“Fate will smile upon you, I’m sure,” said Julian.

Lash looked up into Julian’s face. His mouth crimped and his eyes seemed to catch blue flame. “It will take more than the whim of Fate. It will take my working in secret, until the moment the airship is complete, the weapon is in place, and I will demonstrate it to—” He trailed off, and the flame of his eyes suddenly iced over.

“To whom, sir?” Julian prodded.

When Lash spoke again, his voice was hushed and it was as if he were talking to a league of ghosts in the room. “They,” he said. “They … don’t believe in my idea. Oh, I’ve presented it to them. The high officials of the navy. I have told them that someday the ship of the sea will be outdone by the ship of the air. I’ve presented all my reasons. I have described to them in detail the visions that came to me. But they don’t want to hear it, and they cannot see the future. They look at me as if I have betrayed the navy … or as if I have lost my mind. The ship of the sea, they say, will never be outdone, not in a thousand years.” Lash lifted a thick index finger and tapped it against his shaggy skull. “I know better. I have been given these visions for a reason. I have been entrusted to build this airship. Me, out of all the people in this world who have ever lived. Do you understand the importance—the responsibility—that has been thrust upon me?”

Julian gave a nod. Matthew was thinking that if Samson Lash was not fully mad, he was only a few steps away from the tumble-chute to Bedlam. These visions of his had flamed his imagination yet at the same time begun burning his candle out at a young age. And how could he be certain this dragon of the air would fly, even if the plans were valid enough to build the thing? It seemed to Matthew that Lash desperately wanted to believe it was possible to create a working airship, if only to show the navy he was right—and not half insane—and to step out from the Huxley shadow.

But … the book. The book of potions, with its binding of red leather, was right there on the desktop before Matthew, only a few feet away.

No gun or dagger, Cardinal Black’s eyes on him, Samson Lash big enough to strangle a horse and even Miss Mulloy now looking sinister in the low lantern light.

There was no way out but to play this game to the end.

“Thank you for your offer,” said Miss Mulloy, as Lash had begun a closer examination of the plans. The gold bars remained untouched on the desktop. “I’ll take you back to the parlor now.”

“Very well,” Julian answered. “But am I to—”