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She reached up and took the comb from her hair, so her black locks tumbled to her shoulders. “Is it important?”
    Crecy shrugged. “I came only to wish you a happy birthday.”
    Adrienne blinked in surprise, then smiled. “It is, isn’t it? I had forgotten. I’m—what? — I’m thirty-two today.”
    “Not that you look a day of it.”
    “How courteous of you. I feel it, though.”
    “Youngster,” Crecy muttered. “Here. Do something with this.” She held out a small package.
    “Crecy! What’s this nonsense?”
    “Just take it, please, and no hysterical protestations.”
    Adrienne took the small, linen-wrapped package and unwrapped it, then stared at the contents with a surprise that left her speechless. Her throat tightened.
    “This—this is the first treatise I ever wrote, when I was eighteen.”
    “Indeed, ”Monsieur La Monte.“ ”
    “They would not publish it under a woman’s name,” Adrienne murmured.
    “Where on earth did you find this?”
    “In the library in Saint Petersburg, of course.”

    THE SHADOWS OF GOD
    “But why?”
    Crecy stepped near and looked at her earnestly. “To remind you, Adrienne, of who you are.”
    A shiver went through Adrienne, head to foot, and a tear threatened in the corner of her eye. “Veronique!” She sighed. “I needed that more than any present I could imagine. How do you always know?”
    “I don’t. I wish I knew more often. I was lucky, this time.”
    “Well, thank you.” She opened the book and thumbed through the pages, smiling at sentences she had forgotten even writing. “Thank you,” she repeated.
    “It is nothing.”
    “How is everything?” Adrienne asked, gently closing the volume.
    “No mishaps, if that’s what you mean. Your students are eager to see you but understand the ordeal you are recovering from.”
    “Hercule?”
    “Hercule is as well as can be expected, considering he lost his mistress and his wife all in the same month. But he is still able, still capable. Still Hercule.”
    “I should never have let our affair continue for so long,” Adrienne said softly.
    “He should not have been the one to have to break it off.”
    Crecy didn’t say anything. It was not a comfortable topic, the affair with Hercule.
    “And Irena?” Adrienne went on. “How goes the search for her killer?”
    “I believe it was her secret lover, but I can find no evidence of who that was, none at all.” She paused. “Many still think I did it.”

    THE SHADOWS OF GOD
    “What nonsense.”
    “Even Hercule thinks it,” Crecy said.
    “Well, I do not. I never did,” Adrienne replied. “But it would be best if we could find the real killer, to set such talk to rest.”
    “Of course.” Crecy looked down at her feet and cleared her throat. “Well. I shall leave you to your bath, Adrienne. And happy birthday.”
    Adrienne caught her by the arm, leaned up, and planted a kiss on the redhead’s cheek. “Thank you, Veronique. It is no wonder I love you so.”
    Crecy smiled and then reached to steady Adrienne as the ship tilted.
    “We’re descending,” Adrienne said. “I wonder why.”
    “I shall discover it,” Crecy promised.
    “Wait,” Adrienne replied, fastening her buttons again. “I’ll go with you.”
    Elizavet Tsarevna squealed in delight as the musket in her arms kicked and belched black smoke. She staggered, but she did not close her eyes at the flash of powder, and her aim was steady. She was Tsar Peter’s daughter, that much was clear. A piece of his fierce heart beat in her chest.
    What effect her shot had was more difficult to tell. One of the great beasts fell, but a hundred other bullets whizzed into the mass of flesh and hair beneath them, and any one of them might have knocked it down.
    Elizavet, however, was certain. “I killed it!” the dark-haired young beauty shouted jubilantly.
    Adrienne congratulated the tsarevna absently, transfixed by the scene below.
    The airships were cruising only a few tens of feet from