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several silver charms, a deck of tarot cards, and a bronze gyroscope, but no matches.
    I pulled out the map and looked closely at the sixth point for any hints. Seated between the four teardrop towers, the keep was marked with a simple pair of spectacles not unlike those Anaximander had been wearing back at the shop. Perhaps they were a warning that we would scarcely be able to see a thing inside. A nervous prickle crept up my neck. Something about the castle felt wrong.
    Jackaby stepped up behind me.
    “Any mystical insights?” I asked.
    “I ’ ve told you before,” he said, peering around, “what I do is not mysticism; it is observation and analysis.”
    “Right. Have you observed or analyzed anything helpful?”
    “The air is anathematic, laden with an aura of untold danger.”
    “Untold danger. Charming. That seems to be the unifying theme of today ’ s outing. ”
    “Left. We are meant to go to the left.” Jackaby stepped through the doorway. “Coming?”
    I peered into the inky darkness, trying to shake the uneasiness creeping over me. “What do you suppose the water was for?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “To turn some wheel that ’ s long since rotted away, perhaps—or weigh down a dumbwaiter whose chain rusted through half a century ago. Maybe that was how we were supposed to open the door to the keep, but the termites got to it before we did. Nothing in this place is really as functional as it once was, I’m afraid.”
    I took one last glance at the tall watchtowers looming above us. Their bricks were sun-bleached and crawling with ivy. The useless cannons jutted out of the side like broken limbs on a long-dead fir tree. Warning bells rattled in my head.
    “Jackaby, wait . . . ,” I began, but he had already vanished into the dark hallway.
    I trod inward cautiously, keeping close to the wall as the light fell away behind me. The curving hallway was nearly pitch black. “Jackaby!”
    “Just ahead of you, Rook,” came my employer’s voice from a few yards in. “There’s another door here.” I heard the rattle of a knob and then a click. As I hurried to catch up, Jackaby gave the door a push, and a shower of sparks lit the black ceiling above him, followed by a muffled hiss. One by one, the dusty torches sputtered to life. Some flared brightly as flames played amid shrouds of cobwebs, dying down quickly to a steady glow.
    Jackaby blinked at the flickering torches. “Well, it looks as though a few things in this place still function! That was a clever bit of work.”
    He stepped through the door. The flickering lights within outlined a wide chamber, empty except for a sturdy writing desk. Jackaby smiled.
    “Jackaby,” I said, “we shouldn’t be in here. This whole castle is backward.”
    “I’ll be quick. How do you suppose they managed it? Steel and flint fitted in the corner of the door, I assume. Then what? Hidden streams of oil within the walls? No, oil would have long since dried. Gunpowder?”
    He began rummaging through the drawers in the old desk. My nerves were already ringing, but something about the word
gunpowder
set them further on edge. There was a bit about gunpowder in the old song, wasn’t there? A verse about pistol charges?
    Jackaby discovered two dusty glass tumblers in the desk and held them up in the lamplight. “That ’ s it,” he said. “Just the glasses. Not even a flask to go with them.”
    My thoughts arranged themselves abruptly. Charges . . . yes, that was right. When Farrell and his men came to ambush the Bold Deceiver in the song, the cornered criminal drew his pistol, but he couldn ’ t fire the charges because . . .
    My eyes widened, “Get out!” I yelled, but my voice was lost in the deafening sound of the first volley of cannon fire hammering into the keep.
    Debris rained down from the ceiling, and behind me a massive section of the stairwell collapsed into the hallway, billowing up a cloud of stale rock dust. My ears were ringing, but I