CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Twenty-four years ago, Michael Steinhüller had fled Vienna, crouched and shivering in the back of a butcher’s wagon, leaving everyone he loved behind him. This time, he rode through the city walls in a gleaming, aristocratic carriage, with his oldest and dearest friend at his side. The customs inspector bowed and let their carriage pass without question, requiring no paperwork beyond the affidavit signed by the emperor himself.

As their carriage rolled away from the customs checkpoint, Michael opened the window to wave a last farewell to the travelers behind them, heedless of his royal dignity. Peter Riesenbeck leaned out of the open window of the Riesenbeck company’s own traveling carriage to wave back at him.

“Come see us perform in Berlin for the Prussian king next month!” he called. “We’ll give you both free tickets!”

“Empty promises!” Michael called back. “You’ll have no tickets left to give away.”

Riesenbeck’s grin lit up his face. “From your lips to the Almighty’s ear,” he said. “As always!”

Shaking his head, Michael closed the window.

“Better?” Caroline asked. He heard the smile in her weary voice.

“Better,” he agreed, and took her hand, still craning his neck to watch the actors’ inspection. Their affidavit should be enough to see them through, but . . . “Thank you for having the patience to wait while I saw everything sorted.”

“We don’t leave anyone behind.” She leaned her head against his shoulder, visibly relaxing her guard. It only ever happened when they were alone, and each time it felt to him like a rare and precious gift. “Have you finally finished now?” she asked.

“I have,” Michael told her. “It’s a strange feeling, you know. I’ve never done that before—actually cleaned up the messes I left behind me. But I think I’ve managed it this time.”

The actors weren’t the only innocents he’d deceived in Vienna. Before leaving town, he’d sent a discreetly coded note and parcel to a room in the fifteenth district, where two young pamphleteers worked above a fruit and vegetable shop. All of Prince Kalishnikoff’s political pretensions had ended forever the night before, leaving no necessity for the printing of angry pamphlets that could put Kaspar and Aloysia in further danger . . . even under a police regime that was finally free from alchemy.

It was too late for him to save his old master. But perhaps it wasn’t, after all, too late for some redemption. And with luck those two young idealists would use the signet ring of Prince Kalishnikoff—or rather, its proceeds, when they sold it off—to perform more good than he ever could have managed with it.

The Riesenbeck carriage rolled safely away from the customs inspection, and Michael turned in his seat to meet Caroline’s eyes.

For himself, he could only feel a fierce gratitude for the deaths of the two men who had held her in that ungodly chamber two nights ago. For Caroline, he knew, more complicated emotions were at stake.

Now, her right hand was thickly bandaged, and her pale face was drawn with exhaustion as well as deep new lines of grief . . . for her father, most of all, but even for her damned traitor of a secretary, who had died at her hands. It would take a long time, he thought, for all of her sorrow and her guilt to fade.

But for the first time in years, they both had all the time they needed . . . and neither of them would have to face their demons alone anymore.

As Caroline looked at him now, her expression was open and unmasked. She reached forward to trail her left hand lightly across his cheek, smiling ruefully.

“Well, Prince Kalishnikoff?” she said, in the lilting Viennese German of their youth. “Do you think you’ll find a mere English country house exciting enough to please you, after all your years of adventuring?”

Michael captured her hand with his own and kissed it. “We’ll just have to risk it,” he said.