“Yes sir.” Windom set one of the lanterns upon a small table between two of the chairs and left the room. Garrett placed the ship’s lantern atop the center of the desk and opened its shutters to afford the most light possible. “Mister … Corbett, is it?” he inquired. “What’s all this about stolen Royal Navy ships?”

Matthew decided he must tread carefully upon this uncertain earth. “I can only say, sir, that we have reason to believe such a thing has happened.”

“Then you are as much a fool as is the creature standing beside you. Don’t you realize every naval shipyard on the island of England is guarded by a fortress? Oh yes, we suffered that calamity with the Dutch thirty-six years ago, but since then the yards have been strictly fortified. There are cannons a-plenty facing the seaward entrance to every shipyard, with flag codes also strictly followed. Guards walk the docks armed to the teeth. The roadway entrance is also heavily guarded, and any workman laboring on a ship must pass through the sentry’s station. It would be utterly impossible for any human being to steal Royal Navy ships, and that is that!” He turned again his livid attention upon Julian. “What insanity is this, that has caused you to assault my home at such an hour—at any hour—with this kind of nonsense?”

“Oh,” Julian said with a shrug, “I thought it might be a lark.”

Someone was coming through the door. “Here’s not a lark,” said Garrett, “but a wounded eagle. Come in, Paul, and see your brother.”

Windom was pushing a wheeled chair. In it was not a wounded eagle, but the wreckage of a man.

Paul Devane was wearing a nightgown similar to the one his father wore, but a dun-colored blanket was arranged across the lap and the legs. Matthew could instantly tell that the blanket had nothing to fill it from the knees down. The man—some ten or more years older than Julian, though it was difficult to tell because the bones seemed to be oddly and disturbingly misshapen in his face—had dark brown hair and the slate-colored eyes of his father; across the nose and covering the mouth and jaw was a black cloth mask held by laces around the back of the head. In Paul’s lap was a blue bowl into which the saliva dripped from what was likely, Matthew surmised, the hole where the jaw and chin had been, and the mask—newly applied by Windom, Matthew thought—was already wet. Even as Matthew thought that, Paul gave a convulsive shudder and made a noise of trying to swallow his own saliva and it sounded like someone drowning, going under for the third time.

Paul’s hair was neatly combed; his eyes were bloodshot from the effort of living, but in them Matthew saw a rush of recognition. Paul wheeled himself forward, nearly up against Julian, and reaching out he grasped one of his brother’s hands and pressed it against his own cheek.