Scoundrel:. Zoe Archer
for headstones. There is nothing of what some might call value. Only ruins, most of them buried beneath the rocky soil.” With another wave of her hand, the scroll rolled up and replaced itself on the table.
Bennett rubbed his chin thoughtfully, considering this. “So the Heirs have found something on Delos, something they need translated. An Oracle.”
“It is the ‘who’ that we do not know.”
“Harcourt’s brother, perhaps,” Bennett mused.
“We shall see. I’ve informants on the street to learn where the Heirs are staying whilst in Athens. I am hoping that will help us gather more intelligence.”
“You couldn’t be more intelligent, my dear Pallas.”
Athena dismissed Bennett’s easy compliment with a wave of her hand. Yes, they knew each other quite well, enough to render his blandishments nothing more than pretty coins thrown from an abundant pocket. “Even though there is no Blade more capable than you for deciphering and decoding”—she accepted his slight bow of gratitude with a regal nod—“it is very likely that you and I will be unable to read these ruins, whatever they are. You know nearly every code that has been created, but—”
“But I’ve only the typical Englishman’s knowledge of language. Latin, Greek, and French.” He smiled. “Such a wastrel.”
“None worse,” Athena agreed. “Perhaps we can follow the Heirs at a safe distance as they pursue the Source, let them do the work for us.”
Bennett paced. His legs were long, and the study was not a large room, so he watched his reflection as he caromed from bookshelf to window and back again.
“I hate the idea of trailing after them like guppies in the wake of a whale,” he said. “We should take charge of the situation. God knows what they’re after, but whatever it is, once they get their hands on it, hell’s going to break loose.”
“But what can we do?” Athena asked.
“Find the ruins before they do, translate them ourselves. There isn’t much time.”
“Even if we got to the ruins before they did, we haven’t our own linguistic expert to translate them.”
“I’ll find a way.”
She rolled her eyes. “Spoken like a man. Plow on ahead and damn the details. I need specifics, Bennett.”
It was his turn to be exasperated. “You’re the most circumspect witch I’ve ever met.”
“All the impulsive ones are dead.”
A quiet tap on the study door broke the discussion. At Athena’s word, the door opened. Standing there was her mother. A most striking woman, as her daughter was. Generations of strong-featured, genteel women who could slay a man with a look.
“Ah, Athena the Greater,” Bennett said, coming forward and taking her cool hands. He kissed her proffered cheek, her skin olive marble. “Your daughter’s trying to convince me I’m too impetuous.”
“Athena the Lesser can be overly cautious,” her mother sighed. “It seems she did not inherit the hot blood of her foremothers.”
“Simply because I do not advocate recklessly stumbling around Delos without a plan does not mean I am overly cautious, Mother,” Athena ground out.
“And you rein in your powers,” Athena the Greater continued. “It is as if you fear them.”
“I do not fear them,” her daughter said through gritted teeth. “But I will not cede control to anything or,” she added pointedly, “anyone.”
Her mother started to speak, but Bennett decided it would be prudent to avoid a familial contretemps, which could last well into the small hours of the following morning. He had a feeling their squabble would be heard throughout the house, disrupting his sleep. Lord knew Bennett and his mother could argue until neither had a voice. Their arguments always centered around her favorite topic, which was also his least favorite: when he planned on marrying. There was something about mothers that brought out the petulant child in everyone, no matter one’s age or station. How depressing.
“Much as I revel in your exquisite beauty, Athena the Greater,” he interrupted, “was there something you wanted?”
Mother and daughter broke their loving glare. “Indeed, yes. One of the informants is here.” She turned to the door and motioned someone in. A barefoot boy, somewhere around ten years old, in clean but threadbare clothing. The child seemed a little awed to be in the presence of not one, but two Galanos women, torn between terror and adoration. Bennett well understood the feeling.
“What is it, Yannis?” Athena the Lesser asked.
It took a moment for the boy to find his voice. “The Hotel Andromeda,” he gulped. “That is where the Englishmen are staying. And they leave Athens tomorrow.”
The witches looked pleased, a sentiment Bennett shared. “Very good, Yannis,” Athena the Greater said. She took a two-drachma coin from a small beaded purse at her waist and placed it in the boy’s hand. His eyes widened at the sight, but he recovered himself enough to pocket the coin quickly. At a nod from Athena the Greater, the boy dashed from the room, his bare feet slapping the tiled floor.
Bennett began to follow before Athena the Lesser’s voice stopped him. “Going to the hotel?”
He turned to face her. “As you said, I’ll grab us more information.”
“And then?”
“And then, we’ll know what we’re up against.” He sent Athena and her mother a wink. “Don’t wait up.”
“I’m going out to the garden before dinner,” London said to her father as they sat in the hotel parlor. People were gathering in their evening dress for aperitifs, murmuring pleasantries in English. London had dressed for dinner as well, in a low-shouldered Worth gown of violet gauze over cream satin, her hair pinned up and adorned with silk flowers. She had, in fact, worn that same toilette when having dinner at her parents’ house a week before she and her father left for Greece. She had known everyone at the table. Wearing that same gown now, everything in the hotel so proper and ordinary, London half-believed she was back in England rather than thousands of miles from home. “The night is quite lovely and warm. It would be a shame to waste our final evening in Athens inside.”
Her father glanced up from a handful of correspondence. His dark hair and mustache had turned silver over the course of her lifetime, but his eyes were as clear and cutting as ever as he moved his attention from his letters to her. She often thought that Joseph Edgeworth had been born clutching sheaves of letters and reports, for she almost never saw him without bundles of paper in his hands. When she was small, she had asked her father what all those letters meant, why men were constantly writing to him and petitioning him and showing up at his study at all hours with yet more sheaves of paper. He had said he was a very important man of government business and society, which meant others came to him often for direction. When she asked what he did for the government, he patted her on the head and told her to play with her dolls in the nursery, for such things were not the polite affairs of young ladies.
For years, that was all she knew of her father and brother’s work—that they, and the men of their circle, did valuable work on behalf of their nation’s government. Father refused to tell her more, and Jonas was a dutiful son, keeping silent on that point, at least. Mother was no help, either, insisting that she was just as uninformed as London in the matter, but it was for the best, as her only concern was the home, not what went on past the gate of their house or in the halls of power. And when London asked the wives and daughters of her father’s associates, they all said the same thing. Was it not indelicate, they asked, for a woman to ask such questions, to embroil herself in the activities of men?
As a new bride, she waited, seeking the right moment to ask her husband. She had hoped the shared intimacies of the bedroom might form a bond of closeness between her and Lawrence. But