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Snatching Hodges’s carbine from next to the man’s fallen body, Peregrine spun and leveled it at the duke’s face. “Step. Away. Step away from the door,” he intoned as Chandros lifted his empty hands slightly as if in surrender.

The duke cocked his head at him, a mocking smile hovering on his lips. “Do you think that it matters if you point that weapon at me? Dead is dead, Fitzroy, whether it comes by fire or bullet.”

Perhaps you should shoot him , his mother suggested.

And put more blood on his hands. Not that he was a stranger, anymore, to ending someone’s life.

But this felt different. This was different, and he knew it—staring an unarmed man in the face while he pulled the trigger.

Even if that man was standing between him and the path out, planning to hold him and Hodges here until the fire made it impossible to escape.

Chandros knew it too.

You should know better. Your emotions are why you’re going to burn in the first place.

Either way, Chandros and his mother thought they would win this fight. He would continue his slow soul-death, or he would die by their hands. Perhaps in this very building.

But Peregrine was growing mighty tired of people who wished to control him. If others snared him by what they thought were his weaknesses, if they thought that they held a tame animal on the end of their leash… he was prepared to show them how very wrong they were.

If he was damned for this, so be it. Holding Chandros’s eyes, he pulled the trigger.

Peregrine had only the briefest satisfaction at the surprise that bloomed on the duke’s face. Whether he truly intended to die here or not, clearly he had thought Peregrine didn’t have the balls to shoot him.

But he didn’t linger on the feeling to gloat. Even before Chandros began to fall, Peregrine was turning, dropping to one knee as he yanked his unconscious driver across his shoulders and spun for the door.

The duke was still alive, though choking—bloody foam at his lips.

Peregrine didn’t slow to give him mercy.

He could feel the hungry fire’s rising heat, Hell reaching up to claim him for his myriad sins.

But he was not ready to cede to the flame.

He ran for the stair, freeing an arm to protect his eyes against the searing blaze of light.

As he drew up to the edge of the mezzanine, he could see the way the cracks of the boards below his feet began to glow.

The flames licked around the edge of the stairs in the middle, blackening a growing circle.

The press below had already vanished behind a wall of rising smoke, and the first support beam beneath the gallery was glowing at its joints.

“Lord Fitzroy!” the corporal shouted, pointing at one end of the stairs. “Stick to the wall!” The man had tied his neckcloth around his face and was trying to clear a path for him, dumping sand on the fire where it ate at the stairs.

Holding Hodges as he was, Peregrine couldn’t cover his face against the choking smoke, and it began to make him cough. Breathing as shallowly as he could, he began to descend the burning stairs, feeling the fabric of his clothes grow hot. He hissed against the singe of it.

And as Peregrine crossed the half-eaten halfway mark safely, where the stairs had groaned beneath his weight, the corporal judged it safe enough to charge forwards, taking Hodges’s body.

He shouted at one of the others, who threw his shoulder beneath Peregrine’s arm, hurrying him to the exit and freer air.

The eastern sky was turning a lighter shade. Dawn was near, and the neighbourhood had already begun to respond to the threat of the burning building. All four of them were dragged further away as the bucket brigade fought to contain the damage to the single building before it could spread .

The trooper, Lucas, knelt beside them, wide-eyed and blackened with soot, patting out a place where Peregrine’s sleeve smoked. And then he checked Hodges. “He’s still breathing, thanks to you, you madman. You nearly killed yourself to save him.”

The man’s voice was awed, so Peregrine focused on his own breathing instead of taking offense.

“A real hard case, this one,” Lucas continued. “But he’s got a lump on his skull.”

“He’s hard-headed, too,” Peregrine coughed, and the trooper laughed.

“Well then, I reckon he’ll come around.”

The corporal and the others went back to help the brigade. Peregrine leaned against a brick wall and waited beside Hodges’s unconscious form in the damp chill of London’s morning, watching the plume of smoke rise over the city. Chandros’s pyre.

“Fitzroy?”

Peregrine jerked, realising that in his exhaustion, he had fallen into a doze. Sidmouth and Ravenscroft were standing a few steps away. Then he looked over at Hodges, finding the man awake and sitting against the wall beside him. Though he looked nearly as terrible as Perry felt.

“Ah. You’re not dead, then. Just doing your best impression,” Ravenscroft deadpanned. “You should really expire somewhere less public.”

“Call off your dogs, Ravenscroft,” Sidmouth told the dandy. “Helping save England has surely earned him a few minutes’ respite to die in peace.”

“The exchequer bills?” Peregrine asked them, and Sidmouth nodded.

“We managed to catch that end of things, thanks to that list. What happened with Duke Chandros?”

Peregrine dragged himself to his feet, and beside him, Hodges also stood, looking steady despite the soot and blood. Thank God for small favours. “He chose to die in the fire. A martyr for my mother’s causes.”

“Unfortunate,” Sidmouth said. “Although at least we will be able to restore confidence with the news that the mastermind behind the schemes is dead.”

“And that’s exactly what he wanted,” Peregrine said, feeling discouraged. “He and Goldbourne erased my mother’s part in everything, from this conspiracy all the way down to her lowest gambling hell and smuggling operation. I lost the little proof that remained of everything she has ever done.”

“But there’s your word, still. And Edmunds,” Hodges reminded him.

And Charity?—

That he had survived was a miracle within itself. He hardly dared to hope that she and Selina were safe. He had to get back to them.

“What time is it?” Peregrine asked the magpie, no longer willing to spare thoughts for the dead and the things that could not be changed. Not when now his greatest concern was for Charity and the outcome of her quest to save Lady Normanby.

“Is stupid early not enough of an answer, Fitzroy?” Ravenscroft dug around in his pocket for a watch. “It is approaching six. Wait, where are you going? We will have to discuss what to do next—the Crown?—”

Peregrine didn’t bother turning around, setting a course for the place that he and Hodges left their horses. “Do let me know how those conversations go. I have other important business to attend.”