Chapter Twenty

The ton could not, ordinarily, prepare for a ball in three days, especially not a royal ball, doubly especially not a royal ball with visiting dignitaries, and triply especially not a royal ball with visiting dignitaries that was announced also as a masquerade.

But this was an embassy from the Other Court, and for all their piety and avowed aversion to things uncanny, the ton would move heaven and earth to attend. They would even go so far as to solicit fairy-wrought garments (garments which, I tell you again, are extremely well-made, utterly beautiful, and never ever turn to leaves at dawn) for the occasion in spite of the taboo against such fabrics.

Still the preparation for the event remained complex, especially for the Caesars, who had two daughters and limited funds. Miss Caesar's garments were a part of her and, as such, could not be easily adapted, although she had some expectation that the Lady would assist her in this regard, but Miss Anne and the younger Mr. Caesar had rather more specific needs. To say nothing of the men of the Irregulars, who it had been agreed would attend in case—as several of them had colourfully put it—of fuckery.

Miss Bickle had, in the end, played the role of—for want of a less loaded term—fairy godmother; being endowed with both wealth and a love of the extravagant she was well suited both to source costumes and to advise on matters of style.

Whether it was the intense flurry of activity preceding the ball or the inherent squeamishness of their set that prevented the Caesars from making the offering to Freyr that Barryson had prescribed I cannot say, but it is worth noting at this moment—as we catch up with our party in the hour leading up to the ball—that the offering had not been made. Whether this would return to bite our heroes in their collective buttocks, we shall see anon.

But what a party it was. Even the costumed nature of the event was not quite able to conceal how eclectic a band they were. Miss Caesar herself was notable by absence, being escorted as always by the Lady, but the rest of the family were a riot of detail. The elder Caesars, accompanying their children on this occasion and fatally determined to let no ill befall them, had chosen simplicity—hooded cloaks and plain black domino masks. Although Lady Mary had signalled her identity to all who knew her by accessorising her cloak with a Wedgwood medallion, depicting a chained and kneeling figure and the words Am I Not a Man and a Brother? The others had chosen more complicated attire.

Captain James was perhaps the most straightforward, dressed in court-wear of the like that would have been fashionable two centuries earlier—a heavy doublet with slashed sleeves, and pantaloons in a similar style that gave him the look of a prince from a folktale.

"We all know what we're doing?" he asked, and was answered with a general murmuring of assent. Of course, a good officer never takes yes for an answer. "Barryson?"

"Watching for magic," replied the viking. His attire was furs and steel and topped off with a sword he had acquired from somewhere best not considered.

"Sal and Jackson?"

"Staying out of trouble," said the tallest of the two harlequins. "And reminding you that you don't have to do this."

"Staying back," translated the shorter, "and being ready if help is needed."

"Kumar?"

Constantine the Great—a specific and well-researched Constantine the Great that could have come straight from the walls of the Hagia Sophia—stepped smartly forward. "Communication. Keeping these reprobates clear on what's happening."

"Callaghan?"

The highwayman tipped back his tricorn, although between the kerchief and the mask his face was still concealed. "I'm on Miss Mary," he said with a smile in his voice. "And if I see her break or fall or something try to take her, I'm to act like she was my own sister."

"I've seen how you treat your sister," Sal told him. "Do better."

Callaghan's fist clenched. "That is a scandalous lie and you know it."

"Boy William?" said the captain, cutting across the bickering.

"I'm with Miss Anne," he said. Alone amongst the company he was unmasked, wearing once more the guise of a page boy. "To pay special attention to any man as might try to lead her off. But don't worry, miss"—he flushed a little as he looked over at Cleopatra beside him—"I'll take good care of you."

Miss Anne, raised to be courteous even if ungrateful, tried not to show that she would rather have been assigned any guardian but him. "Thank you. I am sure I shall be as safe as anything."

The list of assigned roles had, from the perspective of the rest of the gathering, included notable absences. Mr. Caesar, his cousin, her lover, and Miss Bickle all stood unaccounted for.

"And what of us?" asked the younger Mr. Caesar, who, from some imp of the perverse, had chosen to dress as a British infantryman. "This is my sister we are speaking of; I will not be consigned to uselessness."

"Your job is to get us in, and to cover for us if we do something that your lot would never do at a ball," Captain James told him.

It was not busywork exactly, and it was certainly true that it made better use of the expertise of the various members of the group. But it did not feel quite that way to Mr. Caesar. "There must be more we can do."

Lady Georgiana, resplendent as Clytemnestra in a bloody gown, contrived to look down her nose at Mr. Caesar despite his slight advantage in height. "There is not. The world is cruel and arbitrary and we can but suffer it."

" Georgiana "—Miss Mitchelmore, as Arachne, complete with web, nudged the woman once known as the Duke of Annadale with her elbow—"there is a time and a place."

"And this is both. We are about to walk into danger; I would recommend that we not jump into it headlong."

Miss Bickle, whose milkmaid's outfit (a different milkmaid's outfit and one that, when challenged, she insisted was actually an outfit representing Marie Antoinette disguised as a milkmaid) came with an impractically large yoke and two pails that she had, at the very least, this time not elected to fill with actual milk, made a noise best approximated as pshaw. "I am certain we can come to no harm while these fine gentlemen are protecting us."

"That," Lady Georgiana replied, "is because you consistently overrate gentlemen."

"I like to think that I overrate everybody," Miss Bickle replied. "It's a much nicer way to see things."

The party had almost finished assembling when the elder Mr. Caesar spoke from beneath his hood. "Captain," he said, "I am grateful to you for all that you are doing, but you should know that when it comes to our daughter, Mary and I will do as we see fit to protect her, irrespective of your instructions."

Captain James gave half a nod. "Wouldn't expect otherwise."

And with that understanding they went to the ball.

Carlton House was the infamous London residence of the prince regent, a sprawling, palatial tribute to art, joy, and vanity. And on this evening it bore also the unmistakable touch of the Other Court. Its Corinthian columns were wound with ivy and its great halls lit with fairy lights. Which is to say, lights provided by fairies, not the strings of tiny bulbs that now bear our name. It is a wholly inaccurate appellation; the things you hang up in the winter have, I am sure, never lured so much as a single traveller to an early death.

The crowds, likewise, bore the mark of Titania's presence. For every masked mortal dressed in outlandish costume there was a creature whose mask was its true face: living dolls and ivy-headed dryads, quick-darting goblins and flower-clad fairies on gossamer wings. Then there were the mortals of the court; the Ambassador was there, representing the king to his queen and not entirely welcome. And alongside him, those who had walked deeper or made stranger bargains, those whose transformations—like that of Miss Caesar—marked them out as clearly belonging to elsewhere.

Miss Mitchelmore—not my primary focus in this tale but still a lady around whom interesting things happened—found her eyes drawn inexorably to one of these demi-mortals, a woman with cold eyes and an aquiline profile, with talons of steel and wings of beaten copper, with a bearing and demeanour that seemed somehow familiar. And whispering a gentle word to Lady Georgiana she led her lover away from our present story into another that I shall not tell you.

The Irregulars proved less prone to distraction, keeping to their assigned roles and their positions, letting the crowds swallow them and watching, always watching, for whatever danger might present itself.

For danger, or for wonder.

The queen herself (the queen who mattered, which is to say Titania, not the Queen of England, who was indeed present and holding court in her own pedestrian manner) had yet to arrive, but while she was the guest of honour, she was not the creature at the heart of this glittering web.

That distinction was reserved for Miss Caesar. Although a dispassionate observer might account her more fly than spider.

The Lady and her charge arrived an hour to the second after the official commencement of the ball. Crystal trumpets and spindle-limbed servants heralded her arrival, and she entered the ballroom in a cascade of white light.

Like everybody else, Miss Caesar was costumed. Unlike everybody else (at least everybody else who remained nominally human), her costume was her body. She wore a gown of no cut ever seen in that age or prior, a wild thing of cracked and shifting glass. Her shoulders were bare and transparent, her hair worn high and fused with her headdress into a spire that would have graced any fairy princess. A mask covered her face, a plain oval with tiny, stylised lips, empty holes for the eyes, and, on its left cheek, a single sculpted tear.

The whole room fell silent at her entrance. The queen, the prince regent, and even the young Princess Charlotte—permitted out of seclusion this once at least—watched her in awe as she walked the length of the grand hall, her footsteps echoing like bells. The Lady trailed behind her and, seeing her protégé in no further need of support, cut to one side to collect Miss Anne, who she had, after all, promised an introduction to royalty.

This being a fairy ball, I was entirely within my rights to attend physically, and even invisible I was plainly present to a sizeable minority of the attendees, but provided I retained my bird's-eye view (occasionally literally; that was the other helpful thing about this kind of ball, the occasional live songbird was very much to be expected) they mostly wouldn't try to talk to me.

Thus I was able to watch the proceedings from several angles at once, to see Miss Caesar stride confidently to the centre of the hall and be flooded immediately with admirers from whom she selected her first dance partner seemingly at random, and, at the same time, to see Miss Anne—with Boy William following sheepishly in tow and her entire family watching anxiously from the sidelines—follow the Lady to where Prince William was standing, masked only in a plain black domino in order that he not be mistaken for an ordinary person.

I did not hear what words passed between the prince and the girl, but he took her hand for the dance, and the band struck up a waltz. Descending to the crowd, I listened in to what her family were saying.

"It could be worse," Lady Mary was observing dryly. "He may be four times her age, but we can be relatively confident he has no wish to murder her."

The younger Mr. Caesar nodded but didn't take his eyes off his sister. "It is only one dance, and if nothing else it should elevate her status in the eyes of others."

Captain James, more accustomed to surveying the whole field of view than the Caesars, replied with half his attention elsewhere. "Will it? I thought masques were meant to be anony—Hang about."

Cutting off his instinctive desire to explain that yes, strictly at a masquerade nobody knew who anybody else was, but in practice everybody did and had a lifetime's experience of showing they did while pretending they didn't, Mr. Caesar followed the captain's gaze to two men on the opposite side of the ball.

The first, the elder of the two, was dressed as a Roman emperor, complete with toga and laurels. By his paltry attempt at a mask and his distinctive whiskers, he was plainly Major Bloodworth. The second was more concerning. He wore the attire of a legionary, lorica segmentata across his chest, his head covered by a Gallic helm. In deference to the British climate and the sensibilities of the day, he had chosen to wear woollen braccae covering his legs to the greaves rather than leaving his knees exposed as Augustus might have. The most peculiar part of his outfit, however, was the mask, which was pure gold—or gilt at least—and covered his entire face in a fa?ade of eerie serenity. Mr. Caesar and the captain were both certain that he was watching Miss Anne.

Balls in general, and masquerades in particular, were supposed to be carefree occasions. An opportunity to let down one's hair (figuratively at least; to actually let down one's hair would be the height of unseemliness) and live, for a while at least, in the moment. Which meant of course that in practice they were a tangle of white-hot thorns made from petty resentments, old tensions, and new intrigues. The dances changed, and the revellers switched partners. To the Caesars' relief, Miss Anne had not stood up with the prince twice in a row—there was seeking royal favour and then there was shameless social climbing, after all.

With commendable alacrity, Boy William had noted the Roman legionary approaching Miss Anne to ask her for the next dance and had taken it on himself to point her in the direction of an older gentleman masked as a fox rather than let him sweep her up at once, but he had not quite had the strength, in the space between dances, to stop the gentleman marking her card.

"Perhaps the next set, then," the legionary said—his voice was soft and by now, to the Caesars at least, unmistakable, "if you would so honour me."

"The lady is—" Boy William had begun, but the legionary had ignored him, and made it quite plain that if Miss Anne wished to refuse him, she would need to do so publicly, thereby giving him great insult.

And given the choice between protecting herself from a man she knew to practise human sacrifice or protecting her reputation, Miss Anne made the only choice she could.

I observed the whole exchange, of course, for such is my function. But Kumar observed it also and circulated at once back to Mr. Caesar and the captain to inform them of the problem.

"He has her for the next dance," he explained. "The boy did his best, but this isn't his battlefield."

For all of fourteen seconds, Mr. Caesar had been letting himself relax. One sister was awaiting Titania and could do nothing truly ill-advised until she arrived; another was with royalty and thus as safe from scandal as she could possibly be, so long as she remained in public. The sneaking in of Lieutenant Reyne—for it had to be Lieutenant Reyne, did it not—was a setback he kicked himself for not anticipating.

Sensing his lover's unease, Captain James laid a hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry," he said. "I'll have a word."

"What sort of word?" asked Mr. Caesar, suddenly full of yet more trepidation.

"The kind that he won't ignore."

Before Mr. Caesar could ask him for any more details, the captain was gone, prowling his great cat's prowl through the crowd and circling towards the legionary from the last angle he'd be watching.

The helm, in this case, was a help. It meant that Lieutenant Reyne had little to no peripheral vision. Which in turn meant that the first he knew of the captain's approach was when a voice in his ear whispered: "This costume comes with a nice thin knife, and we both know that armour is for show."

"And you'd stab a man in the middle of a royal ball?" the lieutenant whispered back. "You'd be lucky to hang."

Captain James kept his voice low. "Way I see it, you've tried to kill one person I care for and are planning to kill another. Reckon stopping you's worth a hanging."

"Then strike."

"Could do. Or we could take a walk."

To my fairy sight, the hall was a cacophony of mortal wanting and striving and yearning, much of it concealed, but with my attention all focused on the two gentlemen and the blade, I saw their hearts beat three times in indecision and watched the captain's fingers play lightly along the hilt of a dagger that was far less costume than it appeared.

They walked.

As much as I wished to keep observing the dancers, the confrontation between the two military men looked likely also to be fruitful, narratively speaking. So I followed them, taking the advantage of breaks in their conversation to flit back like moonlight into the hall and watch for developments.

And I had time. A ball of this nature spilled over most of the house, and so it took some while for the captain and his companion, moving as they were at implied knifepoint, to find somewhere they could talk openly. They settled at last on the library, which even the revellers of Carlton House would be unlikely to disturb and which was situated a convenient floor below the main attractions.

There, far enough now from crowds that in many ways each man was entirely at the mercy of the other, they moved to a respectable, non-knife-appropriate distance and, watching one another with utter suspicion, settled into two conveniently separated armchairs.

"So," asked the lieutenant, "what did you wish to say?"

I took advantage of the pause to check that nothing new had happened in the hall. It had not, but the band had struck up a popular piece called "The Fairy Song" and it was fast approaching midnight, both of which pointed to the queen's arrival being imminent. But not so imminent that I could not return to the library.

"How about you take off your mask first?" the captain was saying. His own mask had already been removed; it had been a silly ornamental thing that kept well with the princely image but had otherwise not suited him.

Whether out of curiosity, coercion, or simple courtesy between military men, Lieutenant Reyne obliged, removing his legionary's helm and the mask with it, setting the headpiece down on the floor.

"In a more civilised world," he said, "we would share a brandy."

"I'm not a civilised man."

Lieutenant Reyne gave a soft, almost apologetic smile. "You are not a refined man," he said, "but you are a civilised one. After all, you are a British officer."

"Barely."

"My father was barely a gentleman. I barely scraped together the coin for my commission. We live in a world of barelys."

The captain's lips curled into an expression of profound unimpressedness. "If this is the part where you tell me we're not so different, I've heard it."

"No, no, I am quite aware of the dissimilarities between us. I am from the country, you are from the streets. I paid for my place, you won yours. You are a captain, I am a lieutenant. And your skin, of course, is darker than mine." His tone was conversational, almost breezy. "Still, I am more of your sort, I think, than the major's."

"How'd you figure that?"

The lieutenant's smile grew cold. "Because neither of us are fools."

Another lull, time enough for me to check on the hall (still nothing, the fairy dance still playing; it would be last dance of the first set, just in time for the queen to make her entrance).

"What do you want with Anne?" asked Captain James, forcefully changing the subject.

"You know what I want with her."

"I might, but I don't think I'll believe it unless I hear you say it aloud."

The lieutenant let that hang awhile, then leaned forwards, almost conspiratorial. "I want her blood. She's the highest-born virgin that the fewest people will miss."

At this, Captain James nodded thoughtfully. "You're right," he said. "You're not a fool. You're just a murdering bastard."

"We're both murdering bastards, Orestes. May I call you Orestes?"

The captain sneered. "Fuck off."

"I'll take that as a yes. But you and I both know that war is a murdering business."

Another silence. Back in the hall, a clock was close to chiming midnight.

"Not like this," the captain replied.

" Exactly like this. Are you aware of the name of my order?"

From the way he shrugged, Captain James could not conceivably have cared less. "Cult of Something? Servants of Somebody?"

"We call ourselves the Iphigenians."

The captain looked blank.

And the lieutenant laughed. "Sorry, it never occurred to me that a man named Orestes wouldn't know. "

"Know what?"

"Just as the Greeks were making war on Troy, it so happened that Agamemnon slew a deer in a grove sacred to Artemis. In punishment, she stilled the winds so their fleets could not sail."

"Sounds like Artemis could have saved a whole lot of pointless death."

That earned half a nod from the lieutenant. "It seems the gods rather like pointless death. To return the winds, Artemis demanded that Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. Sources are rather varied on whether she went to her death willingly, but it is a lesson that my order learned well."

"We don't sacrifice people in this country. Haven't for centuries."

"Quite right." Lieutenant Reyne nodded. "To sacrifice a human being to a god is accounted a terrible crime by all the laws of England. But Orestes, what do we do in war that would not be accounted a terrible crime, were it to happen in peacetime?"

Captain James thought about that. "The waiting," he said, "and the digging. And the walking. Which makes up most of it in my experience."

"And the killing?"

"Some of that as well. I'm not saying all of it's right, but there's times when it's needed. There's rules and you stand by them. Soldiering is soldiering and murdering is murdering. I'll not pretend they're the same just to sound clever."

A melancholy chuckle escaped the lieutenant's throat. "How little you must think of me."

"Telling a man you want to cut an innocent girl's throat will do that."

Another silence, just barely broken by a clock beginning to chime the hour. "What is it that you love, Orestes?"

The clock struck once.

"Family, and them that are like family. The regiment."

Twice.

"Shall I tell you what I love?" Three times. "I love only two things: England, and the men who fight for her." Four. "Tell me, how many deaths is one girl worth?"

The clock struck a fifth time. "It's not a quartermaster's list." A sixth. "You're not weighing out rations."

"Oh, but I am." A seventh. "That girl's death might save a ship of the line"—eight—"or squadron of rifles."

"Or nothing"—nine—"and you're just a killer"—ten—"fuck, you killed a man you knew."

"Like a brother," the lieutenant agreed as the clock struck eleven. "But war is sacrifice."

Twelve.

In the hall—of course I checked the hall, what kind of storyteller would I be had I not?—things were changing. The fairy dance had ended and the partners were separating. The first half of the evening was over and refreshments were about to be served. But as they began to move from the dance floor, buds, then whole leaves, then branches decked with thorns began to break through the far wall. …

"Don't give me that," Captain James was saying. "You can't really believe—"

… And the leaves were joined by a light, here golden, there silver, the sun and the moon in harmony, or a fine pretence of it. …

"But I do. How can I not? The power of the gods is undeniable."

… And bricks crumbled and paint peeled and the wall drew aside to reveal the path to that Other Place where my kind dwell where stars dance by daylight, where the ocean is above and the sky is below, where all is possible but nothing actual. …

"And if the other side have it too?" asked the captain. "If they offer up their children to whatever they have over there."

"Teutates," said the lieutenant quite matter-of-fact, "Taranis, the Neptunian beast that sired Merovech. And believe me, they do make such offerings. So we must make ours or we will fall. "

… From the light came Titania. …

The captain stood, one hand drifting towards the cuirassier's sword he still wore at his side. "I'll not kill you," he said, "not here. Like I said, murdering's not the same as soldiering. But stop this, or next time we meet it'll be a different story."

… She was garbed all in white, and rode a white horse with fifty-nine silver bells on its rein. …

Lieutenant Reyne bowed his head. "As you say, Captain. And, for what it's worth, I've always considered you a fine officer."

… Clarions announced her coming; her courtiers were dressed in spiderwebs and morning dew. …

"Heard good things about you too," the captain admitted, a little grudgingly. "Known men who served under you. Said you never flogged a man as didn't deserve it or sent a man to die for nothing. Not long ago I'd have said that made you better than most."

Unmasked, the lieutenant looked almost melancholy. "Yet you fail to understand the calculus."

"Never had no schooling. Didn't learn calculus, but I learned right from wrong."

"It is right to save lives." Lieutenant Reyne rose and tucked the helmet and mask under his arm. "But the bells have struck. And if the rumours about this evening are to be believed I suspect that you will have other matters to deal with very shortly." He smiled, and his smile was almost wistful. "I am sorry we met as enemies, Orestes. In another life you would have been a great asset to the order."

"In another life you'd have been a great asset to the army."

Since mortal pleasantries are of little interest to me, I left the men to part with whatever vague threats or promises they felt appropriate and returned my whole attention to the hall where, her grand entrance being made, Titania was circulating now amongst the mortal noblesse.

Our court is, you should understand, far older and more essential than your fragile, artificial social structures. But the mortal mind cannot comprehend the truth of us, and so when we present ourselves to your world we do so through the lens of your own culture. Thus in the partially demolished ballroom of the Prince Regent of England she wore the mien and raiment of a European queen, or at least a recognisable parody of one. A crown of spun silver and living laurels graced her brow, and her gown was sewn with a hundred thousand diamonds, kobold-mined in the places far beneath. All about the room, gentlemen kissed her lily-white hand, and the queen herself curtseyed when her unearthly parallel approached.

Showy. That was Titania's problem. Unlike my fine and noble lord Oberon, who is extremely understated and down-to-earth. And looks extremely dignified in his crown of antlers that I have never once seen become unfortunately entangled with a light fitting.

The plan for Miss Caesar to confront the fairy queen for redress stumbled a little here. Crowds are selfish entities and even the wonder of the Beauty Incomparable could not quite clear a way through the throng that now surrounded the Queen of the Other Court.

Matters were proving equally frustrating for Miss Bickle, who had certainly not come to a fairy ball only to leave without so much as glimpsing the queen clearly. Abandoning social convention, she managed—with some effort, and at considerable cost to her dress—to climb the tangled arch of life and marble which now replaced the far end of the hall. This put her perilously close to fairyland proper, which lay a few short meters behind, but for the moment mist shrouded it, and not even Miss Bickle's boundless curiosity would quite let her wander unprepared into the unreal realm.

While the Queen of Light and Glory was distracting the rest of the room, the captain took the opportunity to pull the younger Mr. Caesar out of the ballroom and into a secluded alcove behind an arras.

"Get her out," he told him, breathless and still furious.

"Mary?"

"Anne. Reyne's after her, and I'm sure the fucker is moving tonight. I'll send the lad with her."

Mr. Caesar froze. "Here? What do we do?"

"We move fast," the captain said, "and we move quiet."

"Will it work? There's still Titania to reckon with."

The look in the captain's eyes was steel, which, contrary to myth, is a far greater danger to my kin than iron is. "Right now she doesn't matter. Do the first thing. Live. Do the next thing. That's how it works."

In the shadows, Mr. Caesar's hands shook and his spine tensed. He gazed at the captain with that mix of admiration and yearning he always had. "In case we don't. Live, I mean, then I should say—"

Catching Mr. Caesar about the waist, Captain James pulled him in and kissed him, quick and fierce and burning. "Save it. We're not done yet and nobody's dying tonight."

The talk of death was not doing much to assuage Mr. Caesar's temptation to stay in that alcove with the captain and pretend none of the rest of it was happening. Except pretending was what he'd been doing his entire life, and he was sick of it. So he nodded as decisively as he could manage. "Let's go."

The advantage of a masquerade was that two gentlemen appearing from behind an arras was no great cause for speculation, or at least no greater cause than anything else that went on at such an event. Doing their best to look the acceptable kind of disreputable, the captain and Mr. Caesar went at once in search of his younger sister.

With commendable social instincts, Miss Anne had returned to her family once the dance had ended and was now standing demurely alongside her parents, engaging in light small talk with a distracted-looking Miss Mitchelmore. The younger Mr. Caesar burst into the group with tremendous urgency and broke up the conversation with only the most distant pang of embarrassment.

"Orestes says we need to get you out," he told his sister. Over his shoulder, the captain nodded his affirmation.

"Will she not be safer in a crowd?" asked the elder Mr. Caesar.

Captain James nodded in a yes, but sort of way. "She was, but this"—he indicated the tide of revellers that still flowed (appropriately enough, given her occasional lunar associations) towards the lady Titania—"is not a normal crowd. This is turning into cover. My advice is take her home now before we start seeing real chaos."

Never one to keep her opinions to herself, Lady Georgiana sidled over to interfere. "I'm inclined to agree with the soldier. I have never known an otherworldly being to appear and make things safer. "

The assembled extended family discussed this matter a few moments more, but, as they did, Captain James took it upon himself to signal to Kumar, who in turn signalled to Boy William, who had positioned himself such that he could keep watch on both the lieutenant and Miss Anne without drawing too much attention to himself. Which meant that by the time the group had decided what was to be done, the Irregulars had moved seamlessly to cover their sight lines and the new plan could be implemented immediately.

"Right." Captain James set everybody their assignments and, despite his misgivings about taking instruction regarding his children's welfare, even Mr. Caesar acquiesced to the arrangement. "I'll spot Reyne to make sure he doesn't go anywhere. Boy William, you take these three"—he indicated the elder Mr. Caesar, Lady Mary, and Miss Anne—"get them home safe, especially the girl."

Miss Anne did not especially enjoy being referred to as the girl, but having at least some sensibility of the danger she stood in, she accepted it.

"The rest of us cover the exit, make it look like everything's normal, and remember there's still the queen, the Lady, and Miss Mary to think about."

Few if any of the assembly were in any danger of forgetting the fact, but with the Irregulars running interference, the elder Caesars, backed by Boy William, navigated Miss Anne from the building with no fanfare and with few any the wiser.

There were, after all, far more interesting things for the guests to be looking at.