With only a week before the New Year’s tea party, the teachers were determined to get the girls back in form quickly. Parties were the best place to practice the art of espionage—holidays, shopping, and Christmas presents notwithstanding. Mademoiselle Geraldine’s young ladies of quality were not allowed to be distracted by anything.

Sophronia tried to deliver Madame Spetuna’s warning to Lady Linette, who was having none of it. “I fail to see why you would make up such a falsehood! How on earth would she be in London? Why reach out to you with such an outlandish story after cutting off contact for all this time? Why send proof to Lord Akeldama and not us? Absurd.”

“But—”

“Silence. Nothing more on the subject!”

After that Lady Linette watched like a hunting hound, and Sophronia could do nothing but apply herself diligently to the routine of classes. She couldn’t shake a feeling of suspension. It was as if she were hanging over an abyss. Any move she made might do more harm than good, and someone might come along at any moment and cut her safety line. She became convinced of, even obsessed with, the fact that Madame Spetuna was their only hope. She was their only contact on the inside.

“It’s so frustrating!” she whinged over tea. “Why won’t Lady Linette even entertain the idea?”

“Why is it you’re good at so many aspects of espionage except the waiting?” Agatha nibbled a bit of orange pound cake.

Dimity answered that. “Because she likes to be in motion. Haven’t you noticed? Our Sophronia is happiest when she is crawling over or swinging around something. Preferably a something that is large and in motion itself.”

“But Lady Linette always says an intelligencer needs patience. And Sophronia is supposed to be one of the best.”

“Maybe because I’ve managed to hide that flaw in my character?” suggested Sophronia. “No, I’ve left it long enough. She hinted at something in the record room that might make Lady Linette believe me. It’s time to break into it.”

“Again?” wailed Dimity. “It destroyed a perfectly lovely dress last time.”

“Come on, it’ll be diverting.” Sophronia’s green eyes lit up with excitement.

“Anyone ever taken you to task for a perfectly horrid idea of diversion?”

“Agatha, you in?” Sophronia turned to the redhead.

Agatha sighed. “I’d rather not. I do prefer sleeping.”

“Dimity?”

“It’s not worth the risk. The New Year’s tea party is too close. You know if we’re caught we’ll be sent down and miss the event. You’ll have to do this one on your own.”

Sophronia grinned. “Tonight, I think, an hour before dawn.”

Agatha was true to her word, but Dimity, of course, ended up coming along. It was too juicy a gossip prospect. While Sophronia was busy looking up Madame Spetuna’s record, Dimity could look up the records of their classmates.

Last time they visited the record room, it had been protected by a soldier mechanical of a viciously viscous inclination. But when they approached the door this time, there was nothing more threatening waiting for them than a folding card table and three small chairs stacked haphazardly against the outside. The furniture looked to have been abandoned. The hallway was eerily empty and free of mechanicals.

The sign was still on the door saying RECORD ROOM—CONTAINING RECORDS OF IMPORT in big gold letters. Underneath, someone had pinned an embroidery sample that read DANGER, MISINTERPRETATION HAZARD. The two girls used every door exam in their repertoire, and there seemed to be no trap. Nevertheless, Sophronia picked the locks with a slow, steady caution that tried even Dimity’s patience.

Sophronia could take her time under some circumstances, it appeared.

They swung the door open but did not enter immediately, peering inside from a body length away, to be safe.

The room was entirely unchanged. Machines and rotary belts ran along the walls and filled the corners. Thousands of records dangled above, clipped to conveyors mounted on the ceiling, like laundry hanging from a clothesline. The three desks, accompanied by leather seats, oil lamps, and writing pads, stood in exactly the same place they had last time. This was more disturbing than an army of soldier mechanical guards. It made no sense that after the room had been broken into, the teachers would respond by removing all security entirely.

Sophronia entered first. Dimity followed. They moved slowly, hands held cupped forward and down, in the position of modesty. Their backs were straight, their posture pristine. They were model examples of Geraldine’s training—those hands were held in readiness, able to delve quickly into any one of a number of hidden pockets, to release wrist holsters, or to grab items dangling from chatelaines. The posture was one of anticipation, ready to move in any direction at the slightest provocation.

Sophronia’s instinct was to fire the obstructor or draw her bladed fan.

Dimity had taken recently to a pearl-handled muff-pistol. Not precisely deadly but, as she put it, terribly cute. It was half out of its holster as she took one more dainty step into the room.

Nothing happened. All the machinery remained still and silent, the steam supply asleep along with the boilers down below. It would be loud to activate, but there was no other way to get at the right record. It had taken them some twenty minutes to get to the record room, using the quickest routes and the obstructor. Sophronia guessed the teachers would take about the same to catch them once the noise started.