Dreadnought

Emily knocked on the door of the butter-yellow house, leaning heavily against the doorjamb. She felt rather bad for dirtying up the nice clean paint job with all the black slime and insect guts that covered her, but her ankle was throbbing from the steep climb up the hill. Behind her, on the sidewalk below, Dmitri waited silently. She’d given up telling him to shove off; it did no good.

After a few moments, the Haälbeck attendant, a girl named Dinah, opened the front door, staring at Emily in astonishment.

“What the—Miss Edwards?” She looked Emily up and down. “My gracious! Everyone’s been looking for you! You missed Mrs. Stanton’s lunch.”

Emily sighed, pushed herself away from the doorjamb.

“Good day, Miss Edwards,” Dmitri’s voice called up to her from the street. Emily turned just enough to see the brown man tip his hat before walking briskly away, hands tucked in his pockets. Dinah craned her neck over Emily’s shoulder, watching him go. She looked at Emily quizzically.

“Who was he, miss?”

“No one,” Emily said, limping into the house. “He was just here to protect me.”

“It’s lovely to see you, miss!” Emily followed Dinah’s crisp black-and-white-clad form through the neatly swept hallway toward the Haälbeck Room. “I can’t imagine how you came through earlier without me seeing you.”

“Well, I can be extremely sneaky,” Emily said.

“Oh, I’m sure you’re not,” Dinah demurred, hiding a grin behind her hand. “What a thing to say.”

They came to the Haälbeck Room, and Emily was once again surprised at how empty it seemed. She remembered standing in this room when it had overflowed with stifling clutter—all of which apparently had gone with Mrs. Quincy when she’d been kicked to the curb. Only one thing remained: an important-looking picture of Emeritus Zeno, its frame decorated with bunting and silver paper. Emily scrutinized it, trying to find the face of the mild-mannered man she’d first known as old Ben in the face of the somewhat crazed-looking young priest. She finally decided that it was Zeno’s eyes that were most unchanged; she recognized that spark of single-minded, uncompromising determination. In Zeno as she knew him today, it was easily attributable to wisdom. In the eyes of the young priest, it seemed hardly indistinguishable from insanity.

Looking away from Zeno’s eyes, her gaze traveled to the bottom of the picture, where she noticed the date of the picture’s execution: 1741. The man in the picture was certainly in his thirties—that would make Zeno 175 years old now! She knew he was old, but she’d never imagined he was that old.

Dinah laid a slim hand on the Haälbeck door’s frame and unlocked it with a few soft words. She held the door open for Emily. Framed by its edges, Emily could see the Institute’s Haälbeck Room on the other side, murky and indistinct.

“Be sure to give Mr. Stanton my congratulations on his recent triumph over the Dark Sorcerer of Trieste,” Dinah said as Emily stepped through.

Emily had grown accustomed to making short hops by Haälbeck—there were hundreds of local doors in New York, greatly facilitating interurban travel. But traveling such a long distance by Haälbeck was like being stretched into the finest silken thread. There was a huge rushing and a feeling of speed, as if she were a waterfall tumbling down a million miles …

 … And then she pooled abruptly back into a water-shaped version of herself and stepped out of California and into the Haälbeck Room of the Mirabilis Institute of the Credomantic Arts in New York City.

It was a cozy, richly appointed parlor, filled with marbles and tapestries and the fragrance of blood-red orchids. Emily noticed that it was filled with something else, too.

The foot-tapping form of Miss Jesczenka.

Emily wondered how on earth the woman had known she was coming. She’d hoped to sneak back as quietly as she’d left—but Emily already knew there was going to be hell to pay, and she supposed there was no use allowing it to accrue interest.

“Welcome back, Miss Edwards,” Miss Jesczenka said. She held a cut-crystal glass of iced lemon water in her hand, which she offered to Emily immediately. Emily took the glass, draining it in a protracted and unladylike guzzle. The long Haälbeck journey had left her feeling as if she’d just crossed an Arabian desert. Miss Jesczenka poured her another glass from a pitcher on a small side table.

“You missed Mrs. Stanton’s lunch,” Miss Jesczenka said. Her eyes roamed over Emily, lingering on the chunks of exploded cockroach innards.

Emily smiled brightly. “Did I?”

“Yes,” Miss Jesczenka said.

Miss Jesczenka took the glass from Emily after she’d drained it again, and placed it on a marble side table without making the slightest noise.

“Well, I can’t imagine she’ll mind all that much.” Emily attempted bravado. “Just a ‘little get-together,’ she said.”

“She invited a hundred people,” Miss Jesczenka said. “And two Astors.”

Emily sighed. She took a limping step forward.

“Are you injured?”

“Not in the least,” Emily lied again.

Miss Jesczenka was silent for a moment.

“When you did not return, I sent word to Mrs. Stanton that you had been seized with bewildering fits. I implied that you were wildly pounding on death’s door, demanding admittance. I had to concoct quite a dire scenario to excuse your absence.”

Probably made the old hag’s day, Emily thought. But instead of saying this, she smiled. “How clever of you.”

Miss Jesczenka did not smile back. “So, are you going to favor me with an explanation of why you went to California dressed in men’s clothing and came back covered with intestines?”

Emily was silent. She actually rather wished she could tell Miss Jesczenka about the cockroaches. For some reason, she thought the woman might find it amusing. Or not.

“I’ll go to my room and get cleaned up,” Emily said.

“That’s a very good idea,” Miss Jesczenka said, wrinkling her nose. “Mrs. Stanton may come by later to confirm that you’re on your deathbed. I trust you will be obliging enough to look three-quarters dead?”

“I shall have no problem playing the part,” Emily said, as honestly as if she were swearing on a stack of Bibles.

Once in her room, Emily stripped off her clothes and kicked them into a stinking pile. Someone would have to burn them.

Then she ran herself a well-earned bath. One thing she could say for the Institute—the plumbing was fantastic. The suite she had been given had all the most up-to-date features, including a bathroom with a giant white porcelain tub. She ran water gushing with steam, and as it ran, she unbuckled the straps that held her prosthetic in place, briskly rubbing the red welts where the leather had cut into her flesh. She laid the carved ivory hand on a table, carefully avoiding looking at the puckered stump of her arm.

Sliding into the warm water, she released a moan of pleasure that any well-bred observer would have found positively indecent. The heat felt particularly good on her sore ankle. She explored the abused joint with her fingers. It was still swollen, but with a little rest, it would be fine in a day or two.

It took a long time to get completely clean, for the insect innards had dried to an intractably sticky crust. When she’d finally gotten every bit off her skin and out of her hair, she climbed out of the tub, pulled on fresh cotton underthings, and collapsed onto the wide white bed, feather softness and the smell of honeysuckle enfolding her.

She was snuggling deep into the sweet-smelling sheets when she felt something hard under the pillow. Reaching underneath, her fingers encountered something cool and smooth. Withdrawing it, she discovered that it was a student’s slate, the kind a small child would use to learn his alphabet. It was quite new-looking, framed in polished beech and painted with frolicking lambs. It had a little slot carved into the side that held a sharpened pencil. On the slate, in Stanton’s jagged cliff-peak handwriting, were the words:

MEET ME IN CENTRAL PARK. 4 P.M. URGENT. BRING THE SLATE.

Emily looked at the clock on the mantel. It was three o’clock.

Groaning, she threw an arm over her eyes.

She hadn’t seen Stanton at all during the past week, not even for a minute. And he did say it was urgent. This could be her one opportunity before the Investment to tell him about her visit to California and the bottle of memories Pap had given her.

She lay there, feeling the rise and fall of her own chest. If only she could sleep for a few hours first. She was supposed to be on her deathbed with bewildering fits, after all. And what if Mrs. Stanton came by to gloat? Well, Miss Jesczenka would just have to think of something. Say that death’s door had finally opened, and Emily had stepped inside for a cup of tea. The worse the fate, the better Mrs. Stanton would like it.

Emily sat up. It was a feat of miraculous willpower. She took a deep breath and swung her feet out onto the floor.

The things I do for Dreadnought Stanton, she thought once again.

She put herself into a suite of ladies’ clothing, certainly not daring to call Miss Jesczenka for help. The outfit was knife-pleat new and much fancier than anything she’d ever owned before; Emily was still trying to get used to the necessity of costuming herself for different social purposes. She’d had fewer dresses in her entire life than she was supposed to have for one season in New York, and having a different one for every quarter of the day seemed ridiculous in the extreme. Still, Emily recognized the need for conformity to fashion’s whims, and thus had invested some of the money Mirabilis had paid her on a wardrobe appropriate to decent society.

Fumbling with a long silver buttonhook, Emily got herself fastened—at least buying new clothes had meant she could get them with the buttons up the front. This allowed her to dress herself, despite the handicap presented by her missing hand. It was just too tedious to have to stand around half naked, waiting for someone to do up your buttons.

This dress was of pistachio-green silk, deeply bustled and trimmed with black Dieppe lace and jet-beaded embroidery. It had a matching reticule and sunshade. With the addition of a little veiled hat and a pair of black gloves, Emily felt like an imported doll in a shop window.

Thus appointed, she snuck out of her room, looking back and forth down the hall to make sure Miss Jesczenka wasn’t lying in wait. She tiptoed downstairs to the Institute’s great entry hall. She’d have to get a carriage; she wasn’t going to walk to the park with her aching ankle, and certainly not in this getup. The admissions clerk in the entry hall could get her one of the Institute’s carriages discreetly; she’d quietly slipped him a double eagle a few weeks earlier on a similar occasion, and he’d shown himself more than willing to be bought.

Once it was clear that Miss Jesczenka was nowhere in the vicinity, Emily stopped skulking. Straightening her back, she came down one of the broad twin marble stairways and into the rotunda, domed in colored glass. It was designed to be maximally impressive, with thirty-foot ceilings and walls of gold-veined white marble, and everywhere, the fragrant blood-red orchids that were the Institute’s signature flower.

The entry hall was in a state of last-minute confusion, as decorators, florists, and caterers buzzed about, making arrangements for the Investment that was to be held the following night. Abandoned ladders rested against the walls, half-hung draperies of gold foil bunting hung drooping and limp. It was going to be quite a gala, Emily thought with some apprehension.

She went to the admissions desk and had a few low words with her well-bribed clerk; he nodded to her cheerfully. He hastened from behind the tall imposing admissions desk to pull out a chair for her, giving the seat an obsequious brush, though Emily had never seen a speck of dust in the Institute. He offered to fetch her some water, which she quietly declined. It was always like this, in clothes like these. Men offered her hands, arms, shoulders to lean on; they opened doors, they extinguished cigars, and always—most annoyingly—they stopped talking. Emily thought she could probably get used to being treated as if her body was a blown eggshell, but she doubted she could ever get used to being treated as if her head was as empty as one.

When all the nonsensical fiddling and showy chivalry had run its course, the carriage called, and the clerk returned to his desk, Emily noticed a group of people sitting in a cluster by the front door, chatting animatedly among themselves. They were a zealous-looking lot—a sallow young man with anarchist eyes and an overbite, an assortment of tightly wound females, and two gentlemen who seemed to be twins. They were under the command of a plump, pretty blond girl who looked once at Emily, then twice.

“Miss Emily?” The blonde’s dress was a profusion of ruffles and lace. Her brown eyes narrowed as she came over to where Emily was sitting, squinting to peer through the dark veil that Emily wore. Emily lifted it reluctantly, and the girl’s face became joyous. “Oh, it is you! How wonderful to see you up and about. I heard you were at death’s door. You missed Mrs. Stanton’s lunch!”

“Hello, Rose,” Emily said. She was far too tired for Rose’s twittering intensity at the moment.

Miss Rose Hibble was the president of the Dreadnought Stanton Admiration League, a group formed immediately after the publication of The Man Who Saved Magic, the pulp novel outlining Stanton’s astonishing adventures. The same book that Emily was not in, despite the fact that she’d played as large a role in the adventures as anyone. Even Rose herself had played a small part; Stanton had saved her life, and she’d abruptly fixed her tendency for hero worship upon him. In a spasm of veneration, she’d followed him to New York, and used her secretarial degree from the Nevada Women’s College to get herself a position at a downtown brokerage. She’d then proceeded to form the Admiration League, which already boasted more than two hundred members, thanks entirely to Rose’s tireless organizational efforts.

“Mr. Stanton was supposed to speak to us today,” Rose said, a note of distress in her tone. “He was going to tell us how he defeated the Dark Sorcerer of Trieste!” She raised a well-thumbed book at Emily, showing her the brilliant cover of a new pulp novel, one Emily hadn’t seen yet. On it, Stanton’s idealized form could be seen trampling victoriously over a cringing man in a black cape.

Emily smiled wearily. It had been little more than a month since their actual adventures had been completed, and Stanton had spent every moment of it safely in New York, preparing for his Investment under the guidance of Emeritus Zeno. But on pulp pages squeezed between chromolithographed covers, he’d already reclaimed three mystical artifacts of unparalleled magnificence, defended the Austrian throne against the depredations of a golem, and solved some mystery involving the recently delivered hand of a big French statue they were going to erect in New York Harbor. Emily could hardly keep up.

“I hope he’s recovered from the grievous wound the Dark Sorcerer delivered him! Is he feeling well? The Investment is tomorrow, and he’s got to be at his best!” Rose’s face was taut with worry. “We brought him a card.”

“I’m going to see him now,” Emily said. She squeezed Rose’s hand—a strengthening gesture. While Emily was frequently astonished at Rose’s credulity, and was sometimes just slightly jealous at the way the girl’s brown eyes lit up when she spoke of Stanton, she was genuinely fond of her. “I’m sure he’ll pull through.”

“Please give him our best,” Rose said. “And would you give him this?” She proffered a large card in an envelope that was printed with brilliantly colored flowers and addressed in a careful, intricate script.

Emily tucked it into her bag, next to the slate with the leaping lambs. “I’ll make sure he gets it,” she said.

“Oh, thank you!” Rose said, clenching her hands together. “Thank you!”

The afternoon air was sticky and dead calm, and even the thin green silk Emily wore seemed too warm. Little rivulets of sweat trickled down the sides of her forehead as the carriage carried her along a twisting cobblestone path through the park. She found herself missing San Francisco’s milder clime. A fresh breeze off the ocean offset a lot of Aberrancies in her book.

Stanton’s note had directed her to meet him in Central Park, but had failed to specify exactly where. So she went to the place that was her favorite—the park’s wild northernmost reaches. It was an easy distance from the Institute’s opulent, expansive (and somewhat incongruous) headquarters on Eighty-fifth. Emily had heard it said with some pride that the Institute owned all of the Nineties from the park to the Hudson. Emily supposed that was quite grand, in its way. But given that most of the valuable property in New York City lay below Twenty-third Street, and the Nineties pretty much consisted of squatters’ shacks, small farmholdings, and wide dirt roads that turned into mud slogs whenever it rained, Emily didn’t quite see what there was to get so excited about.

Because of its remote location, the Institute also maintained an imposing facade downtown, on Lexington Avenue near Gramercy Park, but it was not large enough to house all the Institute’s students and activities, so it was little more than an extravagantly splendid shell with a few offices and a Haälbeck door connecting it to the mansion uptown. Emily had found that it was most convenient to travel from the wild reaches uptown to downtown by Haälbeck—as did many others. While primarily an establishment of magical learning, the Mirabilis Institute also had quite a profitable sideline in interurban travel. Mirabilis had cornered the market on Haälbeck timber many years ago, and since only small amounts—hardly more than a sliver—were needed for travel over such short distances, the Institute had built doors all over the city. For a dollar, businessmen could flash downtown, uptown, and across in a thread-stretched twinkling. Certainly much more convenient than clopping through crowded streets in a cab, or riding on one of the clattering streetcars.

The Institute’s carriage let Emily out near the big stretch of water called Harlem Meer. The area surrounding it was rugged, less daintily landscaped than the park’s groomed southern reaches. Beyond the Harlem Meer, farms and muddy roads stretched to the northwest. It was like being home; there were jutting outcroppings of gray mica-flecked stone and the good clean smell of trees and grass and water. Downtown always smelled like sewage to her, even though Stanton insisted he couldn’t smell it and she must be imagining things. But it did smell; it smelled like things all crowded together and moving too fast.

But here it was quiet, fragrant with good living soil. And there weren’t as many people, though she still found herself amidst knots of strollers out enjoying the warm summer afternoon, beautiful children in short white dresses, and nurses pushing prams. Even New York’s most deserted places bustled, Emily had found, and she was certain she’d never get used to it.

At that moment, Emily was surprised to hear the sound of a lamb baaing. As if that were not surprising enough, the baaing was coming out of her bag. Exploring further, she discovered that the baaing was, more precisely, coming from the slate. She drew it out curiously.

LOOK IN FRONT OF YOU, the writing in Stanton’s angular hand now read.

She looked up, seeing nothing but a swarming mass of pigeons. But then there were hands on her shoulders, and the brush of very warm lips against the bare place on the back of her neck. She shivered pleasantly.

“You missed my mother’s lunch,” came the voice of the man to whom the warm lips belonged. Pleasure became annoyance with startling rapidity. Emily spun and stomped a foot.

“If people don’t quit saying that to me, I’m going to—” Stanton grinned and leaned forward to stop her threat with a kiss—an action that had to be averted at the last minute as a group of loudly conversing German tourists came strolling past. He put his hands behind his back, looking sidelong at the Germans.

“Was your mother furious?”

“She’ll get over it,” Stanton said. “Perhaps not in this lifetime, but I happen to believe in reincarnation, so there’s still hope.” From somewhere inside his coat he produced another student slate, the exact match of the one she’d found under her pillow.

“Have you called me here to do sums?” she asked. “I hate math.”

“All right, we’ll stick to geography,” Stanton said, wiping his slate with his sleeve and scribbling something new on it. Emily’s slate baaed. She looked at it. Now it read: WHERE WERE YOU, ANYWAY?

Emily laughed with delight.

“Turn around,” she said. She steadied the slate against his back with her ivory hand and rubbed out the letters with her good hand. She wrote shakily, for it was her writing hand Caul had taken: CALIFORNIA.

Stanton’s slate baaed. After a moment’s pause, he looked at her over his shoulder.

“Instead of going to my mother’s lunch, you went to California?”

“I wanted to see Pap.” Emily tucked the slate pencil into its slot. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stanton, really I am. I didn’t mean to miss it. Things … happened.”

“Oh, well. Things happened. How nice to have that cleared up.” He lifted an eyebrow. “And by the way, why do you persist in calling me Mr. Stanton? Don’t you think that’s a bit formal? It hardly matters while we’re engaged, but after we’re married, it just won’t do.”

He was right, of course; running around calling him Mr. Stanton after their wedding would make her sound like his sixth Mormon wife. But try as she might, she could not make Stanton’s given name sound at all right. It sounded ludicrous coming out of her mouth.

“Dreadnought,” she said experimentally. “Dreadnought,” she tried again, more lightly. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to change it.”

“What on earth is wrong with my name?”

“You have to admit, it’s one fly-killing cannon of a name,” Emily said. “Can you imagine what it will be like after we’re married? Dreadnought, please pass the toast … Dreadnought, please close the window … Dreadnought, shall we paint the walls yellow?”

“What an appealing vision of married life,” Stanton said drily. “One hopes it will include more intriguing things than toast passing and window closing.”

“One hopes,” Emily agreed. “Didn’t you have a nickname when you were younger?”

“The Senator always called me ‘boy.’ ” Stanton’s tone was contemplative. “Mother, on the other hand, would call me ‘Not,’ as in the adverb used to express negation or prohibition. Or, I suppose, as in ‘zero.’ Neither interpretation appeals to me very much.”

“How about ‘knot,’ as in something difficult to untangle?” Emily thought suddenly of the discussion she’d had with Pap.

“I hardly think I’m that complex,” Stanton said.

Emily bit her lip. “All right, then what’s your middle name?”

Stanton paused, then drew himself up. He took on a look of steely resolve. “I won’t tell you.”

She drew back, blinking surprise at his unexpected vehemence. “But it can hardly be worse than—”

He took her chin in his hand, kissed her quickly to stop her talking, then pulled back before the Germans could see.

“Never mind. Call me whatever you like. ‘Dear’ will do nicely.”

Emily did not much like to be kissed to be shut up, but she did like to be kissed. It sweetened her disposition enough that she decided to refrain from pestering him for his middle name. For the time being, anyway. She filed the pester away for implementation at some convenient future date.

She regarded his long spare frame and gaunt face. He seemed thinner, if such a thing were possible. He was burned—a degenerative blight that made it impossible for him to keep weight on no matter how much he ate. Ten years to live, Emily had once been told. Stanton himself had stalwartly refused her the dubious comfort of thinking that it might be longer. Ten years. And with the hard work of running the Institute facing him, it might be even less. Fear flickered through Emily’s chest, but she damped it down ruthlessly. They had today. Today, his dark green eyes glittered, and today he was alive. Today—and however many todays came after it—was all they would have.

“I’m not the only one who skipped out on my duties,” Emily said. “You were supposed to speak to Rose’s Admiration League today. You can’t always be ducking them.”

“Having Rose as the president of my Admiration League—indeed, having an Admiration League at all—is an exercise in patience to which I am not always equal.”

“She adores you.” Emily smiled up at him. “She’d walk through fire for you.”

“Sometimes I wish she would.”

“Oh, stop it. You have to take your duties seriously, you know.”

“Of course I must,” Stanton said, with the exasperation of a man who has heard the same thing a million different times from a million different people—an exasperation Emily was intimately acquainted with herself. “But I hadn’t realized exactly how consuming they were going to be. Having to meet you in a public park, as if this were some kind of … assignation? Having to resort to a child’s toy just to get messages to you?” He glanced at the student slate he was still holding in his hand, then tucked it away inside his coat. “But Zeno maintains I have to stay focused. He’s got this odd idea that you distract me.”

“Who, me?” Emily said. “My, what you have to go through, just to achieve the zenith of credomantic power.”

“I just hope it won’t be too much,” he said, raising a hand to touch a shining brunette lock that had escaped from beneath her small feathered hat. He pulled the movement up short when a loud exclamation came from behind them; the Germans, who were still lingering nearby, had drawn out a map and were consulting it and conversing loudly among themselves.

“For pity’s sake!” he muttered. “Even if they can’t find where they’re going, can’t they at least find their way away from us?”

He went over to the Germans and spoke a few words to them in their own language. They seemed overjoyed at his help and clapped him on the back. When Stanton returned to Emily’s side, there was a wicked grin on his face.

“Did you help them find what they were looking for?” she asked, not quite understanding what had transpired as Stanton took her arm and led her away.

“No,” Stanton said. “But I did share a closely guarded secret with them. Specifically, that all the city’s streetcars may be ridden free of charge if one tells the driver that one’s brother-in-law’s name is Mickey Doogan.”

“Mickey Doogan?” Emily scrunched her nose. “Who’s he?”

“No idea,” Stanton said. “Made him up whole cloth. I haven’t the time to put a bunch of bothersome tourists in their place. The streetcar drivers are better at it anyway. They’ve practically elevated it to an art form.”

Emily looked after the Germans. Having experienced the artful brusqueness of New York’s streetcar drivers herself once or twice, she felt a twinge of sympathy for them.

“You’re just plain cruel, that’s what you are.”

“Not as cruel as not being able to kiss you as much as I like, given how pretty you look today. Come on. We’re going to find someplace less populated.”

Emily tried to match his long strides, but she found herself faltering. In her small boots of tight kid, her ankle was swelling and aching again. He paused, looking down at her foot.

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“I’ll tell you about it when we get to that less populated place you promised me.” She squeezed his warm arm closer to her, acutely desiring a change of subject. “Just exactly how many languages do you know, anyway?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever counted,” Stanton said thoughtfully. “Latin and Greek don’t count; anyone with pretensions to know anything should know those. Same with Sanskrit, Sumerian, and the Dravidian languages, though one needs only to be able to read them. As far as speaking, I’m quite good in French, Spanish, Russian, German, Hebrew, and Arabic. I can get around in Turkish and speak enough Hindi to buy dosas and a mango lassi, if required. Then there’s bits and pieces of others.”

She stared at him for a long moment. She felt as if he’d just hit her over the head with a dictionary.

“You can’t be serious,” she said.

“Well, I haven’t got a stick of Chinese,” Stanton said, making the lack sound egregious indeed. “Believe me, the list I just gave you is unimpressive compared to some credomancers you’ll meet.”

“Where on earth do you put them all?” She tried to imagine knowing thirteen ways to say the word “pickle,” never mind that you didn’t know how to say it in Chinese.

“My dear, language is the currency of credomantic power,” he said. “A spell in English won’t do you a sliver of good in Moscow, or Berlin, or Paris. Besides, a credomancer’s power derives entirely from local customs and beliefs. One must have the ability to discern and exploit those beliefs.”

They turned onto an overgrown path that wound up into the green darkness of a densely wooded, boulder-strewn hillside.

“Will your ankle bear up?” he asked Emily, putting an arm around her waist to support her once the threat of being seen had passed.

“My ankle has been through worse,” Emily said, but let herself lean against him nonetheless.

They ascended up the tangled path, pausing every now and again to disengage Emily’s garments from snagging branches and roots.

Somehow they managed to outwit the local flora and achieve the objective Stanton had apparently been aiming for: a squat, thick-walled building of irregularly shaped stones. It was a perfect cube, with one very small, rusty door hanging off its hinges. Ivy grew all around the structure; midafternoon light poured down through its shattered roof.

“It’s called the blockhouse,” Stanton said, taking Emily by the waist and lifting her up over a fallen tree trunk. “It was here long before Central Park was even thought of. My grandfather fought here in the War of 1812. He used to bring me up here to shoot birds.” He touched the door, which creaked and showered them with flakes of rust. He peered inside. “It’s fallen apart a bit since then.”

As Emily stepped inside the large empty fortress, she noticed that there were two small barred casement windows set in each stone wall. While secluded, it was also rather like being in a jail.

“How romantic,” Emily said, looking up at the sky through the collapsed roof. Fat, curling tendrils of ivy framed the ceiling of mellow blue. It was like looking up from the bottom of a well.

But Stanton seemed to have no interest in the sky. He gathered her in his arms and pulled her close into his sweltering embrace; he was as warm as a fever victim. He began kissing her—kisses that progressed in duration and intensity until it was clear that for the moment, it was better to stop kissing altogether.

He let his arms rest loosely around her waist, resting his forehead against hers.

“You promised me you’d tell me about your ankle,” Stanton murmured. “Have you been chasing Aberrancies again?”

The guess, though playfully intended, was far too close to the truth for Emily’s liking, and she found that she didn’t want to talk about all that now. She enjoyed the warm glow of Stanton’s embrace far too much to risk losing it.

“You first,” she said, lifting her chin. “Your note said ‘Urgent.’ Is anything wrong?”

“Other than you missing my mother’s lunch?” Stanton said. “Everything pales in comparison to that, I’m afraid.”

Before she could hit him, he pulled a velvet box from his pocket and presented it to her with a flourish. She opened the box, and found that it contained a ring of mellow white gold, set with a huge diamond. The stone didn’t just sparkle like other diamonds she’d seen; it blazed fire all around it, blue and red.

“I captured it from the Dark Sorcerer of Trieste,” Stanton explained. “Haven’t you been reading my books?”

“No.”

“It’s a meteorite diamond. Incredibly rare, outlandishly expensive.” Stanton took the box from her and removed the ring. “I rather wish I had captured it from the Dark Sorcerer of Trieste; it wouldn’t have set the Institute back quite so much, and we wouldn’t have had to go through such paroxysms of secrecy to obtain it.” He took her hand and slid the ring on her finger. “It’s to be your engagement ring. I was supposed to have given it to you before the lunch you didn’t attend, so you could flash it around. Oh well.”

“The Institute bought me a big vulgar diamond ring?”

“Well, I couldn’t afford it,” Stanton said. “If it were up to me, you’d keep that one.” He gestured to his gold Jefferson Chair ring that Emily had taken to wearing on her thumb. “But Fortissimus says you have to help reinforce the mythology. I supposedly captured this ring from an enemy of exceptional power and villainy. If you’re seen wearing it, it heightens the illusion.” He tilted her hand up to the light and placed a kiss on each of her fingertips.

“It’s grotesque!” Emily said. “Think of the muscles I’ll have to grow to carry this thing around. I’ll have to have a dress of one size and a sleeve two sizes larger!”

“Now, mustn’t overdramatize.” Stanton smiled, apparently wholly unaware of the irony. He slid the gold Jefferson Chair ring from her thumb and pocketed it. She swallowed a sound of protest; she’d grown quite fond of the simple gold band.

“So what does this monstrosity do?” Emily tilted her hand back and forth, watching the diamond glitter. “Does it allow me to summon armies of the undead? Levitate on nights with a full moon? Read the hidden motives of the wicked and untrue?”

“It doesn’t do anything.”

Mildly exasperated, she let her hand fall.

“Well, it must have some magical power, otherwise why did you risk your life capturing it from the Dark Sorcerer of Trieste?”

“It wasn’t the diamond I risked my life for,” Stanton said quite seriously, despite the fact that his life had been risked only in the most purely fictional sense. “It was an affirmation of the Manichaean principle of Ultimate Good triumphing over Ultimate Evil. Dreadnought Stanton does not battle for material gains, he battles to defeat the forces of darkness. The capturing of treasure is mostly incidental.” He sounded heroic—melodramatically so—and she smiled at him patiently until he got ahold of himself.

A sheepish grin curved his lips. “One does tend to start thinking of one’s self in the third person,” he said more mildly.

“So, no armies of the undead,” Emily said.

“Like you said, it’s just a big grotesque diamond. It’s supposed to sit there and look pretty.”

Emily stared mutely at the mostly incidental ring, which carried on blazing ostentatiously in the afternoon sunshine. Obviously, she could learn a lot from such a ring.

Noticing her unexpected shift in mood, Stanton adopted a lighter tone. “Never mind, you’ll get used to it. Now … your ankle. And an explanation of the injury thereto.”

Emily sighed, looking over her shoulder for a place to sit. Speaking about her ankle reminded her of it, and that was enough to set it throbbing. She eased herself onto one of the blockhouse’s weathered concrete abutments. She had been so looking forward to talking things over with Stanton, but now she didn’t want to. She wanted to forget anything had ever happened. She wanted to forget about the bottle of memories in her pocket, pretend it never existed. But unpleasant things could not just be forgotten, no matter how one wished they could. She drew a deep breath, let it out. The afternoon smelled of warmth and growing plants and sunshine.

“I had a strange talk with Pap,” Emily began. “He had a lot of things to tell me.” She paused. “He told me that there were things about my mother I never knew. He gave me this.” She pulled the heavy blue bottle from her pocket. “It’s called a Lethe Draught.”

“A Lethe Draught!” Stanton settled himself beside her. He took the bottle between his fingers and held it up to the light. He examined the card that was attached to the neck.

“ ‘Catherine Kendall,’ ” he read. “ ‘Boston.’ ”

“It was my mother’s card,” Emily said softly.

“Unglazed bristol board, excellent engraving. This is the card of a woman of good family.” Stanton paused, obviously surprised. “How unexpected.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“When I can spare a second, I’ll take you down to the Institute’s library, and we’ll look up the name in the Boston Social Register. The Institute has copies of all of them back a hundred years or more.”

“I hardly think my mother would be in the Boston Social Register,” Emily said.

Stanton did not comment, but continued to peer closely at the contents of the bottle. “Why would he Lethe you?”

“He said my mother was evil.”

“Evil?”

“He didn’t want to explain,” Emily said. “He just said that my memories were so bad that I had to be protected from them.”

Stanton frowned. “That is the commonly accepted usage of Lethe Draughts—to mitigate the harm of traumatic memories. But it’s a pretty drastic step, one that most practitioners don’t take lightly.”

“I’m sure Pap wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t have to.” Emily felt suddenly cold, and pressed closer to Stanton for warmth. “Well, what do you think? Should I drink it, or what?”

Stanton’s response was immediate. “Drink a Lethe Draught decocted by your pap? I think not!”

Then he quickly lifted an ameliorating hand. “Not that he isn’t an able Warlock, but they’re awfully tricky potions, Emily. Easy to get wrong.”

“So I should let my memories of my mother go? Just like that?” Emily said. “Let my history stay dead and bottled up?”

“Sometimes it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie,” Stanton said. Then he let out a long sigh. “But knowing you, you won’t let them. Promise me one thing. If you decide to drink it, don’t do it alone. Wait until I can be there with you.”

Emily nodded assent, remembering her similar promise to Pap.

“A Lethe Draught!” Stanton shook his head in disbelief. Then, in a darker tone, he added, “He kept a lot from you, didn’t he?”

“He did it to protect me,” Emily said.

“I wonder if that makes it right,” Stanton mused. Then his eyes widened. “But you still haven’t explained your ankle!”

“Well, that happened when I ran into the Sini Mira,” Emily said. The words had the predicable effect of making Stanton blink twice at her; Emily compressed her lips, but did not smile.

“The Sini Mira sent men to Pap’s cabin to ask about my mother,” Emily explained. “They are interested in her. They wouldn’t tell me why.”

“They wouldn’t tell … you spoke to them?”

“I spoke to one of them. His name was Dmitri.”

“He hurt you?”

“No …” Emily was hesitant to go into all the details of her battle with the Aberrancies; she felt he’d been alarmed enough for one day. “There was an earthquake … you know, there’ve been terrible earthquakes in San Francisco … and I twisted my ankle. He was there, he helped me up …” She waved an impatient hand, as if to brush aside the strands of her story that didn’t hold together. “He had been following me. He said he’d been sent to protect me.”

“The Sini Mira is not interested in protecting Witches.”

Emily frowned. Dmitri had said as much himself. “Why do they hate us so much?” she asked, inching herself back on the ledge and extending her ankle to rotate it. “Magic is as natural as … sunshine! They might as well hate sunshine!”

Stanton lifted her foot and let it rest in the crook of his arm. With his large hand, he began lightly kneading her ankle through the soft kid.

“And how exactly do they think they can stop people using magic, anyway?” Emily added, leaning back and enjoying the warm play of Stanton’s fingers on her leg.

“As I understand it, they propose to implement a sort of poison,” Stanton said. “A poison, deployed within the Mantic Anastomosis itself, that would make magic toxic to any practitioner channeling it. The idea was put forth in the fifties by a scientist named Aleksei Morozovich. It sent the magical community into an uproar.”

“I can imagine.” Emily winced as Stanton’s fingers found a particularly sore spot. Then, she asked softly, “How toxic?”

“As Morozovich’s research was never disseminated, that’s a matter of speculation. Some say that even the smallest charm could leave a practitioner feeling ill … and that perhaps, it could be fatal to an individual working a great magic.”

“And what about someone like you?” Emily asked. “Someone burned?”

Stanton pressed his lips together and was silent for a long time. His hand played over her ankle gently.

“Being burned means I cannot control the magic that flows through my body,” he said eventually. “I have no defenses against it; it flows through me untrammeled. I do not choose to channel magic, and thus I cannot choose not to channel magic. If the poison as it has been described were to be implemented, I imagine it would be unpleasant.”

“Mildly unpleasant?” Emily ventured hopefully. “Maybe?”

“Fatally unpleasant,” Stanton said. “Probably.”

Emily let his words hang in the air, hoping the afternoon brightness would blunt them. It didn’t.

It was Stanton who finally spoke again.

“The Sini Mira does not care about me, or people like me. They are fanatics, willing to trample innocent bystanders in the pursuit of their goals.”

“Great. So I have fanatics following me around. Again.”

He looked at her. “Well, the preliminary indications are that they’re not after you, per se. They are interested in your mother. And even if they do think that you can help them find something out about her, as long as you stay within the Institute, you’ll be completely safe.”

The sureness and protectiveness in his voice made her feel like giggling. Emily hated girls who giggled, so she bit her lip and tried to look serious.

“I just wish I knew what they wanted.”

“You said your mother was going to the Sini Mira. Whatever business she hoped to transact with them was obviously never completed. What that business could have been …” He furrowed his brow quizzically. “A nice young woman from Boston, with a child, crossing the country to get to the Sini Mira in San Francisco.” He rested his hand on her ankle, shaking his head. “Whatever the situation, it must have been dire.” He gently lowered her foot. “Better?”

“Much.” Emily smiled at him. “I need to speak with Komé. I think she knows more about the Sini Mira than she ever told me.” She softened her voice. “She wanted me to go with them, back in Chicago. Remember?”

“I remember,” Stanton said. “I didn’t agree with her then either.”

“I’ll speak to Emeritus Zeno tonight,” Emily said, thinking of the rooting ball with Komé’s acorn in it. “He has to let me talk to her.”

“It’s not getting Zeno to let you speak to Komé, it’s getting Fortissimus to let you speak to Zeno,” Stanton said. “You know what he’s like.”

“Fortissimus.” Emily grumbled the word like a curse. Yes, she knew exactly what Rex Fortissimus was like. The most prominent presentment arranger in New York, Fortissimus supposedly knew more about credomancy than anyone besides Emeritus Zeno. He had been retained at an extremely handsome rate to arrange the Investment, promote Stanton’s public image, and advise him on decisions of importance. He’d been making a nuisance of himself for weeks, mostly by claiming whatever share of Stanton’s time was not already claimed by Zeno. “I don’t like him.”

“Well, like him or not, I need him. It’s a big leap for someone in my position to become Sophos.” He paused thoughtfully. “Actually, tonight might not be a bad night to get yourself in front of the Emeritus. Fortissimus is throwing a beefsteak for me at Delmonico’s, and he won’t be around to bother you. Try after nine.”

“Then you’re not coming back to the Institute?” Emily tried unsuccessfully to hide her disappointment. “I swear, I don’t know why I always get left out of things! Why shouldn’t New York see my face once in a while? Is there something wrong with it?”

“There is nothing wrong with your face.” Stanton lifted a hand to stroke her cheek. “But it is Fortissimus’ considered opinion that it’s best to keep you under wraps just at the moment. And even if I were to take you around, it certainly wouldn’t be to a beefsteak. There won’t be any ladies there, just lots of cigar smoke and politicians and—as one might suppose—beefsteak. Hideous.”

“I still don’t understand why I have to be kept under wraps, as Fortissimus puts it. Won’t it seem strange when you marry some complete unknown out of the clear blue sky?”

“Fortissimus has a plan for that, too,” Stanton said. “Ninety-two percent of New York society thinks you’re a daughter of one of those eccentric California cattle barons with a fortune in gold.”

“And the other eight percent?”

“We’re paying them to keep their mouths shut.”

Emily drew an outraged breath, but before she could say anything Stanton chucked her under the chin in a way she thought she could grow to dislike. “My dearest beloved darling, you’ll be able to go around with me all the time soon enough. After we’re married, people will take you as a fait accompli.”

Emily didn’t know what a fait accompli was, but she was certain she didn’t want to be one.

“But even after we’re married”—Stanton raised an infuriatingly patrician index finger—“Especially after we’re married, in fact, I don’t intend to take you to a single beefsteak.”

“Oh, fine,” Emily said. Stanton smiled at her again, as he often did when she was annoyed. Apparently there was something in the set of her nose when annoyed that he found charming.

“Cheer up. The Investment is tomorrow, then all of this nonsense will be over.” It was clear that Stanton was looking forward to the end of the nonsense as much as anyone else. “Meanwhile, let’s make the best of the time we do have, shall we?” Leaning back on the rough concrete abutment, he drew her against his chest so that her body rested against the length of his. His hands smoothed along her waist, his mouth dipped to the hollow of her throat, lips traversing the curve of her clavicle. Gasping, she brought her head close to his and growled something softly into his ear.

“Miss Edwards!” he scolded, his breath quickening.

“Don’t tell me the thought hasn’t crossed your mind.”

“Yes, I know that there are plenty of nice hotels in New York. And yes, you’ve made it clear—painfully so—that you might reluctantly consider shedding your virtue prior to the wedding.”

“I could be convinced,” Emily said, letting her hand wander over parts of his anatomy to accentuate the point.

He captured her hand with desperate quickness and held it tight against his chest. “But the issue, my beloved, is not your purity. It’s mine. It’s very important that I remain chaste prior to the Investment. Once I’m Invested, all bets are off. But before the Investment …” He let out a heavy sigh. “Well, let’s just say there’s a reason the Pope is celibate.”

Emily stared deeply into his eyes. “Let’s leave the Pope out of this,” she said.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “After tomorrow, everything will be better.” He clenched her hand firmly over his heart. “I promise.”

“And I’ll get to see you once in a while?” she whispered into his throat, closing her eyes and savoring his smell of bay rum and collar starch.

“Anytime you like,” Stanton said, his voice soft and rumbling, his breath hot in her ear. He tried to pull her closer, but she slipped nimbly from his grasp—a trick made neater by the fact that she managed to hit him in the face with her hat feather as she did it.

“Until then, Mr. Stanton, let’s not drive each other to the madhouse.” Emily sat up primly and made a great show of straightening her costume. “It’s getting late, and I believe you have a beefsteak to attend.”

Stanton looked at her for a long moment. “There’s a word for ladies like you,” he said.

She grinned at him. “In which language?”

“All of them. And in Chinese, too, I bet,” Stanton said.

“Engaged?” she asked, waggling her ring finger at him. The otherworldly diamond glittered like an explosion of stars.

“That wasn’t the word I was thinking of,” Stanton said, rising swiftly and offering her his arm for the rugged descent back to civilization.