Miss Sekhmet’s beautiful eyes narrowed. “I assure you, Mrs Featherstonehaugh came of her own free will.”

Aha, at last we are getting somewhere. “Oh, did she indeed?” Dama’s agent is a traitor! So what about the tea? Did she take it with her?

Instead Rue said, “And the taxes, did they come of their own free will as well?”

Miss Sekhmet gave her an exasperated look. “Money attracts attention.”

“You have my attention. What are your demands?”

She shook her head. “Oh, no. Not for me to say. I must tell them that you have not been contacted, challenged, or authorised. We will see what happens next. This is a grave setback.”

Rue smiled. “I have been authorised, just not as you might assume.”

“Yes?” she perked up at that.

“Oh no, if you can be cagy, so can I.” If they don’t have the tea, no point in telling them about it. Whoever they are.

They finished their repast, at an impasse. Betraying no little annoyance, Miss Sekhmet tossed her rough earthen cup to the packed dirt of the square where it shattered. Greatly daring, Rue followed her example. It was quite satisfying.

The marketplace was only getting more crowded and hot and stifling. Rue would not have thought this possible a mere ten minutes ago.

“Perhaps,” she suggested, “we should round up my companions and you can guide us back to our craft? Then you can contact your friends for the next move in this little game?”

“Very well.” Miss Sekhmet looked unhappy about it, but there was no other course of action.

So it might have happened, except that a roving flower stall, heavily laden and pulled by a steam locomotive of antiquated design, rolled to a stop in front of them, neatly trapping them in their small corner of the square.

“Ho there!” said Rue, banging on the top of the engine with her parasol.

Miss Sekhmet leaned over to talk to the driver, a discussion that escalated rapidly into a virulent argument in the local dialect, punctuated by copious hand gestures.

Then the flower stall exploded.

Rue acted on instinct. Growing up with parents like hers, she’d become accustomed to spontaneous explosions – of beauty products, parasols, or tempers, depending on the parent. She threw herself back and over the low stone wall she’d so recently been sitting atop. She rolled and landed, surprisingly gracefully, on the other side, crouched down, parasol raised up over her head to shield herself from the rain of flowers, leaves, and stalks.

She peeked over the wall in time to see Miss Sekhmet, insensate, being loaded into the now empty flower stall. A team of suspicious-looking black-clad men scuttled about as nefariously as anything. They were arguing with one another. Rue stared, and then flinched when they pointed in her direction.

One moved towards her.

Rue stood, parasol at the ready. She would not crouch behind a stone wall like a coward.