BALFOUR

Once, in the middle of the war, I’d seen Cassiopeia set light to a store of powder. Everything had happened as if in slow motion—the yellow flames arcing through the night, one moment of perfect silence suspended in the air before Ivory’s target caught flame. It’d sent explosions ripping fiercely through the battlefield, nearly knocking me off Anastasia, since I’d been closer to the ground doing my usual reconnaissance.

The effect Margrave Royston’s announcement had on the room was quite similar to that experience. Everything went still and cold. Then, abruptly, the room exploded.

I was very nearly knocked off my perch again, though this time by the young lady Laure, who’d surged to her feet and strode right over to Margrave Royston as though she thought he’d been the one to do the arresting personally.

“What d’you mean, ‘arrested’?” she demanded.

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Margrave Royston replied—without any of the witticisms for which he was so notorious among the diplomatic circles.

“What for?” Laure persisted. I couldn’t blame her for leaping into action at once, after all. She hadn’t been trained to deal with this kind of situation—she was a student, and not an airman, retired though we were. It was always nice to have someone so forceful among our numbers, unafraid of asking the difficult questions. Before, we’d been gifted with rather a surplus of forceful personalities, so that neither Luvander nor I was used to speaking up. Usually that someone was Adamo; but obviously, under these circumstances, someone else needed to step up and take his place.

“That is a very good question,” Royston said, “one which I find I cannot answer officially. I have my suspicions, though, if you’ll hear them.”

Laure didn’t seem impressed by the diplomatic answer. I folded my hands to keep them steady while privately wondering whether the young woman had ever been told it was bad luck to behead the messenger. “What kind of city is this, anyhow, where you can go around arresting people like that—just willy-nilly?” Laure demanded. “And what sort of friend are you that you didn’t stop ’em?”

It was a great deal to absorb all at once. The girl’s companion—young Toverre, who’d been clinging to a napkin through the entire thing as though it were a life raft—practically leapt up from his seat to try to calm her, elbows and knees everywhere, while I myself glanced to Luvander to see what he made of this mess. While my responsibility toward him was considerably different from that of a fiancé, I’d spent quite enough time hiding in the bastion, away from old friends. Now, more than ever, it was important to show solidarity—especially if what Royston said was true.

He was sitting very still, hair falling tousled over his knitted brow, and he hadn’t even reacted to the revelation of Adamo’s first name, which I myself hadn’t been aware of until just then.

Surely I must have known it at one point—perhaps when I’d first joined the corps, during a whirlwind of preparations and paperwork—but that was feeling as distant a memory as my early childhood. Adamo had always been Adamo to us, just as we’d known each other by single names. It evened us out when we entered the Airman, where no one was a country lord or a petty thief. We were all just Dragon Corps.

“Young woman, please restrain yourself before you do both of us physical harm,” Margrave Royston said. He looked troubled, and I couldn’t exactly blame him. Adamo was untouchable, or so I’d always thought; I couldn’t imagine him allowing this, nor could anyone else in the room, it seemed. Even the war had never managed to faze him. We were all shaken. “Trust me when I assure you—I attempted to do the very thing you have suggested, and I was informed that this was no happenstance arrest but rather was being carried out on the orders of the Esar himself. I don’t know how much comprehension you have of Thremedon’s particular politics, but a magician trying to argue against the Esar has almost no chance at all of overturning his ruling. In fact, if he became aware that I was making a fuss over things, he might just make things worse for Owen in order to make a point. He likes magicians very little, but he likes me even less. The quieter I was, the less messy things would become.”

“That’s horrible!” Laure said. Her face was turning red the same way Merritt’s always did when he inevitably discovered the latest indignity to be visited upon his poor boots.

Toverre was standing beside her, attempting to calm her down, though he seemed reluctant to actually touch her, thereby risking the full force of her wrath turning in his direction. A wise move, I thought, and I was shamefully grateful that Luvander had no such temper to speak of.

“Did they tell you what the charges were?” Luvander asked at last.

“Treason,” Margrave Royston said with a blank expression that stirred something dangerously close to fear in the deepest part of me. There was no chance he’d misspoken; I wouldn’t lie to myself and hope for something like that. “Conspiring in private with secret information to use against the Esar, more specifically. I came here to warn the rest of you—I half assumed the shop would be crawling with Wolves when I arrived—but perhaps we’re still ahead of the pack, so to speak.”

“They wouldn’t come here,” Toverre said, glancing over his shoulder in sudden suspicion, as though he was having second thoughts about having come to the shop.

Perhaps that was the smart reaction to take, but I couldn’t have moved even if I wanted to. I felt rooted in place, a curious mixture of guilt and horror doing battle in my stomach. Of all the people I knew, Adamo could take care of himself the best—that was never in question. There had always been the possibility during the war that one or more of us might be taken captive at any time; we’d always been prepared for it. Indeed, after our last flight over the Ke-Han capital, some of us had been held in their prisons. It was merely that no one had ever imagined those doing the arresting might be on our side of the Cobalt Mountains, rather than the Ke-Han. Despite that, our course of action was clear: If Adamo was in trouble for something that involved all of us, then it was up to all of us to get him out of it.

It also implicated everyone in the room, including the two young students. What a warm reception they were having in the city.

I hadn’t even been given chance enough to ask Laure everything I’d wanted to. Given the gravity of Margrave Royston’s news, it seemed unlikely we’d be able to focus on anything other than Adamo’s plight—hardly what Adamo had planned for us, I realized. Even in prison, he’d be trying to protect us all, keeping our names out of it.

Perhaps I’d been trained too well by him—I should’ve been furious, but I found myself coming down closer on the side of admiring.

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” Laure asked, suddenly hushed. “I went to him, told him all those things about that Germaine woman. I knew not going was gonna get me in trouble. But it got him in trouble instead.”

Margrave Royston blinked. He looked completely awful—the way Thom had, sometimes, when the rest of us had been out on a raid and he’d been alone in the Airman, waiting up all night for news. He must have been with Adamo when it happened. Either that, or he’d had exceptionally fortuitous timing to enter the scene at the very last second.

“Are you referring to Margrave Germaine?” he asked Laure.

“Who else?” Laure said, throwing her hands up in the air. “She started all this, mark my words. Ain’t nothing good that’s ever come of her that I’m seeing.”

Luvander sighed, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. Without its usual lively animation, his face simply looked tired and much older than I remembered. I wondered if I shouldn’t be the one bringing him lunch every now and then, if only to keep things even between us. Just because I’d suffered the most obvious injury didn’t mean the others hadn’t. His throat had been stitched up with a needle and thread. And, as he said, he wasn’t the sort of man to be taken down by a “wee infection,” but he worked hard at his shop, from sunup to well past sunset. Not to mention all the energy he used up with his complicated monologues. It was a wonder he didn’t eat like a horse, just to keep up his strength.

“That may well be the connection, now that you mention it,” Margrave Royston said, smoothing the hair at his temple as though he needed something to do with his hands. I recognized that impulse; only a moment ago I’d been wishing for my gloves to toy with. “I am not saying it’s your fault, so please cease looking as though you’ve not made up your mind whether to strike me or not. All I mean to say is that if Owen had been meeting with his fellows previously, at no great detriment to his personal freedoms, then perhaps it was his sudden interest in Margrave Germaine’s business—which is the Esar’s business—that suddenly landed him in trouble. If it was his investigation into what Margrave Germaine has been doing and not your little meetings of the minds, then … I do detest speculation, but it would explain why Dmitri hasn’t turned his sights on this shop yet, and we are all safe and sound while he is not.”

“Isn’t that a comfort,” Luvander said, standing up at once. “Well, dear friends, as they say when mired in the filthy muck that passes for water down by the Mollydocks: We’re all in deep shit now.”

“Still, better off than Adamo,” Laure muttered, looking quite content to start a fight with anyone who disagreed.

No one dared. We veterans could smell a battle coming and knew how to avoid it altogether.

“I looked into Germaine’s business, myself,” Royston said thoughtfully. “But I suppose the gossiping of the Basquiat doesn’t concern him as much at present. It’s more what Adamo represents, I believe. There isn’t any statue of me in the middle of the most popular street in Thremedon.”

“Do you think we might at least be able to see him?” I asked; someone had to be the man to get his hopes up, after all. “Perhaps the Esar—he must see reason. We’ve done nothing wrong. As far as any rational man is concerned, we’ve done nothing at all.”

We’d all agreed to let the Esar act first for this very reason. I didn’t think anyone had ever dreamed this would be the first action he’d take—especially when the most Adamo could be accused of was forcing me to eat breakfast when I wasn’t hungry. Some mornings it seemed like a crime, but it was hardly an arresting offense.

“You’re assuming this is a man with whom one can reason at all, by this point,” Margrave Royston said, still looking grim. “After the war—not to mention what happened to our diplomats in Xi’an—his state of mind has been increasingly … fragile. No; that isn’t the word. Suspicious. Antoinette can barely get him to agree to see her these days, and all because she practically runs the Basquiat. He doesn’t want her to know his thoughts; I doubt he wants anyone to know them. He doesn’t trust anyone anymore, and like it or not, Owen cuts a rather threatening figure.”

“That he does,” Luvander agreed, tugging at his scarf. “What’s more, he’s our threatening figure. Surely you don’t mean to suggest we do nothing at all? As much gossip as we’ve heard about you, I’m sure one or two stories about the Dragon Corps and its complete lack of common sense must’ve reached your ears in return. That’s not exactly how we play it, diminished numbers or no.”

“When did I insinuate that? Such a course of action is hardly what I’m counseling,” Margrave Royston said. If the reminder of his past stung, he didn’t mention it. Thremedon rarely forgot its scandals, but at least it did stop caring about them after a while. “All I meant was that we have to be cautious, for Owen’s sake. And to remind impetuous youth that, according to law as it stands, the Esar does not technically need a reason to arrest anyone. People tend to forget that. He is the Esar, and if he wished, he could arrest anyone wearing blue on a Saturday. The people wouldn’t like it, and he’d never be so careless with their support, but it is possible.”

“Someone oughta change that law,” Laure said.

“It’s in place from the war,” I found myself explaining. When I’d been learning all the rules and provisions that comprised Volstov’s system of government, in order to be ready to take my place with the other diplomats, I’d found most of the memorization boring, but at least the knowledge had stuck. And now, here it was, proving useful in a most unexpected way. “I … suppose that, what with one thing and another, and the continued threats from the Ke-Han, they never got around to rewriting it.”

“Rather convenient for the Esar,” Toverre murmured, deep in thought.

“And inconvenient for us,” Royston agreed. The two seemed similar in some way though I couldn’t put a metal finger on it.

I felt indignant all of a sudden, for Adamo most of all, but also for my friends, and lastly for myself. We’d spent so many years fighting against an external threat—fighting for Volstov, our home, in the face of a deadly horde—that it had never even occurred to me Thremedon might one day turn around and betray us, like a favored pet suddenly turned rabid.

Once again, I had to think that Ghislain and Rook had been the smartest, realizing the climate in Thremedon didn’t welcome living heroes and getting out while they still could.

“Hm,” I said, as something further occurred to me.

“What is it?” Luvander asked.

“Before I realized what any of this meant, I’d been planning on sending a letter to Thom about all this,” I explained as quickly as I could, leaving out that it was something of a custom between Thom and me to write each other whenever things got rough. We told each other about the most awkward, embarrassing things that we’d recently undergone, and—through the exchange—they no longer seemed so terrible to either of us. “I was writing a letter to him about all of this, just to get it off my mind. About how I’d run out of the bastion, humiliating myself in front of everyone, and how I had been hearing things—those voices. I’d written about everything, really. I never sent it, but if we are coming under suspicion, it seems like it might be a good idea not to leave it lying around.”

“You’re not thinking of leaving now?” Luvander asked, looking aghast. He glanced about the room, then cleared his throat. For a moment, it seemed as though he’d forgotten he was speaking in front of an audience—and that it was up to us to represent Adamo’s training to the best of our abilities. “In fact, allow me to rephrase that: As the senior member of the Dragon Corps in this room, I forbid any of you to leave this haberdashery until otherwise notified of your freedom. Do you follow?” To me, he added, “How was that? Did it sound very Adamoesque?”

No matter how grave the danger, at least he was still capable of making himself laugh. By now, I knew better than to give him any such encouragement.

“Do those orders apply to all of us?” Laure asked. Her face was slowly losing its angry red coloring, and she seemed somewhat more composed than she had been before. It reminded me of a calm day in the countryside, just before a downpour. “Or only them that actually signed up for the corps in the first place?”

“All of you, I should think,” Luvander said with a sniff. “Excepting, of course, the illustrious Margrave Royston, who will no doubt very soon regret having come to inform us of our situation when he is implicated in our nefarious dealings. How many exiles will this next one mark, Margrave Royston?”

“At least you didn’t call me Mary Margrave,” Royston said, rubbing at the back of his neck the way Adamo did when he felt uncomfortable, with a toothy smile that was so far from any of Adamo’s habits I had to wonder why they were friends at all. Adamo had never explained the matter to us, and it seemed rude to pry. “So I suppose we’re getting friendly, aren’t we? Since you are so clearly about to ask a favor of me.”

“For Adamo’s sake,” I said, ever the diplomat these days. “The letter is the stupidest thing I could have written. It implicates all of us, and if for some reason they should search my apartment …”

“If I am exiled for my pains,” Royston said, “and not imprisoned, or worse, I sincerely hope the rest of you are there to suffer along with me.”

“Think of it like a vacation in the countryside,” Luvander suggested.

Margrave Royston cringed. “Please, do not mention that,” he said, voice pained. “Just give me the address and I’ll be off on this madcap errand.”

I did as he asked, writing the address down on the back of a caterer’s business note card he had with him. He left immediately after that, and only the four of us remained in Luvander’s kitchen.

“Don’t worry too much,” I told Laure, as Luvander took off his apron and moved in the direction of his shop. “Where are you going?”

“To open the store, of course,” Luvander replied, “so that no one thinks anything is amiss. If you want, you can go upstairs. There’s a game Ghislain sent with very dirty illustrated cards, which I’m sure will make the conversation among the three of you quite interesting.”

“Well,” Toverre said, after Luvander had breezed out of the room.

“He’s used to another kind of people,” I explained. “Like he said before—we really are lucky Rook isn’t here. However uncomfortable you feel now, that would make things a thousand times worse.”

“So now we just wait, is that the idea?” Laure asked darkly. I could tell by her expression that was her idea of a terrible plan, and while I knew it was our only one, that didn’t mean I had to like it, either. Every mission needed a bit of reconnaissance, but since I was usually the man conducting it, I felt all wrong just sitting there.

“I suppose we do,” I confirmed.

No one suggested we look into whatever lewd card game Luvander had mentioned. The mean-looking clock that made such awful sounds on the hour chimed unexpectedly, making us all jump again, but other than that, no one spoke. Toverre poured himself another cup of tea, then began to polish the handle of the teapot with his napkin; soon, he moved on to one of the saucers, and he was eyeing my stained gloves with a distressed expression. Finally, before his eyes popped out of his head completely, I forced myself to be the first to say something.

“Are you all right?” I asked, managing not to comment on how the others would’ve torn him apart if this had been the Airman.

“They’re going to stain if you don’t soak them,” Toverre said all at once. He’d been holding it in for a long time, it seemed. “I know a few tricks. Would you mind terribly if I tried to clean them?”

“I don’t see why not,” I said. “You couldn’t possibly make them any worse.”

“Oh, but I could,” Toverre told me, sweeping them off the table and heading to the sink. “Not that I will, mind you, but it is possible.”

“Can’t believe you’re thinking of a stain at a time like this,” Laure muttered.

“What better time to think of a stain?” Toverre asked. He began to pump the water into the basin, and Laure rolled her eyes but chose not to argue with him.

Over the duration of time that followed, I discovered something that might have been perfectly obvious to the others all along: I was complete shit at waiting.

I’d checked the clock at least fifty—probably closer to a hundred—times when the door connecting the shop and the back room finally opened. The sound of Luvander chatting with a group of customers filtered in, then was cut off abruptly when Royston entered, shutting the door behind him.

He held a white box in one hand, wrapped with one of Luvander’s garish ribbons, and he looked extremely put out.

“The sly dog made me buy a hat,” he explained, dropping the box onto the table and loosening his scarf. “There was a group of customers, and I know why he was doing it, but the damn thing cost thirty chevronets and I don’t even have a ‘lady friend’!”

I wondered if I could have guessed, when we were first introduced, that Luvander would make such a shrewd businessman.

“Never mind my considerably lighter wallet,” Royston continued, fishing some papers from his pocket. “I did as you instructed, and I tried not to read your personal correspondence—though if I had, it would be all you deserved for leaving incriminating documents lying around. Apparently there’d been another visitor for you not half an hour earlier. But,” Royston added, looking like a satisfied cat, “he wasn’t as persuasive with your landlady as I was. She didn’t let him in, despite the fact that he threatened to come back with some of the Esar’s men. I suppose we’re lucky I got there before they did.”

“Thank you for retrieving them,” I said, somehow not as relieved as I could have been. I didn’t like the idea of anyone’s returning to my room with the Esar’s men. Especially since, if Royston hadn’t brought me those letters, I might well have been the next ex-airman arrested.

That, at the very least, would have made for an interesting letter to Thom.

“Something else you want to say?” Laure asked, even though Toverre tried to hush her seconds later. “I don’t mean it like an insult. You’ve just got a look like you’re not quite telling us everything. One of my cousins used to get it when he was sick—that was how you knew to clear the room before he spewed.”

“Delightful,” Royston said, though he did look a little as though he was going to be ill.

I wished Luvander was with us, so that he might conduct the conversation better than I was currently handling it. But I wouldn’t get very far on simple hopes, or so the proverb about wishing in one hand and shitting in the other went. It was actually a phrase Rook had told me—see which hand fills up first, he’d said—and, like all things Rook had passed on, it had stuck, in its own way.

“There is more,” Royston said, after he’d taken a moment to catch his breath. “It’s part of the reason for my delay, actually, and I do ask your forgiveness. It seems you’ve all been very patient in my absence. It’s merely that the route to your apartment took me directly past the Basquiat, and there was a dreadful commotion out front. Wolves, carriages parked all around, and Margraves shouting in the streets. Lady Antoinette was there—it was she who caught my attention, though I’m not certain if she meant to. When a velikaia is in great distress, she is able to project her thoughts without intending to, and anyone with a Talent will pick up on it. Her voice—her Talent—is particularly distinctive. It has a signature, if you will.”

“This a story or a history lesson?” Laure interjected.

“Laure,” Toverre hissed, looking scandalized.

“No, she’s quite right; I talk too much when under stress,” Royston said, taking a moment to collect himself. “I have a habit of getting caught up in my own words; feeble as far as excuses go, but if you’ll forgive me once more—it’s been an extremely trying day. Shall I get straight to the point?”

“That’d be nice,” Laure said. She’d taken the reins of the conversation in exactly the same way Adamo would’ve done, if he’d been there with us. “Who’s Lady Antoinette?”

“Are you serious?” Royston asked.

“She’s one of the Esar’s closest confidantes in the Basquiat,” I explained, to make the potentially long story short. “Until very recently, their friendship was what allowed him to work closely with the magicians at all.”

“And yet since the end of the war, we’ve been on thinner and thinner ice,” Royston concluded grimly. “What I managed to glean from Antoinette, once I’d calmed her down enough that I could be assured she wasn’t going to injure any of the guards in the middle of the street, was that our Owen wasn’t the only man arrested today.”

Abruptly, I felt my heart begin to pound in my chest. Whatever was happening in Thremedon was a threat I’d never been trained to combat. I’d been raised among the country nobility, and though there had certainly been intrigue and politics enough there, the consequences had never been so dire. You’d lose an extra guest at dinner parties—and that was the extent of your punishment for a bit of gossip that reached the wrong ears. I felt as though I’d been dropped into a game where I knew only half the rules and understood none of the consequences of losing.

In the corps, it had always been my duty to scout ahead, so that I could recommend the best angle for my comrades to attack. For the first time in a long time, one of my friends was in hot water, and I hadn’t the faintest idea about how to approach it. I hadn’t even been able to warn him a storm was coming.

“They were arresting Margraves?” I asked finally.

“Two Margraves and a Wildgrave,” Royston confirmed. “Normally I’d make a joke about Margrave Holt being taken in for his unconventional style of dog-breeding, but this hardly seems the time and place. Josette—Margrave Josette; you’d know her as one of the diplomats who got caught up in that mess in Xi’an—told me the Esar’s men have been questioning Lord Temur all morning. They haven’t arrested him yet, but I suppose the Esar remembered he was Ke-Han and decided to take some kind of offense at it. I honestly can’t tell you what’s happening, but I can tell you what Antoinette intimated. It’s as though he’s well and truly lost his mind to paranoia.”

“All those people arrested, and us just sitting here,” Laure said, shaking her head. Despite the stern quality of her voice, I could tell from her body language that she was frightened. It didn’t seem fair for her or young Toverre to be caught up in all this when they were barely more than children. I was sorry for them and for myself, but I was sorriest for Adamo, separated from the rest of us, without the consolation of company and no doubt spitting mad about it.

“If you’d like to charge out into the street and get arrested yourself just for acting mad, you’re more than welcome to do so,” Royston said sharply. Then he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. That tone was uncalled-for. You merely reminded me … Stubborn heroics tend to bring out the worst in me.”

“I don’t suppose you have any suggestions of something we can do?” I asked. It wasn’t an entirely unrelated question, since, from what I’d heard, Margrave Royston was considerably more well versed in dealing with the political dangers of being disliked by the Esar.

Then again, the airmen had been in such trouble before. Only then, we’d had the power of the dragons behind us.

“I do, but I’m not particularly fond of any of them,” Royston said, running a hand through his hair. He lowered his voice to barely more than a whisper—reminding me all at once that we were in the back of a busy shop, through which all kinds of people passed. Luvander was probably doing his best keeping them away from the door, but with a topic like this one, one could never be too careful. I only hoped some useful gossip was being imparted by his customers. “If it comes to it, I might have to ask you to use your position to make a plea with the Arlemagne diplomats, Balfour. I’m sure they’d be only too glad to help us oust our own Esar, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Now that is most certainly treason,” Toverre said, looking quite white around the eyes. He’d been silent the whole time, and I realized he’d taken all the silverware out of Luvander’s drawers to polish each piece individually with a napkin. “I may be from the country, but I’m not a total fool.”

“It would be a last resort,” I reasoned, in part to soothe myself as much as Toverre. Nothing could be so dire that it would come to that— at least, I had to pray it couldn’t. “No one’s going to turn to the Arlemagne to solve our problems just yet. Especially not when we aren’t sure what our problems are.”

“I’m pretty sure,” Laure said.

“I believe he meant what official reason will be given,” Royston explained.

“Actually, what I’m really wondering is: Why now?” I asked.

No one had an answer for me though everyone was silent for a moment, trying to come up with one.

“Asking the Arlemagne to help would be like sending an invitation to the Ke-Han to march over the mountains and solve our problems for us,” Laure said finally, sounding mutinous. “Bet they’d be pretty eager, now that we’re all so friendly with each other.”

“Here is what I think,” Royston said, knotting his scarf about his neck. “No one should do anything until I get back.”

“That’s funny,” Luvander said, passing into the back room. “I wanted to say that, too, but it seemed selfish. Never you worry, my darlings, only an hour left and I’ll return to you. I’ll see if we have the proper size for you back here!” he added, clearly calling out to one of his customers. “Don’t listen to your friend, either! Large heads are a sign of wisdom and sensuality.”

He popped a funny little shrug in my direction, then he was gone, being sure to shut the door firmly behind him. In his wake, the horrid clock started chiming the hour. But it was as clear a sign as any that we needed to lower our voices.

Luvander was subtle when he wanted to be; it was only surprising because he was so unsubtle the rest of the time.

“You’re leaving?” Laure asked Royston, not allowing herself to be distracted. It seemed to me she hadn’t even noticed the clock. “But we haven’t decided what to do about Adamo yet.”

“That is precisely why I am leaving now,” Royston explained, “before we come to a decision and I’m locked into whatever mad course of action two students and two airmen can dream up. An interesting alliance, I must say. Bastion help me, I honestly don’t know which is worse—if you drag me along with you, or if you don’t. I have a few things at home to set in order, no matter what happens. Besides that, I think I can convince someone to throw her lot in with us. Trust me; if things are heading south as quickly as they seem to be, we’ll need her on our side. I have to get to her before she formulates her own plan and does something rash, however.”

“The way you talk, it sounds like everyone you know’s a complete idiot,” Laure said. At her side, Toverre continued polishing away. I was worried for the spoon in his hand, and for his fingers.

“There is a very good reason for that,” Royston said.

“Like attracts like, huh?” Laure asked.

“If your friendship with Owen wasn’t proof enough of that …” Royston began.

“Then I suppose we’ll be here,” I said, flexing my hands anxiously. One of the metal knuckles cracked loudly, and everyone looked in my direction. It was obvious—to me, at least—that I couldn’t return to my apartment. I didn’t know why anyone would want to bring the Esar’s men to my shabby little room beneath the elephants; it certainly wouldn’t be for them to get a decent night’s sleep.

My not knowing why someone wanted to arrest me, however, wouldn’t make much of a difference when they did.

Dear Thom, I began in my head. It would seem that I am writing to you from prison …

“We will set this to rights,” Royston said, glancing in Laure’s direction. “I don’t make a habit of promising things I can’t deliver, but Owen’s tough, as I’m sure you know. He’s weathered worse than this before.”

“Just don’t be gone so long this time,” Laure said, pressing her lips together tightly after she’d spoken.

Toverre looked up as though he wanted to say something, then stopped himself.

“I’m going to find out who has been taken, and why,” Royston concluded. “And it is going to be enlightening, I’m sure. Then I will—bastion help me—return to you lot and give you what information I’ve managed to gather. That is, unless I am arrested first.”

“Sounds like a solid plan,” Laure said. I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not, because her face was so grim.

“I don’t suppose this is a very good introduction to Thremedon,” I said.

“Nonsense,” Royston said, heading in the direction of the back door. He’d left his newly purchased hat behind, but then I supposed he was coming back for it later. “The only time Thremedon is truly herself is when she’s boiling over with political scandal. The two of you are getting the authentic experience. If you live through this, then you can take anything she’ll throw at you.”

“And if we don’t live through it?” Laure asked.

“It will make an excellent story,” Royston replied.

He took the rear exit, not braving the public side of the shop, and though his words were glib, I sensed he was worried.

For a man who’d already been on the wrong side of the Esar’s graces to be so shaken, it was clear everyone else had good reason to watch their backs.

And for a man like Adamo to be arrested, it was clear the whole city had been turned upside down.