No one would ever hear her complain about it. She stood, casting a look over her shoulder, where Mama still held the loupe to the photograph Lily had passed to her five minutes before. “You’ll have to ask her. What do you think, Mama? Is it ready?”

She looked up with a sigh—and glinting eyes. “I don’t know, Lily Love. The composition is terrible. No effort was made at all to balance foreground and background, and—”

Lily’s laughter cut her off. “You’ll have to blame the German photographer for that. All I did was change uniforms, faces, and the ships in the background.”

“Ah yes. That is all.” Zivon had apparently moved to her side, given that his voice now came from beside her ear. And his hand slipped into its usual place on her waist.

Mama grinned at them, then at the photo, which she held up. “I see no evidence at all of your hand. It is, as usual, flawless.”

It ought to be, given the number of hours she’d poured into that one. She still had the crick in her neck to prove it, too, and lifted a hand to rub at it.

Zivon’s fingers brushed hers away, and his thumb dug into the knot in her shoulder. He always knew just where it hid. “Shall we take it up, then?”

“Of course.” But she didn’t move. In part because it would mean dislodging Zivon’s hand . . . but mostly because she knew what this photograph meant. If it worked as the admiral and Zivon thought, then it could well be the last one he ever called on her to create.

If it worked, the German army would think the English were mutinying too.

If it worked, those flames of rebellion on the Continent that had been smoldering and flaring up since August would erupt into a full-out blaze.

If it worked, the war would be over before another week could pass.

She wanted that. Of course she did. It was what she and everyone else here, everyone else everywhere, had been striving for these four-and-a-half interminable years. But it would mean a change to everything she’d come to know.

No more reporting here every day. No more Room 40 to report to. All the codebreakers would go back to their lives, their real careers. Professors and scholars, linguists and music critics, bankers and students.

Mama came close, handed the picture to Zivon, and gripped Lily’s hand. “You have done good work here, Lily Love. I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you, Mama.” Another something to be grateful for, that her mother had been working alongside her. That Zivon, his name clear, had stayed at his desk upstairs, where everyone knew they could turn to “Old Ziv” for any necessary help with languages. That the admiral had finally come to agree with his advice on how the British forces should, in fact, react to the mutiny.