“This room has become entirely too crowded,” said Charlotte, looking worriedly after the Inquisitor. “All of you, save Alastair and Thomas, clear out—you, too, Gideon. We must be seen to be cooperating. You do understand that.”

“Indeed,” said Gideon, in a tone that indicated that he very much didn’t. He smiled at Thomas, who was still looking dazed. “But it’s ridiculous just leaving them here—they need blankets, food—they’re not being tortured, Charlotte.”

Charlotte looked indignant. “Indeed not. They’ll have everything they need. Now, Gideon, Christopher, Matthew, James—and you, too, Cordelia—you must go.”

Reluctantly, the Merry Thieves began filing out of the Sanctuary, each of them stopping to lay a hand on Thomas’s shoulder and murmur an encouraging word. As Cordelia released her brother reluctantly, joining her friends, she murmured—loud enough for James to hear, “If they don’t have the Mortal Sword here by tomorrow morning, I’ll break you out with Cortana.”

“I heard that!” Charlotte scolded. She held herself very straight, as befitted a Consul, but James could have sworn her face wore the faintest trace of a smile as she closed the iron doors of the Sanctuary behind them, locking Thomas in with Alastair Carstairs.

18 GOBLIN MARKET

One set his basket down,

One rear’d his plate;

One began to weave a crown

Of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown

(Men sell not such in any town);

One heav’d the golden weight

Of dish and fruit to offer her:

“Come buy, come buy,” was still their cry.

—Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market”

“So what is this contraption?” Christopher wondered aloud, prodding gingerly at the adamas object Thomas had retrieved from Golden Square. It sat squatly in the middle of the round table in the upstairs room of the Devil Tavern; around the table were ranged James, Matthew, Christopher, Lucie, and Cordelia. Anna sat on her own in a wing-backed chair with stuffing sprouting from its arms. Several bottles of whiskey stood half-empty on a windowsill.

Anna had arrived at the Devil sometime in the afternoon, only waving away the question when the others asked her whether she had learned anything. “I warned him,” she’d said, sinking down into the armchair and declining offers of tea or sherry. “I knew Thomas was going out on his own last night, and I warned him not to do it. I must not have been convincing enough.”

Anna so rarely expressed self-doubt that the others, including Cordelia, stared in amazement for a moment. It was Matthew who broke the silence. “We all warned him, Anna, but Thomas is a bloody-minded stubborn bastard. Though quite tiny when he was young, and really,” he added, “rather adorable, like a guinea pig or a mouse.”