Chapter Twenty-One

P ercy eyed his companions, taking up half the carriage on the seat across from him. "Tell me again why you two tagged along?"

"Because your wife asked for our help." Hamish crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back into the cushions, his black sleeves straining against the muscles. "And to keep you from doing something stupid."

"Not me," Renard said from beside him, looking out the window at the dark streets, his light hair looking ridiculous with his new haircut sheared so close to his head.

The style made sense to differentiate him from Nic should the bastard show up—Percy had made the mistake himself before—but really. A man must draw the line at looking like a harvested sheep.

"I came to watch the spectacle," Renard explained.

Percy frowned. "I don't need an escort. It's not like I'll kill him."

Both men turned to him then, neither looking convinced.

Blowing hair from his eyes, Percy wished for the sixth time he hadn't left his bowler hat at home, if only to block the sight of his friends' meddling faces. "I'd never harm the crackpot. Tease mercilessly and set his latest contraption on fire out of spite, sure, but you must agree, it's for the man's own good?"

Percy wasn't even certain a blaze would be of note to the inventor. Knowing Gregori, he'd work around the flames and use the heat to forge a new batch of glass until his skin blistered. His focus was a downright health risk.

"Those contraptions are what's flooding the rookeries with revenue and new jobs," Hamish said testily. "I'd rather they and my man stay intact."

Percy rolled his eyes. "Tell me, do you express the milk first, or do you let Gregori suck directly from your tit?"

Hamish didn't take the bait. "If you'd tell us what this is about, we wouldn't need to follow you around."

"Sorry, Your Grace. I'm not currently in need of a nursemaid."

The carriage slowed to a halt and a distant horn blared from one of the ships coming into port through a thick blanket of fog over the harbor.

Percy exited the coach before the rest and made his way to the last warehouse on the wharf before giving the door a solid kick. "Wake up, Crackpot. I've a job for you."

The door opened a minute later, a disheveled Gregori complete with oil-stained breeches and a coat two sizes too big standing in the doorway. Upon seeing Percy, his gaze narrowed.

"We didn't make an appointment," Gregori said.

Percy made sure to show all his teeth when he smiled. "It's a surprise visit, friend."

Hamish and Renard came up on either side of him, like two enforcers standing guard... or two parents hovering over their willful child.

Percy's jaw clenched, but he kept smiling. "Won't you invite us in?"

Gregori glanced at Hamish. "Is he here to kill me?"

"Undetermined."

For fuck's sake! "I need to borrow one of those one-way mirror things you designed, okay? The product sample from the Prodding Pony." Percy shot Hamish a scathing glare. "Happy?"

"Depends on what the mirror is for."

"To show the optimal angle of your innards sliding out your body when I gut you."

"Wouldn't a regular mirror suffice?" Gregori asked, unalarmed and oblivious as always.

"Not for what I need. I'll be building a well-placed peephole in a tavern on the docks. About"—Percy made the rough dimensions with his hands—"this size. Six and six?"

"That's at least eight," Gregori said.

Percy dropped his hands, his ability to keep from throttling the whole group a credit to his endless humor. "Do you have it or not?"

"Precise measurements are important," Gregori said. "How you exaggerate your penile size to the ladies doesn't interest me."

"I see you've upped your insult game." If Percy weren't in such a hurry, he'd have offered the man a drink in commemoration. "Work on your bedside manner, genius. Then talk to me about playing nice with others. Now, the mirror, if you would?"

Gregori rolled his eyes and waved a hand to his left. " Auf dem tisch. "

Renard frowned. "What did he say?"

Percy smiled. "That your haircut reminds him of peach fuzz, and your vest is on backwards."

Hamish ran a hand over his face, lines of exasperation pulling the corners of his mouth down. "He said, ‘on the table.'"

Percy eyed the Duke of Camine with new appreciation. "I didn't know you spoke German."

"I had to. It was the only way to negotiate Charlotte's release from foreign custody."

Percy laughed. How he wished he'd been a gnat on the sill listening to Hamish plead his wife's case in broken German.

Renard wasn't so amused. "Why is this the first time I'm hearing about my sister's incarceration?"

Percy, mournfully, interrupted what was shaping up to become a bloody battle of fisticuffs. "Gentlemen—and genius—I regret I have more important things to do than watch you... do anything." Like taking his wife against the wall and making her scream his name.

Hamish's call stopped him at the door. "Where to next?"

Percy looked to the rafters and sighed. He needed two dukes trailing his every step like he needed Danny to save another cat. Lord Pickles had already wormed her way into sharing his bed, slippers, and one particularly unfortunate bath neither of them would forget. He still couldn't look the stupid feline in the eye.

"Don't need a nursemaid," Percy reiterated. "Go home to your wives, enjoy married life, build a church."

"What if we agree to do everything you say?" Renard offered.

Percy rolled his eyes. He needed two obsequious dukes trailing him like he needed the cat rammed up his arse. "No need, duke. Wives," he reminded. "Pretty, feisty wives who no longer have a reason to throw shoes at your head, what with the babe out."

Renard—whipped man that he was—seemed to consider.

Hamish, reading the same expression on his brother-in-law's face, sighed and promised, "Fine. We'll stay out of it."

Finally.

Relieved, Percy forgot how close he stood to the genius when he mumbled, "Now if I could only get the Greens and the Merrys to play their roles."

" Narren besorgung ," Gregori said.

Percy rubbed his temple. "Again with the German, genius? Really, you've lived in England for how long now?"

Gregori offered an uncharacteristic scolding. "It is a fool's errand. Encouraging gang activity is moronic and irresponsible."

Percy's gaze narrowed. "How do you know about that?" His machinations—a subtle bit of vandalism here, a false rumor there—none of the recent tensions on the streets could be traced back to him, especially by a man who only deigned to show his face in public for the rare tumble with the local pleasure girls. Decidedly open-mouthed pleasure girls.

Answering his own question, he glared at Gregori. "If we can get back to business?"

"I won't help you," he said. "Not if it means starting a war between the Greens and the Merrys."

Hamish jolted. "You're starting a gang war? Are you an idiot?"

Percy rolled his eyes. This was why he worked alone. "Not an actual war. Merely the illusion of one. I informed Markus of my actions before I expertly stepped on toes. No need to worry."

"What about the Greens?" Hamish said. "Did you get their cooperation?"

"Of course not. Any one of those ingrates could be in Nic's pocket." Seriously, this was why dukes made the worst partners.

"What about the locals?" Hamish's face resembled a rolling thundercloud. "I won't tolerate collateral damage. There must be another way."

"I took precautions," Percy said. He wasn't that irresponsible. "The port authorities were anonymously informed of the possible upcoming violence and additional agents were requested to patrol the docks. With all the grumbling over the recent sand theft on the incoming ships, even the captains are likely to throw in their support." He'd thought of everything.

Head popping up like a child's jack-in-the-box toy, Gregori asked, "Did you say sand?"

Percy gritted his teeth at the interruption. Now the man wanted to talk business? "I didn't say steel and timber."

"As in silica?"

Percy scoffed at the man's intensity. Only a scientist would get excited about dirt. "Is there any other kind?"

Gregori sent papers flying from his table in his search for a large, leather journal. "How much at a time?"

Percy sighed. There was no use teasing the automaton when he asked questions of measurement. "By the barrels." The lack of finesse in the next generation's criminal enterprise was sad. "Apparently, smuggling gunpowder and Scottish whiskey is too high an ask nowadays."

"This is bad," Gregori said, referencing his journal.

"I agree," Percy said. "So much harder to buy bootleg if there isn't any in stock."

The man quirked a brow at that. "Silica's versatility far outshines that of liquor."

Percy glanced at the other two men in the room. "Is he speaking German again? I could've sworn he just said something un -English."

Hamish looked down at where Gregori's finger held a place halfway down the page. "Are those ship inventories for the harbor?"

Gregori nodded. "I keep a record of a dozen ships, so if we ever ‘borrow' supplies, we don't leave an easily led trail back to our operation."

"Not bad, genius," Percy said. No wonder the authorities weren't sticking a monocle up their bums. "I'll get you more sand, Greg. If that's what you're worried about?"

"You don't understand," Gregori said, turning the journal so the page was faced right-side up for the rest to see. "Silica is used in everything from glass making to art to weapons, particularly in crude counterweight mechanisms. And it's not the only supply regularly missing from manifests."

He'd need to carry a complete set of encyclopedias on his person to keep up with the man. "Get to the point, Gregori."

"Silica is used to make more than glasses. Add the missing metal and filaments taken in smaller batches and a mechanical picture emerges."

Maybe to a lunatic genius. "I'm sure those lovely little time turners are untapped profits—"

"Bombs," Gregori said.

"Okay, bombs of missed profits." Jesus, he'd sic Danny on the genius for all the word games. That was a bloodbath he'd pay to see.

Gregori shook his head. "Silica is used to delay triggers in bombs."

Percy's humor evaporated.

Renard choked. "You mean real bombs?" He pantomimed a falling shell and resulting explosion with his hand as if the man wouldn't understand his question.

Gregori ignored the idiot's antics and asked Percy, "Is there any way your ex-partner learned about bomb-making?"

Learned? The man had taught their regiment how to make makeshift explosives in the trenches when their guns had kept misfiring. They'd been fourteen.

"Fuck."

"It's Nic," Hamish said, face pale. "At the Leishires' ball, he aired our commandeering of sand barrels as one of his grievances. I hadn't thought a second more about it, the idea he was on a homicidal rampage over a bit of dirt." He ran a shaky hand through his hair. "He's making fucking bombs!"

His horror was mirrored in the other expressions around the room.

This changed everything.

"This is the importance of communication," Gregori said, the rat bastard.

Cornering Nic in the streets was pointless now, especially if he'd already chosen his target.

"How much damage could this kind of bomb reap?" Percy asked.

"Given the amount missing in the past months and the understanding my records are for only twelve of the thirty ships that make regular charters through the harbor..." Gregori took the graphite stick from behind his ear and jotted down a series of figures on a scrap of paper.

When he looked up from his math, his complexion had paled considerably.

The three men waited in silence, their tense postures all conveying they knew the answer before Gregori confirmed their worst fears.

"A crude bomb this size could take out Dockside in a single go."

The idea was unfathomable.

"What is to be done?"

"Call the authorities and evacuate the city?"

"There's no time. What if the plants are already in place? Unless we know—"

The three other men talked over each other, their emotions high—even the robot crackpot worried his lip and interjected when applicable—but they'd get nowhere without a point of origin.

Percy burrowed deep into his subconscious, where the men's conversation, the noise from the harbor traffic outside, the room itself faded away. He let his mind wander, processing the pieces of intel he knew of Nic's past as well as the information they'd gathered over the past years since Nic had reentered the picture.

Nic was gathering supplies.

He intended a large-scale attack.

He was using independent factions in the city. Mercenaries to buy him time and protection.

Personal vendettas had delayed his plans.

Ruled by emotions.

As the list continued, Percy reduced the man's complicated personality to the pinnacle of its driving principle.

Nic had always worked under the anger of what he'd perceived as past wrongs. The list of grievances had grown in length and mania as he'd aged, the ravages of war and exception to rules feeding an already warped sense of right and wrong.

Percy had to narrow down the list if there was any hope. But where to start?

He would hedge his bets Nic would go for a single grand spectacle instead of splitting the materials; he'd reveled in the flashier kill, the display of his prowess and genius.

Which left the damning question: Where would he strike? The Home Office? Fellow Hall? The Prodding Pony? The Harbor?

Whom would Nic see as his greatest foe? Where would he place the blame?

The person he deemed responsible for holding him back. The same person who'd taken away what fictitious future he thought he was owed.

"Me."

The three men fell silent.

Facing their expectant faces, Percy accepted their unflinching trust, his gut tight with the weight of his decision. "Nic will go after me at Fellow Hall."

If a bomb this size could take out entire blocks in the city, it could wipe the entirety of Fellow Hall off the map.

Nic had risen from the grave—a place far easier to manipulate his enemies while they'd dropped their guards—after learning of Percy's newfound wealth and power. Putting his plans in jeopardy because he couldn't stand the idea that Percy had acquired something unattainable without artifice: A play Nic had already used and lost when posing as the Marquess of Slasbury.

All because of him.

"That has to be the target," he thought out loud.

"We know where to go," Hamish said, his expression determined. "Which means we can anticipate him and stop this once and for all."

"It's not that easy," Percy said. Knowing the location turned all his plans sideways. He hadn't calculated a houseful of servants, or the disadvantage of an estate of blocked sightlines.

When he'd thought to lay out their line in St. Giles, the roof access and dozens of eyes would've kept their trap from springing prematurely.

But with hundreds of acres and an unknown number of associates on Nic's payroll, there was no way of pinpointing the direction of infiltration in the country. Any change of routine, any personnel not where they were supposed to be would tip Nic off.

Which left those whose presence wouldn't be thought of as suspicious.

Percy would rather shred his arm from a bear trap than involve his friends.

"Percy." Hamish's hand fell on his shoulder. "Talk to us. Tell us what you need."

Renard snorted. "Not even you believe His Secretiveness would ask for help."

No one would believe it.

The Home Office taught cooperation, obedience, but secrecy more than anything else. Percy had grown to rely only on himself, divulging plans on a need-to-know basis. If no one knew the full plan, a single setback wouldn't cripple a mission because contingency steps would be in place.

Percy gritted his teeth. He'd become as predictable as Nic with his actions.

And that was why Percy always lost.

If there was any hope of taking Nic down, there could be nothing held back.

Percy fought his gut reaction to keep his thoughts silent and chewed on the words before he finally said, "I need your help."

Renard startled. "Really?"

Gregori—the loveable scamp—blurted an out-of-character, "Bullshit!"

Hamish was the only one whose expression never changed. He leaned against the nearest table and inclined his head. "What's the plan?"

Percy returned his friend's composure with gratitude. They'd all need to keep their heads for the chaos to come. "Call in the troops," he said, stomach in knots. "We've a score to settle."

The gamble would decide all their fates: Hamish's, Charlotte's, Renard's, Camille's... Danny's.

Though slim at best, together, there was a chance.

Percy prayed he was right. The consequences of being wrong were too great to comprehend.