I listened. The night was still, just my breath and my heart. No answering gunfire, no horn blaring an alarm. Hope faded as I realized however close I was to the king, I wasn’t close enough.

And yet… sound carried, especially on a chilly night like this. I peeked over the ridge of the road, and as the muzzle flashed at me from across the meadow, I fired in return. The enemy’s bullet hit the mud; I didn’t know about mine. Again I reloaded, waiting.

Still there was nothing.

Despair returned. Poor Blossom, terrified and in pain, had bolted somewhere into the night. While I was grateful for that—if she’d stayed, she’d be dead, lost to a Covenanter’s bullet—I now realized that I was stuck. Even if I could chase my ambusher off, I had no way of catching up to the king’s company. Maybe if Sally managed to find more soldiers… but it would take time to round them up. Only Tom—

Tom! I thought desperately. He’ll follow sooner. And if he doesn’t realize there’s a Covenanter in the meadow…

Surely he’d hear the shots and stop?

Or would he come more quickly, thinking I was in danger?

I had to warn him. And I had to warn the king.

But how? If our shots hadn’t done the job, what else did I have?

The image came then, so clearly. Master Benedict raised an eyebrow and said, What else do you have, indeed?

And I understood.

I fumbled about under my shirt. My apothecary sash. It didn’t only hold reloads for my pistol. I still had two—

There.

My fireworks.

They were four inches long and cylindrical, with a three-inch tail of cannon fuse at one end. The paper-cone noses had been crushed—so had the cylinders, a bit—but I could mend that.

I took the map of Whitehall from my coat and tore it in half. Each piece I curled into a cone and fixed to the top of the fireworks with birch gum from one of the vials in my sash. I hoped the gum would keep them stuck on. I didn’t have time to cure it.

A shot whizzed overhead. The sound made me flinch, even though I knew he couldn’t hit me in the ditch. He’s feeling me out, I thought.

Well, he was in for a surprise. Now that the nose cones were stuck to my fireworks, I needed a stick to serve as a launcher. I cursed. I couldn’t see one in the ditch, and with the Covenanter out there shooting at shadows, I didn’t dare go crawling to find one. What was I to do—

Of course.

My pistol.

It wasn’t ideal—I’d probably burn my hand a bit—but what choice did I have? I dumped the gunpowder from the frizzen, then tied the first of the fireworks to the end. Then I lit the fuse, pointed the pistol at the sky, and waited, eyes closed.

I did burn my skin. But it only stung a little as the firework shot upward, into the sky.