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airships hovered, throwing broad shadows upon the moored ships below. These ships dotted the harbor where Queen Cleopatra’s palace had once stood, and while the lighthouse that rose at the harbor’s mouth was not original, Eleanor had no trouble imagining it to be. She pictured the ancient library and light, didn’t even have to close her eyes to visualize the way the palace had looked so near the waters, brightened by torchlight every evening.
    “Never,” she admitted, and perhaps this explained the way she drank the view in. She looked at Alexandria with hopeful eyes, wondering if she might make it her own. A place uncontaminated by her parents’ wishes and footsteps, a city that was not tied to her mother’s disappearance into the past.
    “Never,” Mallory echoed, unable to mask the surprise in his voice.
    He was a difficult one to surprise and Eleanor took a little pride in the fact that she had done so now, even over so small a matter. “My parents and I passed through Alexandria, but I’ve never been here as an adult. It was always ever Cairo, Giza, points further south, because that’s what drew my mother’s interest.”
    Now, Alexandria drew hers.
    The
Jackal
, under the steady command of the ever-conversational Agent Gin, found a vacant slot in the airborne yards above the Alexandrian harbor. They disembarked upon the platforms that for Eleanor called to mind the lattices of the Eiffel Tower. She rather wondered if it was the same for Mallory, given the way his mouth twisted at the sight of it. Auberon preceded them toward the end of the platform to register the ship’s arrival. Beyond this station, Eleanor spied Cleo Barclay, looking a little ill at ease as she awaited them near the elevators to the ground level of the shipyard.
    Eleanor was eager to have the opportunity to work with her again. Given that Cleo had overseen the care of her grandmother’s mummy all these years, Eleanor cherished the friendship they were fostering. On the surface, it was a simple thing; the mummy being item kept in storage, one Cleo had not been allowed to examine. But for Eleanor it went deeper. While Cleo had pushed when it had been necessary for Eleanor to admit uncomfortable truths, Cleo had also shown an understanding that Eleanor would not soon forget.
    She stepped away from Mallory and Auberon, to move through a variety of passengers, dragomen, captains, and cargo that maneuvered about the platform. Through the metal grates, she could see straight down into the harbor waters far below. Cleo looked less at ease than Eleanor felt, holding herself rigidly straight, her own linen duster neatly pressed, revealing only the hem of her black dress beneath. The humidity was having its way with her black hair, fluffing the curls into a cloud around her shining brown face. Eleanor wondered if the tension in Cleo had to do with the setting and a general fear of heights—Cleo had never possessed such before—or the gentlemen who remained busy registering
The
Jackal
for its stay in the yard.
    “Egypt does agree with you,” Cleo said as she approached, and the two embraced as if sisters, not mere friends who had only met two months prior.
    “And you.” Eleanor kissed Cleo’s cheek and pressed a small wood box into Cleo’s mechanical hands. The hands, made of copper and gold and other fine metalwork, grasped the box perfectly despite its delicate nature, cogs and gears adjusting to the size of the box to leave not a single breath between metal and wood.
    “You did not have to bring me anything,” Cleo said, but the smile that split her mouth said she was pleased indeed.
    “Oh, but I did,” Eleanor said, and nodded to the box. “Go on. Before they finish with the registrar.”
    Cleo slid a metal finger beneath the simple gold latch; the box opened to reveal an interior lined in violet velvet. Nestled within the velvet walls was a small ceramic inkwell. Cleo drew it out and laughed softly at the sight of it; it