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come to Cornwall with me and ask him?”
    Stuyvesant turned away to survey a not terribly inspiring vista, pretending to consider the offer while in fact he was composing his face. He was badly taken aback by the first honest emotion he’d seen in the man—frankly, he wished he hadn’t seen it.
    What Carstairs had shown Stuyvesant, either inadvertently or on purpose, was clear, raw
pleasure.
The black eyes had sparkled, his heel had nearly danced as it came down on the smoldering tobacco; suddenly, Stuyvesant was as physically aware of the man as he would have been of a dog with bared teeth; he found that he had instinctively half turned to face him rather than have Carstairs at his back.
    “You need me to be there?”
    “If you’re going to pretend to be Captain Grey’s friend when you meet his sister, you ought at least know what he looks like and how he lives. And I can see no reason, once you have met him, why I should not give you further information on him. Some of it may prove useful when you are in conversation with his sister.”
    “You could just tell me now.”
    “Actually,” Carstairs said, sounding very final, “I’d prefer that you meet Captain Grey without, as it were, preconceptions. Afterwards, I will tell you all about him.”
    Stuyvesant couldn’t imagine why Carstairs was so almighty eager to take him to see this Grey. Did the man, unlike everyone else in the city, have nothing better to do than hare off to Cornwall? There was something going on here he wasn’t too sure about, some invisible trip wire in front of his toes.
    Still, it wasn’t like he had a whole lot of other choices on his plate.
    “Okay, if you think we need to go to Cornwall, I’ll go with you. When do we leave?”
    “Ten o’clock tomorrow evening.”
    The instructions that followed made it clear that Carstairs had the trip planned out before they met. Before they parted, Carstairs handed him the case, telling him that it contained a few items about the players in their little drama.
    “One last thing,” he said, his hands still locked on the handle.
    “What’s that?” Stuyvesant asked, fighting the urge to rip the thing out of the man’s hand.
    “His sister. I would request that you make it clear to Captain Grey that his sister is in considerable danger of finding herself enmeshed in a kind of political action that has, hmm, profound consequences. If he cares for her, he must intervene.”
    “I’ll do what I can.”
    Carstairs relinquished his hold on the case, and strolled away into the park.
    Stuyvesant was so eager to see the papers that he walked over to the nearest bench and took out his reading glasses, then and there. He found, however, that
a few items
was distressingly accurate. And those were, for the most part, about Lady Laura Hurleigh and Sarah Grey, with almost nothing about Richard Bunsen. And nothing at all concerning Bennett Grey.
    He folded away his glasses and tucked Carstairs’ case under his arm, making his way back to the library he’d been using that week, wrestling with his thoughts.
    Richard Bunsen, his suspect, was a Red trained in the use of explosives. And beyond the mere fact that he possessed the requisite skills, this was a man who had occupied a distinct niche in the military hierarchy: the tightly knit world of the sappers, who labored out of sight of their compatriots, burrowing in silence through the terrible wet earth, raising their thin props against the suffocating weight overhead. Once their secret tunnel reached enemy lines, the miners themselves would draw back, leaving the field to the demolitions man, to lay his charges and breach the enemy’s defenses from the hidden depths. The demo man worked with the miners, but not only was he an officer, he was also subtly apart, slightly above those of his own rank, in the aristocracy of the trenches. He had proved himself, time and again, as a man with icy resolve, unwavering focus, and the steadiest hands on the