New Amsterdam

When Sebastien returned to the salon, he watched for it. Conveniently, Allen, Korvin, Mlle. LeClere, and Miss Meadows were still present, playing whist under an electric light. Ladies were partnered against gentlemen, and Mlle. LeClere and Miss Meadows were winning—on brass moreso than chivalry.

Sebastien swirled a cognac in a balloon glass and lounged in the armchair he'd appropriated, back in the corner beside the door, pretending to read a four-day-old Times of London. He had a knack for vanishing into the shadows when he cared to, and as long as he didn't snap the paper or rattle his cufflinks the card players in their armchairs seemed to have more or less forgotten him. Except for Oczkar Korvin, who never glanced over at all, as if he were consciously ignoring Sebastien's presence.

The Hungarian was of a yellowish complexion, which could have been natural, but also made it more difficult to tell if he blanched where his hand pressed the cards. But then Mlle. LeClere stood between tricks, laying her hand tidily face-down and fetched drinks for the table—sherry for herself, whisky for Miss Meadows and Mr. Allen, and a plum brandy for Korvin úr. Mademoiselle slipped the glass into his hand rather than set beside him so she had the excuse to brush her fingers across his palm. And then, Sebastien saw him lift the glass to his lips, his throat working as he swallowed.

Korvin murmured something in Mlle. LeClere's ear that made her blush. When he turned and saluted Sebastien, the level of the gold-tinged transparent fluid had fallen. Sebastien toasted him back and raised the cognac to his lips, heady fumes searing his nostrils. He tilted the glass, so the cognac touched his lips, and feigned drinking, watching Korvin's smile, and wondering what, exactly, he was up against.

Observing the dynamics at the table made an interesting pastime. The four played intently, without excess table talk. They were all subdued and prone to starting at small noises, but Sebastien judged that more likely the nervousness of the herd when it cannot place the predator than any effect

of guilt.

Allen kept his eyes on Miss Meadows rather than on his partner, as Mrs. Smith had predicted. As a result, he gave away easy tricks, plainly displeasing Korvin. As for Mlle. LeClere, she made an interesting subject. She sat across from Miss Meadows, and kept her gaze almost exclusively on the actress' face in a manner that might have mimicked infatuation if it was not for the narrow line between her brows. The expression made her seem less like love's supplicant, and more like a dog eagerly seeking any clue to its master's mind.

Amidst this, however, she turned the rare fawning glance on Korvin, and seemed only to speak to Allen to apologize to him—peculiar, after her friendliness of the previous evening. Whatever had transpired, however, it wasn't sufficient to keep her away from the table, and there didn't seem to be any enmity between them. Just a sort of chariness like two cats ignoring one another's presence on the bed.

The impasse persisted unaltered until the door slipped open and Hollis Leatherby entered. Sebastien was the only one present who did not startle spectacularly. He had the advantage of having heard and identified Leatherby's step in the corridor, but he feigned a little rustle anyway.

The sound of the paper caught Leatherby's attention. He turned from the ladies and the gentlemen at the card table as if they did not exist—not quite a cut direct, but sharp enough—and took a place opposite Sebastien, in the second of three matching chairs. Across the salon, play continued uninterrupted after the first brief flurry of glances. "Don Sebastien," he said.

"Mr. Leatherby," Sebastien answered. He folded the paper in half and set his drink on the side table, centering it carefully on a cork and wicker coaster. "You seem refreshingly unaffected by the general air of nervousness."

"Do I?" Leatherby leaned forward, elbows on the arms of the chair, and hunched between his shoulders. "I wonder, have you seen my wife?"

"Half an hour or so ago. I left her here, but when I returned—" Sebastien shrugged. "I have not seen her since."

"Damn it," Leatherby said, a flash of real temper roughening his voice. "She wasn't on the promenade."

"Perhaps she went to lie down. She seemed rather peaked."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Leatherby's voice escalated enough that Korvin's head turned, though the other three kept their shoulders set and stared firmly at their cards, a reversal of earlier roles that Sebastien would once have found amusing.

Sebastien held up his hand, mildly, the palm open and facing Leatherby. "It was merely an observation. Really, sir, you are so quick to take offense. One might almost suppose a guilty conscience."

It was provoking, and meant to be. He didn't like Leatherby: didn't like the way he'd dismissed Jack, for one thing, and furthermore didn't like his sharp temper, now that he'd experienced it himself. Careful, Sebastien.

Leatherby drew himself out of the chair, his chest puffed up. "Are you accusing me of something, Don Sebastien?"

"Oh, not at all," Sebastien said. "But I'm also not casting aspersions on the delightful Mrs. Leatherby. So please, there's no need for hackles raised." As he said it, he couldn't remember if it was a common English expression. The languages would run together.

Judging by Leatherby's eyebrow, it wasn't. Ah, well. Quirks of speech were the least of Sebastien's problems. Steadfastly, he refused to stand. "Really," he said. "I imagine she went to lie down. You might look for her there."

Leatherby gave him one more brow-crumpled look and headed for the door. Sebastien heaved a sigh of relief when it closed behind him, and looked up to meet the eyes of Virgil Allen, who was paused beside the caddy, pouring whisky into a still-damp glass. "My money's on the Chinese. For what it's worth."

"I see." Sebastien reached for his cognac, wishing he dared to drink it. "Any reason in particular?"

"Just a feeling," Allen answered. "Could be nothing. Probably is," he amended, when Sebastien's arched eyebrow did not waver. "Still, you know those Chinese have got magicians we don't know anything about in the West."

"I've heard that," Sebastien said. "I've also heard a lot about your American hexes and. . .gris gris, is it?"

"Voudou," Allen supplied. "Mademoiselle LeClere could tell you more about it, I imagine. The Carolinas are civilized; that's her country."

* * *

Jack appeared fifteen minutes later. His color was recovering, though he looked entirely too bright-eyed to have slept the afternoon away. He arrowed straight to Sebastien and plunked down beside him, lifting the cognac glass from his hand without so much as a greeting. His fingers stroked Sebastien's and Sebastien flinched, but managed not to glance guiltily at Korvin úr.

"It makes you dizzy," Sebastien said.

"Medicinal purposes," Jack said, and sipped the amber liquor. "The sun's under the bow."

"Thank you. I've strolled enough for one day."

"I think you'll stroll more, when I tell you what I learned."

"When you were supposed to be resting."

Jack shrugged. "Ask me who the officer of the watch was last night," he purred, waiting for Sebastien's eyebrows to rise before nodding. "Captain Hoak."

"You're entirely too smug for that to be all."

"The logbook," Jack said, and paused for a sip of cognac, his cheeks hollowing as he rolled it over his tongue. He flirted at Sebastien through lowered lashes, and Sebastien folded his newspaper with a snap that turned Virgil Allen's head. The American cleared his throat and glanced quickly back at his cards. "Shows some inconsistencies. It would appear that the Captain's pen ran dry of ink, and he refilled it, but the blacks do not match. One is a German black, and one is French, and greener. He must have bought ink in Calais."

"What was amended?"

"The time of the three a.m. tour was entered, I would guess, simultaneously with the data for the five a.m. tour. But rest of the entry was written earlier. And the pen was not skipping, which indicates that somewhere between entering the notes and entering the time, the captain did some other writing. Or perhaps changed pens."

The words were low, more shape than breath, for Sebastien's ears alone.

"Jack, you're a marvel," Sebastien said. And then he paused, amused pride replaced by an irrational spike of jealousy, as if he'd bought more of Jack than his freedom, that night in Budapest. And after years of work in making Jack understand that Sebastien didn't own him, and never meant to. "And how did you gain access?"

"Sebastien," Jack said, suddenly serious, his voice still soft, as Sebastien swallowed and sat back, his teeth cutting his gums and the inside of his lips in violent—and unwarranted—reaction. "All I did was flirt."

"One might almost say that all you do is flirt," Sebastien said, sourly, but then forced himself to sit back in his chair. "I'm sorry, Jack. That was unkind."

Jack only smiled, his delicate hands cupped around the bell of the glass. "One scandal draws attention from another," he said, and let one shoulder rise and fall, graceful as a girl. When he gestured with Sebastien's glass, he led with his wrist, as languidly as Miss Meadows could have managed.

"Terrible boy," Sebastien said, hiding his relief more successfully than he'd hidden his jealousy. And what will you do, Sebastien, you old fool, when he's a grown man and wants more of a life than you can offer him?

Not too much longer now. And Sebastien had no answer.

* * *

Sebastien's opportunistic stalking of Mlle. LeClere came to naught, as she left with Korvin úr—ostensibly to change for dinner, but in actuality trotting alongside him with quite pathetic focus—after the card game broke up. Will the girl never be alone? he thought, and settled behind his paper so Miss Meadows and Mr. Allen would not see him seem to rush out after, while Jack made a ceremony of dispensing with the dirtied glass and adjourning up the stairs. He'd keep an eye on Mlle. LeClere, and if Sebastien could not catch her alone, perhaps she'd be more amenable to Jack's pale beauty.

Mr. Allen packed up his cards and offered Miss Meadows his elbow and they too adjourned a moment later, nodding to Sebastien as they passed.

As for Sebastien, he set the paper down and leaned his head back against

the chair, closing his eyes, to wait out the day. So Korvin was not of the blood. Even that much liquor would have made him terribly sick, if he were. And—as Jack had noted—the sun was under the bow. Sebastien himself would not risk wandering the airship—he checked his pocket watch, stroking the pad of his thumb over the cool, engraved surface—for at least another fifteen minutes.

He rose from his chair and began to pace. If Korvin were not of the blood, he could be so many other things—a ghul, a necromancer. . .a garden-variety rapist and murderer, for that matter. Sebastien did not fool himself that such men limited their predations to beautiful maidens, or even that a rapist's particular intent was lust, whatever the erotic fantasies expressed in tawdry paperbacks.

Sebastien, as it happened, knew a thing or two about predators.

And would Mlle. LeClere lie for such a man? As smitten as she was, Sebastien had no doubt at all. In addition, Korvin úr was at least trying to give the impression that he knew something about Sebastien.

Sebastien mused on that for a few moments, straightening pictures that did not need it, and shook his head. There were still pieces missing.

He checked his watch again, though he knew the time, and turned toward the door. He would dress in his evening clothes, and if he could not cut Mlle. LeClere out of the crowd for a word in private, it was time to beg the captain's assistance in the matter. There were only two days and a few hours more until the Hans Glücker made landfall in New Amsterdam. And if Mme. Pontchartrain had not yet been discovered—in the passenger quarters or in the airframe—Sebastien did not believe she would be.

If that made him a cynic, well then, so be it.

As he was reaching for the doorlatch, however, he paused. Someone was on the other side. Someone male, and by his breathing, he was nerving himself to some action.

Sebastien paused and stepped back, waiting with his hands at his sides. The American, Allen, by his scent. And nervous rather than angry, praise God for small mercies.

If only it were that easy to identify another of the blood—but contrary to common myth, Sebastien's brothers and sisters in immortality smelled no different dead than they had alive. And his ears weren't quite acute enough to listen for the sound of a human heart. Alas. It would be nice to be more than mundanely supernatural.

Sebastien stood and waited, and at length the door slid open. Virgil Allen started to see him waiting there, hands at his sides, but recovered quickly. "Don Sebastien," he said. "May I enter?"

"This is a public space," Sebastien said, but made no move to surrender the center of the chamber.

Virgil Allen stepped inside, and shut the door behind himself. He coughed and cleared his throat. "Miss Meadows wishes to make an offer." He extended his right hand, staring resolutely at the floor between Sebastien's boots while blushing furiously. A folded sheet of cream-colored paper rested between his thumb and forefinger. Sebastien extracted it, broke the still-warm seal, and flipped it open while Allen twisted his boot against the rug.

The letter was brief.

My dear Señor de Ulloa



I hope my note does not seem too forward, but it seems to me that I have heard your name—and that of the delightful Mr. Priest—before. It wasn't until this afternoon that it came to me; of course, we are mutual acquaintances of Mr. Iain MacDonald of Edinburgh, and I believe you and he are members of the same club.

While I myself do not have that honor, I would be very gratified if you would agree to join me for drinks and conversation after dinner tonight. My dear Virgil will be happy to bear your reply.

Yours truly,

Miss Lillian Meadows



Iain MacDonald was a bookseller. And a bit more than that; he was also, as Miss Meadows suggested, an old friend of Sebastien's and the proprietor of one of the less shady of the underground meeting places. Casually, Sebastien folded the note and slipped it into his breast pocket. "Thank the lady, Mr. Allen, but I will be unable to join her tonight."

"She—" Allen hesitated, obviously both relieved by Sebastien's answer and concerned that the news would be unwelcome. "She said, if you were other otherwise occupied, to inquire as to whether you understood her offer."

"I do," Sebastien said. "And I thank her, but no. I cannot oblige."

Mr. Allen nodded and stepped back, clearing Sebastien's path to the door.

"Gracias." Sebastien stepped forward. He paused with his hand on the latch, and said over his shoulder, "Mr. Allen?"

"Sir?"

"You shouldn't permit her to take such advantage of you, Mr. Allen. It's undignified." The American was still gaping after Sebastien as the detective took his leave with a nod, before stepping into the corridor.

* * *

Jack was fretting in their stateroom, or rather, the cubbyhole that passed for it, but he was dressed for dinner and had Sebastien's evening clothes laid out and brushed. Sebastien paused with the curtain in his hand, and said, "Are you my valet, now?"

"No," Jack replied, turning to the mirror to settle his bow tie, "he's following by steamer with our luggage. Unless you sacked him, too. . .Oh. You did, didn't you?"

"Sacking, in your colorful idiom, would indicate I found some flaw in his service."

Jack sighed, giving Sebastien his shoulder. "I just thought you'd appreciate it if your clothes were ready. Tomorrow, I'll crumple them in the corner."

"I'm sorry." Sebastien let the curtain fall closed behind him. "I didn't mean it that way." He hesitated, and went to pick up the suit on its hangar. "Did you discover anything about Korvin úr and Mademoiselle LeClere?"

"She's going to have some fast explaining to do on her wedding night," Jack said, in Greek. "It would tell us why she didn't hear anything last night, if she slipped out of the cabin. And what if it was her nightgown that

wasn't rumpled? I suppose keeping Madame Pontchartrain silent about something like that would be as good a reason as any to kill her. You don't suppose Mademoiselle LeClere stands to inherit?"

Sebastien harrumphed. "We shall ask the captain for access to Madame's papers, again."

Jack raised a perceptive eyebrow. "What's upsetting you, Sebastien?"

"Is it so obvious?"

"To me," Jack said. He took the evening coat out of Sebastien's hands, set it aside, and began untying Sebastien's necktie and unbuttoning his collar. "You'll want a fresh shirt."

"Yes, dear," Sebastien said, and suffered himself to be dressed like a girl's paper doll. "Miss Meadows knows, Jack."

Jack paused in his work and looked up. He would never be a tall man, but he was a man, and Sebastien was never more disinclined to forget it than when Jack primped into his fey, adolescent persona. "Isn't that the point of all this?" A fluid, dismissive wave. "I'm of age, if anyone asks. And don't I remember you making me wait until I was. How many times did I offer before I turned sixteen?"

"One hundred and thirty-one," Sebastien said. "And no. I mean she's in the club."

"What about the matinees?" Jack stepped back, Sebastien's collar draped limp as a dead snake over his hand.

"Not of the blood." He let it hang until Jack's frown deepened from a pin scratch to a furrow. "An admirer."

"Oh, no you don't," Jack muttered. He tossed the collar aside and reached out, knotting his hands in Sebastien's hair. "Just because I've got to give you back to whatever court you assemble in New Amsterdam, Sebastien, doesn't mean this trip isn't mine. You promised."

And what would his blood brothers think, Sebastien wondered, if they could see him now, pinned down and soundly kissed by a courtesan two-thirds his size?

They would think he was eccentric, of course, and too lenient with his pets.

But Sebastien was old enough to be excused a certain measure of

eccentricity. And he'd long ago realized he preferred the mayfly society of humans to that of the blood. The blood took everything so seriously, as if they passed into that stage of human aging when mortals realized that the world turned like a wheel, and then through it, to a place where the natural cycles of success and catastrophe must be arrested. Before they could inconvenience—or worse, annoy—anyone.

Jack stopped kissing him before he'd rumpled his evening clothes, but after Sebastien's teeth—sharpening in reaction—had furthered their earlier damage to his own lips and gums. Fortunately, he healed fast.

Jack wouldn't have. And it was mad of him to tempt Sebastien so soon after a feeding; Sebastien could control himself, and—barring disaster—he wouldn't need more until they were well grounded in New Amsterdam. But Sebastien also needed far more than Jack had to give. Which was why those of the blood who did not care to hunt for their suppers had courts and courtesans, and not simply a favorite or two. A pint a month, any healthy adult could spare. The same twice a week was slow death—even though the blood, in Sebastien's considered opinion, was merely a metaphor for something more. . .exalted.

It warmed Sebastien as thoroughly as that mouthful of blood would have, though, to see Jack's jealousy.

* * *

Dinner passed uneventfully. Jack demonstrated a certain hesitancy in circumventing the pork roast, but—given two lunches—he extemporized around the fish and salad courses and, with the addition of Sebastien's dessert to his own, made a satisfactory supper. Sebastien disarrayed his food artfully to produce the illusion of dining, a sleight of hand that had served him well over the years.

After dining, the ladies excused themselves before the men adjourned to the smoking room. Sebastien took advantage of the exodus to plead a headache and an aversion to cigars and make his own escape. If Sebastien ventured into the smoking room, he'd be smelling stale tobacco for days. Jack, who numbered cigars among his bad habits as well as brandy—quite the young rakehell, he was growing into, and Sebastien had no-one to blame but himself—would report if anything interesting transpired.

Sebastien had fairer prey.

The passenger room at the head of the stairs was the least desirable, and on an airship as unpeopled as the Hans Glücker, it was understandably deserted. Sebastien slipped inside, leaving the light fixture shrouded, and settled on the lower bunk to wait.

A human—or even a younger blood—might have brought reading material, something with which to while away the hours. Sebastien simply closed his eyes in the dark, leaned his shoulder on the bedpost, and listened to the Hans Glücker drift.

An airship was no more silent in her passage than a sailing vessel. Through the deck, Sebastien could feel the thrum of engines, the almost-subliminal vibration of the cables containing the gas bags within the lifting body, the way the giant aircraft moved in response to the wind plucking at its control cabin and fabric skin. He listened to the ship in the night, and let his mind wander. It was a kind of meditation, and sometimes it helped him uncover surprising truths.

Now, it led him back to Mme. Pontchartrain's cabin, and the disarrayed papers, and the amended logbook. But those items refused to resolve into a pattern, no matter how many angles he turned them to or stared at them from. He found himself instead musing on Mrs. Leatherby, and her blatant attempt to feed him information. Probably accurate information, as it happened. But he was not blind to the manipulation.

A step on the stair and the swish of a woman's skirt brought him from his reverie. A small woman, by the weight of her footfall, and so either Mrs. Smith or Mlle. LeClere. And while he would have been happier to see Mrs. Smith—he was beginning to give some serious thought to wooing her; he would need friends and courtesans in America—he hoped it was, at last, Mlle. LeClere.

Alone.

He smoothed his hair with both hands, the mirror no use to him, and stepped into the corridor. And almost into the young Frenchwoman's arms.

She gave a startled squeak and might have toppled down the stairs if he hadn't caught her wrist and landed her. Instead she tottered and collapsed forward into his arms; he took two quick steps back to set her at arm's length. "Mademoiselle," he said. "Forgive me. Are you all right?"

"Fine," she said, and shrugged his hands off. "I'll just—"

"Not at all." He stepped aside, and then fell in beside her when she advanced. "I've been meaning to speak to you alone."

"That's hardly seemly, monsieur." She stepped faster, but he kept up with ease.

"I did not think you the sort of young lady who concerned herself with appearances," he countered. The reached the cabin she had until recently shared with Mme. Pontchartrain, and Mlle. LeClere moved as if to push Sebastien aside. He caught her elbow and turned her.

"Monsieur," she said. "I will shout."

"And I will tell the Captain that you lied about where you were last night."

She held herself stiff for a moment, her chin lifted, her lips pressed suddenly thin. And then, abruptly, she deflated, sagging inside the confines of her corset. "Damn you," she whispered. "What do you want?"

"Mademoiselle," Sebastien answered, "we all have secrets. I wish only to discover what became of your chaperone. Will you tell me where you were last night?"

"With Oczkar," she said, hopelessly. "I knew Mme. Pontchartrain had a taste for laudanum, you see, and sometimes she did not even remove her clothes of an evening, when she had indulged—"

"And your absence would not wake her from her dreams."

"Indeed," she said, hopelessly. "But I did not kill her. I did not even provide the drug—"

"Hush," Sebastien said. He brushed her cheek with cool fingers. "You do not need to justify yourself to me."

* * *

"Was she lying?" Jack asked, in the darkness.

"I don't believe so." Sebastien did not sleep. But he occupied his pajamas nonetheless, and lay on Jack's bunk beside him, listening to Jack breathe, inches away in the quiet darkness. "So what do we know, then?"

"That we can cross Korvin and LeClere off our list of suspects." Jack spoke very softly, just for Sebastien's ears, both of them aware of Mrs. Smith sleeping peacefully on the other side of the doped fabric wall. Faintly, distantly, Sebastien could hear Hollis Leatherby snoring.

"Unless they did it together."

"Then no-one has an alibi."

"Not even you."

"Alas," Jack said. He shifted under the covers, leaning his head on Sebastien's shoulder. "We know Mrs. Smith is an inveterate eavesdropper. We know Captain Hoak—or somebody feigning his handwriting—made an inconsistent entry in the logbook. We know Mme. Pontchartrain disappeared between drinks and breakfast. We can speculate that Korvin and Meadows had some sort of prior arrangement to travel together, or that Corvin and LeClere did—aside from the tour group, I mean. Five colonials and one European, that's a bit odd, isn't it? Is that something you can inquire after with Mrs. Smith?"

"I thought you didn't approve of Mrs. Smith."

"She's just your type," Jack said, feigning placidity. "And I know very well that we can't get along in America, just the two of us, without friends."

"You are a practical soul, dear boy," Sebastien said, and turned to kiss Jack's forehead. "We also know that Beatrice Leatherby has some agenda that involves incriminating Korvin."

"Or Mademoiselle LeClere."

"Just so. Extending that last point, we know that there is some mysterious tension between the Leatherbys and the other passengers. We know Korvin úr may very well be something other than he seems, but that he is not of the blood."

"We know Miss Meadows knows that you are." Sebastien could hear Jack's frown in his voice.

"And we know that this dirigible is currently host to any number of unsavory relationships."

"Is that so?" Jack asked, propping himself on his elbows, his silhouette barely visible in the dim light that slipped around the edges of the lampshade.

"Unfortunately," Sebastien answered, sitting up, "it appears to be a motif. You should sleep, Jack."

Jack caught his wrist. "Madame's papers appeared to have been riffled. Hurriedly. But you said no one but she and Mlle. LeClere had been in the cabin."

Sebastien nodded. "I did, didn't I? I wonder if I could have been mistaken."

"Anise oil confuses bloodhounds," Jack said, slyly.

Sebastien snorted.

"We also now know that Madame Pontchartrain was an opium addict."

"Such harsh terms for a little genteel laudanum use." And then Sebastien stopped, freed his right hand, and used it to stroke Jack's curls, thoughtfully. "Jack, when we searched Madame Pontchartrain's room—"

Jack stiffened. "No laudanum bottle."

"Indeed," Sebastien answered. "And isn't that a curious thing?"

* * *

Long before first light, when Jack was sleeping soundly, Sebastien dressed and slipped from the cabin. This time, the lack of doors that locked and fastened abetted him. He paused in the corridor, listening for activity, and heard only even breathing and faint snores. Slowly, he descended the stairs, which neither creaked nor settled under his weight, and paused at the bottom landing.

Pretend you are a murderer, Sebastien thought, and permitted himself a smile he would never have worn around a mortal, friend or foe. It even felt unpleasant on his face.

If I wanted to murder someone, though—

No. He turned back, and regarded the stairs, lit green by emergency lights. Sebastien was considerably stronger and more agile than a human man, and he could not have maneuvered even a small unconscious woman down those stairs without waking the ship. The forward stairs were no better—and closer to the occupied sleeping chambers. If she had come this way, she had not been dragged.

Which meant that if Mme. Pontchartrain had not gone up, into the airframe—and the search there had revealed no sign—then, barring sorcery, she had come down under her own power.

And, also barring sorcery, Mlle. LeClere had lied again, because if she had left Mme. Pontchartrain drugged insensate, then there was no way Mme. Pontchartrain could have gotten down these stairs.

In the absence of a Crown Investigator or a Zaubererdetektiv, Sebastien found he must reluctantly shelve the idea of sorcery—at least until they made landfall in New Amsterdam. Where, it happened, there was a Detective Crown Investigator, the most notorious of the scant three the British-American colonies boasted.

Under German law, while he was no more welcome in most men's houses than. . .than Mrs. Zhang and Mr. Cui, he was not proscribed. In British America, however, the blood were outlawed. Those Crown rules had not been generally enforced since the seventeenth century, but were kept on the books for convenience's sake in troublesome cases.

And so, it would be entirely best for Sebastien to have this mystery resolved by the time DCI Garrett arrived on the scene—or the scene, as the case might be, arrived in her jurisdiction.

So it had better not be sorcery, hadn't it?

He paused. Of course, there was one very easy way to tell if it potentially could be sorcery. And that could be addressed in the morning. In the meantime, however—

Sebastien heard crisply military footsteps, and started forward. A few steps took him around the corner, and into the path of the watch officer. Tonight, it was the first mate, who tipped his hat and kept on walking, obviously accustomed to sleepless passengers.

"Guten Morgen," he said, the first mate echoing his words. As he passed, Sebastien checked his watch. Three oh eight. "Herr Pfrommer?"

The first mate checked his stride and turned back. "Ja, mein Herr?"

Briefly, Sebastien outlined what he proposed, and when it seemed as if the officer would protest, held up his hand. "Please check with the captain," he said. "I will abide by his decision."

Herr Pfrommer clicked his heels, a tradition Sebastien had considered happily buried until that moment, and carried on with his rounds. And Sebastien sighed and took himself down to the control cabin before the officer returned, or the sun came up.

The Hans Glücker didn't have a hanging gondola, as a smaller dirigible might. Most of its passenger and crew facilities were inside the airframe, with only a small control cabin protruding underneath the nose of the ship. Sebastien walked forward past the salon and smoking room, down the white-walled corridor which provided access to the washrooms, crew quarters, and the galley by means of German-labeled doors. The hum of the engines was louder, here. They extended from either side of the ship on sets of pontoons, and one of the main struts ran through behind the forward door that would have brought him into the control cabin.

It was locked, of course.

Fortunately, among all his other skills, Jack could pick a lock. And it was Sebastien who taught him.

Sebastien unpinned his cravat—the jewel was set in gold, but the stick pin itself was steel—and with its offices and those of a bit of wire, he managed the lock by touch in seconds. He opened the door and let himself through, and proceeded down a short flight of stairs.

The pilot didn't turn. He spoke, though—in German, of course. "You're back very soon, Herr Pfrommer."

"I am not Herr Pfrommer," Sebastien said, and when the pilot started and turned, producing a weapon, Sebastien stood with both hands raised and open, having dropped wire and pin into his pocket. "I am sorry. The door was open, and I—"

"You are investigating?"

"Yes." Sebastien smiled. "How many pilots are on this ship, sir?"

"Two," he answered. He checked his controls and locked them in position, and then turned back to Sebastien.

"Heel and toe watches?" Twelve hours on and twelve off, that meant. A grueling schedule.

"Yes, mein Herr."

"So it was not you to whom my ward spoke this afternoon."

"I went to my bunk at six—" the pilot began, and then pressed his lips together. "What did your young man tell you about Franz?"

"Just that he was charming," Sebastien lied, taking the opportunity to survey the control cabin. It was small, and while there was an exit door, it

was clearly visible from the pilot's position. "And that he gave Jack a tour

of the control cabin. Tell me, mein Herr, did you leave your post at all

last night?"

"Only to visit the washroom," the pilot said. "And for my coffee and dinner breaks. The officer of the watch takes control during that time." He checked his watch—a wristwatch, favored by aviators, rather than a pocket watch. "I'll take my second break as soon as the first mate returns from his rounds, in fact. My relief arrives at six hundred hours."

"Your dinner break is at three hundred."

"Three twenty," the pilot corrected.

"Thank you," Sebastien said. It was perhaps three twelve. "I can show myself out. Oh—" He paused with his hand on the latch. "Can you tell me where rubbish is disposed of, please?"

"There are receptacles in the washrooms—"

"No, I mean once it is collected. Is it hauled on to New Amsterdam?"

"That would be a waste of the weight allowance," the pilot said. "It's cast overboard. It helps to counterbalance any hydrogen leakage that occurs via diffusion through the gas bags."

"And it's dumped from where?"

"The side corridor outside the galley," the pilot said. "There are rolling bins to collect the trash, and a chute."

"Thank you," Sebastien said, and took himself outside again.

* * *

When Jack awoke, Sebastien was waiting. He leaned against the wall beside the porthole light. The cabin's sole piece of furniture besides the

bed was a luggage stool for the cabin bags. That stool stood on Sebastien's

left hand, under the light, and a white tented shape occupied its flat top. "Sebastien?"

"Cover your eyes," Sebastien said. Jack obeyed, and Sebastien flipped up the shade on the light. Jack lowered his hands, blinking, and pushed himself upright on the bed, tousled and puffy-cheeked as a child.

"What did you find?"

"Laudanum," Sebastien answered, and uncovered the glinting, pale blue rectangular bottle, still full almost to the bottom of its long neck. "And barely a mouthful gone."

There were new technologies that might be used to recover latent fingerprints from smooth, imporous objects, such as the surface of a glass bottle. The materials—lamp black, fine brushes, adhesive cellophane tape—which Sebastien would need to carry out such research would be available in New Amsterdam. As would the infamous—and, by reputation, formidable—DCI Abigail Irene Garrett. The Crown Investigator would wield an arsenal of forensic sorcery, and numbered among its functions would be spells capable of linking the murder weapon to the murderer. Assuming the laudanum was the murder weapon, and not a middle-aged widow's comfort, as Mlle. LeClere had suggested.

"Boss!" Jack exclaimed, bounding out of bed.

* * *

In the morning, they strip-searched the passengers.

The process required some orchestration, as of course neither Sebastien nor Jack could examine the female passengers. This inconvenience was surmounted by sending Mlle. LeClere, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Zhang, Miss Meadows, and Mrs. Leatherby aside as a group to examine each other, with the airship's two chambermaids and one female washroom attendant acting as matrons in the smoking room, while the men occupied the larger lounge. From the giggling that ensued, either all eight of them were in collusion, or all eight of them were agreed that men, in general, were a ridiculous species though perhaps best humored.

Meanwhile, Sebastien and Captain Hoak examined the unclothed chest of each of the men.

It was not an absolute test, of course, but if any of them were a university-trained sorcerer (as opposed to a hedge-wizard or conjurer) he would have borne on his chest the ineradicable mark of his training, a sigil tattooed over the sternum. The mark would be red for the great universities at Oxford, Wittenberg, Paris, Rome, and Kyiv, black for lesser colleges.

There were no schools for sorcerers in Spain.

The sigil would be an outline for a wizard who had matriculated, fully inked for a graduate. But it would be there.

It came as little surprise to Sebastien that Oczkar Korvin, who had maneuvered to be last in line, said softly "I believe this is what you are looking for," and unbuttoned the breast of his shirt to reveal a black-inked design the size of a cigarette case. "Prague," he said. "Eighteen seventy-nine. Are you going to arrest me?"

"Not only on the strength of that," Sebastien said. "Mademoiselle LeClere, however, has twice lied—and claimed you as her alibi. Tell me—did she hope to inherit, when Madame Pontchartrain was gone?"

"Neither Mademoiselle LeClere nor I had anything to do with Madame's disappearance," Korvin said. "Nor do I expect you have anything but circumstantial evidence to suggest it."

Sebastien smiled, his shoulders and chest tightening as he considered the probable course of events. "Circumstantial evidence is enough to hold you and your young lady for questioning, however. And Mademoiselle LeClere hardly exhibits the marks of a clean conscience."

"It's no crime to study sorcery." Korvin úr calmly rebuttoned his shirt. "If we're condemning on history and circumstances, Don Sebastien, what about yourself?"

It had been inevitable. If Miss Meadows knew, then likely so did her entire coterie. Sebastien opened his mouth to respond—

Oczkar Korvin raised his right hand, fingers and palms bent around a hollow concavity, and Sebastien's world went white.

He folded reflexively against the light, shielding his face, his face scorched and the flesh on his hands and wrists searing. He groaned, or perhaps screamed; his ears were full of the roaring of that terrible light, and he couldn't hear anything except, suddenly, Jack's voice shouting.

The pain fell away. The white brilliance darkened, a shadow protecting him: Jack had lunged between Sebastien and the light and then the light was gone, whisked away, as Korvin slipped the enchanted lens into which he had summoned sunlight back inside his waistcoat pocket.

Jack turned, still covering Sebastien with his body, and reached out tentatively to touch his hair. "Are you—"

"I'll live," Sebastien answered, and Jack managed a cramped little laugh as Mr. Cui said something quite unintelligible.

Whatever it was, the captain answered with a quick shake of his head.

The skin on Sebastien's hands was peeled, scorched, pulling back from the flesh in thick curls like a two-day-old sunburn. It ached and itched abominably, already healing now that the affront was ended. Sebastien drew his arms against his chest like a dog protecting an injured paw.

"So," Korvin said. "Shall we hold the wampyr for questioning, too?"

Sebastien forced his fists to loosen, and disciplined himself into standing straight, to face the silent room without rubbing at his peeling face. The connecting door to the smoking lounge swung open and the blurred face of Mrs. Smith appeared around it. Sebastien, still dazzled, recognized her chiefly by the flash of light off her spectacles and the startling paleness of her hair. She shoved the door wide and stepped through, the other women following behind her.

Mrs. Leatherby came last, still hastily rebuttoning her collar. Sebastien heard her gasping. Her bosom must be heaving over the top of her corset as if the brief run had winded her. She tugged some blurred object—a comb?—from her disordered hair, releasing a wave of perfume as locks fell over her shoulders. The scent sharpened his teeth—a room, full of warm humans, and with his scalded flesh sapping his strength—

The injury would heal, but it would cost Sebastien, cost him resources. . .and Jack, understanding, would inevitably offer. Sebastien was anticipating that conversation with even less pleasure than the one he was about to have.

Captain Hoak reached out left-handed and grabbed Jack's wrist, almost hauling him off his feet as he yanked him away from Sebastien. Jack squawked and struggled free, tearing his shirt-cuff in the process, and shied away from Captain Hoak, towards the women. Beatrice Leatherby detached herself from that little group and stepped toward her husband. Sebastien thought she clutched Leatherby's elbow; in any case, she slid her hand through the crook.

"Don Sebastien," Mrs. Smith said. She started forward, her quick steps arrested when Korvin caught her arm. She must have glared over her glasses, or shaken him off, because he stepped back abruptly, his raised hands white against the dark suit coat.

"Don't interfere," Korvin said.

"Merci à Dieu," Mlle. LeClere said, pressing her fists to her bosom. "He earlier accosted me on the stairs, Captain. If I had known my danger—"

The captain spared her a glance before turning to keep an eye on Jack. "Lad, no one's going to make you stay with him. You may think you've nowhere to go, but we can make arrangements—"

Sebastien, still blinking tears from his eyes, couldn't see it. But he could imagine quite plainly that Jack paused, turned—slowly—and balled his hands into fists before pursing his lips into the most condescending consideration imaginable. He would stare the captain in the eye until Hoak flushed and dropped his gaze, and then he would drawl—

"Oh, I think not."

It was as well that Sebastien's face hurt too much for smiling, as he heard the hesitancy in the captain's voice as he said, "Lad?"

"I'm of age," Jack said. "Eighteen in December, before you ask, and also before you ask, I know everything I need to know about Sebastien de Ulloa. He saved my life, and you'll have to kill me to take me away from him." He lifted his chin, arms crossed, the smallest man in the room—shorter than two of the women, in fact—and though Sebastien couldn't see it, he knew Jack glowered.

Sebastien swallowed a ridiculous, hurtful pride, feeling like a man watching his terrier stare down a room full of mastiffs. "Jack—"

"Shut up, Sebastien," Jack said. "Let me handle this. Captain, Germany's laws against vampirism were repealed in the eighteenth century, along with the witchcraft laws. Sebastien has done nothing wrong."

"Nothing besides child slavery and—" the captain glanced over his shoulder, at the ladies clustered like hens by the door to the corridor, and did not say the words rape or prostitution.

Into his embarrassed silence, Miss Meadows stepped, slim and elegant in her men's clothing as she sidled between the corseted ladies. She posted herself a little to Captain Hoak's left, making quite a contrast to the stout, graying captain. She seemed cut more from the same fragile white-gold cloth as Jack. "Jack, darling. How old were you when he bought you?"

Several flinched at the word, and now Sebastien's vision was clearing enough to tell who. Mrs. Smith was one of them, though Sebastien was wishing he was still dazzled enough to pretend he didn't see her face. Instead, he focused on Miss Meadows—and was surprised to see that her furrowed brow was an expression of concern, not reproach.

"Seven," Jack said, folding his arms. "My parents couldn't afford to feed me; they indentured me at five. There would have been three years left to run on my bill of service by now."

And that, finally, brought a look of dawning uncertainty to the captain's face. "Would have been?"

"Yes," Jack said. "Sebastien emancipated me when I turned fourteen. And settled a considerable trust on me, as well. I'm quite independent, and no more in need of rescuing than Miss Meadows, here." And then he smiled at the captain and tilted his head, more like the dove he played at than the falcon as which he stood revealed. "And I also know precisely where Sebastien was the night before last, and I assure you, it wasn't with Madame Pontchartrain. Now, may I see to my patron's injuries, Captain, or are you going to make me force your hand?"

* * *