Part 1
Natalia had left Long Stones at fourteen minutes past three with ninety-six points in reserve on the hundred-point scale she used for herself.
She took a charcoal walking cloak from its peg by the Atrium's lower door, crossed the lowest terrace in a few strides, and went out where the glass gave way to the stone apron above the sea-gate. From the railings she dropped into the cove. The tide was well out, and she went along the shingle beneath the cliffs. A gully half a mile along took her up onto the moor road. The light was already going. By the time it had gone altogether she was far inland, and, as far as she could tell, nobody had seen her.
She ran for three hours and twenty-two minutes.
It cost a lot of energy. When the first suburbs of Albecaster came up out of the dark, with their soot and their mana-lamps, she had seventy-four points left. She had spent a substantial share of everything she had on distance in a single afternoon.
She slowed to a walk at the edge of the city, pulled up the hood and closed the cloak over the grey silk.
She had left without her veil. After the broadcast, a white veil was hardly a disguise. The hood would have to do.
In the great hall of the northern terminus, under a public mirror the size of a barn door, the evening news was running. Natalia stopped behind a crowd of two hundred people waiting for trains, her hood forward and her chin low.
DUCHESS OF WETDIN HALTS VOTE.
The motion had been agreed to at thirty-one minutes past three.
A postponement bought time, not acquittal. The hood's evidence meant the questions would still be asked tomorrow, more politely and by more important men.
Her decision to leave remained correct, she told herself.
The next headline was worse, and she was glad of it. THE HEIR AND THE SPY. Beneath it were the photograph from the bicentennial and a caption about trust cruelly exploited.
Good, she thought. A deceived man is not an accomplice.
And a man who had been sent a spy had summoned nobody. The law that still put summoners to death could not touch her Master.
She was now certain that her departure had achieved exactly what she wanted.
Part 2
At one in the morning, Philip was still in the east study; the bedroom reminded him too sharply of her absence.
The folded plan lay beside him. He knew what she meant to do: frame him as a victim of her deception to protect him.
Forgive me.
Her face as she said it was still clear to him, and he meant to keep that memory.
He opened a fresh notebook and began to write down the good moments they had shared.
He was afraid of losing them as he had lost Tara's face.
His memory of Tara had almost completely faded. Her name was there, and the facts—three years, the apartment, the morning she said she needed security—but the face had gone, worn off like the gilt on an old frame, and he could not recall the exact day it left him.
So he wrote down every moment with Natalia that he could still remember, even the small ones.
It was partly to preserve their precious memories together, whatever happened next.
It was partly to postpone having to take action while his mind was still grappling with the gravity of the situation.
He wrote it plainly, like a task list, because making task lists was what he did well. It did nothing to improve the situation. He knew that, but it made him feel like he was at least doing something.
Writing yourself a will, Host?
The System sat on the far end of the table in a lighthouse keeper's oilskin, with considerably more buttons undone than any actual lighthouse keeper would have allowed, and a storm lantern hanging from one hand.
Where is she? he asked.
You know I can't.
Then could you at least top her mana up, the way you used to do with my money?
That was through a link that no longer exists between you and her. The money I charged was used as a substitute for your green mana. Once the seal became her own, you can no longer channel green mana to her.
The System set the lantern down on the table. Only Philip could see its light.
But as a friend, I could give you some relationship advice.
You should write to her tonight. Lydia told you that the one-way channel is there. So use it.
He turned to a fresh page. His own quick compliance surprised him.
Natalia. Come home. That is an order.
He looked at it. It was what he wanted, all of it, in seven words.
She will obey that, the System said quietly.
That is the point.
Is it? She leaned over and looked at the page with him.
Read it again, Host. She comes home because you ordered her to. The danger she ran from still exists in the House of Lords. And she's learned one new thing about you: that when it really matters, you will command her. What does she do with that the next time she's frightened?
Philip looked at the seven words for a long time.
Then he took out a new sheet of paper and began again.
Natalia. I am asking you to let me know you're safe. I know you left to ensure my safety. But safety without you, chosen without me, is not the life I want.
He stopped. Then he added a last line.
Forgive you? There is nothing to forgive. There is only gratitude on my part.
That one she can refuse, the System said. That is the reason it might work.
When he looked up, the far end of the table was empty, and the lantern had gone with her.
Part 3
Earlier that Thursday evening, at ten past seven, the First Minister's office was the one quiet room in a building that had not stopped ringing since three.
General Beatrice Dugu stood at the window with her back to the room. It faced north, onto a courtyard of wet stone and sleet. In December, Sir Reginald Foxworth had brought winter jasmine for the corner of the desk, because a north-facing office, he said, lacked natural beauty. The flowers had died before Christmas. Nobody had replaced them, and the vase had gone into a cupboard. Coming in tonight, Foxworth had glanced once at the empty corner. Dugu had noticed him noticing, and was annoyed with herself for it.
Behind her, Dianna poured coffee. The display mirror on the far wall held the afternoon's broadcast, paused on the hood's final exhibit: the bicentennial embrace.
"The House has asked for a report," Arthur said, "from the proper authorities. On whether what it was shown this afternoon is genuine, and on what it does and does not establish." He set the order paper down. "The Duchess of Wetdin's words, not mine. I promised officers whose names the House knows. That means the two of you."
"Under which hat?" said Foxworth, from the fireside chair.
"The ones you already wear, Reggie. I am adding a question to your work, not inventing an office because the newspapers would like one."
Dugu turned from the window. "Then the first question is what the hood got right."
Nobody asked what she meant.
Three constabularies. Three files. Not one file mentions the other two. The hood had said it in a voice like warm honey. Dugu had been in this office that December morning, with Dianna taking notes, when Arthur showed her the photographs from the three local cases and told her he had already transferred them to the Bobbies. She remembered what he had said next.
The last thing we need, Arthur had told her, is for the markets to learn that the assassination was part of a systematic campaign.
"She was right about the original files," Arthur said. "The connection was made in this office. I kept it from the public. It was my decision. I shall say so when I am asked."
He said it plainly, without the warmth he usually showed on broadcasts. Dugu found she respected him a little more for that, and trusted him no further.
"My people secured the recorder originals at four, with their existing seals intact," Foxworth said. "Their clock and custody records too. And the three files." He turned his cup a quarter-turn on its saucer. "I also learned something I did not like. The southern capture the hood showed carries our analytical contractor's job mark. We paid for that rendering in December."
"So the leak came from the contractor, not your people?" Arthur said.
"The mark cannot tell us that. Our copy carries it too. Our own copy history is being checked tonight. I have sent the consultancy a preservation notice. The partners will be questioned at a quarter to nine tomorrow. It is a Republican firm; I want lawful search authority and a Foreign Office liaison ready if we need them." A pause. "The liaison is there to handle any diplomatic complications, not to ask the Republic's permission. The House is another matter."
"The Clerk of the Parliaments has frozen the display records and the relay logs," Dianna said, without looking up from her notebook. "He asked me to clearly convey that he did so on the House's authority, and that the House will decide what leaves the building."
"Quite right too." Arthur almost smiled. "If I could seize Parliament's papers by sending round a note, the hood would have a better speech next time."
Foxworth set his cup down. "There is something else we can test against our own records, First Minister. She showed the House one recorder."
Dugu already knew what he would say.
"We hold two."
She saw it again without wanting to: a woman walking beneath a street lamp twelve miles northeast of Glorium. Masked. Dark-clad. Fair. Caught at exactly the same second as the veiled blur leaving the southern road. The hood had shown the Empire one blonde woman and left the other out.
"That omission is rather suspicious," Arthur said. "Find out what material she actually had, and we will see whether the omission was deliberate or merely careless."
"And the Republican pages?" Dugu said. "The asset profile and the instruction log."
"Copies of documents we have not authenticated," Foxworth said. "If genuine, somebody reached the Republic's files, or somebody with access supplied them. Neither possibility tells us who stood behind the hood."
Dugu remembered Rosetta's evidence that the Republic had known of the bombing and withheld its warning. Its interests had not aligned with Avalondia's then, and likely did not match them now. The Republic might be the hood's accomplice, not merely the victim of her breach.
"Ask for the underlying records through the proper channels," Arthur said. "Keep what we can prove here separate from what we must ask them to confirm." He turned a sheet over.
"One more matter. The Duchess of Redwood telephoned my office at half past six. Miss Natalia is no longer in the household. She left this afternoon, before the motion. Her Grace wished it on record that the House of Redwood is cooperating fully with the authorities and does not know where Miss Natalia has gone."
The room went quiet.
"Left," Dugu said.
"Left. Her Grace did not say where or why, and I saw no point in pressing her on what she plainly does not know." Arthur looked at Dugu over his cup. "Do you want Sir Reginald to seek a warrant?"
"On what? A face we have already seen on two women, some nineteen miles apart, in the same second?" Dugu heard her own voice come out colder than she meant.
For a moment, the offer had felt like a gift, and that was what alarmed her. Foxworth would have to act on the answer, but Arthur had put the question to her, and Arthur did not ask questions he had no use for. Still, for one instant, she let herself enjoy the image: the woman Philip had fought for so publicly, sitting in a cell, as payment for the promise he had broken to a woman he had never bothered to fight for at all.
Then her judgement took hold.
If she seized Miss Natalia on the hood's word, the papers would revive the story of her and Philip by morning, and Redwood counsel would cast the arrest as a jilted woman's revenge. Every honest step she took afterward would carry that stain. It would damage her career. Worse, it would threaten the story she had always told herself about who she was: a woman willing to make the necessary compromises in the service of a greater justice. That belief had made every questionable choice on her way up bearable—the conviction that a few stains could be forgiven if the cause they served remained clean.
There was also the Duke. When three committees had circled her name after the bicentennial, Arthur had defended her in public and the Duke of Redwood had backed him. Whatever the Duke's reasons, that support had saved her, and the partnership forming between the two men was plain to see. A warrant for the Duke's household would put her on the wrong side of both and undo all her prior efforts.
And the hood had aimed at the Redwoods for reasons Dugu did not yet understand. She had chosen to be Arthur's instrument. She would not let her own heart become the handle by which a stranger wielded her, least of all at the risk of her aspirations.
A great man masters his emotions; a lesser one is mastered by them. Her father had written it in the margin of his Treatise, in the characters she read as easily as her own name.
"Flight is not proof of murder," she said, the patience back in her voice. "She may have left out of fear, or shock, or for a reason we have not thought of. I want her found, not detained on an accusation. Quiet enquiries at the termini and ports, through Sir Reginald's officers. No public notice, and no detention without independent grounds. If the family's lawyers have a way to reach her, they can pass on a request for an interview with counsel present."
It was the right decision. It was also the safe one. Dugu let the principled reason be the one Dianna wrote down.
"I will arrange the enquiries and speak to counsel," Foxworth said. "Her absence does not close the other questions."
"And the result from the Herongate cup?" Arthur said.
"It supports a Familiar origin," Foxworth said. "It does not put Miss Natalia on the Glorium recordings, and it does not tell us who summoned her. Summoning and concealment are separate questions from the murder, and I shall treat them separately."
"The newspapers will say we let the spy walk," Arthur said.
"The newspapers have already decided she's a spy," Dugu said. "I would rather they did not decide which warrants we seek."
Dianna's pen moved.
"And for the avoidance of doubt," Arthur said, to the notebook as much as to anyone, "Her Grace of Wetdin told the House that something had been kept from it. Something had. No one in this government will ask her to say otherwise."
Foxworth inclined his head. Dugu said nothing. She was looking at the mirror.
Dianna, stepping back through the recorded broadcast for the report, stopped it on the sponsorship roll: Foundation letterhead, one entry ringed in green.
Recipient: Natalia. St. Meredith's Home for Foundlings, Commonwealth of East Zeeland. Full combat scholarship: Thornfield Academy, Iron Crane School, Volkov Institute.
"I have heard those names before," Dugu said.
They had first come to her beside Natalia's sickbed in the Redwood townhouse. Thornfield for firearms, Iron Crane for unarmed combat, Volkov for edged weapons. Lieutenant Chen had made a small strangled noise at the name of the Foundation. Every record he checked afterwards had supported the story. She had found that harder to believe than the story itself.
She had reported her doubts. Later, Arthur had taken her aside by the river beneath the Victory Day fireworks and asked her, very kindly, to leave that thread alone.
Arthur noticed Dugu's hesitation.
Dianna's pen had stopped above the page.
"Put that on the record, Dianna." He turned back to Dugu. "In the autumn I judged that thread secondary to the bombing inquiry, so I said it could wait. In December I judged that it needed re-examining, so I told you to follow the evidence wherever it led. Both decisions were mine."
By the river he had not said wait. He had said allowed to conclude. Dugu let the revision stand; it was a version she could live with too.
He left the reason unnamed. She had suspected Republican pressure at the time; the Redwood alliance would explain it just as well. She preferred not to guess.
"Now it cannot wait any longer," said Arthur.
"Then the biography is a live line of inquiry," Foxworth said. In December he had called a direct approach to the Redwoods premature; he did not pretend now that he hadn't.
He came to stand at her shoulder. "The broadcast tied the Republican documents to Miss Natalia on a resemblance and that sponsorship page. Shoddy work at best. Deliberate distortion at worst."
"And we have a second woman with the same face," Dugu said.
"Which leaves the page doing all the identifying. It is the only exhibit that names her." He studied it like a signature he expected to find forged. "Put one false page among true ones, and the audience assumes it is true as well."
"Then that page is the first thing we authenticate," Dugu said.
What she did not say was that she suspected the Redwoods knew more than they were letting on.
She recalled that when the interview had touched Miss Natalia's childhood, the governess had crossed to the bed, taken her hand, and given Dugu a polite and unmistakable warning.
There was the hair, too. She had taken it herself and sent it to the War Office laboratory. No result had ever come back; the sample had been reported lost. An inconvenient loss was not proof of interference, still less of who had arranged it. But the cup from Herongate had now produced the answer the hair never had.
The cup could not name Natalia's summoner. The Republic might own more than one Familiar with that face; for all she knew, it could have belonged to an entire class of Familiar operatives. But it could be just as possible that someone in the House of Redwood had summoned her, and that the family was hiding it.
Part 4
Later that same Thursday, at twenty to eleven, the last of the relay firm's day staff left. Natalia heard one complain that the preservation notice had kept them there all evening. From a recessed doorway across the street, outside the view of the recording crystals covering the entrance and the clerk's counter, she counted them as they left. She had waited there for ninety minutes, spending only the slow trickle of mana required for living at a human pace.
She had found the firm through the small grey imprint at the foot of every sheet the hood had displayed. At the terminus, the public trade directory had identified it in eleven seconds. The firm was licensed to carry the House's papers to mirrors across the Empire. A long, dull name. A short, valuable licence.
The firm stamped everything it carried. Its mark meant only that the hood's material had passed through its relay. It said nothing about who had sent it in. The register might tell her under whose authority it had been accepted.
She had walked there from the terminus. Running cost mana, and she had already begun to conserve it. The offices occupied a four-storey building of soot-dark brick on a narrow street south of the river, with one window still lit on the ground floor.
The night clerk was alone.
He was perhaps nineteen, with ink on his cuff, a textbook propped against the lamp and half a meat pie on a sheet of newspaper beside it. Every few minutes he underlined something. Natalia noted the textbook, the pie and the pencil, and filed them in her memory with everything else. She also estimated the pie's value in blue mana, which was nil, and was faintly annoyed with the result.
She opened the side door in four seconds, slipped inside and drew it shut, restoring the lock without visible damage. The clerk looked up because the draught had changed, and found a tall woman in a charcoal cloak on his side of the counter, close enough to touch.
He opened his mouth.
She took the pencil out of his fingers before his hand knew it had been emptied, and laid it on the textbook.
"I am not going to hurt you," she said.
But the assurance seemed to frighten him more than a threat would have. His pulse went from seventy to a hundred and forty in the time it took him to swallow. He gripped the edge of the desk as if the floor might go.
"This afternoon your firm carried a display to the House of Lords. Show me what you received, and when."
"I can't—that's—it's confidential, miss, I'll lose my—"
She said nothing. She let him notice how close she stood and remember how quickly she had taken the pencil from his fingers.
He turned to the mirror on his desk.
It took him three tries to open the register because his hands were shaking. His desk credential appeared at the top of the reading copy. The original lay in a press under the firm's seal, with a notice from the Clerk of the Parliaments on its door: preserve the original; keep routine access logged. Natalia read each line as it formed on the glass.
14:41. Government papers, received from the Whips' office. Approved by House administration.
15:05. Displayed: Schedule to the commencement amendment.
15:07:12. Exhibit package received under consultancy credential (briefing and exhibits). Accepted.
There it was. Just over two minutes after the schedule, a package had come in under a different key. Beside it, in the job column, stood a line of letters, a sequence number and a date.
She had seen those characters once before, for one point four seconds, in a small grey box in the corner of the image the hood had displayed.
They matched exactly.
The reference matched the consultancy's rendering job, and the consultancy held a credential to submit exhibits to the House. Somebody had used that access at seven minutes past three. Whether the use had been authorised was another question.
A key proved only that someone had held it.
Of all the sheets the hood had shown, one drew on a biography Natalia knew to be false. Miss Lydia had prepared it before the interview with General Dugu, and the records had supported every answer Natalia gave. This was the household's cover, whatever route had brought the page to the hood.
"The credential," she said. "Whose office?"
He found the credential's entry. An analytics consultancy, two rooms above a shipping agent on the north bank, a street from Kingsworth Bridge.
She committed the address and the entry to memory, then left the mirror as it was. Smashing it would erase neither the sealed original nor the clerk's memory. She wanted the record intact: it showed which credential had been used.
She turned to go.
Behind her, the clerk's pulse leapt again. The lamplight must have caught her face beneath the hood. He stared at her rather than her hands. His reaction told her that he recognised her.
Natalia considered several responses and discarded all those that involved touching him.
She had begun the interference from the recessed doorway across the street and maintained it as she entered. Holding it was still drawing from her reserve.
She had worked out the method while waiting, drawing on three books she had read at Long Stones on nights when Master slept: a primer on mirror transmission, a monograph on recording crystals, and the cinema mirror's maintenance manual. None taught the trick. Together, they explained enough about the standard arrangement she could see through the lit window for her to work out how the crystals themselves might be disrupted.
The method should spoil the images those crystals captured, not merely hide a picture on the clerk's screen. A different installation might not respond. This was her first attempt; the saved record would tell her whether it had held.
But a blank recorder did not make a witness forget. He might report her as soon as she left. Fear had already made him slow; perhaps it could make the simpler account seem safer for a few hours.
She turned back. "The recorders on your desk circuit stopped showing images just after twenty to eleven. Check the saved sequence, not only the live view."
He brought it up. The stored channels went blank at the same minute and remained blank. It had worked. The register and its access log were untouched.
"Now look at the side door."
It was shut and locked, without visible damage. He looked from the locked door to his name at the top of the open register.
"Your name is on the access-log entry made while every crystal was blank," she said. "There is no picture of me beside you, and no mark on the door. Every question about this will start at your desk."
"You were here."
"Yes. Nothing in this room says so except you."
She let him take it in: the register, the blank channels, the locked door.
"When they ask, you can tell them you were curious about the hood's entry. Everyone in the Empire is curious tonight. That is true, and nothing in the record contradicts it." She paused. "Or you can tell them the woman from the broadcast opened a locked door without leaving a mark, appeared beside you without leaving a picture, and chose you. Then they will ask why she chose you."
Then, she disappeared before the clerk could respond.