“We will all be travelling in the same coach, with you as the arbiter of this contest. And with your dispatch of Victor you have demonstrated your willingness to command order from chaos. I, of course, will be there as well to … as the saying goes … watch your back.” Black approached nearer to the vice admiral, minding his footing on the mess below. “Use what is at hand,” he said. “Four killers of international renown—and you and myself—against Devane and Corbett. They don’t stand a chance, but we must hasten our path.”

Lash stared down at the last of the ashen crisps being dissolved into the bloody swamp that had been a human face.

He straightened up.

“Go tell Meacham to wake Hodder, if he’s sleeping.” Hodder was the alternate driver, who kept a room in the coach house next to the stable. “Give word to Hodder to harness the second team and ready the coach. I’ll expect to be off within the hour. Then tell Meacham to gather up the empty wine bottles, fill them with gunpowder and … no, I don’t want Elizabeth or Firebaugh blown to bits. Fill them with lamp fuel, cork them and stand them upright in a box. Gather also some cotton wadding. And,” he added before Black could leave the room, “tell the others I will address them as soon as I clean myself of this mess the Owl has made.”

“At once,” said Black, and he departed.

Lash’s rage was not yet subdued. As soon as Black had left the study, the vice admiral overturned his desk and threw it aside like so much straw stuffing. He took the basket of satchels and flung them against the blood-smeared wall, for in his fury he had no interest in gold.

Standing in the shambles of his study with the corpse at his feet, Lash put his hands to his head, squeezed his eyes shut and cried out a curse to the gods. Taking Elizabeth was one thing, but destroying the airship plans … that was a death sentence for Devane and Corbett, and the book of potions be damned. All Lash desired now, to stem these currents of rage that were sweeping him toward the deeper and darker waters of madness, was to get his hands upon those two, tear them to pieces and dance upon their broken bones. He had to go out and address the others. They would go, all right. Such a hunt would be a pleasure for them, and with the book in the balance … yes, they would go. But there was one small item that Lash thought neither Devane nor Corbett had considered, and because of it their coach might not get very far. In fact, their journey might end before they even got to the northwest pike.