The God's Eye

By Anna Butler

Lancaster's Luck Book 3
Rafe Lancaster is reluctantly settling into his role as the First Heir of House Stravaigor. Trapped by his father’s illness and his new responsibilities, Rafe can’t go with lover Ned Winter to Aegypt for the 1902/03 archaeological digging season. Rafe’s unease at being left behind intensifies when Ned’s fascination with the strange Antikythera mechanism and its intriguing link to the Aegyptian god Thoth has Ned heading south to the remote, unexplored highlands of Abyssinia and the course of the Blue Nile.

Searching for Thoth’s deadly secrets, Ned is out of contact and far from help. When he doesn’t return at Christmas as he promised, everything points to trouble. Rafe is left with a stark choice – abandon his dying father or risk never seeing Ned again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anna Butler
• Release date: Jan 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463257647

Anna Butler

Anna was a communications specialist for many years, working in various UK government departments on everything from marketing employment schemes to organizing conferences for 10,000 civil servants to running an internal TV service. These days, though, she is writing full time. She lives in a quiet village tucked deep in the Nottinghamshire countryside with her husband. She’s supported there by the Deputy Editor, aka Molly the cockerpoo, who is assisted by the lovely Mavis, a Yorkie-Bichon cross with a bark several sizes larger than she is but no opinion whatsoever on the placement of semi-colons.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The God’s Eye © 2019 Anna Butler

All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. An eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other enquiries, contact Anna Butler at [e-mail]

Editing

Desi Chapman, Blue Ink Editing

Megan Reddaway

Cover Art

© 2019 Reese Dante

http://www.reesedante.com

Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

Map and other internal artworks

© 2019 Margaret Warner

[e-mail]

Contents

ABOUT THE GOD’S EYE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

GLOSSARY FOR THE LANCASTER’S LUCK WORLD

Thank you for reading!

ABOUT THE GOD’S EYE

Third in the Lancaster’s Luck series, following The Gilded Scarab and Rainbow Award winner The Jackal’s House.

Rafe Lancaster is reluctantly settling into his role as the First Heir of House Stravaigor. Trapped by his father’s illness and his new responsibilities, Rafe can’t go with lover Ned Winter to Aegypt for the 1902/03 archaeological digging season. Rafe’s unease at being left behind intensifies when Ned’s fascination with the strange Antikythera mechanism and its intriguing link to the Aegyptian god Thoth has Ned heading south to the remote, unexplored highlands of Abyssinia and the course of the Blue Nile.

Searching for Thoth’s deadly secrets, Ned is out of contact and far from help. When he doesn’t return at Christmas as he promised, everything points to trouble. Rafe is left with a stark choice – abandon his dying father, or risk never seeing Ned again.

With love and gratitude, this book is dedicated to Claire, Sally, Elin, Desi and Megan who helped me polish Rafe into brilliance. And to Sandra, for her invaluable help with the German phrases. Thank you, all. Without you, Rafe would not shine so brightly.

CHAPTER ONE

Aside from a passion for waistcoats of the same liturgical purple oft sported by the Archbishop of Canterbury—a pleasing shade for a gentleman of my years and colouring—I am not a religious man.

This should surprise no one. The Church looks askance at a confirmed bachelor unless he’s vowed to a life of quiet celibacy and good works. And while I am the most confirmed of bachelors, quiet and celibate I am not. The only work I care to contemplate involves Gallowglass First Heir Ned Winter and horizontal surfaces where we might celebrate our carnal urges with enthusiasm and a great deal of noise.

My chief complaint, though, is that the Good Book has some distressing, wrongheaded ideas about the culpability of children when it comes to the sins of their fathers.

With a father like mine, the injustice fair takes the breath away.

I was thirty when I learned that while Richard Lancaster (deceased) may have been my mother’s husband, a country squire, and a lover of the music hall, the one thing he had never been was my father. He stood Moses for me and, I am told, said not one word of blame to his wife, but I was not of his begetting.

I discovered this in Abydos, Aegypt, in the early days of 1901. The man I had supposed was my half-cousin John, First Heir of Minor House Stravaigor—my House—tried to kill me. John, it turned out, was not any sort of cousin at all, but the elder half-brother determined to get rid of me before our father, the head of our House, the Stravaigor, could disinherit him and put me in his place. He failed, and the Stravaigor removed him from the succession. Permanently. John lies now under a shady palm in the Aegyptian desert near Abydos, and I—Raphael James Lancaster, better known as Rafe—was proclaimed First Heir.

A tale with all the barbaric bloodthirstiness of the Old Testament. But that’s the Britannic Imperium for you. Ruthlessness is the Imperium’s very lifeblood, bred into the flesh and bone of every House within it, from the most powerful of the Convocation Houses to the smallest, most insignificant of the Minor Houses, their satellite allies. Assassination has been the tool of choice for generations of Houses jockeying for power and position, all champing at the bit to govern the Imperium. It’s the tradition, you see, and we British are very fond of traditions. It makes for an exhilarating social and political system, where the Imperium’s great men won’t even go to the lavatory unless escorted by guards so well armed they could start their own war.

The Imperium steamed on in this merry, sanguinary way, unchallenged for centuries until Queen Victoria applied the brakes. With her liking for good order, and unamused by the constant, messy internecine war between the Houses, she threatened to demote any House that used assassination. That brought the Imperium’s favourite tradition to a juddering, steam-belching halt.

She took umbrage when my grandfather was killed eight years ago, Ned had told me one night in Abydos, the evening of John’s funeral when I was still reeling from my sudden elevation. We had talked a great deal about politics as Ned tried to reconcile me to my doom. I was with Flinders Petrie at Luxor, but with my father taking over the House, I came home. Papa told me the Queen’s temper tantrum blew out half the windows in Windsor.

The Stravaigor had mentioned it when I left the Aero Corps over a year previously. I remember the Stravaigor telling me those House Principes she gave a talking-to about it are still trembling at the knees and wiping shaking hands across their troubled brows.

Even with me draped over him in our favourite sandy hollow out in the desert, the stars filling the skies with incandescent glory, Ned had shrugged, more cynical than usual. I don’t think so. All that’s changed is the Houses are more circumspect. They at least try to make their assassinations look like accidents.

His wife had been killed in such an accident, leaving his sons motherless. I tightened my arms around him and let the talk drift into silence. In comparison, my concerns were mere pinpricks. After a respectful interval, I offered what comfort I could, tracing the scars left on his chest from the same accident with fingers and tongue until he forgot politics and my worries about my clouded future slipped from my mind.

For a little while.

That so-called accident—engineered, House Gallowglass suspected, by fellow Convocation House Pannifex—proved the Stravaigor wasn’t alone in his devotion to preserving and furthering the power and influence of his House by any means necessary. The clever old man, subtle as a snake, had plotted and contrived for the benefit of our family for the last forty years. Even now, ailing as he was—dying—he had but one objective: House Stravaigor must thrive. To that end, he had sacrificed, without apparent remorse, the son he’d raised himself, and doubtless thought of it as his duty to preserve the well-being of the House.

John’s view of the matter, I suspect, would differ. But then, John had never been altruistic.

So here I am in John’s place, I said to Ned, one balmy August evening some eighteen months after John’s death and my translation to his honours. Ned’s polite inquiries about my father’s poor health had transmuted themselves, like a reverse alchemy of gold to base metal, into a threnody on my position vis-à-vis my House. We were at Margrethe’s, the premier club for gentlemen of our persuasion. Dinner had been an epicurean delight, and I was sipping an excellent full-bodied Château Margaux grand vin. On the one hand, proud to be a gentleman, a confirmed bachelor, coffeehouse owner, and ex- Imperial Aero Corps aeronaut—I smiled at him and took his hand under the table—and most of all, proud to be your lover. On the other, I’m mortified I’m First Heir. It might not be so bad if Stravaigor weren’t at odds with our Convocation ally, but the Cartomancer sneers down his nose at us. I sneer at my House myself, but I do draw the line at outsiders indulging in the practice. You might well laugh! I do have some proper feeling, you know. Not much, I acknowledge, but some. I might have more if I hadn’t been hauled in to take my turn at protecting a House filled with people I neither like nor trust—

Reluctantly, Ned murmured. Reluctantly hauled in. Don’t forget the mere ‘corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to a bald and unconvincing narrative.’

I did not need Ned singing from the Mikado, though I acknowledged his advice was sound. Most reluctantly hauled in. I’ve come to the conclusion I’m no more altruistic than my predecessor in the job.

Under cover of the table, he squeezed my hand. You are altruistic to a fault.

I don’t feel it. I feel as though I’m hanging between opposing poles, stretched until I’m pulled out, attenuated. Strung between the conflicting stars like Odin on the tree.

Good Lord. Claret made me more poetic than was wise. We stared at each other in consternation.

Ned wore the expression of a man who had suffered a sharp kick to a sensitive ankle from someone wearing size ten boots. He has exquisite ankles. With his free hand, he moved the claret jug out of my reach. I think you’ve had rather too much of that. You’ll be declaiming in heroic couplets next, and if I’m to deal with you being poetic, I’ll need to be far more foxed than I am.

I laughed. We turned to other talk and ended the evening in the most energetic and satisfactory way in one of Margrethe’s luxurious bedrooms, forgetting House politics for a while.

From this you will understand why I baulk at paying for another’s sins. I have more than enough of my own.

The next morning, Hugh Peters and I visited the aerodrome at Friary Park, then returned to town before noon in my one concession to the improvement in my circumstances: a light, sleek sporting vehicle, a two-seater autocurricle powered by the latest in aether combustion engines.

We’d been to Friary Park for our regular training flight. Hugh, my lieutenant at the coffeehouse and all-round sustainer of my way of life, had attained his pilot’s license a few months earlier and needed the practice. In my own case, it gave me an excuse to fly.

When I crashed my aerofighter at Koffiefontein during the Boer War and permanently damaged my eyesight, my one consolation at losing my military flight credentials was that, with spectacles, I could still see well enough to keep my civilian aeronaut’s licence. I still had my wings. I loved flying, and supporting Hugh’s endeavours added the gloss of altruism to a selfish desire for a few barrel rolls and tailspins. We’d spent an invigorating morning tootling about the skies above north London in one of the smaller aeroships, looping loops, spinning, corkscrewing, and performing other exhilarating military manoeuvres frowned upon by the civilian aero-regulatory authorities.

Ned Winter and I found trouble so often, Hugh needed such military skills. It reconciled him to the idea of learning to fly, to be honest.

Becoming a pilot is a rich man’s pursuit, with the same costs and cachet as keeping one’s racing yacht at Cowes or buying one’s shotguns at Purdey’s. I’d insisted on his training, even though Hugh considered the whole enterprise above his station and demurred at first with a modest I’m not a gentleman, sir. It’s not seemly. Such nonsense. The Good Lord knew I didn’t want to lose him—I wouldn’t last five minutes without Hugh to manage me—but I’d make sure he gained the skills and training to make his own way if ever he needed to. Pilots being such a rare breed, he would always be in high demand. It was the least I could do, to give him a chance of independence if he wanted it.

And all practicality aside, Hugh might not have been born in the purple, but he was one of the truest gentlemen I knew.

Our drive back to town was far more sedate than the flying lesson. Hugh took the wheel, and he is several degrees more staid than I am. I dare say he didn’t consider even one barrel roll en route.

Hugh didn’t so much as take his eyes from the road when I relayed this trenchant criticism. Never once crossed my mind, sir, the curricle not having wings.

Prosaic beggar.

He drew up outside Stravaigor House in Kensington. My father would have preferred me to live there, but I had established myself in a successful coffeehouse near the Britannic Imperial Museum in Bloomsbury when I’d been given a medical discharge from the old Queen’s Aero Corps in late 1899. I wouldn’t give that up for the inconvenience of living under an inimical paternal eye. The coffeehouse was my insurance, if you like. If First Heirhood turned out to be unsustainable, I needed a bolthole that would allow me a living outside the House. I’d keep my independence, thank you. Not even my father’s dire health following a heart attack in May had been enough to move me. He could tap on his dickey heart and look as wistful as he liked, but no.

Not yet.

I’ll make my own way home, Hugh. Don’t wait.

If you’re sure, sir.

Sir was sure, and he drove off to freedom while I trudged up the steps to enter durance vile. The heavy bronze doors closing behind me as I stepped into the hall did nothing to reconcile me to my fate.

Not long after my arrival in my father’s rooms, the butler presented the midday post on a large silver salver. One letter was for me.

An embossed spread of playing cards, the ace topmost, decorated the gold wax sealing the heavy cream parchment envelope. I knew that seal. Not a bill, then, but a formal communication from House Cartomancer, the Convocation House to which we’d been allied since the House system was created by Good Queen Bess, who connived with eight powerful nobles to keep out the Spanish Armada. Ever since, we have committed our government into the care of those best placed to steer the helm of state: the eight great Convocation Houses under the leadership of the reigning monarch—Gallowglass, Cartomancer, Huissher, Justiciar, Pannifex, Archiator, Quister, Venator—supported by their Minor House allies. No flirtation with Athenian democracy for us, of course. We don’t need it.

The most gentlemanly of hands had addressed this envelope. My father, casting his eye over it before tossing it to me across the width of his desk, drew my attention to the elegant script. The Cartomancer’s own writing. Unusual.

Indeed. Most of the letters from him I’d seen in the past had been in the sharp angled script of his private secretary, its calligraphic tetchiness reflecting both the Cartomancer’s temper and the usual state of relations between his House and mine. This, though, was penmanship of a more florid, less constipated style.

R. J. Lancaster, Armiger. First Heir, House Stravaigor.

Rafe, my father said, while I tutted over the pretentious use of Armiger when the workaday Esq. did the job just as well. He nodded at the letter in my hand. You will find it easier to read if you open it.

He had the lion’s share of the post on his side of the big desk set before the window. At the end of July, when he had first recovered enough to leave his bed, I’d entered the house one day to find him halfway down the stairs, clutching the banister. His valet, Harper, fluttered at his side, bleating out protests. Baffled by his managing to get so far, and stronger than the old man now, I’d gathered him up and swept him back to his rooms. My remonstrance was more effective than Harper’s. Louder and more emphatic, anyway.

He was obdurate about his need to oversee House business, and I’d set four brawny footmen the task of rearranging the furniture to placate him, moving a desk into the small sitting room attached to the master’s suite. Now, in middle of August, on a good day he could walk from his bedroom next door to the desk, leaning on Harper’s arm, or mine if I’d arrived early enough to be co-opted in support. On not so good days, Harper pushed him in a light bath chair. On the whole, the wheeled chair was preferable, as the exertion of walking thirty feet or so left him ashen-faced and shaky, in need of the small white foxglove pills the local apothecary created to ease his labouring heart.

Today he’d walked to his desk, but he’d had time to recover from the ordeal, his face a healthier shade of grey than usual and his sharp intelligence undulled by pain and lack of air. He held an envelope, the twin of mine.

I used to view letters from you with the same enthusiasm. I reached for the letter opener.

You know better now.

I do. I know better than to open anything from you.

He gave me his usual wolfish smile in return, choosing, I think, to believe me to be jesting. I forbore to disillusion him. Instead, I returned to my letter from the Cartomancer.

Our alliance with him resembled many an unhappy marriage: characterised by strife and hurt feelings, with occasional forays into a species of distasteful marital congress intended to keep up appearances before the neighbours. Relations had been in the doldrums the previous year when I took up my new role, but William Lee, the Cartomancer, had since recollected that we rascally Stravaigors were the source of much of his wealth—indeed, of the Imperium’s wealth. The dealmakers, the traders, the ones who made risky adventuring and trading an art, we kept the nation’s coffers brimming. What’s more, at the old Queen’s funeral, the Cartomancer saw for himself the strong links I have with Convocation House Gallowglass, the richest and most powerful House in the Britannic Imperium. As a result, the Cartomancer needed and resented us in equal measure. It made for an uneasy alliance.

The envelope held a summons to attend the Cartomancer’s birthday celebration to be held in September. Florid greetings and his earnest wish that I join him at a bal masqué on the last Saturday of the month, followed two days later, on his actual birthday, with a celebratory dinner for four dozen or so select guests.

An invitation to join him at a bash to celebrate his birthday next month.

A bash? Knowing the Cartomancer, I doubt it will be much of a drunken spree. The Sahara had nothing on my father’s tone when it came to desiccation. You may expect an indifferent claret and an even less prestigious port. He has the palate of a costermonger and couldn’t distinguish a Lafite Rothschild from cooking sherry.

I’ll insulate myself beforehand with something from our own cellars, then. I nodded at the letter in his hand. Your missive?

An offhand enquiry about my health, with the condescending explanation that this year he invites you to represent Stravaigor in my place, given the uncertain nature of my recovery. The corner of his mouth lifted in a sardonic little smile. He fears to overexcite me, I fancy.

Probably more fearful the indifferent claret would carry you off. A masked ball. Good grief.

To give him his due, he does that sort of thing well. The fancy dress ball he held in the old Queen’s Jubilee year was the most brilliant event of the season.

I saw the newspaper reports. The costumes they illustrated had more diamonds to the square inch than the De Beers’ mines in Kimberley.

The Stravaigor smiled. I left the diamonds to Madame Stravaigor. I went as the Pope.

Not a statement calculated to counter my cynicism about religion. I quirked an eyebrow at the letter he held and fluttered mine at him. He nodded and we swapped. The tone of the Cartomancer’s letter to my father was condescending, as he’d said, and cool. The letter to me, by contrast, exuded a bonhomie I trusted not one whit.

It appears I am one of the elect, worthy of the great man’s notice and regard. I put down the letter.

And I am not. My father’s smirk, which he’d worn throughout this exchange, broadened into a true smile.

I shrugged. I’ve no doubt my attraction is my link to Gallowglass. Not that anyone knew how strong and personal the link was, mind you. But since everyone wanted to stay on the Gallowglass’s good side, it increased my value.

He inclined his head. Indeed. Whatever his reasoning, his purpose seems clear. I’ve never regained more than an uneasy truce with him, but he sees which way the wind blows. He’s prepared, obviously, to give you your due when you succeed me. You can repair relations with our Major House, if you wish.

Ay, there was the rub. Did I so wish?

Our family line is thick with pirates and buccaneers. And even in these less overtly freebooting days, a heady disregard for societal norms, coupled with a delight in grasping every advantage, is in our blood. The other Houses regard us with caution, aware they seldom get one over on us. We are rapscallions to our bootstraps. The Cartomancer didn’t object to our piratical ways until the late unlamented John, too incompetent to swab decks much less be allowed near the quarterdeck, had trodden on our liege lord’s financial corns and made off with profits the Cartomancer deemed his by right.

With an unforgiving Convocation House ally, my father had scaled back efforts to repair the breach, managing it by seeking alliances elsewhere. He had married off his elder daughter, Emily, to the Plumassier’s heir in 1900, engineering a closer link to House Gallowglass to which the Plumassier was allied. He was casting about for a similar connection for Eleanor—Nell—the younger of my two half-sisters, who was almost twenty-two. He had exploited my knowing the Scrivener and the Jongleur, pleased to build closer ties with both. And, of course, he had tried to milk my friendship with Ned Winter to our House’s advantage. That was the golden link, the promise of stability and prosperity, and he had grasped at it with both hands.

So, would I take the olive branch if it were offered me by the Cartomancer and arrange a return to the fold for my House, or follow my instincts and strike out for ourselves when I took the helm?

No use asking me. I didn’t know.

Will you accept the invitation? My father’s quiet voice broke into my thoughts. When I looked up, he was regarding me, wearing the neutral expression donned when he was negotiating a deal. It gave away less than would a steel trap.

I don’t see why not. It seems sensible to keep open the lines of communication. I gave him a nod I hoped would reassure. I didn’t want this job you’ve thrust on me, you know that. I still think the Houses pernicious. But whatever changes I make, I’ll do from within, and I’ll do nothing to endanger our House. I’d prefer to put our extended family into the send cool greetings at Yuletide and restrain myself from delivering the cut direct box, but they are still family. Their welfare is my responsibility. I’m not convinced, though, that our path lies in tight alliance with the Cartomancer or any other Convocation House. I’d rather we went our own way.

Mmmphf was all he said, at first. Then he raised one shoulder in a tired half-shrug. It will be a more difficult course to chart. You’ll be shifting with every wind and current if you eschew being tied to a Convocation House.

It will be more interesting.

That it will.

We’re in a class of our own at trading and dealmaking. We can treat with all the Houses from a position of strength if we aren’t beholden to any one of them in particular.

Even Gallowglass.

Not a hypothesis that appeals to me. Still, I won’t be here to worry about it, and I have faith in you. And to drive the point home, he made a hissing intake of wheezing breath and clutched at his chest. His lips turned an alarming blueish shade. Somewhat anxious, since I was by no means prepared to take on his honours, I shook one of his powders into a glass of water and made him drink it. Mouth twisting at the taste, he sat silent for a moment until whatever pain he felt passed, resting his chin on his hand and turning his gaze to the window.

Outside, the treetops in the garden tossed about in an unseasonable east wind, their leaves glinting where the bright sunshine caught them. At length he stirred, giving himself a little shake, and straightened in his chair. We’ve dilly-dallied long enough. My doctor’s expression grows graver by the day. My heart is failing, Rafe. I think we can agree I am unlikely to live more than a few months. Time to grasp the nettle. His gaze held mine, his eyes, a darker brown than my own, steady and yet fierce. You need an heir.

I know my mouth opened to respond, because I felt the air whistle over my teeth with the sharply indrawn breath I took. But I found myself mute. With horror.

You didn’t want to be First Heir or deal with the House at all. He smiled then, the usual wolfish quality missing. But as I said to you when John died, I know your sense of duty and honour won’t allow you to stand aside and see the House suffer. I’ll go easier to my grave if I know the succession is assured. That, my boy, is your greatest duty and responsibility.

I flapped my hands about in lieu of speech.

I have several candidates in mind. The Flegeoure’s youngest girl is a possibility. She’s seventeen, I believe, and considered quite a beauty.

Indignation restored my voice. Seventeen? Almost half my age! Barely out of the schoolroom!

All the better to train her up. Most of our leading Houses have ladies of marriageable age. The Gossoon has three, I believe—

I refuse to countenance a father-in-law whose title is the Gossoon. Ridiculous name. Besides, he’s allied to House Pannifex, and that wouldn’t go down well with Gallowglass.

He smirked. The wily old devil lived and breathed the politics of House alliances and enmities, and he didn’t need me to tell him Gallowglass and Pannifex were in a state of polite enmity. I’d wager he’d mentioned the Gossoon’s girls to soften my defences.

He laid a piece of foolscap onto the desktop, swivelling it around so I could read it. A long list of names in his neat script, broken into groups. Every eligible lady available on the marriage mart. Consider them, please. A thin smile. Although I agree you may discount Pannifex allies.

The Houses were rich in daughters. Every Minor House—Houses Manstreler, Pargeter, Corvinor, to name but a few—had female offspring to spare. But they weren’t my father’s primary objectives. The ladies from the eight Major Houses, the Convocation Houses, headed the list. Sofia Winter’s name was first.

Ned’s younger sister.

I was acquainted with Ned’s siblings, of course. His brother, Theodoric, was in his late twenties, a serious young man devoted to the family business of managing the Imperium’s finances. Sofia was barely in her twenties, about my sister Eleanor’s age—a pretty, softer version of her brothers, with the same hazel eyes and flaxen hair. Their unusual Nordic names were in honour of Madame Gallowglass, I believe, who was descended from an aristocratic Swedish family. They had all inherited her blond Nordic looks, in any event.

My father tapped a fingernail against Miss Winter’s name. "My preference, of course. No alliance could be more glittering or more strategic. Your close friendship with Ned Winter needs to be consolidated, and you could do no better for our House than to make a marriage alliance with Gallowglass. You could thumb your nose at the Cartomancer with impunity. At the entire Imperium, for that matter.

"Mark me well, Rafe. I want you to escort Sofia Winter to the Cartomancer’s bal masqué and do your level best to win her. You need an heir before my time runs out."

CHAPTER TWO

The ensuing argument was cataclysmic. Biblically so, if I may continue with my religious imagery—a calamity of the order of merrily tootling along the Euphrates and seeing a wall of water higher than the mountains thundering over the world and sweeping all before it into a maelstrom of grief, while Noah floats past on his ark, waving at you as you go under for the last time. The beast of the Revelation made less of a racket.

It started with an explosive Oh hell, no! from me and deteriorated from there. We raked up every grievance as we argued, shaking them into bad-tempered life. The climax came after about ten minutes when my father, shaking visibly, lost some of his vaunted control and shouted at me, his face purpling, I am your Princeps and the head of your House, boy! You owe me and your House everything you are! I require this of you as a matter of obedience, and you will do as you are told!

I stared. And that approach has worked so well with me in the past.

At which juncture, he snatched up his inkstand and hurled it at me. Benares brass and heavy, the ugly thing could have done me an injury if I hadn’t ducked. It left a nasty dent in the wall and a fine spray of black India ink over the wallpaper.

I think he was astonished at his own temper. He stared at me, his mouth dropping open, and the choler grumbled itself down to glares and huffed-out grunts. He sat with his mouth set in its hardest lines, the visual equivalent of the mousetrap snapping shut.

Harper had rushed into the room at the first shout and was now shooting me reproachful glances as he flapped about trying to get my father to unclamp his jaw enough to swallow one of the restoratives prescribed by the doctors. My father shooed him away. At which point Harper turned the doe-eyed looks onto his lord and master, who waved a hand at him in unmistakable dismissal.

Leave us, he said. And when Harper flapped a little more and made the mewling noises of a cat in intestinal distress, he added, I will remain calm, and Mr Rafe will be careful not to stir things up. Won’t you, Rafe?

Right at that moment I’d have liked to stir the entire world with a steam-driven paddle. However, I did not wish to come into my inheritance any sooner than I had to. I gave him a jerky nod in answer.

Harper trailed out of the room, his lugubrious face turned to us over his shoulder, all drooping jowls and large, hurt-filled eyes. When the door to the bedroom closed and we were alone again, my father turned to me, rubbing a hand over his face as if to clear the temper away.

It is seldom I can be provoked to such an extent. Very seldom.

In all likelihood, I was the first to witness it and live to tell the tale. I made a noncommittal noise, not quite real speech.

He sighed, sagged in his chair, and made a concession of sorts. Perhaps I was a little precipitate.

It was barely afternoon, but I felt the need for something stronger than my indignation to sustain me. The sun would be below the yardarm somewhere in the Imperium, leading me to give thanks, as I made my way to the decanters set on a table at the side of the room, that my nation’s imperialist achievements, however deplorable, supported my need for alcohol. I splashed a generous helping of Scotch into a glass, then held up the decanter in mute invitation. He nodded. I didn’t give him much, just enough that when I shook a heart powder into it from the box on his desk, it dissolved the fine white grains in a few swirls. He took it with a grimace. Apparently even a good Scotch couldn’t counter the apothecary’s loathsome concoctions.

My father made another concession. Better than his usual tinctures, I suppose.

It was another step away from bad temper and to more civilised normality. I nodded. He nursed the glass while I restored the balance of my own humours with an excellent Islay malt.

We sat in sullen silence for several minutes, sipping the Scotch and not looking at each other. I turned my eyes anywhere rather than at him: at the richly decorated room, the papers strewn over the desk, the