“Put some potassium in the shavings bin.”

“Which you got from…?”

“Chemistry cupboard.” Then, more defensively, “Puddle never locks it. It isn’t even like I broke in.”

“Puddle?” asked Cyril.

“Master Tuttle,” said Stephen. “Chemistry teacher. Complete fart.”

Ah. Pitiable professor. Student eager to impress his peers. Volatile combination. Rather like potassium and pencil shavings. “Did people laugh?”

Stephen scoffed. “Rotten fireworks. Best thing they’d seen since Millicent Rice mooned the headmaster.”

“Anyone hurt?”

The scoff faded into sullenness. “No.”

“Do you wish they had been?”

Stephen really looked at him, then. Not just a leery sideways glance, but a full-on stare. His nephew’s eyes were so dark they swallowed his pupils. Or perhaps his pupils were just that wide. Fear, excitement. Either would do it.

“No,” said Stephen, more softly this time, and then looked back at his feet.

For a precarious moment, Cyril thought that might be the end of things. He had just reached for another opener when Stephen looked up again and spoke.

“Mum won’t tell me outright, but … You were a spy. Weren’t you? Even before the Ospies. You did all kinds of dangerous stuff. With guns and all. And coded messages.”

“With guns and all,” said Cyril, keeping his irony close to his chest.

“What was it like?” asked Stephen. “Did you kill anybody?”

He thought of the ceremony tomorrow. Of Cordelia, and everyone like her who’d suffered for his cowardice. “I did.”

“What else?” asked Stephen, no longer sullen or arrogant, but deeply sincere. “Can you do poisons? What about microfilm? Did you ever have to go behind enemy lines?”

“Let’s just say that I could teach you how to build a better bomb,” said Cyril. “But more importantly, I can teach you not to get caught.”

A crowd gathered for the ceremony, despite the weather. Gray slush stood an inch deep over the bricks of the small park they’d made where Cyril had once sat with a cocktail and watched the curtain rise.

The space looked smaller than it had when the Bee filled it: grubby walls on three sides, without windows. A patch of low sky dragging its belly, threatening more snow. He lifted his collar, against the wind and any curious gazes that might come his way.

“Neither of us are exactly pariahs,” Lillian had told him the night before, when she brought down some blankets for him to use. “They ran a couple of exposés when I first came back from Asu—I gave one or two interviews. Everyone wanted something juicy, a big tell-all, but I tried to keep it bland. Mostly about family and patriotism. People don’t care about you if you’re boring.”

“And me? I imagine my story’s a little harder to downplay.”