Charlie wishes he could tell his friend that he is wrong. That Renfrew won’t know a thing; that he will treat him as the errant schoolboy he is, scold him, lock him in a schoolroom, and make him scrub the floors in penance. But in his mind’s eye he sees him again, the Master of Smoke and Ethics, sitting in the coach back from Oxford, quietly talking to Thomas. Renfrew knows. Something. Many things.

Perhaps he can be persuaded to tell them.

“In that case,” Charlie says, looking calmly at his friend. “We will all go.”

But Thomas won’t have it.

“Too risky. After all, we don’t know whose side he is on. For all we know he is mixed up in this and working with Lady Naylor. If she is, in fact, our enemy. We need to split up. To make sure someone is there, in London. In case Renfrew detains me. Someone who knows, and can act as a witness.”

Again Thomas’s reasoning is sound. And again, Charlie draws a different conclusion.

“Then I will go.” He goes on speaking over Thomas’s murmur of protest. “If you are right — about the cage, about the Smoke in you, all of it — then it’s you who is important. Not me. So I will go.”

Still Thomas tries to argue, rises from the ground, anger in his voice, his whole body shaking with exhaustion.

It’s Livia who shuts him up.

“You can’t go,” she says to him. “Not by yourself. You’d never make it. Someone would have to come and be your nurse. So no matter what you do, you will put one of us at risk.” She speaks very calmly, dispassionately, reciting the facts.

“I don’t know this Master Renfrew, nor would I easily be able to find him. And you require an attendant. So either we all go and risk our hides. Or none of us goes. Or Charlie goes, and bears the consequences of your decision.”

She looks from one boy to the other as though weighing them up. It is, to Charlie, an uncomfortable glance.

“You have to make up your mind, Mr. Argyle.”

She adds it quietly, sadly, as though she knows he already has.

ф

They say good-bye once they have arranged a meeting place and time. It’s easy. There is only one place in London both boys are sure they will find. Execution square; at the foot of the scaffold. Three meeting times a day, dawn, noon, and dusk: starting lunchtime tomorrow. It’s the earliest they can imagine Charlie can make it to London. He will have to sleep at the school. Or on the road.