Dexter crept into the suite for a few hours each night, trying not wake her as he collapsed on the sitting room sofa, exhausted. By breakfast he would be gone, back at the station, his mind fully occupied with his . . . photophoroseismochorinator.
“Multi-hyalchordate Phototransphorinating Seismograph,” Dexter repeated patiently when she asked him about his progress on one of the rare occasions she encountered him long enough to converse. “Hardison’s Multi-hyalchordate Phototransphorinating Seismograph. And it’s going quite well, thank you. We’ve finished laying the glass cables and calibrating the mercury triggers to respond to any minute seismic activity. Now it’s just a matter of making sure the central sensors light up when they’re supposed to.”
She felt redundant. Murcheson refused to let her take the Gossamer Wing up anymore, and in any case it was ruined for daytime flight by the dye. COULD MYSTERY BALLOON BE THE WORLD’S SMALLEST MANNED DIRIGIBLE? asked the newspapers.
There had been no further hint of threat from Coeur de Fer or Dubois. Murcheson had sequestered himself in the station. He had been unable to pin the steam-car attack on Dubois as yet, but firmly believed Dubois was responsible. He considered the attempt proof that Dubois knew of his role with the Agency, and wanted him out of the way to facilitate whatever nefarious political move he and Gendreau had planned. Charlotte simply didn’t believe Dubois had ever taken any action on behalf of a greater ideal than his own profit margin, but she had no hard evidence to support her feeling in the matter. She thought Dubois had tried to kill Murcheson, and nearly killed her and Dexter instead, over business, and resented it because that was a circumstance she had never signed on for.
Murcheson discounted her opinion on the matter out of hand, and his refusal to even consider it wearied Charlotte at first. Finally she pushed past the point of disillusionment and into a kind of fatal humor at the absurdity of it all, at Murcheson’s insistence that his trouble was the Crown’s trouble. She liked him, respected him still, but Charlotte finally accepted that the life-and-death make-believe hadn’t ended with the war, and would probably never end. It was the only way people like her father and Murcheson knew how to operate. They would keep this secret war going forever.
Charlotte realized, then and there, that it didn’t necessarily have to be her secret war. Not anymore. She had a choice.
She had a future in which to make it. And for the first time in years, that future rose up before her as an opportunity, rather than a duty.
To her surprise, once she’d had this epiphany, Charlotte found herself beginning to enjoy the town and the enforced relaxation.
Sipping bitter Turkish coffee and enjoying the salty afternoon breeze off the estuary, Charlotte sat outside an old half-timbered building and watched the meticulously detailed model boats bob along the water. A choir was singing traditional French sea shanties somewhere nearby, and families wandered past on their way home from the festival, exhausted children carrying buckets of shrimp they’d spent the day catching.
Holiday, she finally realized. I’m on holiday.
Her last holiday had been her first honeymoon, so she forgave herself for not recognizing it sooner. This was nothing like that trip, or even like her voyage to France with Dexter, all tension and anticipation. This reminded her more of her unplanned day in the countryside, when her soul seemed to calm once she resigned herself to the fact she had nothing to do but wait. She had done all she could.
Charlotte saw the delivery boy bringing the evening paper to the newsstand down the street and abandoned her table only long enough to buy one and return. She flipped it open, and her jaw dropped as she translated the headline. The mystery airship had been forgotten, shoved aside by a more newsworthy story:
ROLAND DUBOIS MURDERED! the paper blared. WEALTHY INDUSTRIALIST STRANGLED BY MYSTERIOUS ASSAILANT IN BRUTAL DAYLIGHT ATTACK.
The police, it seemed, had named no suspects yet. Charlotte suspected immediately who the murderer was, but thought it unlikely the police would ever apprehend him unless French intelligence willed it so. Perhaps she and Dexter had been wrong and Coeur de Fer had never stopped working for the Égalité French, after all. Or perhaps, after years serving the execrable Dubois, he had undergone a change of heart and done away with the villain.
So that was it. Whether Murcheson was right or not, whether Dubois had been plotting with Gendreau to build a doomsday device and take over France or not, it didn’t matter anymore. Either way, Charlotte accepted, her part in the intrigue was over.
MARTIN’S HEAD THROBBED in time with his heartbeats. The fever that had plagued him on and off for days seemed to have taken permanent hold now. Even when chills overtook him and sweat poured from his face he could feel the heat, only banked, never extinguished, always ready to return even hotter than before.
Still, it could be an infection. It could be something treatable, removable. He’d been nearly as sick at least twice before as his body reacted to the metals and other foreign substances attached to it during the implant process. He was lucky, he knew, that the arm had lasted as long as it had, that it hadn’t rotted off entirely as often happened with such extensive implants after a few years. Martin’s body seemed uniquely amenable to the grafting, but even he had suffered from it on occasion.
The fever is making you stupid, he warned himself. He was still determined to follow through with his recent decision. A surgeon-engineer could take the arm off, but a highly skilled makesmith might be able to locate the poison vial within the workings. Failing that, a makesmith could still perform an amputation if he had to. Without the arm, the poison vial would be no danger, the infection would heal. So Martin’s overheated brain insisted, ignoring the quiet voice that said the vial might be anywhere in his body, even inside his skull with the ear implant . . . or the poison might have spread too far to stop it now, no matter where the vial was.
No, it must be the arm. Take the poison out, even if it meant taking the whole arm off, and the world would be right again. His nightmare could actually end. Dubois was dead, and the secretary’s delay in “finding” the body had been sufficient to help Martin escape detection. He could be free. He could even make a life.
You’re already dead, that maddening little voice whispered, but Martin doggedly continued down the corridor of the hotel, leaning on the maid’s cart for support as he pushed it before him. The maid would never miss it, because he had made sure to take it at a time when the housekeeping rounds were well over for the day.
A convenient corner in the hallway would provide him all the cover he needed to await the Makesmith Baron’s return, because the man was obviously no agent and would never think to scan the entire hall before approaching his room. Martin had been watching him come and go from Murcheson’s factory for three solid days now, and knew Hardison would also be tired and off guard when he returned from whatever he was doing there. Martin no longer even cared what that was.
He would take Hardison to the place he’d prepared, convince him to remove the arm, and then kill him. One final life taken, to save Martin’s own. It would be simple, and Martin reassured himself he would be up to it despite his weakened state, as long as Hardison obliged by being tired and inattentive at the crucial moment.
DEXTER RUBBED HIS eyes, leaning against the back of the lift gratefully as it rose. The attendant smiled politely then ignored him as usual. Dexter was glad for any silence that didn’t result from a room full of people waiting for his next instruction.