Chapter One

Above London, early June 1838

The gas flames hissed like a malevolent adder as Jimmy Porto, the hot air balloon’s pilot, pushed more gas into the envelope above us. I looked up and up to the interior of the dull gray silk. Cool dawn air caressed my cheeks. I marveled that no wind blew my blonde braids where they dangled down my back. But then, we moved at the same speed as the gentle wind, rather than standing still on the ground, defying it.

“Thank you again, Jimmy, for bringing me up today,” I said.

“No problem, Miz Elise.” He tugged the brim of his cap once. “We owe you.”

Yes, indeed the Romany had owed me. I thought they’d repaid me a hundred times over. But the Rom… carried this debt through several lifetimes. One lifetime for each of the lives I had saved back in southern France in 1817.

He met my gaze in gratitude, something Romany men did not do with a Gorgí female, or even one of their own females unless she was a wife, daughter, or a sister.

“I know what it is to have angry, violently angry men on my trail. I could do nothing less.”

I’d also seen more than enough needless death. The potential demise of an entire clan had fueled a drunken Viscompt’s lust for unnatural power. “I had to warn you. Not one of you would be left alive if I didn’t.”

“That’s a risk you didn’t have to take.”

Yes, I did. For reasons I’d not tell him. “Still I thank you for letting me observe from your balloon this morning.”

Up here, one thousand feet above civilization, the air was fresh and crisp; the golden light of early morning clear and sharp. None of the smells of too many people crowded into too small a space penetrated my sensitized nose. The smoke of tens of thousands of coal fires lay like a pall over the rooftops with only an occasional church spire rising toward heaven, giving a hopeful pathway for all the prayers of people trapped below.

Steam-powered engines lightened the burdens of life, giving us many advances in transportation, communication, and household appliances. But the burning coal needed to convert ordinary water into steam left behind a filthy residue.

Below us, the city sprawled in unruly lines and clumps, blurred by smoke. The dome of St. Paul’s stood out from the jumble of London, one of a few distinctive landmarks. But once I’d anchored my sense of direction in the eternal symbol of solidity, permanence, and hope, my eyes pushed aside the pall and found other familiar places. Tower Bridge, Westminster, Piccadilly Circus. The winds pushed us west and north, following the Thames, the heart vein of transportation and commerce of southern England.

“There be Windsor, Miz Elise,” Jimmy pointed upriver. Further than I wanted to go.

I winced at his use of my original name. Jimmy had known me too long. But he was useful as a pilot when I needed one, as a friend and go-between with his family of Romany spread across the entire island and half the continent.

Since Miss Ada Byron had married Sir William Lovelace, I’d transformed myself into a new personality (not with Lord Byron’s dreaded transference engine, merely a new name, a new attitude, and a new wardrobe). No more the drab respectful governess. By day, I was Madame Magdala, the owner of a respectable coffee shop and news shop. Evenings often found me hostessing a controversial salon. I invited artists, poets, opera singers, politicians, and dilettantes.

Jimmy’s people had helped me protect Miss Ada many times over the last decade—more of the Rom’s perceived debt to me, which they had extended to my pupil. They also kept me apprised of necromancers taking up residence in ruined castles, and scientists moving their experiments away from the ethical and moral strictures of Oxford and Cambridge.

“Deploy the aerolons, Jimmy. I need to circle the city,” I said.

“Be prettier out here,” he replied, not moving his hand to the brass lever near the ring joining the firebox to the envelope. He drew in a long breath of clear country air smelling of freshly tilled fields, trees leafing out, and meadow flowers. I mimicked his inhalation and appreciated why he wanted to linger, drifting aimlessly with the breeze.

“This is important, Jimmy. I love the green land as much as you do. I love the freedom of the roving life that you have transferred to roaming the skies. But I needed to see the patterns of movement throughout the city. I had heard rumors, possibly of violence at the queen’s coronation. My visions confirmed them. I needed to know which malevolent force drove those rumors. Or if my visions failed me.”

We spoke in Romany. Most of Jimmy’s country accent disappeared in his native language. He even spoke correctly … mostly.

“Aye, Miss Elise. I feels it too. Something wicked stirs the air and the people. I’ll get you as low as I dare.” He flashed me a cheeky grin as he engaged the lever that sent semi-rigid folds of silk outward and tacked back to the city, much as a sailboat would move against the wind. “Used fog gray for the envelope just so we’d stay invisible a bit longer.” A true Romany at heart, flamboyant and audacious when needed, equally quiet and hidden when skirting the law and distrustful Gorgí.

He really was attractive in his slender, olive skinned, and dark-eyed way. Alas he was much too young for me and though his tribe respected me for my visions, and thanked me for my help, I was Gorgí, an outsider, forbidden to touch.

“Romany know how to hide.” I returned his grin, grateful for the lessons they’d taught me.

We drifted back over the city, taking in more of the dark, poverty-stricken jungle of Southwark, south of the river. Evil could hide in the open streets and opulent houses on the north side just as easily as the tenements. Armed military men were reluctant to enter Southwark. Criminals lived openly there, protected by neighbors who closed in on themselves like any impoverished ghetto. Military might was put to better use protecting our new queen, young and beautiful Victoria. I had my own ways of making sure her upcoming coronation occurred on time and without the blemish of an assassination attempt.

It would be an attempt only. My enemies would use it as a diversion for other nefarious activities.

“There, Jimmy!” I pointed to a dark object hovering in the lee of St. Paul’s.

Another balloon. Black envelope, black basket, seemingly empty.

“Hovers, it does,” Jimmy said quietly on a long exhale. “Balloons need to move, flow with the air which is never still.”

I dropped a single magnifier over my flying goggles. The black basket jumped into sharper detail. Not a lot of room between the rim and the firebox.

Then a long telescope snaked out over the edge and pointed down. Whoever was in there looked at individuals, not large patterns.

“Pointing that thing toward Trafalgar Square, they be,” Jimmy muttered.

His young eyes were better than mine. I hated admitting that I needed spectacles.

“What is there? Besides a monument to a beloved but fallen admiral and his mighty victory over the French.”

A memorial to the dead. Necromancers needed death to fuel their magic.

And then the light patterns shifted and I spotted the glint of sunlight on a brass circular opening in the bottom corner of the basket. A musket barrel? Or a small cannon? Aimed directly at Westminster Abbey where the coronation would take place in a matter of three weeks.

We descended rapidly, away from that black monster.