“Magnus said he wanted to put a spoke in their wheels.”
“Dr. Magnus was a madman who would have used our outrage at the barons to open the doors to his own invasion.” Holmes gave the plans back to Nick. “You had best keep these safe from official eyes. There is no telling who might wish to make use of them.”
“Where is the casket?” Nick asked. “Do we have any idea?”
“You tell me.” Holmes indicated a table with a lazy wave of his good hand. A book lay open on it, open to an engraving of a small chest richly decorated with gems and carved owls.
Nick shook his head. “I don’t remember seeing anything like this in Dr. Magnus’s things.”
Holmes leaned back, clearly tired. “He never found it. An archaeologist named Heinrich Schliemann excavated it in Greece and shipped it to London. It was closely guarded, but supposedly never arrived. What do you think happened?”
Nick couldn’t see why his opinion mattered, but he gave it anyway. “Who is to say that is true?”
“Precisely,” Holmes replied. “I am beginning to suspect that the entire operation was an elaborate scheme to harvest the gold from the artifacts. No one took the casket from the warehouse, because someone on the inside—someone with no idea what the casket could do—melted it down to nothing.”
“Not quite,” said Evelina.
Both men turned to look at her.
“The gold was just for show.” She gave a sly smile. “They threw the insides out as scrap.”
Chapter Forty
London, April 14, 1888
PROMETHEUS GALLERY
8 p.m. Saturday
Even Jasper Keating must have known the old axiom that the show must go on. With or without Athena’s Casket, the gallery with his show of Greek treasures was due to open that night. Fashionable London was invited to experience the glory of the Gold King’s archaeological bounty. Or, as Imogen quipped, booty.
The Roths—minus Lady Bancroft—went on ahead while Evelina got into a hansom with her uncle and Dr. Watson. No one except Sherlock Holmes thought he should be going anywhere, least of all his long-suffering doctor, but the game was afoot.
“I arranged for a wheeled chair to meet us there,” the doctor said in a grumpy tone. “Lest the game no longer be afoot but prostrate.”
“Did you bring it?” Uncle Sherlock asked Evelina, ignoring his friend.
“I did,” she said, patting the basket in her lap. “Gold, gems, device, and decoded letter.”
“Excellent,” he said. “This should be most entertaining.”
Evelina wasn’t so sure. “What will happen to the casket?”
Holmes closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the cushions of the cab. “I imagine it will find its way into a ship. That is why it was originally created, after all.”
“But do we really want to give such a marvelous thing to someone like Jasper Keating? What about armies of invading airships?”
“Holmes?” Dr. Watson piped up.
Her uncle didn’t reply, but put on his inscrutible face and opened one eye.
“I would think that if the casket were designed to fly,” said Watson, in his kindest voice, “it would yearn for the skies. It would be unkind to keep it locked in a museum.”
Evelina gave him a grateful smile. The doctor had known almost nothing of devas until that afternoon, but was keeping up with the conversation like a trooper. “What about the gold and the letter?”
“I mean to expose a theft. You are holding the evidence. Athena’s Casket is only one of many missing items.”
“I follow the part about melting down the ancient objects for the gold,” Watson said. “That explains why the maid had raw gold and jewels on her person. But wouldn’t the melted objects be missed?”
“No,” said Uncle Sherlock. “I surmise that Keating will see every item in his collection except the casket. That was too unusual a piece, with all its working parts, to replicate, but of all the pieces, it was the largest and most valuable. That made it far too tempting a prize for our thief to ignore, and so it was pronounced lost.”
“Are you saying Harriman took it for himself?” Evelina asked.
“Assuredly.”
“You say the other pieces were replicated. Replicated how?” asked Watson.
“I have my theories. I have but to test them.”
“You’re being cryptic again, and it’s tiresome.”
Sherlock closed his eye again. “I can promise you a good show, Watson. Mr. Keating will be one very angry man.”
“But won’t innocent people be hurt by that anger?” she asked, thinking again of Imogen and Tobias.
“Truth is impartial,” her uncle replied evenly. “Even so, I will do my best to keep as many of your friends as I can from harm’s way. I am not without my methods. You have my word on that.”
That was somewhat reassuring, although she had no idea how her uncle would manage the Gold King. Evelina was starting to form an idea of what might happen, but it was like squinting through mist. There were outlines, but no detail.
Lestrade had come by after Nick had left and reported that he had followed up on the matter of the Chinese workers. It turned out that Mr. Markham’s observant tailors were a wealth of information. One had chanced to speak with a worker who had been allowed outside the warehouse to repair a window. He had said that the workers had been hired by Harriman. Their foreman—one of their own countrymen—kept them in virtual slavery. The most interesting fact was that some of them were goldsmiths.
The cab arrived at the gallery just as the sky was turning to indigo dusk. Evelina alighted, the basket over one arm. Keating’s gallery wasn’t in a large building on its own, just one door along a curving row of Georgian storefronts. The facade was pale stone, flanked by Corinthian pilasters. Through the door she could see a large open space, dotted with marble plinths holding statues and other objets d’art.
The streetlights were on, washing the front of the building in the gold light of Jasper Keating’s empire. Her uncle waved away the wheeled chair and walked her toward the door. He moved slowly, but steadily.
Lestrade waited inside, his sharp face full of anticipation. “You’re just in time,” said the inspector. “The gang’s all here.”
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” her uncle said. “I have one small detail to attend to.”
“Right you are.”
Sherlock led her down a side corridor that opened onto a row of offices. One door was marked Curator. The room was empty, although the desk looked like someone had been there recently. Letters and invoices littered the surface.
“Wait here,” he said, and left.
Evelina set her basket on the desk and looked around. The cube had been curiously silent since the code had been solved, as if its work was done. Now she pulled aside the cloth she had wrapped it in, and slid her hand onto the cold metal surface.
“Do you want me to leave you here?” she asked it.
At first, she felt nothing. Then there was a faint stirring of consciousness, like a breeze rippling across a pond.
Then suddenly Evelina was in the clouds, mist and free air all around her. It was the first time she’d truly connected with its essence. It is an air deva, all right! Weightless, she soared, land and water an insignificance below. Wind tickled her feet, bouncing her gently as she surfed along its waves. All she had to do was wish herself higher and she could climb the brilliant beams of sunlight …
“Evie?”
The spell broke, and she was suddenly grounded and heavy, glued to the earth. For a split second, she had truly merged with the air deva. The loss of that connection, the loss of that freedom, left her bruised and leaning on the desk for support.
“Nick,” she said breathlessly. “Why are you here?”
“Your uncle told me to come. He said I should be here for the finish, since I was involved. That was decent of him.” Nick looked at his feet, a frown pulling at the corners of his mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s near the middle of April, and that means tenting season. Ploughman’s is moving on. That means it’s time for me to leave London.”
Loss wrenched a cry from her lips. The hollowness that followed seemed achingly final. She closed her eyes, willing back a sudden rush of tears. “I’ll miss you. More than you know.”
He gave her a hard look. “Are you sure about that?”
There it was: he was jealous. It was in every line of his body, every angle of his face. He was moving on with the season, the way the circus always did. For Nick, lush spring would fade to a sweltering, dusty summer traveling to every market square and mining town, while Evelina would have her Season of balls and parties and then retire to a country manor for the hottest months. No two lives could be more different.
She had once looked up to Nick. He had wanted her to ask him to stay, but she hadn’t. Now he thought he was beneath her notice.
But it wasn’t like that. He was her Nick, and always would be. “I will miss you. I am sure about that.”
“What about Roth?”
She knew what he meant, but she pretended not to. “What about him?”
“I’ve seen you with him.” He looked away, as if the corner of the desk was intensely interesting. “Do you love him?”
“Nick.” Sadness congealed in her throat.
“I would never expect you to come back. But if you did, if you wanted to, I would do everything …” He trailed off, hope dying, or already dead.
“Oh, Nick.” She couldn’t say any more.
Rousing himself, he took one step, closing the distance between them. He grabbed her shoulders, forcing her roughly against the desk. The edge of it pressed into her hip with bruising force. She started to protest, but suddenly his mouth was on hers, crushing her lips against her teeth. He tasted more of anger than affection. There was no magic this time—it had never come for them when they were angry with each other, as if that drained the life out of everything.
Evelina strained to push away, not wanting him like this. Not wanting the memories of him tainted by rage.
“Stop!” She managed to get the word out. “Stop, please.”
“I’m not good enough for you?” His lip curled away from his teeth in a sneer, but he took a step back. “I saved you from Magnus. I killed for you.”
“You’ve been good to me.”
“The whole time you were a girl I never touched you. Anyone who tried would have had me to deal with. Doesn’t that count?”
“Of course!”
“Your Golden Boy is rich. That’s it, isn’t it? He’s rich and educated and smells better than a man who has to get dirty before he can eat. Nothing but the best whores for him.”
Evelina slapped his face. The crack of it was loud in the little office. Nick’s hand went to his cheek, hurt and mockery warring in his eyes. “Are you saying you don’t love me, Evie girl?”
She swore under her breath. “Not like this.”
She couldn’t go backward. She wasn’t the same girl who had clung to his hand in the dirt yards where they trained the horses.
“How then?” He leaned in. “Is there any way I could ever measure up?”
Was there? Their shared magic that would condemn them, but that wasn’t the only stumbling block. She’d gone to school. Her clothes were new, not bought from a barrow at the back of the market and crawling with lice. He was the king of Ploughman’s, but she had a future. “The day Grandmamma Holmes came for me,” she began in a dull voice.
Nick reached up, grazing her cheek with his rough fingers. “They took you away.”
She shook her head. “I always told myself that, too.”
Maybe it was time for the truth, or at least part of it. This would be the death of his fairy tale, the one where his lost princess was reclaimed. She could see him starting to understand, the hurt encroaching on his dark, liquid eyes. “No.”
“I begged Gran Cooper to let me go, Nick.” She put her hand over his, wishing she could soften it for him. Even now, after all these years, she was still torn between what she had and what she’d lost. “And Gran agreed. Oh, I ran away a time or two and tried to find my way back to Ploughman’s. I cried myself to sleep for months. I didn’t know what leaving would mean, and how many losses I’d suffer, but I knew I wanted more than Ploughman’s. I still do.”
Nick stared at her. “You wanted to go.”
“Just like my father did, when he was a boy.” Evelina looked away, unable to meet his eyes anymore. She felt a sob tremble in her throat, but swallowed it down. “That’s the truth.”
“Evelina, no.” He grabbed her wrist, as if that would keep her. “No. It was the magic. That was why we couldn’t be together. We had to be older and learn how to hide it.”
But they couldn’t. There was no turning back their power any more than they could command the sea.
“I’ll find a way, Evie,” he whispered. “I’ll figure out how to make it work.”
“Gran said that wasn’t possible.”
“I’ll prove her wrong.”
There was so much loneliness in the words, the tears that had threatened began to slide down her cheeks. She couldn’t cry. She’d lose whatever ground she’d gained.
And she couldn’t tell him any more than she had. He was the king of Ploughman’s, the Indomitable Niccolo. The circus was the only place he could call his own—but those people he loved had been willing to cast him out in order to stay safe from wild magic. She couldn’t tell him that was why she had chosen to go. What good could come of tainting his memories of the only home he knew? It would only make what had to be worse.
And that meant telling him only part of the truth. “I would die for you, Nick. You’re my oldest friend. But I want a different life.”
He didn’t answer. His breath was coming hard, like he had run miles, and his hand crushed the bones of her wrist.
“You’re hurting me,” she protested.
He let go of her with a curse. She look a long, shaking breath, her thoughts sputtering under an onslaught of grief. The anger in his eyes sliced through her like a knife. He’d killed for her. He would do it again, if she asked, and maybe that loyalty was one of the reasons she couldn’t stay. Deep down—maybe not so deep—she was afraid of him. Or herself.
She had left Ploughman’s once to save his life. She would do it again to save them both.
“I can’t continue this conversation.” She pushed past him out the door, shrugging off his hand when he tried to stop her.
When she reached the corridor, she started to run toward the sound of her uncle’s voice.
And away from Nick calling her name.
Tobias considered a pot sitting on a plinth. Much of the exhibit was gaudy, covered in gold and jewels—the sort of things people had at coronations or funerals or trotted out to impress the neighbor barbarians during the sacrifice. This was just a pot, brown with some zigzags of white and red paint, but it was beautiful in its proportions. The name of the maker was lost in time, but his soul knew that potter’s soul and sent its thanks.
Something simple and lovely was exactly what he needed after listening to his father crow about winning a tidy sum on Nellie Reynolds’s trial. The money made up for what had been lost with Harter’s Engines. Like any inveterate gambler, Lord Bancroft was expansive in the afterglow of victory. There would be dinners and gowns and nights at the club, thanks to the unfortunate actress. The good times were back.
In contrast, Tobias wished he could find the peace to create something as baldly perfect as the pot on the plinth. He was willing to bet—to continue the gambling theme—that the potter had been an orphan.
His communion with beauty lasted less than a minute. Then the crowd closed in.
Oddly, it was the Gold King who broke his reverie. Keating spoke in a confidential tone, putting a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure you’ve heard that the Magnus question is resolved. I recall you expressed c
oncern about the man the night of the Westlakes’ ball.”
“I did, yes.”
Keating had given Tobias a law-and-order speech that would have done the prime minister proud. Having grown up around diplomats, Tobias was something of a connoisseur of such things.
“It wasn’t the conclusion I had anticipated,” Tobias added, “but I can’t say that I’m sorry. The man was a menace.”
“Some people invite fate to deal with them irrevocably.” Keating inclined his head, a little sorrowful, a little cocky.
Oh, he is good, thought Tobias. Chilling, but he has the amused statesman nod down perfectly. The only flaw was that Keating watched his audience’s reaction a little too closely. He was still testing out his mask. Is he going to make a play for a seat in Parliament? A ministerial role? Maybe more?
“I don’t waste time, Mr. Roth. And I admire your willingness to speak out and identify a problem. In fact …” he fished in his pocket and drew out a watch.
To Tobias’s surprise, he handed it to him. “What’s this?”
“The world’s smallest steam engine. What do you think of it?”
He struggled to collect his thoughts, which were still parsing through newspaper accounts of Magnus’s demise. There hadn’t been an arrest. Had Keating played a role in the man’s death? If so—Tobias turned his attention to the watch before mounting horror suffused his face.
The watch was a large hunter with a case, but the back opened up to reveal a tiny boiler. It was almost burning hot to the touch, uncomfortable unless one held it by the chain. “A clever notion. I’d love to take it apart. But it hardly seems practical. You’d roast a hole in your pocket, wouldn’t you?”
“We think alike, my boy.” Keating gave him sly smile. “I’ve had my doubts about Bancroft, but the jury is ready to see if you’re cut from better cloth.”
Tobias tensed, as if the floor were suddenly made of crackling ice.
He saw the steam baron had got the desired result. Keating’s smile was reminiscent of a jolly crocodile. “Keep the watch. It’s yours. The previous owner doesn’t need it anymore.”
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