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a bare forty feet away, I heard the whine as he pushed a charge into the breech. The tube of luminiferous aether lying along the long barrel glowed a bright yellow shot through with scarlet phlogiston sparks.
    Hell.
    House guards are always too damn quick off the mark and notoriously suspicious. Seeing me there in what had obviously been a military greatcoat was enough to get this one on edge. It didn’t matter that I had no ill intent toward the House member in the coffeehouse, even if I knew who it was. The guard had too light a finger on the trigger, and if I moved a step, all the innocence in the world wouldn’t stop him firing. At this range he couldn’t miss, and it’s a sad day when a man has to hope the guard had his harquebus set for a neural disruptor pulse. A few minutes of pain and paralysis were infinitely preferable to being hit by phlogiston particles—human candles were a commodity best left to the Ancient Romans.
    So I squared back my shoulders and lifted both arms to chest level, turning my empty hands palm up.
    Harmless. No threat. Don’t care about your House. Couldn’t give a damn about it, actually. No threat.
    For a moment, we stared at each other, until the guard nodded. For all that, the man kept the harquebus at the ready and took a step backward, blocking the doorway completely. His lips moved, although I couldn’t make out what he was saying. He might have been speaking to his master, or…. No. He’d been talking into a Marconi communicator. The lights outside the coffeehouse glinted on the earpiece as he turned his head.
    He had called up reinforcements. An autophaeton, defying the anti-traffic laws, turned into the bottom of Museum Street from New Oxford Street at speed. Typical arrogance, that. The Houses always bent and twisted the laws to suit them. The phaeton, armor plated and with the driver a mere shape behind the shielded glass of the cabin, halted outside the coffeehouse with such sharpness it bobbed on the high-perch suspensors holding the body above the huge wheels. It blocked my view, and I caught only a glimpse of whoever was in the guard’s charge as they scrambled into the phaeton. Well, I caught a glimpse of a pair of boots. An instant later and the phaeton was moving again, lurching off with a burst of vapor and the stink of burning tar. It turned left into Great Russell Street and headed for Tottenham Court Road. The harquebus was probably trained on me until the autophaeton was out of sight.
    I dropped my hands and reconsidered the idea of spirituous liquors.
    “He’s something big at the museum, and his man there was likely a bit wary of you, seein’ as you’re a stranger,” remarked a voice behind me, from inside the Tavern. The man laughed and jerked a head toward the inside. “Which is right stupid, since I got a place full of visitors from all over the Imperium. The museum draws ’em like wasps to a honey pot. Can’t see why. Load of old stuff in there and most of it’s broken.”
    I let out a breath in a silent sigh. “Londinium’s full of visitors from all over the world, not merely from the Imperium.”
    “None of the other bits are British. They don’t count. Drink, sir? I got a really nice bottle of daffy here as would suit a gentleman of your stamp.”
    “Is unthinking patriotism more appalling than drinking gin at this early hour?” I matched the publican grin for grin. “Not now, thank you. Do you know who it was?” I had the vague idea of making a complaint to someone. If I could think of anyone to complain to.
    The publican shrugged. “One of them big Houses. He don’t come in here.”
    All the more reason for me to patronize the Tavern, then. “Thank you. I’ll be back to taste your best bitter later in the day, I promise.”
    “Lookin’ forward to it, sir.” The publican touched his forehead in lieu of a nonexistent hat and faded back into the pub.
    I turned my attention to the coffeehouse.
    It looked to be the right sort of