“It might be Sleeping Beauty’s story. I have a vague recollection of my mother telling me that some previous prince or princess had added the description of a stupendous treasure hidden inside the castle. But my mother did not like how crowded that made the area around the castle—the lure of lucre is apparently much stronger than the lure of Sleeping Beauty herself—so she stripped out that addition in her copy of the Crucible, which later became my copy.
“I did not see evidence of anyone streaming toward the castle in the Citadel’s copy. But that one had a phantom behemoth guarding the castle, and I would say that is in itself more than enough to keep away those who are merely greedy and opportunistic.”
Fairfax looked at him with narrowed eyes.
Suddenly he remembered that once upon a time he had refused to let her look at Sleeping Beauty in his copy of the Crucible. In the days before they trusted each other completely, he had modified Sleeping Beauty in his copy of the Crucible to look exactly like her—and had not wanted her to know or guess why he would not allow her to ascend to the garret of the castle where the princess slept her years away.
“When we get to Mrs. Hancock’s house,” he said, “I will take a look at the text of Sleeping Beauty’s story and see if I can undo the change.”
She plucked a blade of the knee-high grass that covered the meadow. “Maybe not.”
“Why not?” asked her guardian.
“It might confer an advantage on the way back: those of us still left standing will know what to expect; Atlantis, not so much.”
He supposed it was true that other than Fairfax and himself, no one else had been prophesied to die. That meant nothing, however, when it came to their chances of survival. But he did not want to say no to her—they had so little time left. “I will leave it as it is then.”
“I hope some of you live to take advantage of that,” she said to the company.
Haywood winced. Kashkari looked grim; Aramia, suitably afraid.
The only one who seemed to be made of blithe assurance was the commander of a rebel base. “Thank you, Miss Seabourne,” said Amara. “I have every intention of doing just that.”
Mrs. Hancock lived on a street of small two-story row houses. The houses were of identical frontage and height, their combined rooftop enclosed by low, decorative parapets.
The floating fortress could not be seen from Mrs. Hancock’s window. Titus had described it as best as he could to his companions, while they were still in transit in the Crucible. But for something like that, seeing was believing.
He slid the shutters into place and pulled the curtains shut. “You may turn on those sconces now,” he said to Mrs. Hancock.
A soft light with a hint of apricot came on, illuminating an interior not unlike Mrs. Hancock’s parlor in Mrs. Dawlish’s house. Mrs. Dawlish’s house had been full of print chintz and embroidered flowers, but Mrs. Hancock’s parlor had always been bare to the point of austerity. But whereas her English parlor had drawer pulls marked by the stylized whirlpool that symbolized Atlantis, here there were no such patriotic decorations.
“How are you?” asked Fairfax, embracing Mrs. Hancock warmly. “We wondered what became of you.”
“I thought you’d run and hid yourself somewhere in England,” said Kashkari.
London, Titus would have wagered, in one of the more crowded districts where the addition of a middle-aged woman who dressed in brown sacks would never have been noticed.
“Sit down, please,” said Mrs. Hancock, distributing several plates of unfamiliar-looking snacks. “I considered it. In the first minutes after Mrs. Dawlish’s house became overrun with Atlantean agents, every other moment I had to restrain myself from slipping away and disappearing among the English. And then I came to my senses. If my superiors suspected me, I would already have been arrested. I wasn’t—so I decided I must use my position to its greatest advantage.
“I made every effort to look eager to help my compatriots. Poor Cooper was quite distraught that I was so civil, indeed obsequious, to the men who were carting things from your rooms. And it hurt more than I thought it would, to lose Cooper’s good opinion. But I had to do what I had to do.
“What I didn’t expect was that I was immediately recalled to Atlantis for questioning. Though I readily agreed, once again I very nearly fled. In the end I told myself it