NO ONE HAD cleaned this chimney in a long time, Magdalys decided. She felt the thick layers of ash coating her hands and knees as she worked her way along down the narrow chute. As usual, the whole world became an eternal darkness soon after she got on her way. There was always a terrifying moment of emptiness when that happened: What if she got trapped in there and no one came to get her? What if some fool decided to start a fire and she got smoked out or burnt to a crisp? Then she’d take a breath — not too deep or she’d end up coughing till she heaved — and remind herself that every chimney let out into a fireplace and if she had to she could haul butt back up double time and be out of there.

This particular one did seem extra long, though. She tried not to think too much about it, just kept climbing down and down and down until finally a shard of light appeared beneath her.

She allowed herself a long exhale and then scaled the rest of the way down, landing with a muffled thud in the fireplace.

The dining room she stared out into was one of the most elegant places she’d ever seen. Fine linen cloth covered the table, which displayed eight porcelain dishes with perfectly placed silverware and folded napkins on either side. Even the curtains were magnificent! They were great, shiny, royal-looking ones with golden trim and tassels.

Magdalys stifled a gasp. Who was this Harrison Weed, with his fancy Manhattan apartment and strange dealings with Cuban orphans?

Whoever he was, he almost certainly had an office somewhere in here, and in that office would be his personal papers. And there, hopefully, Magdalys would get some answers.

She brushed as much soot off herself into the hearth as she could and then crept out of the fireplace, through the dining room — careful not to touch anything — and out into the carpeted hallway. Paintings of old white men adorned the walls, and here and there an ancient-looking bust of someone with a beard stared emptily from an inlet. The next room was a bedroom; beyond that was a washroom and a sitting area of some kind. At the far end of the corridor was a closed door. There was no way to open it without getting the shiny golden doorknob covered in black soot, but Magdalys hadn’t come all this way just to give up because she was going to dirty up a rich man’s apartment. She wiped her hand a few times, then turned the knob and walked in.

Bingo.

Thick books lined all the walls and cluttered a mantelpiece overhanging another fireplace. An elaborate wooden desk took up almost half the room, papers covering it like autumn leaves. She crossed the length of the room at a run and, not even bothering to try and keep them clean, started rifling through the stacks and stacks of documents.

Within just a few minutes, Magdalys had gone from irritated to disappointed to bored to furious, and now she was sliding quickly toward despair. The man had so many papers and none of them made much of any sense at all! There were records and info sheets full of scratched-out numbers and random words that didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason. It could be a code, Magdalys figured, but it wasn’t one she’d be able to figure out any time soon, if at all.

She kept digging, frustration gnawing away inside her, until a single word on a folded-up parchment caught her eye.

It had clearly been delivered by microdact; those telltale claw imprints gave that away. And someone had written it hastily, that was for sure. Ink splotches speckled the edges of the paper, and the handwriting looked like it had been scribbled on dinoback.

Orphans was the word that brought Magdalys’s frantic paper shuffle to a sudden halt. At the top, an elaborate circular seal glistened off the page. It had what looked like rays of light bursting out of a roaring tyrannosaurus in the center, and the words “K of the G C” were scrawled around the circumference. It was the same insignia that Riker had on the medallion he wore! And it glared off the tops of a bunch more of Weed’s papers too. But what was the K of the G C?” Magdalys read:

My Brother Knight — I trust all is well with your endeavors and I write you with the utmost urgency.

Shipment of 40 orphans from the COA for transport South.

Will deliver at 11 tonight for immediate removal from city limits.

Magdalys gasped. The paper had today’s date on it. In a little over twelve hours, they were sneaking the orphans out of the city.

Have everything ready on the Ocarrion.

If the captain gets antsy again, handle him.

With great haste,

R

Magdalys’s eyes went wide. “Riker!” she said out loud.

Then the door opened and the tallest woman Magdalys had ever seen walked in and screamed.