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case he couldn’t get free, or the railroad did stop running, he didn’t want Master Henri to have been waiting for him instead of investigating on his own.
    When Lord Darcy was happy with the reply, he made a clean copy, then folded it and sealed it with his signet, and called the armsman back into the room. “Tell Prefect Henri that I will look forward to working with him, if I can get away,” he said, handing the paper to the armsman.
    Ciardi came to the door as the armsman was leaving. “Lord Peter Whiss to see you, Your Lordship,” he said.
    “Lord Peter? At midday? How strange. What does he want?” Lord Darcy asked.
    “He didn’t say,” Ciardi replied. “And it is well past midday, my lord. It is almost four o’clock.”
    “So it is,” Lord Darcy agreed. “Show His Lordship in, please, Ciardi.” He stood up and slipped into his jacket, which had been hanging over the back of his chair.
    “Sorry to bother you, Lord Darcy,” Lord Peter said, barely sticking his head around the door. “But, much as I regret it, I must drag you away from all this.”
    “If you must,” Lord Darcy said, buttoning his jacket and adjusting the lace cuffs of his shirt. “Are we going outdoors? No? Good, then I won’t need my rain cape or overboots. Lead the way!”
    A minute later they were bustling together down the long castle corridor. “You are the last of the invited guests to be notified,” Lord Peter explained. “And we’re running a few minutes late, as it took me longer than expected to locate His Grace the Archbishop. I must say, Darcy, that you are surprisingly uninquisitive for a man who has just been suddenly pulled away from his work. I expected at least a couple of questions, if not an argument.”
    “You said that you must drag me away,” Lord Darcy pointed out. “I took you at your word. You are not frivolous with language.”
    “That is so,” Lord Peter admitted. “These days I will admit I seldom feel frivolous about anything.” He stopped at the Map Room door, which, Lord Darcy noted, had an armed guard from the King’s Own standing at attention beside it. “Well, here we are. After you, my lord.”
    Lord Darcy entered the Map Room ahead of Lord Peter and greeted the five people already there: His Grace Archbishop Maximilian of Paris; His Highness Duke Richard of Normandy, the King’s brother; Master Sir Darryl Longuert, the Wizard Laureate of England; His Lordship the Marquis Sherrinford, the King’s Equerry; and Goodman Harbleury, the Marquis Sherrinford’s amanuensis and shadow.
    “Good day, Lord Darcy,” Marquis Sherrinford said. “Please sit down, and we’ll begin.”
    The Map Room, a part of the Royal Archives, was a fourteen-by-twenty- foot room, equipped, as its name indicated, to store, display, and examine maps. The rear wall was one vast walnut cabinet of long, wide, flat drawers for storing unfolded maps. Along the wall to the right of that, below the high-set windows, were rows of oblong bins, crafted of the same wood, for storing rolled-up maps. The front wall contained devices for hanging maps for study, and the large, walnut table that dominated the room was inlaid with a complex set of brass fittings that would enable one to hold down, examine, magnify, or pantographically duplicate or enlarge a map.
    Lord Darcy dropped into the nearest straight-back walnut chair and rested his hands on the table. He had spent many hours in this room during the years he was Chief Investigator for the Duke of Normandy, examining and committing to memory the plans of the kingdom’s major castles and many of the minor ones. It was a knowledge that had proven useful more than once.
    Marquis Sherrinford pushed himself out of his chair. “Thank your lordships all for coming,” he said. “I’ll be as brief as possible, as I know you all have important duties that you put aside to come here.”
    “And without a word of explanation too,” Duke Richard said. “It is a mark of the