“Suppose I say yes,” Masseter said quietly, his eyes on Petra, “and when we have gone up the river together, when we have gone beyond the reach of the unknown queen, suppose I kill you then?”
Sullivan spoke from Petra’s side. “You’ll have to go through me.”
“Well, now it’s a party,” Masseter retorted, rolling his eyes. “Happily, friend.”
Petra ignored him. She gave Sullivan an apologetic smile and shook her head.
The seiche smiled back, his eyebrows arched. “If you don’t want my company, that’s fair. But you aren’t the only one who has restitution to make, so don’t be a martyr, Petra.” His voice changed. “Let me come with you.”
The quality of Petra’s smile shifted a fraction. “I can’t ask that of you.”
“You don’t have to ask.” The eye with the scar below it flashed a wink.
Masseter sniffed. “I could kill you both for that scene alone.”
“I’m sure you could.” Petra stood and walked to him and actually patted his cheek. Masseter bore the condescension without flinching, but fury radiated off him in waves. “But if the stories are true,” Petra said, “you haven’t killed yet in the course of building your new device. You’ve let plenty die, but you haven’t taken a life with your own hands. I think there’s a reason for that. Possibly that reason has a name.”
“Jacinda,” Maisie said quietly from the hearth. She picked the queen of secateurs up from the floor, stood, and put the card into the peddler’s palm, the one marked with the little spray of scattered scars. He crumpled the card in his fist with a snarl and raised his hand as if to strike the girl, then just as quickly dropped his hand again and thrust it into his pocket, the queen still clenched in it.
Meanwhile, Petra unscrewed the winder from the music box and put it into her watch pocket. She handed the box to Mrs. Haypotten and smiled thinly at the merchant. “Make your choice.”
For a long moment, they looked at each other. With his scarred hand, now empty again, Masseter reached into his own unfinished device, the one contained in the filigreed box. Carefully he plucked out the spring. Petra held out a palm, and the peddler put the spring carefully into it.
Maisie stretched herself up on her knees, craning her neck for a look at the curl of bone. Words and figures had been carved into its flat surfaces, but they were minute, and she would have needed a glass to read them.
“The calculation is inseparable from the consequence,” Masseter said, watching Petra closely as she, too, inspected the spiral. “Not magic, perhaps, but something one should never walk through time without remembering. Something you should perhaps remember, as well,”
“Thank you.” Petra put the spring away with the winder. She glanced to the iron queen, and immediately the nails unwound themselves from Masseter’s legs and feet and eased themselves back to their original places in the floor. “Shall we go, Mr. Masseter?”
He closed the box and returned it to his pocket, then bent and rubbed his shins. “I am at your service.”
“Remember it,” the iron queen said grimly. In his chair, Negret gave the awl one more tap on his knee, then turned its point with fierce and deadly precision on the stack of papers.
Petra, meanwhile, opened the French doors between the riverward windows and stepped outside. The rain whipped in, and the surface of the water was now mere feet below the porch’s tiled floor.
Masseter followed her with curious eyes. “Shouldn’t we go and get . . .” He gestured vaguely back inside.
Petra glanced over her shoulder. “What? Our tooth powder?”
“Anything?”
The young woman took a deep breath. Then she laughed. “I imagine we can find what we need along the way. I don’t know what that’s likely to be.”
She walked to the gap in the railing that showed where the stairs led down to the river, then stepped down onto the blue stair and from there onto the surface of the water. It bore her feet up as surely as if she were standing on rock. She laughed again, the rain slicking her bobbed curls into a sleek, chestnutcolored cap.
The seiche strode past the merchant and through the open door. “I suppose you can walk on water, too,” Masseter muttered.
Sullivan said nothing, just stepped down onto the floodwater beside Petra. The two of them looked back at Masseter. Petra reached up a hand. The one-eyed merchant squared his shoulders, crossed the porch, and allowed her to help him down onto the surface. Whether because Petra still possessed some lingering orphan magic or because the river understood what was being asked of it, his feet did not sink.
As the three of them turned away from the inn, Maisie shook herself and ran to the French doors. “Petra!” she wailed. Out on the water, Petra turned and waved but didn’t stop walking.
Jessamy Butcher and Madame Grisaille followed Maisie onto the porch, each with a hand at the ready to restrain the girl if she tried to follow. “Where is she going?” Maisie choked on her words and on the rain, her chrysanthemum shawl whipping in the wind.
“Into the wilds of the middle country,” Madame Grisaille said, drawing her gently back into the shelter of the parlor. She took Maisie’s shawl from her and passed it to Jessamy, then unwound a wrap from her own shoulders and swathed the shivering girl in it. “But look, my
