Princess Leodhild and Princess Aerinndís, with barely a pause, gripped one side of the table and tilted it, sending the ancient puppet master and assassin sliding. Makepeace made no effort to arrest his fall, landing on two chairs, which clattered hard to the polished wooden floor.
The vampire folded his paper as he lay in the tangle. “You’ll damage the furniture.”
“No matter. You can cover the repairs.” Princess Leodhild settled herself at one end of the now-righted table, opposite Princess Aerinndís. “Or you could keep your feet—and the rest of you—off the table, Comfrey.”
He responded by reaching up and placing the paper where they could see it. An early evening edition, only a portion of the headline visible, but more than enough.
“Make the effort to send word, Wednesday, should any other events of interest occur in your presence. A minor declaration of war, perhaps, or trivial invasion.”
Rian, adjusting her thoughts to the unexpected family atmosphere, sat down on her vampire’s opposite.
“You neglected to furnish me with an address.”
“I’m always contactable through the palace.”
“Is the common post not read? Shall I invent a code?”
He shot her an irritated glance as he levered himself to his feet and recovered the chairs. “This latest excursion of yours is hardly secret.” But he waved the discussion away. “Any other developments?”
Rian described the visit of Lynsey Blair, the Alban woman’s connection to Lord Fennington, and the proposed trip to Tangleways.
“Folly does fund research into fulgite alternatives,” Princess Leodhild remarked. “His company led the development of those roof-mounted turbines, you know, and the conversion of existing water- and windmills to fulquus generation. Whether he’d need to outsource is another question. Are you proposing to question him directly about this secret commission?”
“That depends on his reaction to Aedric and Eiliff’s names.” She glanced at Makepeace, who had propped his head on one fist. “As you say, the one who commissioned those automatons had small reason to steal them. We had a second visitor to Forest House—searching through the attic where Eleri has been setting up her workroom. So far as I can tell, this one came in through the street-side attic windows, and it took longer for the folies to notice. I don’t think that bull creature could manage that.”
“Mm.” It was difficult to tell if his boredom was feigned. “What did you expect ‘Felix’ would end up doing?”
Rian stared. She’d said that when alone with Eleri and Eluned, with only Griff and the talkative young page nearby, and not within earshot. “How did you—?”
Princess Aerinndís’ husky voice cut through her confusion. “He can make you not notice him. The Amon-Re line can control minds.” Hands neatly folded on the table, the Crown Princess looked merely disinterested when Makepeace turned an expression of genuine annoyance on her. “Pouting from someone so ancient is ever entertaining, Comfrey, but it wastes time. Accident or not, you’ve bound yourself an apprentice. Use her effectively, for in this matter I have no patience left for games.”
She had very dark blue eyes. It took increasing effort not to fall into them.
Makepeace sighed as if greatly put-upon, but then lifted a shoulder. “Wednesday recognised the one calling himself Gaius Silvanus, come with the head of Ficus Lapis to show the progress of the tunnelling. In this fashion for taking the old Republic names, that one is exceptionally common, almost a cliché, and thus infinitely suspicious attached even to the junior assistant of a very reputable engineering firm. So who is this ‘Felix’?”
Putting aside the rather large revelation concerning the Amon-Re line’s abilities, Rian said: “He’s from the Tarinus branch of the Silvanii. Gaius Silvanus Tarinus. Felix is simply a family pet name.”
Makepeace clicked his tongue. “Now I know the expectations.”
“What relation to Darius Silvanus Tarinus?” Princess Aerinndís asked.
“Grandson,” Rian said. “Favourite grandson. The omens around his birth were particularly good, and when I knew him he was being groomed to be the family’s bright hope, was in Dacia to observe a successful Proconsul’s handling of his duties. Though that was ten years ago, and as I said I would not have expected to find him outside the territories of the Republic. Not digging tunnels, at any rate.”
“Perhaps he likes trains,” Princess Leodhild said. “A lot of people do.”
The good humour of her words was belied by narrowed eyes and the glance she offered her niece, who responded only with: “I’ll look into it.”
Rian hoped she hadn’t brought unnecessary trouble down on Felix’s head. After all, it was possible he had fallen out of favour, or simply refused his family’s plans for him and pursued a career outside of politics. But his grandfather had served multiple times as one of the New Republic’s Consuls and it truly was odd for Felix to be working in London.
Still, while Rome would certainly care deeply about functioning artificial fulgite, Felix had no obvious connection to Aedric, so Rian set him aside and returned to her core concern.
“Did you find anything suspect in Caerlleon?”
Makepeace, still propped on one fist, shifted his gaze back to her. “The local Constabulary think you sadly obsessed, looking for conspiracies in an obvious accident.”
That was no revelation. “Yes. They liked to hold up Eluned as proof of Eiliff and Aedric’s lack of care. I’ve done my best to prevent Eluned from realising that. What of Aedric’s apprentice?”
“The boy was right.” Makepeace, clearly aware of how she stiffened at his words, waited a double beat before continuing. “A friend of this Willa’s asked her to buy what she could—told her he planned to start his own workshop, and didn’t want his current employer to realise. That same friend fronted the auction, unusually well-funded, and made any number of purchases. Primarily of containers of smaller objects. And then he died.”
“At the auction?” Princess Leodhild asked.
“The evening after he took delivery, though he wasn’t found until several days later. Fell and broke his neck, very clumsy. His purchases were still there, though, and his family had them on-sold in due course. But there would have been plenty of time to search through them.”
“A literal dead end, then?”
“Not quite. The man had his friends. He managed to not gossip about his purchases, but he was known to associate with the local grey trade. The thriving market there is stolen fulgite, of course, but if that’s the reason for his involvement, how did they know these two pieces of fulgite existed in the first place? And why weren’t you and those brats of yours attacked before Sheerside?”
“Did Willa know about the fulgite?” Rian asked.
“No. Only about the commission of an automaton, and she seems to have taken that at face value.”
“That’s all I knew as well, before Sheerside,” Rian said. “The children had managed to keep it strictly secret, and Aedric and Eiliff had certainly taken pains to obscure the true nature of their commission. If they succeeded, the most likely source of information would be whoever commissioned them.”
“And when a hasty search gave them only one of the fulgite pieces…” Makepeace lifted his head from its prop, frowning. “Ma’at vampires are far from the only truth diviners among the god-touched. If someone of that sort had questioned you when you didn’t know about the fulgite, that would explain the progression, and the determination to get hold of the household contents.”