And I do not like bullies.”
After that, our fates were more or less sealed (a phrase that always makes me picture a weary old Fate tucking our futures into an envelope and pressing her wax seal over us): Jane Irimu and I became something like friends.
For two years we lived in the secret margins of Locke House, in its attics and forgotten storerooms and untended gardens. We scurried around the edges of high society like spies or mice, staying mostly in the shadows, noticed only sporadically by Locke or his assorted minions and guests. There was still something confined about her, something tense and waiting, but now at least it felt as if we shared the same cage.
I didn’t think of the future much, and if I did it was with a child’s desire for vague, far-flung adventures, and a child’s certainty that everything would remain as it always had been. It did, mostly.
Until the day before my seventeenth birthday. Until I found the leather-bound book in the chest.
“Miss Scaller.”
I was still standing in the Pharaoh Room, still holding the leather-bound book in my palm. Bad was growing bored, issuing periodic sighs and huffs. Mr. Stirling’s toneless voice startled both of us.
“Oh—I didn’t—good evening.” I spun to face him with the book tucked behind my back. There wasn’t any particular reason to hide a scuffed-up novel from Mr. Stirling, except that there was something vital and wondrous about it, and Mr. Stirling was more or less the human opposite of vitality and wonder. He blinked at me, eyes flicking to the open chest on its plinth, then inclined his head infinitesimally.
“Mr. Locke requests your attendance in his office.” He paused, and something flitted darkly across his face. It might have been fear, if Mr. Stirling had been physically capable of any expression beyond attentive blandness. “At once.”
I followed him from the Pharaoh Room with Bad’s claws click-clicking at my heels. I tucked The Ten Thousand Doors in my skirts, where it rested warm and solid against my hip. Like a shield, I thought, and then wondered why the idea was so comforting.
Mr. Locke’s office smelled as it always had, of cigar smoke and fine leather and the sorts of liquors that are kept in crystal decanters on the sideboard, and Mr. Locke looked as he always did: squarish and neat, seeming to reject the aging process as a waste of valuable time. He’d had the same respectable dusting of white hairs at his temples my entire life; the last time I’d seen him, my father’s hair had turned almost entirely ashen.
Mr. Locke looked up from a stack of stained, weathered-looking envelopes as I entered. His eyes were gravestone-gray and serious, focused on me in a way they rarely were. “That will do, Stirling.” I heard the valet retreat from the room, the brassy click of the door latch. Something fluttered in my chest, like bird wings against my ribs.
“Sit down, January.” I sat in my usual chair, and Bad stuffed himself half-successfully beneath it.
“Sorry about Bad, sir, it’s just Stirling seemed to be in a hurry and I didn’t take him back to my room first—”
“That’s quite all right.” The fluttery, panicky feeling in my chest grew stronger. Bad had been banned from Mr. Locke’s office (as well as all motorcars, trains, and dining rooms) since the Society party two years ago. Just the sight of him usually provoked Locke into a speech about poorly behaved pets and lax owners, or at least a grumbling snort through his mustache.
Mr. Locke’s jaw worked backward and forward, as if his next words required chewing to soften them. “It’s about your father.” I found it difficult to look directly at Mr. Locke; I studied the display case on his desk instead, its brass-plate label gleaming: Enfield revolver, Mark I, 1879.
“He’s been in the Far East these past few weeks, as I’m sure you know.”
Father was beginning in the Port of Manila, then island-hopping his way northward to Japan, he’d told me. He’d promised to write often; I hadn’t heard from him in weeks.
Mr. Locke chewed his next sentence even more thoroughly. “His reports on this expedition have been spotty. Spottier than usual, I mean. But lately they’ve… stopped coming altogether. His last report was in April.”
Mr. Locke was looking at me now, expectant and intent, as if he’d been humming a tune and paused for me to finish it. As if I ought to know what he would say next.
I kept staring at