The sewer maps are hidden between mattress and bed-base. Thomas unfolds them, one next to the other, slips the drafting paper out of his trousers. It is thin enough for the print to shimmer through. Copying it all would take hours. But he does not need all. He finds a line marking the river, works up from there, copying the main thoroughfares first of the “Ashton” plan, then traces the turnoffs marked only on the plan entitled “Aschenstedt.” Back and forth he works, quickly, his hands sure, listening with half an ear to the conversation outside. When he is satisfied with his copy and has replaced the plans, he looks over at Livia, sees her urging him to leave. But he isn’t done yet. Something else has caught his eye, a box, quite large but shoved to the corner of the bed frame in such a manner that its form merges with the bulk of the oaken leg. Thomas drops down onto his stomach and pictures Lady Naylor do the same, to deposit it there. The box is heavy as he slides it out; varnished wood reinforced in metal at the corners. The latches are not locked, open on a flask sunk in a satin-lined depression that precisely matches its proportions. He pulls it out, notices its weight: a squat, short-necked bottle made of tinted glass, holding perhaps as much as half a gallon. The stopper is buried with care but is mounted with a brass ring to aid its removal; the glass of the bottleneck seems inordinately thick. Thomas raises the jar, feels a viscous liquid shift inside. Livia gestures, but he won’t be hurried, casts around and finds a cup Lady Naylor has brought here from the kitchen, its bottom encrusted with a smudge of tea. It takes both hands to pour. The liquid moves sluggishly, then leaps out in a sudden gulp of purest black. Thomas holds it far from him, watches it cling to the cup, receiving his hand’s shudder and transmuting it into the ponderous slide of molten lead.

Quickly now, putting down the cup for a moment, he returns the bottle to its satin-cushioned, bottle-shaped hole, and the box to the back of the bed. At just this moment, the conversation outside hits a lull. Livia’s eyes warn him, swivel back to Charlie.

Thomas freezes and stands waiting, in his fist a liquid distillation of all the darkness in this world.

ф

Lady Naylor makes to rise. She mustn’t. And so Charlie detains her, with words of course, some truth he has been working towards, Livia can see it in the hot-eared earnestness of his face. It’s an answer to Renfrew perhaps, to that which he did to him, in the name of good morals and the future of the realm.

It may work on her mother just as well.