“Is there something you need?” Mirriam asked.

Karigan slowly turned round. Of course Mirriam would discover her in the hall. Where else would she possibly be? “No,” she replied. “On my way to the privy.”

“I trust you remember where it is?”

Karigan nodded.

“Good. I shall await you here.”

“Damnation,” Karigan muttered to herself when she entered the privy and shut the door. This was much worse than her days as a schoolgirl in Selium, where it seemed every adult had been peering over her shoulder. She couldn’t even enjoy the emergence of the fish spout from the wall when she pulled the lever, knowing Mirriam awaited her outside. When she finished, she was duly escorted back to her room.

Once more ensconced in bed, she picked through the books again. This time a piece of paper that appeared to be torn from a larger sheet slipped out of one of the books. It was filled with type and a couple of pictures. It was entitled, “Excavations of the Old City,” and in the top etching appeared the profile of “Professor Bryce Lowell Josston, Licensed Practitioner of Archeology.”

Professor Josston of Mill City, Known for His Studies of Ancient Sea King Relics, Has Turned His Erudite Attentions to His Own Neighborhood.

“The ruins of the Old City have always captivated my imagination as I grew up beneath their brooding visage,” the professor said. “And now I have been given permission to excavate in the ruins to seek further links to the legacy of the first Sea Kings.”

The professor is a scion of a Preferred Family that made its fortune in the manufacture of cotton textiles. It is said he has eschewed industry in favor of scholarly pursuits and sold his majority interest in the Josston Mills. The Imperial Grant to Excavate, the professor believes, will endow him with a lifetime of potential discoveries.

“There is nothing better to me than learning about how those of the past lived,” he said.

Professor Josston joins several others in pursuit of artifacts on the Emperor’s behalf, including the notable Doctor Ezra Stirling Silk, Special Consul to the Emperor on Antiquities and True History, who has conducted remarkable excavations along the east coast and in the Northern Sea Archipelago.

• • •

The second etching illustrated a broad knife with an entwined pair of dragons forming the hilt. The caption read, Bronze knife believed to be Sea King relic, unearthed by Professor Josston in the Bealing Harbor dig.

Bealing Harbor was in Hillander Province, or what used to be Hillander. To Karigan, the sea kings were but a curiosity of far ancient times, lost in the shadows preceding the Black Ages. She knew little of them except that they’d been violent marauders, pillaging and battling the tribal people who had roamed the region that she knew as Sacoridia. They had subdued the people and ruled for scores of years, especially along the coast. Likely their blood still ran through the veins of many Sacoridians. The sea kings had left abruptly, just simply got up and left, sailing their fleets of ships east. If there was any reason for their sudden departure, it was lost to time.

In any case, it appeared the sea kings were an approved topic of history, perhaps because it was so distant as to be deemed harmless. She wondered if the clipping had been slipped to her purposely, and if so, by whom? Why not just hand it to her? She shook out all of the books, but no other loose papers fell out.

Probably just as well. She’d had enough mysteries and revelations for one day. As the light in her room waned, the bells clanged a final time, and Karigan imagined workers filing out of the mills, weary and relieved another day had finished. Where did they go? If they were slaves, she could not expect they’d be returning to very comfortable accommodations.

My father managed to make his fortune in textiles, she thought, even though his suppliers did not rely on slave labor.

If Professor Josston’s family had made its fortune with cotton mills, she had to assume slaves were involved. The professor’s apparent removal from the business, and his rescue of Lorine, softened her harsh assessment of him. But he was obviously very well off and had profited from slave labor. She wondered what life was like for other people who were not the scions of Preferred families.

The door creaked open and Mirriam strode in, the last of day’s light glancing on the monocle hanging from her neck.

“You aren’t going to read in the dark, are you?” she demanded. She bustled over to Karigan’s bedside table where a globe sat on a bronze pedestal. She twisted a key in its base and at once the globe filled with a bright, steady light.

“Like magic,” Karigan murmured.

“There is no magic in this world, young lady,” Mirriam said, “but modern wonders gleaned from the ingenuity of men.”

To Karigan’s chagrin, there was truth in the housekeeper’s words about the magic. “Is it whale oil?” she asked.

Mirriam laughed. “Now where are we going to find a whale to make oil? Not enough of them left to supply the needs of the city, much less the empire. It’s phosphorene that gives off the light. Surely they weren’t still using candles in the asylum . . . ?”

Karigan swallowed, not wanting to reveal just how ignorant she truly was, but she had little choice. “How do you extinguish the light?”

Mirriam muttered something to herself in a tone of disbelief and then added, not without pity, “I am shocked the Goodgraves put you in such an institution lacking modern amenities. Why, it’s barbaric! No wonder the professor brought you here. Now watch.” Mirriam simply turned the key in the opposite direction and the room darkened.