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contended with too many forces to permit distraction.
    Elöise had just confessed her love for the opera, despite the difficulty of securing tickets, and was offering an account of a particular favorite from some seasons ago, Les Jardins Glacé , an apparently wandering adventure from the mountains of deepest China. Upon reaching a point of pause where Miss Temple might inquire politely about the music or the scenery, Elöise instead found the young woman's grey eyes fixed on the scrub-filled meadows around them.
    “Celeste?” Elöise ventured, after the silence had taken full root.
    Miss Temple looked at her and flicked up the corners of her mouth in a smile.
    “I am sorry,” she said. “I had a thought.”
    Elöise put away her neglected story of the opera and smiled gamely. “What thought?”
    “Actually several thoughts, or several that make one large thought clustered together—like chairs around a table, don't you know.”
    “I see.”
    “One of those cunning tables one can extend.”
    “What thoughts, Celeste?”
    “I was thinking about killing.”
    “Killing?”
    Miss Temple nodded.
    “I'm sure it is a subject to weigh upon us both,” began Elöise, with a careful air. “We have seen so much of it in so short a time—the killings at Tarr Manor, people hunted through the hallways of Harschmort, the truly savage battle on the rooftop before the airship could fly, and then death after death once we were aloft—and for you an even more difficult and sensitive question, in your unfortunate and foolish and corrupted former fiancé.”
    The cautious deliberacy of her words was mortifying. Miss Temple waved her hands. “No no—it is not that at all! I am occupied with our present business! We are miles away, and it is all my mind can hold—certainly there is no room there for a wolf! If we are to help the Doctor and Chang, who must have become caught up in these same events—”
    “But these recent deaths,” protested Elöise, “we know very little—”
    “We can extrapolate!” cried Miss Temple. “We are not fools! If one has studied dogs, one then knows how to lead a pack of hounds! If we assume the three incidents are part of one tale—”
    “What three incidents?”
    Miss Temple huffed with exasperation. “In the fishing village! The grooms killed in the stable, the fisherman dead in his boat, the Jorgenses in their cabin! By stitching them together we will see whether the resulting narrative reveals the raw hunger of a beast or the calculated actions of a villain. We can then determine where next —”
    “How can we? Not having witnessed the incidents, not having seen the stable or the boat, not knowing how the bodies were disposed—”
    “But you must know! Doctor Svenson must have told you—”
    “But he did not .”
    “We at least know in what order the killings occurred, and at what times.”
    “But we don't. We know only when the bodies were found , Celeste.”
    Miss Temple did not enjoy others referring to her Christian name at whim, and enjoyed it even less as punctuation to a thought she was supposed to find self-evident.
    “Then perhaps you will tell me when that was , Elöise.”
    After a wary glance at their silent driver and another sigh of resignation, Elöise shifted closer to Miss Temple and spoke in a voice barely above a whisper. “The two grooms were discovered first, after the storm. The wind was still quite high, but the rains had eased enough for folk to leave their homes. Several horses were found roaming free. When they were led back to the stable, the doors were found open and the grooms, dead. The Doctor and Chang were both there. I was tending to you, not that I regret being deprived of the sight.”
    “And some horses are still missing.”
    “Apparently, yes.”
    “And there was a hoofprint at the Jorgenses’ cabin, along with the mark of spurs. Did you see the man in the village wearing new boots?”
    “I did not.”
    “ Riding boots. In a fishing