Now this.

He watched the line of forest grow closer across the windswept, yellow-grassed moors. There was nothing to do but to allow his horse to move toward the future at what was for him a plodding pace. He was no stranger to the dangers of whatever the future might hold; as a member of the Herrald Agency and in New York a “problem-solver” he had already survived many dangers to arrive at this moment in time. Matthew was tall and slim, with a lean, long-jawed face and cool gray eyes that held hints of twilight blue. His thatch of thick black hair was protected from the wind and cold by a dark blue tricorn; other presents given to him by Professor Fell were a pistol and a powderflask in a holster at his waist, along with an ivory-handled dagger that had belonged to Albion. Matthew’s pale countenance bespoke his intellectual qualities of reading and chess-playing, both of which had aided his educational progress from his upbringing in a New York orphanage. One lasting mark of his journey through an uncertain and certainly demanding life was a crescent scar that curved from just above the right eyebrow into his hairline, the reminder of his nearly fatal encounter with a bear four years ago.

A few lengths ahead, Devane’s horse moved at a steady walk. Matthew mused that the man wore his black cloak like an emperor’s tunic, and his polished black boots were equipped with sharp little spurs. Devane was blonde-haired and handsome, with a chiseled and clean-cut face, and Matthew knew from their first meeting that Devane could be boyishly charming when he wasn’t puffed up with the villainy that he seemed to like to wear as much as the green tricorn. There was a story in Devane, but whatever it was, Matthew thought that it was well-hidden and well-protected.

The horses went on. The wind shrilled around the riders. The road—such as it was, really a track through the grasses avoiding the belchy bogs—curved toward cliffs overlooking the turbulent sea, and then entered the darksome woods.

Beneath the gnarled branches of interlocked trees the two riders continued onward, the already-meager sunlight further cut to a gray haze. Crows cawed from a distance; that, the thump of the horses’ hooves on the dirt, and the occasional keening of the wind were the only sounds. Devane trudged his horse forward, the gloomy forest closed in, and Matthew grappled again with the gnawing feeling that time was the enemy as much as was Cardinal Black.

After the passage of nearly two hours—enough to make Matthew’s tailbone sore and move the sun like a smear across the sky—Devane suddenly reined his horse in and quietly said, “There.” He pointed toward a narrow break between the trees. Matthew could see against the slice of solemn clouds a stone watchtower perhaps sixty feet tall, set upon a forested ridge another fifty feet up. “A mile or so to the base of the ridge, then maybe another half-mile,” Devane calculated. Without a further word he urged his horse into a walk, and Matthew flicked his mount’s reins and followed.