Chapter 10
Mr. Stoke lived alone in a narrow rowhome on one of the nicer streets of New Harrow, where the classical pillars, smooth curves, and many arches of Old Harrow yielded to straight lines, star motifs, and steel-hearted brick buildings.
A group of children thundered past as I approached, chasing one little boy with a ball and screaming like a troop of monkeys.
They toppled their way around a corner, passing a disgruntled older woman perched on a stool.
The woman eyed me as I followed the children, merging onto the next street and diverting down an alleyway behind the houses.
Criss-crossing laundry lines dripped onto my hat as I unlocked the door of Mr. Stoke’s cellar with a key I had quietly procured in case of emergency.
I descended uneven stairs into the murk and, after an intimate encounter with a series of cobwebs and a needlessly large spider, I dusted myself off in Mr. Stoke’s kitchen and closed the cellar door.
The kitchen was small, little more than a countertop and table and plastered walls. The bread was stale, the icebox warm, and the woodstove cold. There were no recent memories to be gleaned, and the older fragments I glimpsed were dull, daily things.
Mr. Stoke had not been home in days, that much was evident.
In the study, I discovered memories of smoking cigars, and found a pearl-handled revolver and box of bullets which I commandeered.
Upstairs, the bed was neatly made. Mr. Stoke’s clothing was ordered in his wardrobe and a photograph of his sister—who died of influenza as a child—was set upon his desk.
That sight filled me with a troubled kind of relief.
Mr. Stoke would never have fled without such a treasure. He had not abandoned me.
But that left only much, much darker options. I sank onto a chair between his desk and the window and stared across the room, letting the quiet seep into me.
My solitude was overwhelming. I thought of Mr. Wake, waiting for me this evening, of Pretoria and her offer, and Lewis, still so far away. I resented his absence and let myself molder in that for a time.
When I took hold of myself once more, I returned to the kitchen. I made myself a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table, setting out my notebooks and taking up a pen.
A rustling snared my attention. I instantly dropped out of the chair, knocking my hat askew and crouching in a position that Pretoria would, no doubt, have described as toadish.
I caught a shush of paper against metal, a clack, then quiet.
Belatedly, I remembered the revolver and slipped it off the tabletop, secreted six bullets inside, and slowly rose to my feet.
The hallway was quiet and the front door closed. But there on the mat lay Mr. Stoke’s mail.
I snatched the letters up and hastened back to the table, shuffling through the stack as I went.
I recognized nearly every name, marking Mr. Stoke’s usual correspondences.
A cousin in the countryside. A lady friend who Mr. Stoke insisted was not a lover, but whose letters always put color in his cheeks. And so forth.
One letter was out of place. A Dr. Maddeson, Professor of Philology at Harrow University.
I opened it with no little trepidation, conscious of just how critical this missive could be.
I was not disappointed. There, in typewritten text, this Dr. Maddeson addressed several questions about the symbols on a certain box. Familiar, wheeled symbols which Maddeson had sketched across the bottom of the page by hand and identified as Old Sarren.
Clearly, Mr. Stoke had an interest in the box beyond retrieving it for Lord Stillwell.
I needed to speak with this Dr. Maddeson. Perhaps he had seen Mr. Stoke after his supposed disappearance.
But it was far too late to go to the university, and I did not want to learn the repercussions of failing to meet Mr. Wake. The day was fading, and my threads would soon twine.
I finished my tea and dozed on Mr. Stoke’s sofa until the nearby church sounded nine bells. Full darkness had settled over the city—the dangers of the dark were lesser, I believed, than those of active threads.
The night was cold enough to threaten frost and the streets deserted save for a retiring lamplighter with his stilts resting on one shoulder. His shadow stretched long over the street as I set off at a brisk pace, burying my chin in my collar and keeping watch for a hackney.
None appeared, but my body warmed with the exertion and my overburdened mind calmed. An influx of courage came with it, and I found my shoulders relaxing, my steps slowing as I passed over Pointer’s Bridge and into Old Harrow.
Soon, I passed the intersection of Old Harrow’s canals.
On an island in the center sat a statue of the Entwined Lady Honoria Grey.
Robed, with her hood cast back and a modest gown visible beneath, she stood with her arms around two children—one human, the other Entwined with golden threads.
Despite being a mage, her reputation as a mediator between Entwined and humanity had kept her likeness standing, even now.
I moved on, into the narrow, cobblestoned intersection of Glassmaker’s Square.
There was nothing square about the space, wrapped around the belly of an ancient watch tower that had been overrun by the rebuilding efforts after the revolution.
Foundations of red stone were swallowed by the Almany Cathedral with its lording belltower and a face of moons and stars.
A sensation of being watched crept up the back of my neck. Careful not to look behind me, I crossed the square, passing through the shadow of the clocktower, and glanced in the window of a nearby shop.
I blinked in momentary distraction. Instead of seeing my shadowed reflection once in the glass, I saw myself a dozen times, in every size and at every angle. Some reflections were stable, while others spun lazily—suspended on long chains from the ceiling.
The reason why was quickly clear. Over my head, the shop’s sign stretched.
Mundey and Mayfair, Mirror Makers.
The footsteps continued, but more slowly. There, in the window and a dozen refractions, I saw a new figure enter the square. Wearing a long coat and a fitted cap, he did not look left or right, but straight towards me.
Feigning calm, I set off up the steep street beyond the mirror maker’s shop.
Footsteps drifted after me, echoing faintly against the close-packed buildings. It was not immediately clear whether they followed me directly, but I was not about to take the chance.
As soon as the road turned, cutting me off from sight, I diverted into an alleyway and broke into a run. Another turn, a low archway—more pre-imperial ruins, swallowed by new buildings—and I found myself in a tiny courtyard.
A courtyard with no exit. I spun, staring up at row upon row of windows and criss-crossing laundry lines towards a circle of open sky. The moon had slipped from behind the clouds, bathing me in silvered light and banded shadows.
There. Stairs. I mounted them lightly and ducked into an open-air hallway, startling a plump cat and passing right through the building, onto a bridge over the next street.
I swept the street with a glance before skittering across and onto a section of preserved stone wall. I followed the ramparts until they ended at a large, locked gate.
“Miss Fleet.”
I spun. Harden stood behind me, head cocked to one side in the moonlight. The tips of his silver threads flashed, just above his collar. “You’ve no sense, have you?”
“Why are you following me?” I cocked the revolver in my pocket. The sound was impossibly quiet, damped by wind and wool, but Harden still noticed.
“A little sense, then,” he amended. He paused, and after a moment seemed to come to a decision. “I’m not. Following you, that is. Well, I wasn’t, until I saw you wandering in the night like a fool.”
I stiffened. “This is hardly Dockside and you are not responsible for my wellbeing.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” He shrugged and started to leave. He tossed over his shoulder, “But you should stay on the main streets. I’m heading that way, if you happen to have gotten yourself lost.”
I took a reflexive step after him before catching myself. “I am not lost, but if I was, it would only be because of you.”
He kept walking.
“Is there another way off this wall?” I called.
He gave me a flat look and, with the air of someone aiding a particularly inebriated friend, gestured to one side.
I flushed. There, shadowed but obvious from this angle, was a staircase leading down. I had walked right past it.
Reining in my pride, I trailed after him through a warren of alleyways, side streets, and courtyards until we reached a main road again.
A man and a woman passed beneath the low light of an ill-tended gaslamp, ignoring the jeers of a drunken man sitting in the center of the street in a toddler’s straight-legged pose.
I let out a long breath. “Thank you, Mr. Harden.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and regarded me with an expression that was considerably more forgiving than before.
It was during that look, likely the most unguarded I had seen upon him, that my mind and body elected to inform me that he was, objectively, an attractive man.
There was a stateliness in the hard lines of his face, an echo of the statues I had perused at the museum hours before.
There was stolidness to his posture that spoke of self-assurance and competence—even if he applied that competence to throwing bombs in public squares.
I looked away.
“Mayfair!” the drunk in the street called, waving broadly. “My dear, dear friend!”
“Mayfair?” I repeated.
Harden gave a long-suffering sigh and strode towards the drunk. They spoke, too low for me to hear, as he helped the other man to his feet and guided him to the sidewalk. There he deposited the drunkard in a doorway.
“Don’t sit in the street, Stewart,” Harden commanded.
Stewart gave an overly serious salute. “Aye, sir!”
“Mayfair?” I repeated a second time.
“He thought I was someone else. Let me walk you the rest of the way home. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I am weighing the dangers of escorting a bomb-lobbing Separatist to my door with those of walking home alone,” I said frankly.
“We did not set those bombs or throw the grenades,” he said firmly. “We only fired the flares. Credit for the bombs must go entirely to Incarnadine and her Zealots.”
I hesitated as he started walking. The Zealots were a human organization devoted to the eradication of the Entwined, and they were not picky about how they went about it—slander, framing, murder.
Hangings.
“What are you saying?” I hurried to catch up. “The Zealots framed you?”
“Yes. We do not bomb innocents. And I was not following you.”
I was not sure I believed him on either point, but a little of my caution drained. I frowned, recalling the events and the mirror maker’s shop.
“Mayfair. I see… You were going to the mirror shop and I happened to be there. Harden is your alias, for criminal enterprises.”
“Emrys Harden,” he corrected. His face caught the light of a nearby lamp and my heart stuttered in my chest. His gaze was direct and perceptive, and though I could not see his threads in this light, I knew they twined.
For the first time, his being Entwined struck me as a bridge between us, rather than a barrier. He knew what I was, if I recalled the events after the bombing correctly. We were kin, in a distant way.
“All right, then. Emrys Harden is a smuggler and Separatist,” I observed. “And Mr. Mayfair is a mirror maker?”
Harden-Mayfair abruptly took my wrist—his grip round like a manacle, barely touching my skin but solid as iron—and tugged me into a doorway.
I pinched my lips closed, smothering a startled noise, and surveyed him with my back to the doorpost.
“You are a Rogue Adept,” he stated, enunciating clearly, though his Harren accent was strong as ever. “What is your real name, Miss Fleet? What threads are you hiding?”
I did not bother denying it. “It seems we both know something we should not. Shall we blackmail one another? Betray one another? Or agree to simply forget and move on with our lives?”
He glanced out into the street at distant voices, sniffed, and frowned. “I’d be more forgetful with a drink in my belly.”
I paused, searching for his meaning. “Are you asking me to bribe you with alcohol, or have a drink with you? I will do neither.” I held up my left hand and pointed to the outline of my engagement ring, beneath my glove.
“Lewis. I am engaged to your colleague, Lewis. Also, I require sleep. It is very late.”
“Colleague? The man’s a brother to me,” Mr. Harden scoffed. “You misunderstand. I know of your and Illing’s arrangement. You’re no more lovers than me and Stewart.”
“That is good news. Stewart seems like the unreliable sort and I would feel obliged to dissuade you,” I quipped, to conceal a rush of conflicted feelings.
Not only had I not known how close Lewis and Mr. Harden were, but Lewis had apparently told him our engagement was a facade. What else had he said?
I opened my mouth to ask, but caught myself.
This line of thinking would not do, and I needed to silence Mr. Harden.
I could think of no other way to do so save murder, which seemed a rather brash escalation.
And considering Lewis’s lack of interest in me, what harm was there in taking a drink with Harden?
His attention was unexpectedly appealing, and a pleasant distraction from the looming threat of meeting Mr. Wake.
“A drink, then,” I relented.
He smiled, slow and genuine and warm, and I felt a flush rush from my cheeks all the way down to my toes.
I pinched myself, hard, through my skirt. “Had you somewhere in mind?”
He stepped back into the street and offered me an arm.
I did not take it, but we set off together in a companionable silence, and I feared no shadows as we passed through the cobbled streets.