difficult," he finished, as if he shared a great secret.
The coquettish flirtation left her uneasy, even as she laughed. But she didn't think of herself as a vampire's courtier. Surely the power in their relationship was shared, not taken. "I'm Sebastien's friend," Garrett corrected.
"Yes. Sebastien is considered something of an eccentric."
"How old is he?"
Mr. Priest stopped, and stared. "He doesn't know."
And that was kind. He could have toyed with her, gloated over knowledge she did not share. Oh? He never told you?
"Roughly?"
"He remembers the Black Death," Mr. Priest said. "He remembers the millennium. He saw Vladimir the Great baptized a Christian in Kyiv. And Evie had already left him, by then, and he says they were together forty years or so—"
"Evie."
The blond boy tipped his head. "The one who gave him his first. . .
taste."
"He's a thousand years old, Mr. Priest?"
"My best guess? I make it about eleven hundred. He sometimes mutters to himself in a particularly incomprehensible dialect of medieval vulgar Latin when he's not pretending to that ridiculous Spanish accent. It might be Galicean. He's Galicean. Or Asturian, rather, if I have the dates right."
"But you're not sure?"
Mr. Priest shrugged. "He says he doesn't remember. He says he starved, during the plague, and forgot a great deal."
"And you believe that?"
He tilted his head. His smile slid from cherublike to conspiratorial. For a moment, they were allies. "I think he wishes to believe it."
* * *
The Lord Mayor's summons arrived in the first morning post, shortly before sunrise. Garrett read it in her nightgown, lingering over tea spiked with lemon, honey, and a trace of brandy. The summons was phrased as an invitation to luncheon; Garrett penned a reply before she moved on to the rest of the mail.
There were the usual assortment of personal notes, invitations, correspondence, and bills; she set the latter aside for Mary's attention and retained the rest. It being Wednesday, she also had both morning papers, the
New Amsterdam Courant and The New World Times, the second of which actually concerned itself with little more than New England, New Holland, and Virginia.
The news was ill. The redcoats and green-jackets she'd noticed the previous afternoon were fresh on ships from Africa, and garrisoned on Manhattan, where they could take what rest they might and also serve to reinforce the city.
Some three hundred were quartered with local householders, and, as might be expected, some of those—but not all—protested. The Lord Mayor demanded the troops be withdrawn or that their hosts be compensated. The Duke welcomed the aid from abroad.
Garrett flipped to the second page and looked for reports of continued skirmishing in the Green Mountains. She found nothing, but that didn't mean there was nothing to find, only that the newspapers were not printing it.
Richard considered his mandate to extend to the suppression of uncomfortable truths.
Garrett had no stomach for the rest of her tea. She pushed the tray away, left the letters on the table, and padded up the stairs to dress with more than her usual care.
* * *
The Lord Mayor's offices opened at nine. Garrett presented herself in the antechamber at precisely half one, squaring her boots on the Persian carpets before the secretary's desk between bongs from the grandfather clock. There was no assistant in evidence, and the desk was clear and dusted. The ink on the blotter was fresh.
Garrett was about to announce herself with a sharp rap on the double doors to the Lord Mayor's private office when the right one swung open. Peter Eliot himself peered around the edge, the flesh of his right hand hammocked between the knots of his knuckles as he twisted the knob back and forth. "You came," he said, blinking like a drunk.
He was red-eyed, but Garrett didn't smell any liquor on him. She strode up crisply, letting her skirts shush about her ankles, and he stepped out of the way. He shut the door; she waited to see if he was likely to shoot the bolt, but there was no thump of the latch. Not that an un-ensorcelled lock could inhibit Garrett when her wand was tucked into her corset.
Apparently, the invitation to dine had been sincere. Several covered salvers and a decanter of wine rested on a round mahogany table before three casement windows. Beyond them, yellow leaves turned in the wind. Garrett waited while Eliot, unspeaking, drew out a chair for her convenience. She permitted him to seat her, the carpet beneath the four legs thick enough that she felt it compress