Circle of Shadows by Imogen Robertson Page B

the desk warily, half-expecting the child to drop the pretence and start laughing at her, and peered down at the paper before the inert little scholar.
    Good afternoon, Mrs Westerman , it read, and welcome to my home .
    ‘You are both magicians, I can barely comprehend it! Are there many machines that write like this?’
    ‘Some. We have made several that draw also. It is a matter only of examining the movements of the hand as it performs the action we wish, forward and back, right and left, then translating it onto our little brass discs.’
    ‘You make it sound easy,’ Harriet said wonderingly, and touched the paper face of the child with a fingertip.
    ‘Not easy no, but in some way simple.’
    Sami approached the mechanism and picked up the sheet to cover it. ‘Adnan is too modest,’ he said. He ruffled the model’s hair affectionately, and just as he dropped the sheet over it there came the sound of a male voice calling outside. ‘Oh, perhaps that is Julius,’ he said, and headed for the door with long strides.
    ‘My apologies, Mrs Westerman,’ Al-Said said, watching him go. ‘Our neighbour is a metalworker called Julius. He and Sami are good friends.’
    The words were only just out of his mouth when Sami returned and handed a folded sheet of paper to Harriet. ‘It was a message for you, Mrs Westerman, from the palace.’
    Harriet took it from him and broke the seal. She felt the smile fall from her lips and her skin whiten. She thrust the note into her pocket. ‘I am afraid I must go at once. I hope to see you both again, gentlemen.’
    ‘Harriet, what is it?’ Rachel asked. ‘Is Daniel well?’
    ‘It is nothing to do with Daniel, dear. If you would stay here and finish your tea, then perhaps the gentlemen may escort you back to the palace.’
    ‘Don’t be foolish, Harry. I am coming with you.’
    ‘Stay here.’ She said it so sharply, Rachel almost shrank away. Without trusting herself to speak further, and with only a nod to the astonished brothers, Harriet hurriedly left the house and started out along the northward path from the village.
    The directions she had received were very clear. Harriet found the Temple of Apollo at the far end of the formal gardens, at the summit of an artificial hill which gave it views back across the expanse of water, hedges and flower gardens to the pink face of the palace itself. It was a smallish, circular domed building, the roof supported by Doric columns. Below them was a wall covered in frescoes of the Muses. She mounted the steps and found herself in its stone interior. A marble bench curved round the low wall, and taking his ease on it, a lazy smile on his lips and surrounded by various gods apparently offering him lyres and laurel wreaths, was Manzerotti. He was as beautiful as ever. She hesitated.
    ‘Mrs Westerman,’ he said, his voice light and high as a dove cooing to its mate, and nodded to his right. On the bench, just out of his reach was an open walnut case with a pair of travelling pistols in it. She did not speak but took a seat next to it and removed one of the guns. It was a beautiful object – walnut grip, full silver mount. It was cold and smooth in her hand. Heavy without being cumbersome, it felt full of its purpose. She glanced up at its owner. It was like him to own something so perfect, so lovingly made and so deadly.
    ‘Are we to fight a duel?’ she said at last. Her voice broke in her throat; it sounded harsh and ugly in her ears.
    He shook his head and looked out across the view away from the palace and towards the great forests of Maulberg swelling and falling over the hills.
    ‘I would not challenge you, madam. There are the guns. Do with them what you will.’
    In her mind, during the three years since she had seen him in triumph on the stage of His Majesty’s Theatre, she had tried to make him ugly. She felt his sins should show in his face: this spy-master, for whoever would pay him, this monster without principle or ideal