Jack had a night secretary as well as a day one. He was sleeping more now, but there was still night work to be done, and it wasn't the sort of thing you could ask Danvers to help with, unless you wanted him to splutter in outrage all over your suit.

Fortunately, Brandt had survived the rebellion in India to become a detective at Scotland Yard. He was the same Brandt—curly-haired, composed and cautious—but now he had contacts in the London police force, and was ideally placed to help Jack unearth the remnants of the Order which had captured and enslaved his girls.

It was unfair to call him the night secretary, maybe. There was nothing shady about him, except that he'd been forced to live his private life in the shadows due to society's unaccountable hostility to who he was. And he restrained Jack just as much as Danvers did—although he had his work cut out for him tonight.

He arrived at the Academy two hours earlier than expected, clutching telegrams, and wearing an expression so English it might have been copied, muscle-by-muscle, from the face of John Danvers. Jack knew that expression. It was the face of reluctant but determined duty – a face which knew it was going to suffer for telling the truth, but had made up its mind to suffer anyway.

Still, he ushered Brandt into his office, with its ivy-shrouded windows, and offered him a seat. It was all very civilized, even if he did have to stuff his fist in his mouth when Brandt took his usual minute-and-a-half to get to the point.

"There's been some kind of... co-ordinated attack... on the girls living outside of Oxford. Mostly, our men were able to deal with it, but three of them were found this morning with their throats cut, and the girls they were guarding..."

Jack vaulted over the desk and grabbed Brandt by his collar, lifting him out of his seat and slamming his back into the wall. "Finish that sentence very carefully, Brandt," he breathed. "The girls they were guarding?"

"Missing," Brandt wheezed. "Not dead."

"But could be dead?"

"I doubt it, General. The attackers were wearing black, and tattoed on the wrist with the Eye of Horus. They sound like the assassins who captured the girls in the first place."

Jack let him go – or flung him to the floor, he wasn't sure which – and took his anger out on the furniture instead. He kicked Brandt's chair across the room, where it shattered a window and got lodged in the ivy.

"A pre-emptive attack, I assume," said Brandt, over the stream of swear-words. "They knew we were looking for them. Perhaps we weren't subtle enough about that."

"We were subtler than I would have liked to be, Brandt."

They had been searching for the Order for months now. The gems were the best way. Any slave-girl could spot them from a mile off. They were a cross between opals and rubies—blood-red but rainbow-hued.

Jack had taken Emma Hope to Regent's Park, where the richest and most well-dressed people in England paraded their splendour, and asked her to watch the brooches, bracelets and rings that passed under her nose.

And then he would go up to their owners – introducing himself as 'Sir Jack', because that always helped – and enquire how they had come by such fascinating jewellery.

It was an achingly slow process. At first, all they found were jewellers and merchants and brokers, people who traded in the gems but had no inkling of the slavery. Or, if they had – and this was the agonizing bit – nobody could prove it.

The early days, when he'd been angriest, had been full of delicate work. Gentle enquiries. Examining accounts and receipts. Carefully sifting through information to find the source.

Brandt had proved to be amazingly good at this – so thorough and methodical, it could drive you mad. And somehow he'd been able to keep a lid on Jack's impatience.

"You made this public, General, when you sanctioned the article in the Illustrated London News. Now you have to be accountable to the public. Any murders will be traced back to you, and could make things very difficult for your girls."

"But they're murdering!" Jack protested, flinging his arms wide. "You said they slit the throats of three of my men! Why are the slave-dealers allowed to murder but I'm not?"

"Because the slave-dealers can't be traced as easily as you. You publicly assumed responsibility for these women. Who do you think they're going to suspect when the women's persecutors start turning up dead?"

Jack strangled the response he would have liked to give and bunched his hands into fists. There was no point yelling at Brandt. He had to control the anger. Push it down until it was needed. Use it for fuel when he had nothing else.

"That building in East Dulwich," he said, his voice gravelly with the effort of self-control. "The one that supplied two of our jewellers..."

Brandt's forehead winkled. "I've told you, I can't get a warrant to raid the place. There's no evidence of wrongdoing."

"Apart from trading in gems that we know were mined by slaves!"

Brandt pinched the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger—a motion that made him look very much like Sam. "I have to be able to convince my superior officers before I can go charging in. That's the law."

"May I remind you that the law would put you behind bars just for existing?" Jack snapped.

He hadn't meant to say it. He was sure Brandt didn't need reminding. A man could still be locked up for loving another man. And the language used to charge the offenders was so vague that it would have been quite sweet if it didn't have such horrible consequences. The men involved were 'unlawfully meeting each other to commit an unnatural offence'. They were 'grossly misconducting themselves'.

The magistrates made it sound worse than murder. At least murder could be given a name, could be talked about.

Brandt was silent for a moment—not as though he was considering what to say, but as though there were a hundred things he was trying not to say.

"You never need to remind me of that," he managed at last.

Jack relented. It struck him again how much Brandt resembled Sam, with his muscular shoulders crammed into an ill-fitting suit. The difference was, Sam had always been able to shout and bully people, safe in the knowledge that the men in power were exactly the same as him—white, British, educated, heterosexual. They would listen to him because they recognised him.

Jack had never realised before how much Sam's outspokenness—and his own—was a privilege. And how different it might be for people who were made to feel every moment that they didn't belong.

He blinked and tried to re-trace his thoughts back to the anger. It didn't take him long.

"Anyway, you don't have to raid the place," he said, starting to pace around the office as his brain heated up. "I'll go in by myself. You're allowed to look at files that a concerned citizen has brought to your attention, aren't you? 'Excuse me, Officer, I found these papers blowing about in the breeze and bless me if they don't seem to indicate an illegal trade in human cargo'. I won't kill anyone, I promise. And not a single policeman will have set foot on the premises."

He waited, with difficulty, for Brandt's carefully considered response.

"But what if you find a whole garrison of assassins in there?"

Jack spread his hands. "They can't kill me."

"They could put you to some inconvenience!"

"I'd relish some inconvenience right now," said Jack, through gritted teeth.

Brandt raised a ponderous eyebrow. "I don't think you're in the most reasonable frame of-"

"No," said Jack, putting out a hand. "Let me stop you right there, Brandt. This is me being reasonable. They've got three of my girls. Think about it for a minute or two – I already know you will – and you'll realise that I'm making several big concessions for you. No police on the premises, and no dead men. Take it or leave it."

***

Shikari rode with him on the train up to London. The thunderous look on Jack's face meant they had the compartment all to themselves.

Jack liked Shikari, although he couldn't work out if the feeling was mutual. The boy hardly ever spoke to him. He was either in awe of him, developing a crush on him, or plotting to kill him. Jack genuinely couldn't tell which.

Still, he was a soothing companion. His silence wasn't as busy as Brandt's. You didn't get the feeling that he was considering every possible response before he picked one—just that responses were precious, and he wouldn't hazard one unless it was absolutely necessary.

Jack supposed that was how things had worked in the prison colonies. When you were constantly on the edge of starvation, you didn't waste any energy on conversation.

He was in no condition to talk anyway. He was restless to the point of fever. He loaded and unloaded his revolver, counted the cartridges, opened the window, closed the window, peered into the luggage racks and paced around the carriage, watched by Shikari's calm, dark, non-judgemental eyes.

He couldn't stop thinking about what might have been done to the three missing girls. Common sense told him they were in no danger. The girls were commodities to these people, and it made no sense to damage your own property. But there were so many ways you could hurt them while still technically keeping them fit for work. Even locking them up again – keeping them in a room without windows – would be unbearable if you'd just been starting to believe you were free.

And yet, for all the strangling anxiety, he was sort of happy. He was finally doing something. Oh, he would have to take care every moment not to let the anger go too far, not to kill anyone, not to get distracted from the all-important files. But he would be able to crack a few bones, break a few noses. 

How many times, in the four months since Ellini's death, had he been able to take out his anger on somebody who actually deserved it? You could make good cases – devastating cases – against Alice and Sergei, but they were not the ones who had dragged her underground and held her captive for five years. They were not the ones who had organized her enslavement as though it were a package tour – a five-year excursion with Thomas Cooke.

A murmur made him halt in the middle of his pacing, and he realised Shikari had spoken.

"What?" said Jack, his hand reaching unconsciously for his revolver. Shikari spoke up so rarely that, when he did, you assumed it had to be a matter of life or death.

Shikari glanced at his longbow, as if he was taking courage from the sight of it. "Did you know there's a statue of you in Northaven?" he mumbled. "You and the other rebel Generals on your way into the Delhi cantonment?"

Jack blinked, trying to decide if this subject was better or worse than an imminent threat to his life. He sat down and smoothed out the creases in his trousers. "Well, it wouldn't be a very nice statue if it depicted us on our way out of the Delhi cantonment."

"You didn't know?" said Shikari, his eyes wide. "I knew you were – well, sort of under house arrest in Oxford, but I didn't know that they'd kept you from..."

His eyes swivelled back to the bow. Jack supposed he had spent more time with it than with any living person. No wonder it gave him courage.

"You're very popular there," the boy went on. "Northaven, I mean. The town's populated by people you saved in the rebellion, although nobody's really sure what made you involve yourself in the rebellion in the first place..." He left a nervous pause—not at all like his usual silences—and hastened on. "I mean, Joel Parish was an idealist, and Lord Huth and the others followed you for profit, but-"

"You wrong at least two of them," said Jack briskly, unloading his revolver and counting the cartridges once more. "Azimullah and the Rani weren't there for profit, and Alim just followed me out of loyalty. Or horrified curiosity. Either way, it didn't do him any good."

"And you?" said Shikari, all rapt attention.

Jack looked away. He didn't want to shout at the boy, but he hated those wide eyes, the hints of hero worship. He wasn't sure—he had never been sure—what made him get involved in the rebellion, but he knew he wasn't the selfless leader Shikari thought he was. And hero worship now—now that he'd killed Ellini and driven Sam out of town, if not out of his mind—made his stomach writhe.

"Look, it was going to happen anyway, and it was going to be a massacre. I saw a way to make it tidy and get rich in the process."

"But you didn't get rich-"

"Well, it didn't go exactly to plan," said Jack, with the ghost of a smile. "At least I made it tidy."

"You don't know what it meant-"

"I do know what it meant," said Jack, cutting him off as politely as possible. "That's why I'm uncomfortable taking the credit. Joel Parish is your hero. He did what all good heroes do. He died. I can't do that, so it stands to reason I'm something else."

***

Jack had to admit that the office building in East Dulwich looked very inoffensive, now he came to see it. It was three floors high, plain white stucco, without much ornamentation. It had the look of a civil service building—and not a particularly exalted branch of the civil service at that.

Still, there was light filtering through the shutters on the first floor. He knew clerks kept late hours, but they didn't tend to stay on past midnight if their business was completely honest. Something was going on.

"What do you think?" he said to Shikari, who had followed him silently from the station.

"I think there's definitely someone inside to be interrogated," the boy offered. "How will you get in?"

Jack looked up and down the street. The gas-lamps were lit, but all the other buildings were dark. This was a street of warehouses and counting-houses. Everyone except the industrious clerks in the office before him had gone home.

He nodded to the warehouse opposite, which had a convenient, flat roof.

"I think I'll get up there, ask you to fire an arrow with a rope attached into the frame above that window, and then swing across and kick through the glass."

Shikari's expression didn't change. He didn't even raise his eyebrows. He looked at the coiled length of rope Jack was proffering and hefted its weight experimentally.

"It will take a lot of force to fire this, even over a short distance," he muttered, half to himself. "And the arrow will have to bite deep into the wood if you intend to swing across. You must have a lot of faith in my aim."

"Is that wrong?" said Jack, without glancing at him. "Starvation trained you. That's better than any academy."

Shikari blinked, which was obviously as close as he came to registering surprise. "No, you're right. I can do it. I'm just not used to being trusted right away."

"Well, I work fast. Of course, we're both going to look pretty silly if I crash into a room full of innocently scribbling clerks."

Shikari shook his head and unslung his longbow, using it to tap the pavement between them. "Have you seen this?"

The bow struck something metal, and Jack looked down to see a manhole cover embossed with a faint, swirling pattern in the centre.

He squatted down on his haunches, using his fingertips to trace the design, but he already knew what it was before he touched it. The Eye of Horus.

"They may be scribbling," said Shikari. "But I doubt they are innocently scribbling."