of time I spent there, often in the company of Natalie Oscott.

She was indeed there, tacking a sheet of paper onto the piece of corkboard we had hung for the purpose. “Oh, good heavens, Natalie,” I said when I saw the figure drawn on it. “That again?”

“I’ve improved it,” she said, flashing a grin at me over one shoulder. “On advice from an enthusiast in Lopperton. He thinks I’m a lad named Nathaniel—I do a very good boy’s hand, when I put my mind to it. On account of falsifying my brothers’ workbooks, when they had not written the exercises our tutor had set. What do you think?”

The sheet of paper bore a large diagram, whose predecessors I had seen several times before. A wing spread across the page, with measurements carefully marked out, and annotations I could not read from where I stood. Even at range, though, one difference was apparent. “Are the wings curved?” I asked, curious despite myself.

“Yes, he thinks that would work better than a straight line. And he suggested an alteration to the harness, too, which he is going to try for himself as soon as he can get it built.”

To be perfectly honest, I thought they were both mad. True, as I said in the previous volume of my memoirs, I had been obsessed with dragon wings since I was a small child, and the idea of being able to join them in the sky was attractive. But a human being cannot possibly achieve the pectoral strength necessary to fly by flapping artificial wings—that having been Natalie’s first notion. The best he (or she) can hope for is to glide, and even then, I had my doubts.

But Natalie found the notion an intriguing challenge. For her, the puzzle was intellectual: was it possible to engineer such a thing? In pursuit of that question, she had taught herself a great deal of mathematics, most of which I understood not at all. She had also entered into correspondence with others, for she was not the only one with an interest in the matter.

Natalie had not yet attempted to construct or test any of her designs, for which I was grateful. Although my husband had called me the queen of deranged practicality, putting into practice ideas others would never think to attempt, even I have my limits. Those limits may, as this narrative will show, lie further out than I claim (and honestly believe)—but I never know that until I pass them. And that, I invariably do under circumstances in which going further seems to be the only feasible course of action. It is only afterward that the “deranged” part of “deranged practicality” becomes apparent to me.

Besides, I was less sanguine about others’ foolishness, and I should not like to lose my closest companion to a broken neck. Natalie had been a great source of comfort to me since Jacob died. It made my heart all the lower, thinking that I could not bring her with me to Nsebu.

She saw my fallen countenance, but mistook the cause. “I promise you, Isabella—I have no intention of committing my own bones to the tender mercies of physics. At least not until after Mr. Garsell has conducted enough tests of his own to assure me the design is sound.”

“That isn’t it.” I sighed and went to my desk—Jacob’s desk, once—in front of the broad windows overlooking the back garden. The surface was cluttered with books and stray pages, my preserved sparkling Greenie standing guard over them all; I had forbidden the maid to touch anything there, even to dust. Maps of Eriga, travellers’ reports, a draft of an article I was considering asking Lord Hilford to submit for me, under his own name. The Colloquium would not accept a paper from a woman.

Perhaps it was the reminder of the Colloquium’s requirements that made my voice more bitter than I intended. “I spoke with your grandfather today. About your family.”

“Oh.” That one word might have been a valve, letting out all the air and vitality that had made her so animated.

I lowered myself into the familiar leather of my chair. “You know, then. That they don’t want you to go to Eriga.”

“They want me to stay here and find a husband. Yes.” Natalie turned and paced a few steps away.

Her deficit of enthusiasm was plain enough that I could read it without seeing her face. “It needn’t be bad, Natalie. You have your grandfather on your side, and from what you tell me, your family has at least some understanding of your interests. My father consulted a matchmaker to obtain a list of unmarried men who might share their libraries with me. I am sure you can go further, and find yourself a husband who will support you in your work.”

“Perhaps.”

She did not sound convinced. Before I could muster the words to develop my argument, however, Natalie spoke again. “It is an untenable situation, and I know it. One way or another, I must be dependent upon someone. If not a husband, then one of my brothers, or—” She caught herself. “I cannot ask that of them. But how much less can I ask it of some stranger?”

I had not missed that or. She had been about to list a third option, and had stopped herself. I could guess why. Rather than approach it directly, though, I said, “Do you not want a husband? Presuming you could get a good one.”

She stood very still; I think she was considering my words. Then she turned to face me, and answered in the tone of one who had never realized her true reply until this moment. “No,” Natalie said. “I don’t.”

“Not for security,” I said. At that time the Independent Virtue movement had not yet taken shape, but its arguments were beginning to be spoken, in hushed, half-scandalized whispers. If a woman traded her marital favors for financial support, did that not make marriage a form of prostitution? “But for companionship, or love, or—” Now it was my turn to stop shy of my final words.

Natalie blushed, but answered me. “Not for any of those. I welcome the friendship of men, of course. But childbirth is dangerous, and motherhood would demand too much of my time; and I have no interest in the, ah, activity for its own sake. What is left?”

Very little, really. Except, perhaps, for an end to her family’s nagging—and that could be gotten in more than one way.

It would have been wiser for me to wait until I had examined the state of my own finances. But I was to leave for Nsebu in two weeks, and had no desire to waste my time or Natalie’s on the wrong preparations. “If you must be dependent on someone,” I said, “and if your conscience will permit it, then be dependent upon me. Widows often take on companions, and you have very nearly been mine these past few years; certainly you have been a dear friend. We might make it official.”

The hitch in her breath told me I had struck my mark precisely. Still, she protested. “I could not do that to you, Isabella. If I do not marry, I will be a burden forever. What if you change your mind, two or ten or twenty years down the road? It might poison our friendship, and I would never wish for that.”

I laughed, lightly, trying to ease the desperate tension in her eyes. “A burden forever? Piffle. Stay with me, and I will qualify you for a life of independent and eccentric spinsterhood, supported as you choose by your learning and your pen. Other ladies have done it before.”

Not many, and few in the sorts of fields that Natalie had proven herself drawn to. Historical scholarship was more permitted to women than the designing of crazed glider-wings. But I had formed the resolution to live my own life as my inclinations demanded, and furthermore to do so with such zeal that society could not refuse me; it would be the height of hypocrisy for me to preach feminine obedience to Natalie now. She knew the obstacles and the cost: she had seen how I lived.

By the growing light in her eyes, the obstacles were trivial and the cost not even worth mentioning. Her mouth still spoke protest, but only because of her commitment to logic. “My family will take some convincing, I fear. Possibly a great deal of it.”

“Then you have two choices,” I said, rising from my desk. At this time of day, the light through the windows at my back would frame me with a kind of halo; I was not above using that for dramatic effect. “You may stay in Scirland and work on convincing them, and I will welcome you at my side once that is done. Or you can inform them of your intentions, leave for Nsebu with me in two weeks, and let them work through it on their own.”

“Two weeks?” Natalie said, her voice going faint. “You are leaving in—oh, but—”

I waited. My words were sincere; I would welcome her company whether she had to join me later, or wait for my return to Scirland. It would not be fair to importune her with my preference.

Besides, I knew her well enough to guess her answer. Natalie’s shoulders went back, and her chin rose. “I had promised to come with you to Eriga,” she said. “A lady should keep her promises. I will inform my family at once.”

I had never thought Maxwell Oscott, the earl of Hilford, to be a sadist. His chosen method for smoking out the thief, however, had me reconsidering the matter, with conclusions not favourable to him.

The symposium whose attendees comprised our most likely suspects was, as Mr. Wilker had said, scheduled to end that week. With the police turning up nothing of use in their examination of Mr. Kemble’s laboratory, Lord Hilford settled upon a more direct method of looking for the guilty party, which was to invite everybody to supper and see if anyone flinched.

To this end, he arranged, on vanishingly short notice, to rent out the upper hall at the Yates Hotel, and made certain that all those we suspected would attend. His excuse for this event was that the Colloquium, which would be hosting a formal banquet the following night to mark the end of the symposium, did not permit women within their hallowed walls, and he was most determined that the gentlemen attending should meet various ladies of education and merit—chief among them, though he did not advertise this fact, the widowed Mrs. Camherst.

I suffered Lord Hilford to put me in the limelight because it would aid in our efforts, but under my mask of cooperation, I was petrified. At that time, the only monograph attributed to my name was A Journey to the Mountains of Vystrana, which was hardly a scholarly work; I had laid no claim to Concerning the Rock-Wyrms of Vystrana, being concealed in the small print line “and Others” that followed Jacob’s name. The few articles I had published regarding my research on sparklings had not gone to scholarly journals. Furthermore, I had been a confirmed recluse for going on three years. The prospect of attending a dinner party with a crowd of intelligent strangers made me so ill, I could hardly eat.

But if my spine weakened, I had only to think of the dragons who risked slaughter if the secret of dragonbone preservation became widely known, and my resolve returned to me on the spot.

The upper hall at the Yates blazed with candles that night, their light reflecting from polished wall sconces, crystal chandeliers and glasses, and the silver cutlery laid in precise ranks along the table. The men who filled the room were a mixed lot: northern Anthiopeans in their black-and-white suits, southern Anthiopeans in calf-length caftans, Yelangese in embroidered silk robes, Vidwathi with gems pinned to the fronts of their turbans.

It was not a proper dinner party, such as Mrs. Gatherty would approve of; the gentlemen outnumbered us ladies by more than three to one. But Lord Hilford had done an admirable job, given the short timeline, of organizing female guests, so that Natalie and I were not the only women present. The noted ornithologist Miriam Farnswood was there, as was the mathematician Rebecca Norman; the others, regrettably, would mean little to a modern audience, as their work has not survived history’s forgetting.

I pasted a smile on my face, took Lord Hilford’s arm, and sallied forth to see who flinched.

He introduced me, one by one, to the individuals we considered to be possible culprits. Nicanor de Androjas y Reón (the “ratty Marñeo fellow,” whose nose did give him an unfortunately rodentlike profile), Bhelu Guhathalakar, Cuong Giun Vanh, Foma Ivanovich Ozerin. Mr. Wilker was with us throughout. None of us expected our interlocutors to have broken into Kemble’s laboratory themselves—that was undoubtedly the work of some hired criminal—but surely the thief would, by now, have glanced through Kemble’s notes. Both Mr. Wilker and I were mentioned in abundance. The connection between that work and our names could not be missed.

Cuong dismissed me immediately as beneath his notice, directing all his conversation to Lord Hilford and Mr. Wilker. Ozerin gave me more attention than I wanted, but entirely of the wrong kind; I extracted myself from that situation as soon as possible. De Androjas y Reón did indeed flinch, but he flinched at everything. (I daresay that man was even less comfortable in such a crowd than I was.)

By far my best experience was with the Vidwathi chemist Guhathalakar, though not, at least initially, for any reason useful to our investigation. He was a younger man than the others, thirty at most, and of a type I have met countless times in my life, which I confess is one of my favourites: so powerfully interested in his subject that trivial considerations such as the sex of his conversational partner are quickly forgotten. I might have been an orang-outang, for all he cared; what mattered was that I showed an interest in chemistry, and could respond to his statements with intelligent questions (even if I did not understand the answers). It took no encouragement at all to get him expounding at length, his voice growing louder in his enthusiasm.

It took only slightly more encouragement to steer his exposition in the desired direction. “Dragonbone, yes,” he said, his Vidwathi accent thickening as his mind raced ahead of his Scirling. “I think it is on the anvil. With so many working on the problem, and the new equipments we have now, we will have answers soon.”

He showed no sign of secret knowledge, no coy hint that he knew more than he said. Even as I responded, I transferred my attention to the milling guests around us. Guhathalakar’s voice carried well enough that soon the entire room would know we were discussing the preservation of dragonbone. “It would be a tremendous breakthrough, if so. But I confess myself troubled as to the potential consequences, once the problem has been solved. My own interest being in natural history, I cannot be easy with anything that might encourage men to butcher dragons.”

An indulgent chuckle from my left heralded the arrival of Peter Gilmartin, marquess of Canlan and vice president of the Philosophers’ Colloquium. “But did your own party not butcher a dragon for study in Vystrana, Mrs. Camherst? Indeed, I believe the drawings of that carcass were your own work. Surely it would be beneficial if natural historians could keep dragon skeletons for study, rather than having to obtain a fresh specimen each time they have a new question.”

His words were sensible, but his patronizing tone ruffled my feathers the wrong way. Still, deference for his rank forced me to moderate the reply I wanted to make. “It is not natural historians who concern me, my lord, but others, who would likely not be satisfied with a handful of skeletons. Humanity is not known for its moderation.”

“And yet, think of the advances that might come from this discovery. Should we put the well-being of savage beasts above our own?”

I had an entire article’s worth of reply ready for that, but Lord Canlan gave me no chance to begin. He turned instead to Guhathalakar, leaning forward with a friendly and conspiratorial air. “I should like to talk with you tomorrow, when we are in more scholarly surroundings. Your work interests me a great deal, and I believe I may be in a position to help it along.”

Had a Vystrani rock-wyrm breathed on me in that moment, I would not have been more frozen. While Guhathalakar made his reply, my gaze was pinned to Lord Canlan, unblinking, as if by sheer intensity of stare I could prove or disprove the sudden suspicion in my mind.

The marquess was in no position to exploit Kemble’s research himself; his primary interest was in astronomy. But that did not mean he could not benefit in other ways. For example, by selling Kemble’s notes to the highest bidder.

Did I imagine it? Was the smile he directed at me before moving onward merely more patronizing courtesy, or did it send a private, gloating message that he had what I had lost, and intended to profit thereby?

He was a marquess, above even Lord Hilford’s elevated station. I could hardly accuse him where he stood—though shock nearly overrode my better judgment and sent the words flying out by reflex. And he had said nothing I could even begin to construe as evidence, let alone expect anyone else to accept.

I fulminated on this through dinner, for there was no opportunity to step aside with any of my own friends and give them my suspicions. Afterward, though, while Lord Hilford was bidding his guests farewell, I pulled Mr. Wilker into a corner and delivered the tale in a rush.

“It’s a thin reed,” he said when I was done, and frowned across the room at where Lord Canlan stood.

Although the words of his reply were scarcely encouraging, I took heart from them nevertheless. There was a time when Thomas Wilker would have scoffed at my fears and chalked them up to an overactive imagination. Now he gave them due thought—even if that thought did not lead him to agree.

“I don’t know how he would have learned about Kemble’s research,” I admitted. “But you have met him before—is he the sort of man who would flaunt his coup in front of me like that?”

Mr. Wilker’s grimace gave me my answer. “When it is the project of a woman and a man like me… then yes. He loves nothing more than to put his lessers in their place.”

An unpleasant personality hardly constituted proof, though. “Will you be at the dinner tomorrow night?” Mr. Wilker shook his head, mouth set in a hard line. Of course not: his sex might grant him entrance to the Colloquium’s premises, but the son of a Niddey quarryman would not be invited to their celebratory meal. “Lord Hilford will have to watch, then. Lord Canlan may be offering the notes for sale, or at least sounding out his prospective buyers. Given how chatty Guhathalakar is, it won’t be difficult to encourage him to say.”

A muscle tensed in Mr. Wilker’s jaw. “It doesn’t offer very good odds for stopping him, though. We can’t ask Lord Hilford to make a scene.”

“It’s the best we can do for now,” I said. And left unspoken the rest of my thought: that we might not have any chance to do better.

FOUR

I can only blame myself for the incident that occurred prior to my departure from Scirland.

The rush to depart left me with several dozen matters to take care of, ranging from soothing family to receiving Lord Hilford’s report on the final dinner of the symposium. (He did indeed question Guhathalakar, but to no avail; Lord Canlan had ignored the man all night, much to Guhathalakar’s disappointment.) One matter in particular had me more distracted than most.

On the afternoon before my departure, Mrs. Hunstin, the nanny, brought my son downstairs to await his uncle and his aunt, who would be caring for him in my absence. Jacob was dressed in a toddler’s tunic, but his hair, a sandy shade that had not yet darkened to his father’s rich brown, was presently bare of the cap clutched in his free hand. The other was clinging tightly to the nanny’s thumb, his eyes fixed on the staircase, which he descended one careful step at a time.

My mother had accused me of heartlessness, abandoning him to go gallivanting (her word) off to foreign parts. Her accusation was only the first of many, as that judgment eventually spread not only to others in our social circle, but to complete strangers and even the news-sheets. There is no reason anyone should believe me, justifying my behaviour at so late a date, but since I cannot move on without addressing this subject, let me say: a pang went through my heart at the sight of my son.

I had not been close to him during his rearing; he was not a fixture of my life the way children are for more involved mothers. I found more satisfaction in scholarly work than in the day-to-day tasks of feeding, cleaning, and comforting him. In hindsight, a part of me does regret missing such events—but even then, my regret is an intellectual one. The development of children from soft, formless infants into adults is a complex process, and one I have come to appreciate on account of my dragon studies. (If you read that comparison as demeaning, please understand that, for me, it is not. We, too, are animals: the most wondrous and fascinating animals of all.)

Despite that distance, however, I was not without feelings for my child. Indeed, I imposed that distance in part because of my feelings. Jacob’s serious expression, focused on the challenge of navigating the stairs, reminded me profoundly of his namesake. As people had told me, again and again, he was in some sense a piece of my husband, something left behind by Jacob the elder. I was not always prepared to deal with the reminder of that connection. And so a part of me chose instead to flee.

But it does a disservice to my own life to claim the Erigan expedition was motivated by fear. It is equally true, if not more so, to say that I was running toward something, as well as away. Jacob and I had shared a love of dragons, and if leaving his child behind was a betrayal of his memory (as so many people assured me it was), staying home would have been a betrayal as well. We had agreed, on a mountaintop in Vystrana, that caging me in the life expected of a Scirling gentlewoman would be the death of me: spiritually, if not physically. I had been caged for three years, caught in a trap of my grief and obligations as well as society’s expectation, and the work I did on paper granted me only partial freedom. Enough to make me long for more, but not enough to satisfy.

And yet I was leaving behind a child. An innocent toddler, bereft even before his birth of one parent; now I proposed to subject myself to any number of potential calamities that might rob him of the second.

I cannot say whether, given the chance to revisit that choice, I would change my mind. I know now, to a very precise measurement, how great the dangers would be, and how narrowly I escaped them. But I also know that I survived. Little Jacob was not left orphaned, as so many had direly predicted.

Did I have the right to undertake such risk? I can only give the same answer I gave then: that I have, and had, as much right as any widower in the same situation. Few question the widower’s decision, but everyone questions the widow’s.

On that day, I buried all such thoughts beneath the press of business. (Almost all of them. The aforementioned pang was real, nor was it alone.) When little Jacob had finished his conquest of the stairs, I knelt on the cool stone of our front hall, putting myself closer to his eye level, and held out my hands. He came to them, hesitantly, after a nudge from Mrs. Hunstin.

“You must be very good,” I told him, trying and failing to affect the tone I had heard others use with toddlers. “Nanny H will be coming with you, so you must mind her as you always do, even if you are in a different house. I shall write to you often, and she will read you my letters; she will write to me of how you are doing. And I shall be home before you know it.”

He nodded obediently, but I doubt he grasped the import of my words. That I should go away for a few days was a thing he had experienced many times; that I should go away for months or a year was beyond his comprehension.

I heard the crunch of gravel before the ringing of the bell. My brother-in-law Matthew had arrived, and his wife, Elizabeth, with him. They came into the hall, and I gently shooed Jacob toward Bess, with Mrs. Hunstin close behind.

Matthew sighed, looking at Jacob, and shook his head. “I know it’s too late to talk you out of this. But still—”

“You’re right,” I said, before he could finish that thought. “It is too late. I am profoundly grateful for your assistance, Matthew; never doubt that. But I am going to Eriga.”

His jaw shifted, briefly giving his face the air of a bulldog facing an unwelcome target. “I never would have predicted that Jacob would marry so obstinate a woman.”

I wanted to say, then you did not know him very well. But in truth, I’m not certain Jacob himself would have predicted our match, in the years before we met. Antagonizing Matthew would accomplish very little, and so instead I said nothing; I merely kissed my son on the head, admonished him once more to be good, and waved them off down the drive.

Their carriage, departing, passed another on its way in. The coat of arms painted on the door was familiar; it was the white stag’s head on a blue field of Hilford. The carriage, however, was not the earl’s. I stood in the entrance, frowning, and so had no chance to hide when the door flung open (almost before the carriage had stopped) and emitted the angry form of Lewis Oscott, the Baron of Denbow—and the earl of Hilford’s eldest son.

“Where is she?” he demanded, striding across the gravel to confront me. “Bring her out here at once.”

“She?” I repeated dumbly, for my tongue had not yet caught up with my brain.

“Natalie!” His bellow made my ears ring. “I have tolerated her association with you; until now it did little harm. But this is beyond the pale. You will give her up this instant.”

My brain had only got as far as knowing who “she” was. Why else would Natalie’s father be here, if not because of his daughter? But the rest still escaped me. I had not seen Natalie in several days—a fact which, in retrospect, should have concerned me. We left for Eriga on the morrow, after all. I had been too distracted to think of it, though, assuming (when I considered it at all) that she must be with her grandfather.

A foolish assumption, and one that was now having some very unfortunate consequences.

“My lord,” I said, collecting my thoughts, “I cannot give you what I do not have. Natalie is not here.”

“Don’t lie to me. Where else would she be, if not here?”

The accusation set my back up. “With her grandfather, perhaps? I take it she spoke to you about her intentions.”

He snorted in disgust. “Intentions. It is madness, and you know it. A position as a companion is all well and good for women who cannot do better, but Natalie has perfectly good prospects, so long as she is here to take advantage of them. And you will not want her with you forever. When you tire of her—or get yourself killed, which is entirely possible—what will become of her? No, Mrs. Camherst, I will not allow you to ruin my daughter’s future for your own benefit.” Setting his shoulders, he strode forward.

I slapped my hand against the doorjamb, barring his way with my arm. “Your pardon, Lord Denbow,” I said, with icy politeness. “I do not recall inviting you in.”

This sudden and brazen resistance startled him, but he did not let it slow his tongue. “I am here to collect my daughter, Mrs. Camherst, with your permission or without it.”

“If she were here, I would be glad to broker some kind of negotiation between the two of you. As she is not, you will have to seek her elsewhere. I will not suffer you to rampage through my house regardless.”

He was not so far gone as to try and shove me aside, though he very easily could have done so. His fury thwarted for the nonce, he resorted to persuasion. “Mrs. Camherst, please, see reason. You are determined to put yourself in danger, regardless of the consequence to your family; very well. I have no authority to command you to better sense. But I can protect my daughter, and I will.”

“Lord Denbow,” I said, moderating my own tone to suit his. “I have told you, she is not here. I have not seen Natalie in days. Should I see her before I leave, I will tell her you came, and advise her of your concerns. That is all I can promise.”

He deflated visibly, like the punctured bag of a caeliger. “I am sure she is coming here. Please, might I—”

“I will tell her you came,” I said firmly. Had he not attempted to thrust his way into my house, I might have been more tolerant; as it was, I wanted him gone. “If I see her.”

With that, he had to be content. By then the footman was hovering behind my shoulder, looking distressed at the prospect of having to forcibly evict a baron from the premises, but determined to do so if necessary. (Clomers was a very good footman, the best I ever had.) Half-fuming, half-dejected, Lord Denbow returned to his carriage, and so away.

Once he was well down the drive, I deflated a bit myself. “If he comes back, do not let him in,” I said wearily to Clomers; and, having received his stout agreement, I went upstairs to my study.

Natalie was sitting in front of my desk.

I very nearly swallowed my own tongue at the sight of her. While one part of my brain sorted out the contradictory impulses of gasping, shrieking, and demanding an explanation of her, the rest noted certain details: the open window on the side wall, overlooking a fine (and easily climbed) oak tree; the fierce and frightened look in Natalie’s eyes; the small valise on the floor at her feet.

“He locked me up,” she said, sounding almost as if she could not believe it. “We argued for days, and when I told him I was going whatever he said, he locked me up. Him and Mama. I am sorry to have made you a liar.”

“She only lies who tells a falsehood knowingly,” I said, as if such distinctions were at all the most relevant thing at hand.

Natalie drew in a breath, and the unsteadiness of it advertised her distress. “I fear I have made a great deal of trouble for you. I came here intending to go with you tomorrow—but if I do, Papa will be infuriated.”

If she did not, then she would have little choice but to return to her family. And while they might have what they perceived as her best interests at heart, the disjunct there was severe enough to send Natalie up my tree and through my window, and who knows what else before that. Her actions, more than any words, told me that return was simply not to be borne.

Her grandfather might protect her against the worst of it—but a better protection would be to go beyond her family’s reach. “Your father will have to be infuriated in Scirland,” I said, the dryness of my tone covering for any temporary quailing of spirit. “He doesn’t have a visa for Nsebu, and isn’t likely to get one anytime soon.”

Hope kindled new life in her posture. “Do you mean—”

“The ship leaves tomorrow,” I said. “We must think of how to get you on it.”

We smuggled her on board by way of the workers’ gangway, where her father would never think to look. With Natalie dressed in the clothes of a laborer (yes, trousers and all) and a sack of potatoes on her shoulder, Lord Denbow never had the slightest chance of spotting her.

He was there, of course, and made a great protest, insisting to the gathered members of my family (Paul and Judith; my mother and father; my favourite brother, Andrew; Matthew and Sir Joseph, who was my father-in-law) that I had kidnapped Natalie.

“I have not kidnapped her, my lord,” I said, covering my nervousness with irritation. In his distress, he had not yet thought to ask me outright whether I had seen his daughter. If he did, I would have to make up my mind whether to lie, and a sleepless night of pondering that very question had failed to supply me with an answer.

I had kept my word, if only halfheartedly, talking with Natalie of his concerns. The conversation had failed to divert either of us from our course. My one source of apprehension was that I had no opportunity to speak privately with certain individuals, namely, Mr. Wilker and Lord Hilford. The former would be coming with me on this expedition, and the ear not occupied by Lord Denbow’s furious expostulations was being filled with my mother’s insistence that in addition to it being madness for me to go abroad, it was even more mad to do so without any kind of female companion. Marriage had provided me with a mystical shield against impropriety, one not entirely lost with widowhood, but she still feared rumour. (In fairness to her, I must say she was right to do so. But I get ahead of myself.)

Lord Hilford, I thought, had guessed something of what was going on, though whether he knew I was actively helping Natalie, I could not say. I did, however, see him draw Mr. Wilker aside upon his arrival, and whatever he said turned Mr. Wilker’s face to stone. That done, Lord Hilford set himself to diverting his son as best he could. They went together to examine my cabin, to satisfy Lord Denbow that Natalie was not there; I hoped she had found a good place to conceal herself until we were well away from shore.

Andrew, to my pleasure and relief, set himself the same task with our mother, and accompanied me on board when the time came, as he had done when I departed for Vystrana. “So, where are you hiding her?” he asked as we crossed the deck.

A heavy step brought my head around. Mr. Wilker had joined us, pacing to my right, leaving me feeling trapped between them. But Andrew was grinning as if it were all a tremendous lark, and the grim set of Mr. Wilker’s jaw told me he would not be surprised by anything I might say.

“She is hiding herself,” I said. “I honestly don’t know where. This was her decision, you know, though I support her in it.”

“Miss Oscott is even less sane than you are,” Mr. Wilker said.

“Then she’s in good company,” I said lightly. That would not be the end of it, I knew; but Mr. Wilker would not go against Lord Hilford’s clear wish, that his granddaughter be permitted her escape. He was too loyal to the earl, and owed him far too much. What arguments we would have—and oh, did we have them—would come later.

Our ship was the Progress, the famed steamship that for many years formed the primary link in the Scirling-Erigan trade. Built from Erigan steel and fueled with Scirling coal, it was a symbol of the partnership inaugurated by the Nsebu colony—at least, it was seen as a partnership on our side of the ocean, though the truth was less balanced than that word implies. The bulk of its capacity was given over to cargo, some of which would be scattered through various ports like seeds as we made our journey, the rest traded in Nsebu before the holds were filled once more with iron, gold, ivory, and more. But the Progress was the jewel of that sea route, and so it also had passenger cabins, well equipped for the comfort of the dignitaries who occupied them. The three of us were hardly dignitaries, but Lord Hilford qualified, and had arranged for us to travel in style.

We met him emerging from my cabin with Lord Denbow behind him. Or rather, Lord Hilford emerged; his son charged, backing me against a wall. “Enough of this, Mrs. Camherst! You will tell me where my daughter is, or—”

My brother was already stepping to defend me. I was very glad that Lord Hilford intervened, before I had to discover what Andrew would do. “Lewis! Control yourself. Or do you want the crew to drag you bodily off this ship? You are making a scene.”

All hail that bane of the upper class, a scene. The spectre of being publicly shamed was enough to check Lord Denbow. It was not enough to calm him, but with his momentum broken, the baron knew he could not prevent the ship from departing. And if he attempted to detain me, he would face any number of consequences. He could not decide what to do before his father took him firmly by the arm and dragged him away, not quite by force.

Still, he indulged in one final accusation, shot over his shoulder. “You will ruin her life.”

“I have not ruined my own, Lord Denbow,” I called after him. “Trust your daughter to find her own way.”

Natalie emerged when we were out of Sennsmouth harbor, and once she was properly attired, I called Mr. Wilker in.

He shook his head at the sight of her. “I would ask whether you have any notion what you’ve just done. But you’re the earl’s granddaughter, and I know you’ve inherited at least a portion of his intelligence. So I will only ask you, in God’s name, why.”

“Because I had to,” Natalie said.

I understood her meaning, but Mr. Wilker clearly did not. Yet we required some degree of comity, or this expedition would be doomed before we arrived in Nsebu. “Mr. Wilker. I am sure you endured hardships of your own, gaining your education, forcing those of higher station to accept you as their intellectual peer. Why did you do it?”

“This will rebound on her family,” he said, ignoring my question.

“And were there no consequences for your own family, when you left Niddey for university?”

It was a guess, but not a blind one; I knew Mr. Wilker was the eldest son of his line. His indrawn breath told me I had struck my mark. Belatedly—as usual for me, I regret to say—I wondered whether his sensitivity on this matter was because of his own experience, rather than in spite of it.

“When you came to Vystrana, it was different,” he said, as if appealing to me for reason. “You came with Jacob, and with his blessing.”

“Are a woman’s wishes only fit to be considered when blessed by a male relative?” I asked sharply. “If so, then take Lord Hilford’s for Natalie, and let us be done with it.”

He flushed, and left soon after. It was not the last time we argued the matter, but my words had lodged under his skin like a barb, and their effect became apparent in due course.