Three months later...

Keeping time was important. The whole city was a dance, made up of smaller dances – some of them group affairs, some of them individual encounters. You had to navigate your way through them without treading on your partner's toes, without disrupting the bigger dances. It would have been nice to say that there were circles within circles, but it wasn't quite as tidy as that.

Jack watched his feet as they skimmed over the paving slabs in Broad Street. The gaping holes and chasms had healed over, but, because this was Oxford, soot and mud and horse-dung had got into the cracks, dyeing them black. Wandering lines of black lightning criss-crossed the road like stitches. Already, the city children were saying that, if you stepped on them, you'd be transported straight to hell.

Jack made a point of treading on them whenever he could. People looked to him to see how much they should be worrying, so the more sprightly and unconcerned he seemed, the better.

Oxford, as he had always known, was a complicated machine with lots of busy, moving pieces. Some of the pieces were angry, some were dangerous, some were useful, some were priceless – but they were all moving, and they all wanted something from him, even if it was just his grisly death.

He had to juggle them, appease some and frighten others. He had to keep this place running, keep its inhabitants from killing each other – and, most importantly, he had to keep them from killing his family.

It was a complicated dance, but he'd mastered it. He bounded up to some people and carefully sidestepped others. He shuffled through an embassage of old ladies who wanted Ellini to give a talk at their institute, bowing and smiling, making no promises. He dipped his head to the Dean of Christchurch, who could be touchy about lax etiquette, and who was currently being gracious enough to keep Elsie's statue on college grounds. Who knew how long that would last for.

He swept the rooftops with his gaze, counting guards in time with his footsteps, looking for anything out of place, anything not quite as it should be.

He almost missed it. Five guards on the roof of the Sheldonian, two on the roof of the Indian Institute, three on – oh no, wait–

His smile grew as he looked back at the Indian Institute, but he didn't allow his gaze to linger for too long. There was nothing he could do about it now, anyway. He would see if Sita noticed. It would be good training for her.

This was the best part of the dance, really – glossing over other people's wobbles, finding the things that were out of time and adapting his steps to match them.

He passed the Sheldonian Theatre, his feet still skimming rhythmically over the cracks. When he got to the Clarendon Building, he caught a glimpse of motion out of the corner of his eye, and turned just in time to grab the flutter of skirts and pigtails as it hurled itself towards him. Sita had leapt from the steps and thrown herself into his arms.

Jack caught her clumsily and staggered, trying to keep their balance. This was not how the dance was supposed to go, but Sita was one of those partners who improvised.

She chattered at him, completely unabashed, while he fought to remain upright. "Jack, I saw so many books! Some of them were chained to the walls!"

"Sita," he groaned, lowering her to the ground. "Be careful where you're jumping! There's an axe-blade on my back!"

She made a face. "As if our axe would ever cut me! He'd twist his head right round before he even came close."

"Well, since he has a sharp pick on the back of his head, that isn't much comfort," Jack muttered. But she hadn't finished telling him about the Bodleian. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks tinged with colour. She would have to enthuse for a good five minutes, or she'd probably burst.

"They showed me into this lovely old room with painted ceilings," she gasped. "And some of the books had scorched spines and burnt pages, and I asked what had happened, and they said it was you!" She gave him a look that was half-accusing and half-impressed. "Did you really set fire to the Bodleian?"

"Not personally," he said, shifting his shoulders. "It was a long time ago. I was very upset about your sister."

"It was like punching our house, wasn't it?"

Jack sighed. "You're never going to let me forget about that, are you?"

She gave him a smug, beaming smile. "I feel like it told me everything I need to know about you."

Jack tried to suppress his own smile. He knew he shouldn't be encouraging this kind of cheekiness from a girl two decades his junior. But since she was more than two decades his senior in intelligence, it all seemed to balance out.

Besides, Sita was his friend, as well as his daughter. She really was his daughter. He knew that from the jolt that shuddered through him whenever she hurt herself. It was like being slammed in the stomach. She might not be his flesh and blood, but she was his daughter. And now there was another one on the way – unless it was a son. In a way that was wondrous as well as worrying, he had literally no idea how he was going to handle it.

"Are you packed and ready?" he said, straightening up.

"Of course." Sita gave a petulant toss of her head. She prided herself on always being packed and ready. She was a born traveller. "More importantly, are you ready? Have you organised the guard around Mrs Darwin?"

"Yes."

"Have you contacted the Chief Inspector in Newcastle and arranged to liaise with the police force there?"

"Yes."

"Have you got hold of the plans for the building where Leeny will be speaking?"

"Yes."

"Have you checked the train times from York?"

"Yes."

"Have you arranged for someone to feed Snowball while we're away?"

For a moment, Jack stopped in his tracks and allowed a look of dismay pass over his face. He let it go on just long enough for the girl's eyes to widen, and then he grinned. "You thought I'd forgotten, didn't you?"

"No," said Sita, sticking her nose in the air.

"Yes, you did."

"Well," she grumbled, looking down at her shoes. "You'll slip up one of these days..."

"That's what I have you for, Lieutenant. Keep testing me."

Sita walked a little straighter after that. She liked to be reminded that she was his second-in-command.

It wasn't a situation Ellini approved of, but Jack felt like he owed Sita. He hadn't had a chance to say so until two weeks after 'the incident on Broad Street'. He'd been so busy before that, rushing off to London, giving interviews and making statements, trying to stop the cracks from spreading.

But as soon as they had a quiet moment – while they were in the ivy-shrouded Entrance Hall at the Academy – he'd asked her what it had been like, waiting at the Faculty with Manda while the world outside cracked and crumbled.

"Oh, it was awful," she breathed, her eyes lighting up with enthusiasm. Jack didn't doubt that it had been awful, but he couldn't help smiling at her enthusiasm. She was just like her sister. Nothing made her happier than telling a dramatic story.

"We heard gunshots," she resumed. "And then this awful, heartbroken cry, that sort of echoed off the buildings. I remember wondering how anyone could scream for that long without stopping to take a breath! That was when Miss Manda was taken ill. She almost fell down! She went white as a sheet and put her hand over her chest, as if it was her heart that was breaking. I helped her into a chair, but she wouldn't tell me anything – she just kept shaking her head and saying how awful it was."

Sita swung her arms, as if the story was giving her energy that she didn't know what to do with. "I went and got her a glass of water, and when I came back, the ground was shaking! I could see tiles and chimneys tumbling off the rooftops opposite! And then Miss Manda sat up so straight and sudden in her chair, as if someone had jabbed her from behind – I suppose that must have been when Elsie was stabbed. She dropped her glass of water and didn't even glance at it! Then she limped upstairs – she could hardly even walk – and went and got the doll from your bedroom. I didn't know what was going on, but she told me I had to wait there while she went out. And then it was worse than anything, because she'd hardly gone five steps down the street when Snowball snatched her up and carried her off screaming!"

"But you still stayed where you were?" Jack prompted.

Sita narrowed her eyes, trying to work out whether she was being praised or reprimanded. "Well, I didn't think I'd be much use against a dragon! What was I going to do, stand in the street and yell at it to bring her down again?"

"That's what I mean," said Jack. "You were smart. You didn't have to be."

Sita furrowed her eyebrows. "What do you mean, I didn't have to be?"

Jack smiled. He could see how that would be a puzzling idea, for a girl like Sita. "I brought you back from the demon realms into a world where your friends and family were dead. All you had left was your sister and some idiot you'd met in the underworld, who hadn't saved you anywhere near as many times as you'd saved him."

Sita giggled at this, but rather sadly. She was probably thinking of her mother and father. Jack supposed it had been tactless of him, to remind her of everything she'd lost. He swept on before she had a chance to dwell on it.

"And then you had to watch both those people – the only family you had left – walk into danger while you sat quietly at home. That was hard for you, but you did it to help us."

He'd been thinking about this a lot while he was away – thinking about what he would have done, as an eight-year-old, if the only loved ones he'd had left had told him to stay put and not try to help. He was sure he would have been crawling on his belly down Broad Street, getting himself – and, most likely, anyone who loved him – killed.

"You can't imagine the difference it made," he went on, shaking his head. "You can't imagine what it would have done to me, if what happened to Elsie and Danvers had happened to you."

Sita had the decency to look down at the tiled floor while he steadied his voice. She was a very observant eight-year-old, and she knew how much those deaths had hurt him. Jack watched her standing there, swinging her arms with helpless sympathy, and wasn't sure whether he wanted to burst into tears or burst out laughing. She was so adorably, inimitably Sita.

He cleared his throat and went on, "So this is what I'm going to do. In return for your cleverness and restraint, I promise to train you – so that, the next time someone you love is in danger, you won't have to sit on the side-lines, twiddling your thumbs."

Sita's head snapped up, and she gave an excited squeal, jumping up and down on the spot. "Oh, you mean it? You'll teach me how to fight?"

"Yes."

"With swords and everything?"

"If you like."

She suddenly stood still, her eyes narrowing. "You mean – when I'm older?"

"No, now." He gave her a playful prod in the ribs. "We'll have to start early if you're still determined to go to India and be a pirate–"

"Tea-planter," she corrected, her voice hardening. "Or an explorer, if I can find someone to finance my expeditions. Pirates steal, and I'd never do that. If I buy any land to grow tea on, I'll be sure to pay a fair price for it."

Jack patted her head. "You will, my love, because you'll be buying from the British. They've taken everything worth owning over there. And they don't give discounts – except to other stuffy white men they went to school with, who are rich enough not to need the discounts in the first place."

Sita pressed her mouth into a disapproving line to hide her smile. "You cynic."

Jack spread his hands. "When the world proves me wrong, I'll be delighted."

"I can already prove you wrong! Colonel Wellesley was one of those rich British men who apparently don't give discounts, and he paid for Leeny and me to be educated in his household with his own daughters!"

"What were the daughters like?"

Sita hesitated, but only for a moment. "Never mind about the daughters!" she said, stamping her foot. "The point is, Colonel Wellesley was generous."

Jack decided not to argue. It occurred to him that Colonel Wellesley and his daughters – maybe even his entire kitchen staff – had been murdered by Robin. And then it occurred to him how special it was for a little girl who'd met Robin to be arguing against cynicism. Sita really was a jewel.

He wished he could explain that to her, but he didn't want to bring Robin back into her thoughts. He would just have to settle for showing her with his actions, every day of his life – so that everything he did would be some variation on 'Sita is a jewel', if you really unpacked it.

Now, he led her across the road and into the cool shade of Holywell Street. She was still full of observations about the Bodleian, so he let her chatter on, only stopping when they had passed the carved front doors of the Indian Institute.

He reached out and grabbed one of her shoulders, turning her round to face him. She should be able to see the roof of the Institute from there.

"Look over my right shoulder, but don't stare," he instructed. "Tell me what you see."

He was proud of the casual way her eyes flicked up and then away again. He had taught her how to observe without being obvious, and she was turning out to be a natural.

"It's John and Kevin on their morning shift."

"Is that what you really see, or just what you expect to see?"

He saw her eyes shift back and then down to her feet, as if she was mulling over what she'd seen. That was what he'd taught her. Take a mental image of the unusual thing and then dissect it in your memory. Go back for more details if you need to, but never look for more than a couple of seconds, or they'll know you've noticed.

"Oh," she said. "You're right. I can usually see Kevin's head and shoulders above the parapet, and I can only see this man's head. He's wearing Kevin's hat, though," she added – apparently for the benefit of her shoes. "Could be his brother. Do you think Kevin's sick?"

Jack nodded his head in the direction they'd been walking, and they continued onwards, without a backward glance at the Indian Institute.

"I haven't heard about it," he said at last. "And, if he's sick, why bother to dress his replacement in his hat? No, I think someone – most likely Kevin – doesn't want us to know that Kevin is not on duty this morning."

"Shall we go and tell him off?" Sita asked hopefully.

"No, not yet. If something's going on, we'll learn more by watching him. What do you know about him?"

Sita beamed, as if she was glad of the opportunity to show off her knowledge. She talked to Jack's guards all the time – she had taken the responsibility of being his Lieutenant very seriously – and she was naturally personable. They seemed to like her, even though she dressed well, had a governess, and used words they'd never heard of. Perhaps her dark skin prevented them from thinking of her as a toff. And she was learning new words from them – although not the kind Ellini would approve of.

"He lives in a cottage at Iffley lock with his mum and younger brother," she announced, with barely a pause to shuffle through the files in her memory. "Quite a lazy man, I thought. He's always complaining when he gets put on the morning shift."

"Yes, that's the impression I got too," said Jack. The dance was speeding up – Kevin was bringing in some new steps – and he could feel the thrill of improvisation, the wind whistling through his hair. "So, if we go down to Iffley lock and find him asleep in his bed, then that fits with what we know, and we've got nothing but a lazy guard who was thoughtful enough to cover his shift. If not, we've got to ask ourselves what a lazy man like Kevin is doing not in his bed or at his post at nine o'clock on a Saturday morning."

Sita nodded, all seriousness, but he could see her eyes shining. She loved this kind of stuff. "Can I go to check on him?"

Jack shook his head. "You're too easily recognisable. I'll send Arthur."

There was a guard lounging in the shadows of a doorway opposite the Faculty, who snapped to attention when Jack caught his eye. Jack gave him a signal and mouthed the word 'Arthur', which sent the guard scuttling off in the direction of Longwall Street. Then he turned back to Sita as if nothing had happened. "Who's guarding the honorary Vice-chancelloress?" he asked.

The title sounded clunky, and it was no doubt supposed to. The University didn't promote women very often, and when they did, they made sure to give them long, torturous titles, to hint at the unnaturalness of female power, even at the sentence level.

But, clunky title or not, the University had rallied round Mrs Darwin. They hadn't just opposed her arrest, they had promoted her three times – she was an honorary Professor, an honorary Fellow, and now the honorary Vice-chancelloress.

They always stuck that word 'honorary' in front of it, which Jack had learned to interpret as 'entirely at our discretion and not really based on merit'. After all, the University still didn't allow women to graduate. They supported Mrs Darwin because they thought she had saved their city, but they wouldn't go so far as to consider her an equal.

Actually, Alice was in a position quite similar to the one Jack had been in when he'd first come to Oxford – lauded by some, hated by others, and technically under house arrest. She wasn't allowed to leave the city, for her own safety as much as public order.

Fortunately, she thought of the world outside Oxford and Cambridge as a wasteland of barbarians, so she hadn't protested much.

To Jack's surprise, she had even resisted the efforts of the University to turn her into a hero. She turned down all their invitations to give speeches about 'the incident on Broad Street' and the death of the Little Mother.

"Killing that girl was an extremely unpleasant necessity," she had told Jack. "And I must say, I find it morbid and disturbing that people continually ask me to recount it. It may be why the University has chosen to promote me, but I will not allow it to be what I am remembered for."

Jack had given her a thin-lipped smile and said, "Well. Good luck with that."

But he really did wish her luck. It would be nice to think of something other than Elsie's death whenever he looked at her.

At least he didn't have to look at her often. She kept to her glass laboratory at the Faculty these days, working on whatever it was she hoped would be the thing people remembered her for. Sergei said he sometimes heard the sound of minor explosions and breaking glass from up there, which did not bring back good memories.

"I think Mr Warner's guarding her this morning," said Sita. There was an edge of reproach to her voice that made Jack smile. Alice hated Ted Warner – everything about him offended her, from the loud voice to the patches of scaly skin – so Jack put him on the roster to guard her more often than was really necessary.

"That's good," he said, trying to keep the smile out of his voice. "Ted's solid and dependable, not overly fond of Kevin, and he's too thick-headed to be easily talked round."

"Mrs Darwin hates him, though."

"It's our job to consider Mrs Darwin's safety, not her pleasure."

"I feel like you consider her displeasure all the time!"

Jack gave her a sidelong glance, still fighting his smile. "Well, everyone should be allowed to have a hobby," he said. "Where's your governess? Wasn't she with you at the Bodleian?"

Sita waved vaguely back the way they had come. "Miss Hope wanted to sketch the chained-up books. She said they're an invaluable metaphor."

Jack sighed. Emma was a good governess – she was clever and patient, and she never shouted. She saw the best in people, which was exactly what Sita tended to do, so the two of them got along well. And she was genteel and well-educated – or at least, she had been up until the age of fifteen, when she'd been snatched from her mother and brought to the fire-mines.

But she thought about art too much. And her habit of seeing the best in people meant she was never on guard against the worst in people.

A girl who'd lived through the fire-mines should have seen the problem with letting her eight-year-old charge wander the streets of Oxford on her own. The fact that she didn't see it was both a miracle and a nuisance.

He supposed he couldn't blame her. She had left the Ruskin School of Art in disgust, because they had only wanted her to paint prettiness: mountains and trees, blue skies and attractive women. But Emma was used to seeing beauty in sacrifice – in blood and bruises, and the smiles of women who didn't have much to smile about. That was what she wanted to paint.

She had heard about Ellini's lecture tour and asked to go with them across the country, so that she could sketch real people with real troubles. And she was qualified and good with Sita, so Jack had offered her the post of governess. But he had known it was just a side-line. The art would always come first.

It was just as well he'd taken other precautions.

Ginniver was behind them, he knew, though he couldn't have said how long he'd been aware of her. He turned and looked for her in the crowd. She was blending in, inspecting the display in a jeweller's window, but she met Jack's eyes briefly and gave him a little nod. It seemed to acknowledge that Emma had been careless, while at the same time warning that she wouldn't take kindly to anyone who criticized a fellow slave-girl. Besides, she was here, so there was no harm done, was there?

Ginniver had tired of her husband within a few months of their marriage. He supposed, when you had dismembered a peer of the realm with your bare hands in a fever of righteous fury, being the wife of a greengrocer would seem a bit dull. So she had come back to live at the Academy and asked Jack to teach her how to fight.

At first, he had been worried that she'd developed a taste for killing, but after working with her for a few weeks, he decided that what she had really developed a taste for was feeling in control of her life – feeling free from fear when she walked down a deserted street at night. Now she had seen that men came apart just like everyone else, she wanted to stop being afraid of them. He couldn't begrudge her that.

Besides, it had worked out well. He could buy big, strong bodyguards anywhere, but he couldn't buy the kind of loyalty that years of working in the fire-mines with Ellini had instilled in her. He could set her to guard Ellini and Sita without having to worry about what she wanted, whether he was paying her enough, whether she had any skeletons in her closet that he hadn't found out about.

She was a slave-girl, and Ellini was her family. She'd protect her for nothing – although Jack resisted the urge to pay her nothing. Even slave-girl loyalty might erode if it was taken advantage of.

He turned back to Sita, who was swinging her arms in her thoughtful way. "Have you had any visions about the journey?" he asked. 

He was very interested in Sita's visions now. He was keeping up with the dance well, and he loved improvising, but there was a great big uncertainty in his future that he suspected would render him completely powerless, and he couldn't help thinking about it, prodding at it, trying to plan for it, even though he knew it was the kind of thing that would laugh at all his plans. It scared him more than magic, more than Myrrha, and yet it happened every day. Midwives at the Radcliffe Infirmary could see ten in a night.

Sita gave him a one-shouldered shrug, still thinking about whatever it was that had been making her swing her arms and wrinkle her brow. "No. Oh, you're going to give me three shillings to buy books."

Jack raised his eyebrows, trying not to smile. "Oh, I am, am I? That's a very convenient prediction for you."

She gave him a commendably blank look. "I can't change the future. I just predict it."

Jack reached into his pocket, letting her hear the jingle of coins. "Anything else?"

"Oh," she said, as if she'd just remembered. "There's going to be a fallen tree on the line at Brackley."

"The train doesn't go through Brackley."

She waved a hand. "Well, some place that sounds like Brackley."

"Tackley?"

"That's it! Just north of Oxford. We'll have to take the carriage all the way to King's Sutton and get on the line there."

"You remembered King's Sutton," Jack pointed out.

"Well, it sounds nicer," said Sita, with a sniff. "I don't like all these ack sounds. It's as if whoever named these villages was choking."

He laughed and brought some coins out of his pocket. "All right. That's worth three shillings."

It really was, he thought, as they walked on. King's Sutton was almost two hours away by road, and the prospect of being alone in a carriage with Ellini for two hours made his skin tingle. It had been too long – which was to say, it had been two days.

"Am I coming in the landau with you?" said Sita, as if she had sensed his excitement and wanted to squash it.

"No, you'll be in the coach with Emma and Ginniver."

"But why can't I come with you?"

Jack was ready for this one. "Because you have lessons to learn, and I don't want to sit through them."

Sita huffed. "Maybe you should. Maybe if you did, you wouldn't still think the capital of America was New York City..."

Jack opened his mouth to say that everyone had their blind spots – that she, for example, didn't know the difference between a trebuchet and a catapult – but he saw Sergei coming down the steps from the Faculty, and closed his mouth.

Ellini had slept at the Faculty last night. Sergei always kept a room ready for her, even though she and Jack and Sita had their own house now, on a rainbow-coloured terrace of Georgian houses just at the bottom of Headington Hill, where the neighbourhood of St. Clements met South Park. Jack had often passed those houses and thought how idyllic they looked, away from the University, without a gargoyle of a gothic arch in sight. So, when he had seen a 'For Sale' sign outside one of the houses on this terrace – a sliver of powder-blue stucco with sash windows – he had taken Ellini to see it as soon as he could persuade her to put down her book.

It was equidistant between the Faculty and the Academy, without being overly close to either. They could be alone there, while at the same time being ten minutes' walk away from their friends. It was perfect.

But sometimes it wasn't close enough to the manuscripts Ellini needed to study, so she stayed with Sergei at the Faculty when she wanted to work late into the night.

Jack couldn't think of a safer place for her to be than with Sergei – although it was obviously a little less safe around Alice – but he was going to be anxious until the baby was born, and Sergei would hopefully know how to set his mind at rest, at least for five minutes.

As it turned out, Sergei was watching him expectantly, nursing a small smile behind his moustache.

"She's fine," he said, as soon as Jack opened his mouth. "Four months in is a relatively stable time, I'm told."

Jack knew this was true. She had only just begun to swell at the waist – her abdomen was a delicate outward curve that couldn't yet be called a bump. She was eating and drinking with a vengeance – she liked aniseed balls all of a sudden – but, other than that, you couldn't really tell she was pregnant.

Still, he was going to worry. It was his job. It was – in a clunky, sweaty way – all part of the dance.

"Remind me where it is you're off to today," said Sergei, nodding at the carriage parked outside the Faculty's front steps.

"Newcastle."

"Glamorous," returned Sergei. His smile was still locked up, but Jack knew it was there. It was something to do with the crinkles around his eyes.

He shook his head, allowing the worry to ebb and the smile to creep back. "What is it you're always saying about life, Sergei? It's not the destination, it's the journey."

And this was truer than he knew. The thought of two hours alone in a carriage with Ellini was making him walk straighter, pulling his mouth up at the corners. When he was alone with her, it was like stepping out of the dance and watching it whirl on without him. The frenetic pace of his life slowed. Little details started to make it through – the nice ones, not the ones that could kill him – he was always watching out for those.

Details like the way the sun sloped and dyed the sandstone golden. Details like the almost-indiscernible pupils at the centre of Ellini's eyes. There was the tiniest difference – a gold-black sheen to her irises that disappeared when you got to the very centre – but he could look at it all day.

And their conversation was just like it had been in the amnesia days. Happy irrelevance. Teasing and playing dice and talking about nothing – but with the added bonus that he knew what he was doing this time. He knew what it all meant. The nothing was everything.

And he thought maybe there was no better symptom of recovery than that. He was back where he had been in the dark times, but it didn't fill him with terror anymore. It was his favourite part of the day, because this time, he was doing it right. 

***

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