Alden concluded that evening by writing up a report of his findings and delivering them to Lucille’s home, but since his employer was elsewhere when he arrived he simply went home for the night once he’d done so. Usually he would be leery of handing off such important information to a third party, but since it was Lucille’s own wife who took the sealed envelope, promising to secure it within Lucille’s personal office without opening it, he felt it was safe enough to trust her. After all, the two seemed quite close, even by the standards of married couples. The next day, Alden made an early stop at a local bookstore, purchasing a number of texts related to just about anything that seemed relevant to the incidence of spontaneous combustion, going outside his own field of tinctury and into the wider sphere of diseases, medicines and poisons. It wasn’t a cheap purchase, but Alden wasn’t exactly hurting for money at the moment, and spending ten pounds on medical texts seemed a lot more reasonable now than it would have just a few days prior. With his new books in hand, he ensconced himself within the confines of his office to peruse his new purchases. Once again, he sought any known compound that could reasonably be used to reliably induce spontaneous combustion. But nothing seemed to fit the details of the case. There were a few poisons that were known to cause a very high risk of combustion, but in all three poisons he could find, the actual combustion was preceded by hours of mindless rage and aggression. Similarly, all the diseases he could find that even semi-reliably concluded in spontaneous combustion, such as rabies, caused massive behavioural shifts long before combustion took place. This didn’t fit with the two cases he was investigating. Both Dr. Rawleigh and Professor Abney had been at work in their respective laboratories at the time of death, and in the case of the late Professor Abney had been hard at work up until the very minute of combustion. Clearly, any behavioural changes caused by this poison would have to be subtle enough that the victim could still perform their work. Subtle enough that a co-worker wouldn’t be alarmed by the changes before combustion occurred. Far too subtle for any of the explanations that Alden had been able to find. And that suggested something very worrying indeed. A completely novel poison, unknown to the medical community, or at the very least to the European medical community. With a tired groan, he slumped forward and allowed his head to thunk into the desk. Loudly enough, it turned out, to cause Mr. Dawkins to look in from the workroom with worry writ clear on his delicate features. “Are you quite all right, Mr. Stowe?” “No, not really. I’m working on a problem that may or may not be functionally unsolvable. I don’t suppose you have any specialist knowledge in Asian medicine? Specifically Han?” “Well, I’m not an expert by any means, but I have made some personal study of the subject of Han, Wei, Wu, Samhan and Nihonese tinctury and traditional medicine. I also have a number of works of medical literature from those regions that I had translated on commission, which is partially why I was in such dire financial straits when I first sought you out for employment.” “…Why, that is absolutely brilliant! You just may be able to help me after all, Mr. Dawkins. I don’t suppose I could trouble you to bring those texts with you tomorrow morning?” “Certainly. It really wouldn’t be any trouble at all.” “Capital! Be sure to do so.” Feeling rather heartened by this bit of good fortune, Alden cleaned away his books and went up to his apartment while Mr. Dawkins started preparing for his own personal experiments, as he did most evenings. Deciding to take a proper evening repast for once, Alden prepared a pot of tea and a small selection of little sandwiches. Unfortunately, before he was even halfway through his meal, he was interrupted by a knock on his door. With a small sigh, he got up and opened the door, finding Miss Oxley standing outside. “How can I help you, Miss Oxley?” “The Han child is back. The one who’s been running errands for you. She says it’s urgent.” “Then I shan’t keep her waiting. Thank you, Miss Oxley.” Quickly donning his boots and jacket, Alden headed out to speak to Mei Jing. The girl seemed more than a little agitated. “What news do you have for me, Mei Jing?” “We found Li Tao. He went to many shops today, buying Han things the girls have sold. Leilei follow him to his house, because Leilei is very good at sneaking. His house is number 14 on Wild Rose Street. Leilei say Li Tao was packing many thing, as if leaving very soon for long time.” Alden swore quietly under his breath. If Li Tao was getting ready to leave, Alden could only imagine he had booked passage on an early morning flight to Han. Many long-distance airships left early in the morning to make sure they got free of heavily trafficked airspace before night fell. If Alden wanted any realistic chance of nabbing his suspect, he would have to act now! Rushing inside, he penned a brief missive for his employer. “FOUND OUR MAN. WILD ROSE STREET 14. LEAVING FIRST THING TOMORROW. IM GOING NOW. BRING WHOEVER YOU CAN AND MEET ME ON THE CORNER OF CORNFLOWER STREET.” Scribbling out the telegraphic address on another piece of paper, he rushed out to Mei Jing. Without much care, he dug a small handful of coins out of his purse and dropped them in Mei Jing’s hand along with the two pieces of paper. “Run over to the Telegraphic Office on Broad Street. It’s the closest one that’s open this late. Tell them to send this message to this address. The rest of the money is for you and the girls. Now go!” Mei Jing was briefly distracted by the wealth of coinage in her hand, but Alden’s final exclamation was enough to shake her out of it. Without another word, the two of them took off, Mei Jing in the direction of Broad Street and Alden in the direction of Wild Rose Street. Alden arrived at the street corner where Wild Rose Street and Cornflower Street intersected more than a little out of breath. It was too late in the evening to find a hansom or anything like that, and it wasn’t as though the trams ran anywhere even close to this messy sprawl of old cobbled streets. For all that the street names were pretty, this was not a good part of town, and Alden found himself shrinking into the shadows a bit. Sure, he’d been out later than this in less reputable parts of town, but those were streets he knew. Streets where he ran as a child. This place was mostly unfamiliar to him. He heard the clip-clop of hooves nearby, accompanied by the awkward rattle of wheels going over cobble, but it stopped some way away before turning and going back the way it came. Alden only barely had time to wonder why a small horse-drawn cab would come all the way here at this hour before a figure clad in dark greys pulled into view, almost invisible in the dim light. Alden tensed up, but when the figure spoke, the voice was very familiar to him. “Good, you’re here. I came as soon as I got your message. Here.” Lucille handed him a small pot of some sort of cosmetic cream. “What…” “To darken your skin. Your clothes aren’t a bad colour, but your skin shines even in the dull glow of what passes for moonlight in London.” Alden nodded and started applying the peculiar cream to his face and hands. It smelled vaguely of soot and ashes, but it had a very smooth feel to it. As he did so, he studied Lucille. Her hair was concealed behind a dark scarf, and something about the cut and fall of her clothes made her silhouette strangely indistinct. But somewhat amusingly, she had tied her hair-scarf in a way that fully wrapped over her ears, and from the way it bulged, Alden could tell she was still wearing her silver and sapphire earrings beneath it. “The earrings don’t come off even for something like this?” “The earrings don’t come off for queen or country. If the earrings coming off was the only way to prevent the world from falling into ruin, I might consider it, but I would have to consult my wife first.” Alden couldn’t help but smile. For some reason, this utterly nonsensical refusal to remove a pair of earrings made Lucille seem a lot less intimidating and unapproachable than before. Shaking his head slightly, he focused on more pertinent matters. “You came alone?” “The total number of people I can trust with something like this who I can get a hold of on this short notice includes me and nobody else.” “Fine, just us two, then. I sure hope Li Tao doesn’t have a lot of friends over.” Lucille handed him something dark and heavy. It took Alden some time to realize it was a large pistol with all the metal parts coated in something dark to prevent it from gleaming. “Do you know how to use one of these?” Lucille asked. “Not a clue.” “In that case, keep your finger off the trigger. Just point it at anyone you want to scare.” Alden nodded uncomfortably. Even with his finger firmly off the trigger, the weight of the gun felt very worrying in his hands. Lucille motioned for him to start moving, and he followed her lead as they slipped from shadow to shadow. Even trying to keep his eyes on the woman at all times, Alden sometimes lost her in the murk and had to guess at where she’d gone. He’d considered himself a fairly competent sneak, courtesy of his youth with the Rascals, but he was thoroughly humbled by the woman in front of him. Which really only made him more suspicious about just what kind of things she did all day in service to whoever her royal patron might be… Before long, they made it to the door on number 14, and Lucille pulled a roll of lock picks from within her dark clothing. The lock on the door clearly wasn’t much of a challenge to her, because within less than a minute Alden heard the faint click of the mechanism turning. “Take hold of the door handle.” Lucille murmured quietly. “On the count of three, you pull the door open and I rush inside. Enter as quickly as you can, and close the door behind you, but don’t slam it. Understand?” Alden nodded in response. “Good. Now… One… Two… Three.” Alden pulled the door open, and Lucille slipped inside with smooth, quick movements, Alden followed as soon as he could, carefully closing the door behind him, and found himself faced with a peculiar scene. Li Tao was sitting at a big desk, surrounded by a mess of papers and a bunch of packed bags. Lucille had her gun pointed straight at his chest, and was hissing rather threatening-sounding words at the man in what Alden could only assume was the language of Han. He certainly couldn’t make out a single word in the flowing stream of smooth, diphthong-heavy syllables. Li Tao seemed very much like a man fighting a rising panic. His eyes darted around, clearly trying find any exit, any way out of the situation. Alden, feeling like he should make himself useful, raised his own gun towards the man in what he hoped came across as a threatening manner. Some sort of strange calm came over Li Tao’s face, and he said a few short words in a loud, disdainful voice. Before either of them could react, Li Tao pulled a large syringe from his pocket and jammed it into a vein, injecting himself with some strange purple fluid. Lucille startled and hissed out a question in Han language, but Li Tao didn’t answer. Before long, he slumped back into his chair, his eyes rolling back into his head. Alden’s eyes grew wide. “Shoot him!” He hissed. “Head or heart, just kill him quick!” “What? No! If I shoot him, the noise will attract the whole neighbourhood.” “This isn’t the time to worry about that! You need to kill him immediately!” “No! We’ll take him with us. If we can keep him alive, he can still answer some questions!” But by now, Alden saw it. The faint little wisps of smoke rising from the man’s slumped-back body. With a hissed curse Alden rushed forward and grabbed the syringe from the mans body, stuffing it in his jacket pocket before pulling the man from the chair and tossing him to the middle of the floor. His body was already so hot it almost burned to the touch. “What are you…” “There’s no time! He’s going to burn! Grab everything you can and run, because this whole place is going to go up like a candle!” Finally grasping what was happening, Lucille quickly looked around at the old wooden building they were in. “…Shit!” Without another word, she and Alden rushed around the room to grab anything they could carry. Alden swept all of the papers on the desk into one of the packed bags, and then grabbed as many bags as he could easily carry. By the time they had both gathered as much as they could, the man on the floor had already burst into flame, and the intensely hot fire was spreading rapidly across the old, dry-rot infested floorboards. Lucille and Alden fled the little house as quickly as their legs could carry them. By the time they reached the end of the street, the exterior of the house was already catching, and Alden could hear someone in a neighbouring house ringing their fire bell. They were less than halfway down the adjoining street when the nearest fire bell tower took up the call, its mighty peal summoning professional and volunteer fire fighters alike. Alden heard the sounds of people hastily getting out of bed and moving to unlatch their windows all around him. I struck him then that two figures clearly dressed for housebreaking being found running from a burning house carrying a bunch of large bags would be a very bad look indeed. Fortunately Lucille clearly had the same idea, because she led Alden down a small alleyway and down a set of cellar stairs, leading to a mostly-concealed door that opened to a key she pulled from her pocket. She pulled Alden inside and shut the door behind them, locking it again before collapsing to the ground, seeming utterly spent. “I’m not… really used… to running at full speed carrying a heavy load.” She explained between gasping breaths. “You should have shot the man.” “In retrospect… you are probably correct. I apologize… for ignoring your advice.” “Not too much harm done, I suppose. What is this place?” “The cellar of a pub called The Tarnished Crown. It’s one of the many places in the city that will open to copies of this specific key. This alley leads to an absolute rats nest of alleyways and hidey-holes, so even if anyone saw us running this way, they will just assume we continued down the way. We’ll stay the night down here. In the morning the publican will provide us with a bath and a change of clothing, and we’ll be on our merry way.” Alden nodded, thinking back on the little adventure. Outside, he heard the wailing sirens of fire-fighters’ carts hurtling down the street. “I didn’t realize you spoke the language of Han.” “I am fluent in six languages, and can muddle my way through another four. The Han language happens to be one I’m fluent in.” “There’s a lot more to you than meets the eye, Lucille Baines.” “Given your remarkable successes so far, I could say the same about you.” Alden opened his mouth to argue, but he wasn’t sure what he could really say to back up his point. After all, he had rather surprised even himself in the past few days. Deciding to let the matter drop, he instead focused on something else. “What was that he said, right before injecting himself with the poison?” “For the emperor.” Alden considered that for a moment. “You know, even if it came to pass that I had to sacrifice my own life for my country, I doubt my last words would be ‘for the queen’.” Lucille snorted. “I can certainly relate to that sentiment. I feel my last words would be more along the lines of ‘to Hel with it’.” Alden was about to reply when he heard footsteps passing by outside. Staying very quiet, he listened as two people walked by. One of them actually came down the stairs and tried the door, but after finding it locked, they both carried on down the alleyway. “The constabulary, no doubt.” Lucille remarked. “Too many doors, too many alleyways. They can’t wake up every resident and proprietor and have them unlock every door to let the constabulary look inside.” “Recent events haven’t filled me with a great deal of respect for the constabulary in general.” “Plodding busybodies, the lot of them. Good for rounding up drunks and not much else.” Alden nodded, then looked across the dimly lit basement. “If we sit beneath the lamp, we could probably go through these things. Might was well get something useful done while we wait.” “I was about to suggest the same thing. I was just waiting for my poor arms to recover.” Alden rolled his eyes. “Would you like me to carry your luggage, your ladyship?” She swatted him on the shoulder. “My body is a precision instrument, you oaf. Carrying heavy things is not part of my skill set.” “Just as you say, my lady. Allow this humble oaf to carry these heavy, heavy bags so that you can rest those frail little precision instruments you have in place of arms.” “I think I liked you better when you were intimidated by my status, Alden Stowe.” “And what good would I have been if I was too intimidated to tell you to gather what you could and run before Li Tao set the whole house ablaze?” “…Let’s just get these bags over into the light.” Alden smirked as he moved the bags over, and he and Lucille started going through them, although Lucille was quickly distracted by the mess of papers Alden had swept from the desk. They were covered in Han writing, so Alden left her to it as he looked through the other bags. Many of them simply held clothing and other personal effects, including a small amount of coinage both Han and English, the latter of which he simply moved to his own purse. But the next bag held a large amount of papers covered in the neat, fastidious handwriting of the late Dr. Rawleigh. “I’ve found Dr. Rawleigh’s stolen notes. And I think there are some notes taken from Professor Abney’s laboratory as well.” “Good. I’ll take care of those.” “Anything interesting in your papers?” “A lot, but not what I need. He was clearly working with… No, for someone else here in London. He received frequent orders from somebody, telling him who his targets were and where to pick up the equipment he needed. But it’s all just mentioned as numbered drop points, with no indication of where they are, and the person giving the orders is never named.” “That’s unfortunate. If he was working for someone else, that means his death might not really solve anything. Whoever is in charge of the operation might just continue what he’s been doing using someone else to do the dirty work.” “That was my thought as well. I’d hate to see more of our nation’s intellectual elite going up in flames.” “Any mention of the poison in those papers?” “Several. It is referred to as ‘the burning drug’. But there’s no mention of how it’s made, or what its composition is.” Alden patted the syringe still in his pocket. “I have enough of a sample left that there’s some tests I can run. With any luck, I’ll be able to figure that one out.” “Good. Consider that your top priority. It’s strange, though. The amounts of this ‘burning drug’ that Li Tao was given are referred to as ‘hundredth batch’ amounts. That one syringe was enough to make Li Tao combust in less than three minutes. Why would anyone make batches of such a poison at least a hundred times larger than an immediately lethal dose…?” “I have a feeling we’ll find out sooner or later, and that we won’t like the answer very much.” “That seems like a safe bet, yes…” Alden started looking through the last of the bags, and found it to be full of little individually wrapped packages. Opening the top one, he found a beautiful, ornate hairpin made of jade. Lucille looked over curiously. “What do you have there?” “Treasures and fineries from a large number of wealthy Han families, I suspect.” “Stolen?” “In a sense. Runaways from Han bring them when escaping having their feet broken by their families and sell them to the London pawnbrokers. Li Tao made a habit of purchasing them and returning them to the original owners for a finders’ fee.” “There must be almost a hundred packages in that bag.” “Yes… If you don’t mind, I would like to take these.” “I suppose that’s fine. What are you planning to do with them?” “I’m going to return them to where they’ll do the most good.” Lucille stifled a yawn. “Suit yourself. There are sleeping cots over in the corner, and I’m exhausted. You should get some rest as well, Alden. I’m sure it will be a long day tomorrow.” “No different than any other day since I started working for you, then.” Lucille gave him an almost teasing smirk and tossed a small purse at him. Alden opened it up, and just as he expected, it was full of yet more money. “Come now, Lucille! You can’t just throw more coin at me every time I complain and expect it to work!” “Yes I can.” Alden kept arguing as they both prepared to sleep, but his heart wasn’t in it. Because he knew full well that she was right.