31

LIEUTENANT WESTLAND FOUND ME ON THE TERRACE, MY EYES red but face dried of tears and the kerchief finished. “Miss Balstrade, I came as quickly as I—” He halted as he noticed my tearstained face. “You must already know something?”

“No, I—” I coughed, clearing my throat and my thoughts. “What’s going on?” I hadn’t expected to see Theodor’s brother again until our trip home, Merhaven having charged him with minding the Gyrfalcon in port.

He carried a packet of papers, bound loosely with red ribbon. “These were supposed to be sent to you,” he said, pressing them into my hands. Letters, I realized, addressed to my attention first at Southlea and then at the summit. “I didn’t open them,” he added, unnecessarily, I thought, until I saw that the cheap red wax seal had been broken and was flaking away, leaving an orange stain on the paper.

“Someone did,” I murmured, swiftly beginning to read the rudimentary printing spaced out as carefully as its untrained hand could write on the inexpensive, knobbled paper.

“They were open when I found them, but I must confess I did read the contents. May I ask—who is the writer?”

“Byran Border,” I said. Theodor’s brother waited for an explanation. “A commoner from one of the cities we visited—Havensport.” I thumbed through the other letters—four of them in total, all from Border. “I told him he could write to me.”

I skimmed the first letter, Border’s poor spelling slowing me down less than his poorly practiced handwriting. Galatine schools only taught common students through the age of twelve, and plenty of boys and girls left before that to start working. Despite any difficulty reading his letters, his message was clear.

I glanced at Ballantine. “We have to find Theodor,” I said.

Less than a quarter hour later, we were holed up in Theodor’s room, Annette perched on his desk and he and his brother poring over the letters by the window. “Where did you find these?”

Ballantine ducked his head. “I shouldn’t have been in the admiral’s desk,” he began, “but I needed the tide charts we’d worked out and he forgot to give me a copy. I accept fully that it was a breach—”

“Of protocol, of courtesy, yes, but damn it all, Merhaven had stolen these!” Theodor managed to keep his voice contained below a yell. “I don’t care what rules you broke.”

“The Royal Navy might disagree,” Ballantine said, shifting his weight.

“You idiot, there isn’t going to be a Royal Navy anymore if this all goes to hell.” Theodor threw the letters down and began to pace. I plucked them back up again. Annette silently took one at a time to read.

“One thing seems very clear to me,” I finally said. Both men turned, waiting, expectant. “They were waiting until you were gone, Theodor. These nobles dallied until you were out of the country and then abandoned the reform, reversing it where they could. And the people don’t blame you.” I rifled through the paper and read aloud, “If we can hold fast, we will. We will wait for the return of the prince and we will not give in.”

“Sweet hell,” Annette cursed gracefully. “Riots in Havensport and they’ve burned the city lord’s offices.”

“Keep reading,” I said. “They tried to take the fortress along the seawall, but…” I shook my head—they’d failed, at the cost of many men.

“It seems, cousin, that they expect you to stand against the nobles,” Annette added.

“As they rightly should,” Theodor said. “The laws are clear. We followed the laws in bringing the Reform Bill, in debating it, in voting, and now the reform is the law.” He paced back toward us and slammed his hand on the spindly desk that held the weight of Byran Border’s letters. “They should stand against the nobles, and those of us with any shred of ethics left will stand for the law alongside the people!”

“I suppose this means heading home early?” I said.

Theodor drummed his fingers on the desk in rapid, martial tempo. “Yes. It’s no use keeping our allies if the country burns while we delay. There’s a final vote on the Open Seas Arrangement in two days. Will that give you time to prepare to go back?”

“Of course, but Merhaven commands the Gyrfalcon.”

“Not any longer. I’ll charge him with representing our interests for the remainder of the summit. No, it’s not ideal,” he argued with himself, “and he’s bound to overpromise something, but we’ll untangle those knots later.”

Ballantine nodded. “The Gyrfalcon can be ready in two days’ time. At least it’s not open war. Not yet, anyway. We can make it back before the real fun begins.”

I raised an eyebrow at Lieutenant Westland. “Were you born an optimist?”

“Optimism helps at sea,” he replied. “Especially when you’ve no idea what you’re up against.”