Knowle gave him an unkind look. “Be quiet. Now, speed is of the essence. Our sailors are the Secretans, so Lord Flitby will be in command of this vessel. He and Lord Arthur will arrange the sails, under Lord Chingford’s supervision. Mr. Darling will stoke the boiler. Anton and I will be on watch for trouble or disobedience. You have caused me immense inconvenience, Lord Arthur, and ruined my plans, and I don’t like you. I suggest you don’t give me an excuse to demonstrate that. Up.”

Kim rose. Will followed him, since there wasn’t much choice. Three men with guns in a small space wasn’t a fight he wanted to start.

The engine room was in the middle of the boat. There was a hatch and a ladder made of iron rungs down to a space that was small and already warm from the furnace, with bunkers of coal on either side.

“Right,” Knowle said. “Lock him in.”

“Are you insane?” Kim said. “What about ventilation?”

“I dare say it will be uncomfortable—”

“Don’t be a fool. If you lock him in there without supervision, he’ll wreck the bloody engine,” Chingford said, which was irritating because that had been Will’s plan.

Knowle’s face spasmed with annoyance. “Get down there, Anton. Watch him. Let’s go.”

The next hour or so was not one Will enjoyed. The furnace was a gaping maw that took a lot of coal, and as he shovelled it in and the boiler heated up, so did the engine room to an unpleasant degree. It was sodding noisy too, and he didn’t much enjoy the sense of the yacht moving underfoot: it gave him an unpleasant feeling in his head as well as his stomach. He’d only been on boats a few times in his life, all of them troop carriers, and the sway of the waves had been a lot less pronounced. Did it make a difference that the Aurora was being driven by sail and steam at once? It was plunging and rolling a lot more than seemed safe, and he lost his footing more than once, scattering coal across the floor.

Anton didn’t seem to be enjoying himself either. At first he watched Will work with a smirk that needed slapping off, but the expression disappeared as the ship ploughed on through the waves, swaying and rocking, and before too long he took a surreptitious hold of the rungs set in the wall.

He didn’t look any too bright but he still had his gun, seasick or not. Will might be able to wallop him with the shovel before he got a shot off, but Kim was up there with Knowle and Chingford, neither of whom liked him, and ‘might’ wasn’t good enough in the circumstances. So he shovelled coal, resenting every spadeful, hot, sweaty, dusty, and thirsty.