“Not satisfied yet,” Julian answered. He had seen an edge of the airship plans protruding from beneath the desktop’s blotter where Lash must’ve put them before Merda’s visit to the study. He drew out all five sheets of the parchment. Then he pulled the lantern closer and removed its glass chimney to reveal the naked flame.

“What’re you doing?” The young woman’s voice carried a note of alarm.

“I don’t care to be held down and beaten. This is my payment.” So saying, he held the first sheet to the flame.

She attacked him, not with the supple grace of RakeHell Lizzie but with the wild desperation of Elizabeth Mulloy. She got an arm around his throat and squeezed but in her current state she was no match for Julian; he threw an elbow into her jaw that knocked her nearly senseless and then he tossed her like a bag of rags against the wall.

Methodically and with great joy, Julian burned all but one sheet to brown crisps that he scattered across the top of Lash’s desk. When Elizabeth started up off the floor, he kicked her down again. The bad man was in his full glory. He set fire to the fifth sheet and when it had burned nearly to his fingers he blew it out so only a charred remnant remained.

“Get up,” he told her.

“You don’t know what you’ve done!” she said as she staggered up, her eyes wet with both rage and pain.

“I know.” He shoved her out of the study. “Move.”

Instantly Matthew saw that violence had been done to Elizabeth. “Julian! What have—”

“He burned the plans!” she said, nearly sobbing. “This insane idiot! He burned them!”

“Not all of them.” Julian moved Firebaugh back from the door with an elbow to the ribs and dropped the remaining fragment on the floor. “Now,” he said triumphantly, “we have the book, we have the chemist, and I presume the coach you obviously escaped from is somewhere near.”

“A hundred yards up the road,” Matthew said.

“Good. Our hostage won’t have to walk too far in the snow, will she?”

“Our … hostage?”

“We’re taking Miss Mulloy,” Julian said. “No resistance from you, please.” He put the gun to her head. She looked at Matthew for help, but he was unable to give it. Julian was already pushing both Firebaugh and Elizabeth toward the foyer and the open door.

Matthew started after them, but stopped to look down upon the remnant of the airship plans on the floor.

All that was left was about the length of a man’s thumb. Matthew had the bad feeling that Julian had just declared war upon Samson Lash, and combined with Cardinal Black and the other killers who would want both the book and their revenge …

… it was going to be a very long way back to Y Beautiful Bedd.