Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

Timing and an eye for opportunity. Alice was about to be a young, pretty, rich widow with a titled son and another alliance to make. Keating could use that, and a dose of mourning would force her to remember who was in charge. He was more than a little annoyed with his daughter. She had become far too attached to Roth when Keating required her loyalty for himself, and this premature change of cast would put her in her place.

Of course, Alice didn’t know about the poison yet. Roth had hoped to spare her, and Keating had agreed. He couldn’t afford hysterics right now, although he would miss the touch of drama. Damnation .

As Keating finished buttoning his jacket, his gaze fell on a wooden box the size of a carpet slipper. It sat on the shelf behind his desk, right at elbow height. Irritation made him tug at his cuffs, straightening them with a decisive snap. There was only one thing worse than finding out your maker shot his poisoner all over your office carpet, and that was discovering that same maker was a turncoat. Both Roth and the Cooper girl had vanished.

With a leaden feeling in his belly, Keating reached toward the box, his fingers twitching. Nothing he saw beneath the lid would make him happy, so he stopped, rubbing his thumb against his fingertips. Don’t bother. You already know the answer . But knowing wasn’t the same as being certain, so he picked up the box and set it on his desk. It was heavy, the polished rosewood finish hiding the heavy mechanism within.

Evelina’s bracelets were only one half of the containment device that imprisoned her. This was the rest. He unlatched the lid and raised it with a faint click. Beneath it was a series of round dials showing direction, distance, and time. Keating looked at the position of the needles and swore.

Roth had unlocked the bracelets to allow Evelina to leave the university grounds, but that didn’t disable the tracking mechanism. Unfortunately, the device used her dormitory rooms as the central point from which her location was calculated. Setting the tracking mechanism was a cumbersome business requiring the services of Her Majesty’s Laboratories. Baskerville Hall, just over two hundred miles to the southwest, had been within its range, if only just. Keating hadn’t seen the need to reset the whole mechanism for a trip scheduled to last only days. Now he wished he had, because all the indicators on the device were in the neutral position, unable to read a thing.

Bile soured Keating’s mouth. Evelina was out of range of his device’s reach. Tobias Roth had vanished. Her Majesty’s Laboratories were destroyed and there were rumors that Madam Thalassa and her followers had done it. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Evelina had played a role in the sabotage and then escaped—and that meant she had the key to the bracelets.

Keating polished a fingerprint off the convex face of one of the dials, his knuckles brushing the green felt inside the lid. Then his temper overcame him and he slammed the lid shut with a bang. Roth was an idiot or a traitor, and Holmes had been no help at all. He’d claimed to be fully occupied chasing a giant, murderous hound over the moor.

This much he knew: Evelina’s disappearance had happened overnight. Keating had sent out a search party of his best men, but they’d turned up nothing, and that was no surprise. He had gone to bed one night knowing just where she was, and by the time his streetkeeper had checked the device the next morning, she was beyond the limits of its reach. I was duped . And he would bet his last shilling Holmes was in on it. Holmes, Roth, and perhaps even those fools at the university.

Of course, the restraints had an automatic safeguard against just such events. This latest model didn’t depend on the bracelets being within range, but upon the number of times the key was turned. The key would soon stop working—if it hadn’t already—and she would die in agony. A just punishment, if the waste of a promising operative. So much for lenience. I should have burned her long ago .

Fuming, Keating left his suite of offices, slammed the door closed, locked it, and stalked down the corridor of the Steam Makers’ Guild Hall. He glanced over his shoulder, missing Roth’s presence, and then cursed himself for doing it. Damn Roth . Still, it had been good to have a future viscount on staff; it gave his entourage presence. And damn Scarlet , he thought grimly. Reading had cost Keating a valuable asset. Good makers didn’t fall out of trees. Now, sadly, the only future left for Roth was to die quickly offstage and with the least fuss possible. And maybe he deserves it .

Anger throbbing in his gut, Keating reached the stairs and began to descend, wondering how much of all this to reveal in the meeting that would begin—he checked his watch—mere minutes from now.

He continued, turning left toward the meeting rooms. He saw the Blue King up ahead, with three of his ragged Blue Boys guiding the steam-powered chair he rode in. Although his territory comprised the poorest parts of the East End, where starvation was commonplace, he was enormously, grotesquely fat.

Behind the chair, carrying a portfolio under one arm, was Mr. Juniper, the Blue King’s elegant man of business. The fellow paused, bowing slightly in Keating’s direction. The gesture rankled, reminding Keating of one other unpleasant discovery he’d made in the last week—Juniper’s true name was Moriarty, and he was a mathematics professor at the very same college where Evelina had been attending. Could he have played a role in her escape?

Keating slowed his pace, not wanting to confront King Coal’s entourage right away. For the first time the Gold King could recall, he was actually nervous. There was an unusual amount that could go wrong today.

A dainty gloved hand fell on his arm. “Mr. Keating, a word if you please.”

He tensed when he realized that it was Mrs. Valerie Cutter, better known as the Violet Queen. She had a small geographical territory, but her true kingdom was the brothels and a few of the London periodicals—though some hinted at a significant spy network. Information was her specialty, and thus she was not a woman to brush off. Keating stopped. “How may I help you, madam?”

Mrs. Cutter was dressed in a deep magenta costume decorated in long fringe that no doubt cost dearly but put Keating in mind of a lampshade. She was in her midforties, dark haired, and still handsome except for the cold glitter in her eyes. “We are in tumultuous times, Mr. Keating.”

He cast a glance at the monumental steam clock mounted above the entrance to the council chamber. “Not only tumultuous, but fleeting. I am all ears for whatever you have to say, but keep in mind that we are in danger of being late.”

She gave him a coy smile that still managed to be annoyed. “Then I will come directly to my point. You need a friend.”

“Do I?”

“Don’t be foolish, darling. We’ve all heard about the laboratories.”

A bad taste formed at the back of his mouth. “And what do I have to do with that?”

“Nothing, officially, but everyone knows you took an interest in the place. Having it blow up like that looks bad. Some even say it was magic.”

“It was the boiler,” he said with a stiff smile.

“Something came to the boil, that much is certain.” She snapped open her fan, covering her smiling lips.

He’d had enough of the exchange. “Are you volunteering to be my friend, Mrs. Cutter?”

“I find myself casting about for a safe harbor. The last one appears to have been shot.”

Keating had been half expecting this, since Scarlet and Violet had always been close. “I have mooring points available for such a delightful craft as yours, but such things require negotiation.”