The thought: “You’re a bloody idiot!” flashed through Stephano’s mind.
Half-turning, he saw someone coming at him with a rush from behind. He ducked, and the truncheon that had been aiming for his head missed. Stephano drove his shoulder into his attacker’s body and both men went down onto the street. Stephano grappled for his assailant’s throat, planning to choke him into submission. Surprisingly, he met no resistance.
The agent was limp, unconscious. Stephano rolled him over to find that the agent had hit his head on the edge of the curb. Stephano examined him. His skull was cracked and bleeding, but he was breathing. Stephano took hold of the man by the shoulders and dragged him into one of the horse stalls and dumped him in the hay. He’d wake up with the world’s worst headache, but at least he’d wake up.
Stephano had been toying with the idea of questioning the agent at gunpoint, asking him for information about his boss. That was obviously no longer an option. Stephano left the mews. Looking back toward the boarding house, he could not see Monsieur Russo, but he figured he was watching. Stephano touched his hat and continued down the street, heading in the direction Miri and Gythe had taken as they followed Dubois.
The sisters had a good head start on Stephano, but Gythe would leave a trail for him. When he came to an intersection of two streets and needed direction, he looked about and almost immediately saw a ball of bright white light dancing among the lower branches of a flowering shrub. Known as “fireflies,” these sparkling balls were among the first magical spells taught to children, for they could be created by drawing a single, simple sigil on a bit of paper.
The fireflies have no particular use, other than to introduce children to the wonders of magic. (And entertain cats. Doctor Ellington was particularly fond of chasing them around the deck.) Fireflies do not generate heat and are not harmful. Those created by children generally last only a few moments. Gythe’s fireflies lasted hours, however. She could even cause them to glow different colors.
Gythe and Stephano had worked out a code, so that he or Dag or anyone else in the Cadre could tell by the number of fireflies what direction the subject had taken, or if Gythe and Miri had lost the subject, or if the subject had entered a building or jumped into a cab, and so on. Anyone seeing the fireflies flickering in a bush or sparkling in a gutter would merely assume that children had been playing with magic and would think nothing of it.
Stephano’s main worry was that Wallace’s agent, Dubois, would have taken a cab to his destination, in which case they would lose him. Stephano and Rodrigo and Gythe had tried to develop spells that could be thrown onto the back of a cab in order to track it through the streets, but thus far they had met with only limited success. Traffic tended to obliterate or displace any sort of magical markers left on the pavement and if the cab was drawn by a wyvern and took to the skies they’d lost the person for good.
Fortune smiled on Stephano. Dubois walked back to his lodgings, which were not far from the boarding house. Miri and Gythe had no difficulty following him. Stephano followed the firefly directions and found the sisters sitting on a low wall-two weary nuns taking their ease.
“He’s in there,” said Miri, indicating a small inn in a residential neighborhood.
“For how long, I wonder,” Stephano said.
“Oh, he’s going to be there for some time,” said Miri complacently. “Gythe and I went inside to ask the landlord for a donation to our Home for Wayward Children. We heard this Dubois fellow tell the innkeeper to have his dinner sent up to his room. He also said that if anyone came asking for him, to send them in to him immediately.”
“Excellent!” said Stephano, and he added teasingly, “Did you get any money for your wayward children?”
Miri held up a coin. “I figure I’ve earned it,” she said with a wry smile.
“I’m truly sorry I brought all this trouble on you, Miri,” said Stephano ruefully. “Am I forgiven?”
“So long as you convince Dag I did not poison his cat,” said Miri feelingly.
Stephano leaned his head under Miri’s wimple and gave her a kiss, causing two women walking past to glare at him in shocked reproof.
“And now,” said Stephano, reaching into his jacket to give the dragon pistol a reassuring touch, “let us go ruin the dinner of Monsieur Dubois.”
Sir Henry Wallace watched with satisfaction as Stephano removed Dubois’ agent. Wallace still had a problem, however, in the form of Dag Thorgrimson. Henry had not counted on Stephano leaving the mercenary and Rodrigo behind with orders to escort Alcazar to the ship. Henry considered shooting Dag, but the mercenary’s competence in handling his weapons and the fact that he was holding a loaded musket forced Henry to dismiss that notion. He might try bribing him, but one look at Dag’s ugly, loyal face, his stalwart, soldierly mien, and Henry knew bribery was not going to work.
Henry sat at the table, half-listening to Rodrigo and Alcazar talk, considering ways to get rid of Dag.
After imbibing several glasses of wine, Alcazar had recovered quite remarkably from his fright. He and Rodrigo were discussing Alcazar’s job as a journeyman with the Royal Armory. Alcazar, aware of Sir Henry’s eye on him, had been careful not to mention anything regarding his discovery up to this point. But now the wine had gone to his head. He was chatting away happily when suddenly something seemed to strike him.
“I beg your pardon, Monsieur, but did you say your name was Villeneuve?” Alcazar asked.
“I did, sir,” said Rodrigo.
“Rodrigo de Villeneuve? The man who wrote the treatise on Magic and Metallurgy?”
“The same,” said Rodrigo, delighted. “Have you read it?”
“My dear sir,” said Alcazar with emotion, reaching out to clasp Rodrigo by the hands, “it was your brilliant theories that led me to my discovery-”
At the word, “discovery,” Sir Henry’s attention snapped back to the conversation. He fixed Alcazar with a hard, glittering stare that froze the words in the journeyman’s mouth and ended the conversation in mid sentence. Henry turned his attention to Rodrigo, who was humming a popular aria and accompanying himself on the table, running his fingers over the table as though it were a pianoforte. Rodrigo appeared to be completely self-absorbed, giving no indication that he had heard Alcazar’s babbling, much less understood the importance of what he’d said.
But Sir Henry was not fooled. He had caught the quick gleam of intelligence in the brown eyes and the smile of cynical amusement on the sensitive mouth.
“I do not trust you, Monsieur,” said Henry Wallace to himself, gazing at Rodrigo from beneath half-closed eyelids. “Captain de Guichen is not the type of man to have a fool for a friend.”
Sir Henry rose to his feet. He saw Dag shift his hand to the trigger of the musket.
“I’m only going to take a look outside,” said Sir Henry, and he walked to the window.
Several people were moving along the street. Sir Henry dismissed all of them as being unsuitable and eventually settled on a man dressed in shabby clothes who was walking slowly, peering at the houses, as though searching for an address. Henry summoned Dag.
“That man is one of my agents. I’m going to go speak to him. Remain here where I can summon you if I have need.”
Dag nodded silently and, putting down the musket and, keeping his hand on a pistol beneath his coat, took up his station near the entrance to the boarding house. Henry hurried outside and ran out into the street. He stopped the man by flinging an arm around the stranger’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry to detain you, friend,” said Sir Henry. “But there is a silver petal in this for you if you will stand here and converse with me a moment. How do you find the weather? I fear we may have rain this afternoon. There is a smell of thunder in the air. What do you think?”
“I think it is uncommonly hot, sir,” said the man, seeing the glint of silver in Sir Henry’s palm.