The inn was small, but cheerfully lit and scrupulously clean. A fire blazed in the taproom. The aroma was of strong ale and hot stew.
Mrs. Needles often railed against the evils of an empty stomach: it sapped warmth, drained courage, and decimated clear thinking. Iolanthe had been cold, confused, and disheartened when she pushed open the doors of the inn. But now, with her supper laid out on the table before her—chunks of beef and carrots swimming in gravy, slices of freshly baked bread with a huge mound of butter, and the promise of a pudding to come later—she felt slightly more herself.
She had selected a table next to the window, within view of the back door, which led out to an alley. Upstairs a spare but decent room awaited her. And in front of her, the railway timetable. She had already circled the train—a very crude form of expedited highway, from what she could gather—she intended to take in the morning.
She reached for a slice of bread and slathered it with butter. At his resident house, the prince would soon also be sitting down to supper. Would he think of her, as she thought of him? Or would he secretly rejoice, relieved not to have to take on the Bane?
Master Haywood would be pleased that she’d wisely turned away from the prince’s extravagant schemes to concentrate on her own survival. She stared at the bread in her hand, glistening with melting butter, and wondered whether the food offered to Master Haywood in the Inquisitory was as palatable. And would the agents of Atlantis do anything for him when symptoms of merixida withdrawal began? Or would they simply let him suffer?
“What are you thinking, you handsome lad?”
Iolanthe jumped. But it was only the barmaid, smiling at her.
Smiling flirtatiously.
“Ah . . . a brimming mug of ale, served by the prettiest girl in the room?”
The girl giggled. “I will fetch that ale for you.”
Iolanthe stared at the barmaid’s retreating back, wondering how to keep her away. She couldn’t afford even the possibility of a situation where someone might find out she wasn’t such a handsome lad after all.
The barmaid glanced over her shoulder and winked. Iolanthe hastily looked out the window. At home a hub of the expedited highways usually had more than one inn. Perhaps she’d see something else nearby.
Across the street, high above the railway station, hovered two armored chariots. On the ground, a team of agents—easy to distinguish from the startled English pedestrians by their uniform tunics—fanned out from the station. Several of them headed directly for the inn.
The fear that seized her made time itself stretch and dilate. The man reading a timetable under a streetlamp yawned, his mouth opening endlessly. The diner at the next table asked his mate to “Pass the salt,” each syllable as drawn out as pulled taffy. The mate, moving as if he were inside a vat of glue, set his fingers on a pewter dish with a small spoon inside and pushed it across.
With a loud thump, a great tankard of ale was plunked down before Iolanthe, the froth high and spilling. She jerked and glanced up at the barmaid, who winked again meaningfully. “Anything else for you, sir?”
Her illusion of freedom crumbled.
She was not safe here. She was not safe anywhere. And she had no choices except between dying now or dying slightly later.
She threw a handful of coins beside her largely untouched supper and ran for the back door.
He was a bastard. Of course he was: he lied, cheated, and manipulated.
She would not like him very much when she realized what he had done.
It did not matter, Titus told himself. He did not walk this path for flowers and hugs. The only thing that mattered was that she should come back. The hollow feeling in his chest he ignored entirely.
He turned on the light in Fairfax’s room and waited. A quarter hour passed. And there she was, her face pale, her eyes wild.
“If you are looking for your hat, it is on the hook over there,” he said as casually as he could manage. “Pay me no mind; I am just here to forge a good-bye note from you.”
She dropped her valise, pulled out the chair at her desk, and sank into it, her face buried in her hands.
In the last few weeks of his mother’s life, she too had often sat like this, her face in her hands. Impatient with her anguish, he used to yank at her sleeve and demand that she play with him.
After her death, for months he could think of nothing but whether she would have still decided on the same course of action had he been different, had he patted her on the back and stroked her hair and brought her cups of tea.
He moved forward slowly, cautiously, as if the girl before him were a sleeping dragon.
Against his better judgment, he laid a hand on her shoulder.
She shook, as if caught in a nightmare.