“I’ve heard that asylum has an unsavory reputation,” the Inspector said. “There has been some agitation to close it down.”

“And so it should be closed down and the administrators condemned by the Imperial Council.” The professor’s righteous zeal was very convincing. Karigan thought he put to shame any actor of The Royal Magnificent Theater with his performance. “My poor niece. She is a pretty thing, and I’d a thought to marrying her off to some nice young man not concerned about the disarranged state of her mental faculties, but after such trauma? I doubt anyone would have her.”

Not to mention his performance was making her feel pathetic.

The Inspector made sympathetic noises. “I must check the seal,” he said, and he stepped outside with the papers. Shortly an ominous whine emitted from without. Did she discern a tensing of the professor’s posture as he watched through the doorway?

The Inspector returned and handed the documents back to the professor. “Everything checks out,” he said. “It’s a fine thing you are doing, helping family.”

“Well, unlike you, Inspector, I’ve not been blessed with children of my own, so I guess I find a way to compensate. Speaking of which, how many do you have now? Last I heard, eight?”

The Inspector grinned. “We’ve a ninth coming along.”

“My word! Good man!” The professor clapped him on the shoulder. “Wait till I tell Mirriam.”

The two said their good-byes, the Inspector politely doffing his hat and saying, “Sorry to have troubled you, sir.” When the door closed behind him, the professor sagged against the wall, mopping his brow with a handkerchief.

“Everything all right, Professor?” a male voice asked from the room off the foyer. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but the speaker did not reveal himself.

“A close one, that,” the professor replied. “I’d only received these documents yesterday.”

“Rasper does good work.”

“Yes. Good enough to fool an Inspector and his mechanical. Thankfully it was Gant this time—he’s more, shall we say, reasonable than some of the others. But don’t give Rasper any idea of how good he is or he’ll start demanding that I pay him more.”

The two laughed, and the professor moved into the room, drawing a pair of doors closed behind him. Karigan sat where she was, dumbfounded that her patron had gone to such lengths to protect her. Obviously he’d be in trouble if he was found out. How odd this world was that everything must be approved and documented.

The idea that the Inspector had a mechanical something-or-other to help him made her shiver. The concept of “mechanicals” was not unknown to her or to others of her time. Mornhavon the Black had brought them to these shores in his conquest of the New Lands. Her ancestor, Hadriax el Fex, had referenced them in his journal. But none of her contemporaries, not even the scholars, seemed to know what the mechanicals looked like or how they operated, except that some incorporated etherea in their workings. They were part machine and part magic, but if magic was absent from this time, perhaps the Inspector’s device was purely mechanical. The future, it appeared, held many marvels both useful and frightening.

Encouraged by having witnessed this much. Karigan decided to try and learn more. She crept down the stairs, her bare feet silent on the carpeted treads. At the bottom, she glanced all around her. There was, as she thought, a formal parlor to her right, and the closed doors of the room the professor and his companion had entered to her left. A grand hall went deeper into the house from the foyer. No one else was about. She limped over to the closed doors and pressed her ear against one of them. She heard voices within.

“It’s downright strange, I tell you,” she heard the professor proclaim.

His companion made a muffled response.

“Both Samuels and Mirriam observed the wounds on her body as unusual,” the professor said, “the old ones and the fresh ones. The old ones, Samuels said, are like stab wounds from . . . from edged weapons.” He sounded disturbed. If he had believed she were a Green Rider, then perhaps he wouldn’t be so surprised, but it appeared there were no Green Riders in this time and no memory of them. To think all their bravery and efforts came to this, unremembered and disbelieved.

“Mirriam thought her muscles unseemly for a girl, too, even one who might have labored in the mills,” the professor mused. “Maybe a field hand? No lash marks, though. Her wounds, combined with the artifacts lead me to only one conclusion.”

Karigan did not get to hear what it was because someone said, “Psst,” behind her. She jumped.

“Miss,” Lorine said, “you must go back to your room.”

“I’m tired of my room.” Oops, that sounded a tad more petulant than Karigan intended.

Lorine gently took her arm and turned her toward the staircase. “Please. Mirriam will be home soon, and if she or anyone else sees you down here . . .”

Karigan heard the implication that if mad Miss Goodgrave were discovered wandering around, the fault would fall on Lorine, who’d be in a great deal of trouble. Not wishing to cause Lorine problems, Karigan started up the stairway compliantly, but was vexed not to have heard the rest of the professor’s statement. Midway up, she stopped, thinking to go back down, fling those doors open, and confront the professor. But Lorine anxiously tugged on her sleeve. With a sigh, Karigan continued her upward climb.

When they reached the top landing, the double doors opened, and Karigan paused to look back down. A man strode out into the foyer with books beneath his arm.