Chapter Text
The dining hall in the morning was noise and clatter and the smell of old grease — the particular kind of grease that had been accumulating in the same stones for four hundred years and wasn't going anywhere. Sherlock moved through it with his bucket and his apron and the blank focused expression he'd found was the most useful face for this kind of work: hands doing one thing, mind somewhere else entirely.
He was scrubbing the same table in long, even strokes — the mechanical rhythm of it almost meditative, almost, if you could get past the indignity — when Smudger appeared in the doorway.
One look. That was all it took. The man's shoulders were in the wrong position. Carrying news he'd rather not be carrying.
"Tell me it wasn't you," Smudger said, low, coming toward him.
"What wasn't me, sir?"
"The robbery last night. The library." He stopped at the end of the table, arms folded, face somewhere between concern and the particular resignation of a man who has supervised too many clever young people and has been here before. "You had keys. The scrolls have been stolen and you were the last one seen going in." A pause. "I hope for your sake it wasn't you, my boy."
The cloth stopped moving.
Sherlock straightened, slowly, jaw tightening. The library. Last night. The creak of the door in the upper dark, the scrolls in the cabinet, the key in the lock — he remembered the sound of it, the specific click of the tumblers engaging. He had locked that cabinet. He was certain of it. He was — he was certain.
The doubt arrived anyway, which was annoying. He was almost certain.
"Excuse me, Mr. Smudger," he said, setting down the cloth, reaching for his coat.
Smudger watched him go with the face of a man who already knows this is not going to be straightforward and has decided to step back and let it be complicated without him.
* * *
He came up the staircase and found her already in the corridor — coming out of the door as he was coming up, which meant she'd heard his step on the landing and had been ready.
She was dressed. She was always dressed before him. He'd stopped being surprised by it and had started being faintly impressed by it in a way he'd decided not to examine too closely.
She read his face in the two seconds before he reached her and he saw it happen — the small adjustment behind her eyes, the shift from whatever she'd been thinking to whatever he needed her to think about instead.
"What happened?"
"The scrolls are gone." He was already moving past her toward the stairs. "Stolen from the library last night. I was the last one seen going in. James too." He stopped. Turned back. "You were there."
"I was browsing," she said. Flat and precise. "I touched nothing. Moved nothing." A beat. "Who knows that?"
"No one who matters yet."
She looked at him — one of those looks that lasted about a second and apparently contained a full assessment — and then fell into step beside him without being asked. He hadn't asked. He wasn't sure he would have thought to ask. That was the thing about Scarlett: she just appeared where she needed to be, and you only noticed after the fact that you'd wanted her there.
"We need to get to James before Hodge does," he said.
"Then we go," she said, already on the stairs.
* * *
He pushed open Moriarty's door without knocking, because knocking felt like a courtesy that the situation didn't have time for.
James was in his sleepwear, standing at his desk by the window, leaning back against the wall with the specific expression of a man who has already received the bad news and has moved past shock into the cooler territory of calculation. The expression of a man who, Sherlock had begun to understand, spent very little time in shock and a great deal of time in calculation.
Scarlett came in behind Sherlock and positioned herself near the door — not blocking it, just close — in the way she positioned herself in every room that wasn't hers. She looked at James. James looked at her. Then at Sherlock. Then back at her. Updating something.
"Just for clarity's sake," Sherlock said. "We didn't take those scrolls last night, did we?"
"No, we didn't," James said. Flat.
"What did Hodge say?"
James shifted his weight. "He took my scholarship." Said it plainly, the way people sometimes say the worst things — matter-of-factly, like if you keep your voice level enough you can stop it from being real. "Without that, I can't stay here."
"Oh, dear."
"Gets better."
"Go on," Sherlock said, putting on his jacket. "I can hardly wait."
"You'll be going back to prison."
The word sat there for a second. Sherlock finished buttoning his jacket. "Lucky me." He turned at the door. "Get dressed. Meet us in the library."
He was already gone. Scarlett paused in the doorway and looked at James once — brief, level, the look that took a measurement — and then followed.
Behind them, James stood in his sleepwear looking at the closed door for a long moment. Then, slowly, with the expression of a man committing to something he can't see the end of, he began to get dressed.
* * *
Mycroft was already in the corridor, already at pace, already wearing the face of a man who has been managing a situation for twenty minutes and has arrived at the firm conclusion that no one will thank him for it.
"Stay out of trouble." He turned and walked back toward Sherlock as though the words were a debt he was collecting. "One simple request."
"Is there any point protesting my innocence?"
Mycroft's eyes moved to Scarlett — that brief, complete assessment he gave her every time, like he was checking whether her edges had changed — and back to Sherlock. Before he could answer, Lestrade appeared at the end of the corridor with the earnest momentum of a young officer who has been given an assignment and intends to discharge it correctly.
"Sherlock Holmes. I am arresting you on suspicion of theft."
Sherlock looked at the approaching restraints with the expression of a man cataloguing an inconvenience.
Behind him, Scarlett had shifted her weight — almost nothing, less than an inch — to a position from which she could move quickly in two directions. Her eyes were on Lestrade's hands. On the second constable's position. On the distance to the courtyard. She had done this calculation in other corridors, with other officers. The geometry was always the same. She filed it, and waited, and let Mycroft work.
"You won't need those," Mycroft said.
"Sir. I'm a constable."
"Yes. The clue was in the uniform." Mycroft stepped forward, smooth and absolute. "I am Mycroft Holmes of Her Majesty's Foreign Office, in Oxford to assist Sir Bucephalus Hodge. Surely this is more properly detective's work."
"I thought I'd make initial inquiries. Early worm catches the bird."
A pause that managed, somehow, to communicate several things about intelligence without saying any of them.
"I'm merely trying to prevent your professional embarrassment," Mycroft said, with a courtesy so precise it was functionally a threat, "for being reprimanded by your chief officer — who happens to be my bridge partner — and is, as you know, a stickler for due process."
Lestrade folded.
Scarlett let her weight settle back. Let out a breath that wasn't quite audible.
"I need you to get me into the library," Sherlock said.
* * *
Mycroft gave them ten minutes and positioned himself at the entrance like a door-stop made of bureaucratic authority. "Don't embarrass me again."
Sherlock and James moved down the centre aisle, already talking — the fast, layered conversation they fell into when they were working, each one catching the thread the other threw before it hit the ground. Scarlett walked with them as far as the window at the far end, set high above a ledge, the hole in its glass and the bars bent aside.
She hadn't said anything about it yet. She wanted to look at it properly first.
Above her, Sherlock climbed the shelves to reach the ledge, deadpanning from above: "There has been — wait for it — a break-in."
"Astounding," James said from below. "How did you develop these skills of penetrating deduction?"
She tuned them out. Not rudely — she was still tracking the conversation, she always tracked everything — but she needed to look at the floor without narrating it.
She stood in the aisle directly under the broken window and looked.
No glass on the interior floor. She checked twice, moving her gaze slowly, because absence was the kind of thing you could miss if you were looking for something else. The ledge: glass, quite a lot of it, the glitter of it catching the light. The exterior sill: more. Which meant the interior was bare. Which meant the glass had gone the wrong way.
She checked a third time because she wanted to be sure before she said it.
"This window was not broken from the outside."
Both of them looked at her.
She pointed, not touching. "When you break a window from outside, the glass falls inward. Into the room. It lands on the interior floor." She indicated the ledge, the sill. "The glass is outside. It was broken from inside. Someone in this library broke this window and bent these bars — from in here."
James straightened slowly. "To make it look like a break-in."
"To make it look like someone came in from outside," she said, "when whoever took the scrolls was already inside. Already had access. Already had a key."
The silence that followed was the silence of a theory collapsing and a better one forming in its place. She'd heard that silence before. She'd learned to wait through it rather than fill it.
"Inside job," Sherlock said. Something in his voice — not surprise, exactly. More like the click of a lock engaging.
"Inside job," she agreed.
James looked at her with the expression he'd started wearing in the last day whenever she spoke — somewhere between admiration and the recalibration of someone whose original estimate had been wrong in a direction he found interesting. "She does this a lot, does she?"
"Frequently," Sherlock said. And she caught something in the way he said it — not showing off, not performing. Just — accurate. Like he was reporting a fact he was quietly pleased about.
She didn't look at him. She kept her eyes on the cabinet lock.
Mycroft appeared at the end of the library. "Your ten minutes are up."
Hodge came in behind him.
* * *
Sir Bucephalus Hodge entered like a man who had already written the verdict and was attending as a formality.
"Mycroft. Would you mind telling me why your brother — the prime suspect — is standing at the scene of the crime?"
"I think it only fair he has a chance to defend himself, sir."
"He has a chance to defend himself in a court of law. Constables — remove him."
Lestrade moved. The two officers moved. James gave a small formal bow in the direction of the doorway where Edie had appeared with Hodge's party, watching with bright, interested eyes.
Hodge turned to her. "Do you know each other?"
"Never seen him before," Edie said pleasantly.
The officers were nearly at Sherlock. Scarlett's weight shifted — she was aware of it, the way her body moved without asking her, repositioning toward the thing it had assessed as a threat. She didn't move. Not yet. She watched Sherlock's face for the signal that it was time to move. His jaw was set. He wasn't looking at her.
Not yet.
Then the Princess stepped forward.
Princess Gulun Shou'an moved into the room the way certain people moved — not performing authority, simply inhabited by it, the way a weight inhabits a room by changing how the air sits. She raised one hand. The officers stopped. Stopped like they'd hit a wall.
"Leave him."
The room's temperature changed. Scarlett felt it — the shift in who was in charge of the next thirty seconds — and let her weight settle back onto both feet. Her hand moved away from the hidden seam of her skirt. Slowly. Without announcing it.
The Princess looked at Sherlock. When she spoke it was in Mandarin — calm, controlled, each word placed with precision.
"Did you do it?"
Sherlock answered in kind, without hesitation, fluent and unhurried. "Of course not."
Every head in the room turned.
Scarlett had known he spoke it. Sherlock had told her about meeting the princess before they had went to bed.
"Why would I do that if I had a key?" he was saying.
Hodge stared at Mycroft. "What the bloody hell is going on? One minute he's a redeemed felon — then a servant — then a felon again—" A genuine pause. "—and now apparently he's a linguist."
"It's not a very interesting story, sir," Mycroft said, flat.
James held up the broken clock — knocked in the thief's descent, stopped at the precise moment of disturbance. "The clue's in the clock."
"Because when he climbed down," Sherlock said, "he knocked this off. Six minutes past ten. That's when it happened."
Hodge looked at Lestrade. Lestrade stiffened.
"And you didn't notice this, Constable?" the Princess said.
The silence that followed was the specific kind that contains an embarrassment being managed in real time. Scarlett found she didn't enjoy it as much as she might have expected to. Lestrade was young. He was earnest. He just hadn't known what to look for.
Most people didn't. That wasn't their fault.
"I can help you find your father's scrolls," Sherlock said to the Princess.
"There's a very good reason you can help find them," Hodge said. "You stole them."
"The scrolls are my father's," the Princess said. She turned to Hodge with the level patience of someone who has an argument and does not need to hurry it. "Need I remind you, sir, how much of your trade with China relies on my father's goodwill?"
Edie stepped in, gently, with the timing of someone who had done this before. "We are running late for your appointment with the dean, sir."
Hodge looked at the room. At the Princess. At Sherlock. "Perhaps — we should give the princess a chance to conduct this investigation as she sees fit."
"I must protest —"
"Oh really? Must you?"
Lestrade backed down.
Scarlett had not moved from her position near Sherlock. Had not spoken, had not drawn any attention to herself, had simply stood still and read the room and stayed ready. This was also a skill. It wasn't a small one. Most people never learned that sometimes the most useful thing you could do in a room was take up less of it.
"Thank you, Constable," Sherlock said. "We'll take it from here."
* * *
The carriage let them out at the edge of the woods, where the river path ran south toward Candlin College. Damp earth, bare trees, the smell of cold water and something fungal and sweet underneath. The kind of smell that got into the back of your throat and stayed there.
Scarlett walked a half-step behind and to the right of Sherlock — where she could see his face in her peripheral vision, where she could see the Princess and James ahead, where she had a sight-line to the treeline in both directions. Not chosen consciously. Just where she ended up, every time, in unfamiliar terrain with more than one unknown.
"According to reports," the Princess was saying, "the thief scaled down the building and into a boat. Rowed out from Candlin College, got out here with the scrolls —" She paused where the path opened onto the riverbank, where a flat-bottomed boat sat moored exactly where the police report had placed it. "And then disappeared."
Sherlock was already crouching, eyes on the bank. The ground here was soft — the kind of soft that remembered things.
"Footprints. Only one set of tracks."
"One thief," James said.
They followed the trail into the trees, where it resolved into something else: the deep parallel grooves of carriage wheels, the circular wear of two wheels moving in the same direction under load.
Sherlock crouched over the track. Scarlett crouched beside him, close enough to see what he was seeing. The mud was pale grey here, almost clay, and the wheel marks were clean-edged on three sides and slightly smeared on the fourth — the lateral drift of a wheel that wasn't sitting level.
"One of those wheels was a little drunk," James said.
Sherlock looked at the mark. Something quiet moved across his face — not a smile exactly, more the shadow of one, the internal click of something clicking. "And a drunk wheel would need to sober up."
"Where one might get a wheel fixed," James said.
Scarlett stood, brushed the mud from her gloves. She thought about the glass on the wrong side of the window. She thought about someone who'd had a key and had staged it anyway — the effort of it, the care taken to point the investigation outward.
You only did that if you were confident the investigation would go where you pointed it.
Which meant they thought the people asking the questions were predictable.
She filed that too, and followed them down the road.
* * *
The Princess fell back slightly on the road — not from fatigue, Scarlett had noticed that she never moved from fatigue, only from intention — and came up beside Sherlock with the air of someone who has been waiting for a moment of relative quiet.
"I wanted to ask. Were you trying to impress me?"
Sherlock raised an eyebrow. "Impress you?"
"At the maths lecture. When you corrected Professor Thompson."
"The professor's calculations were incorrect," Sherlock said. "That was all."
The Princess looked at him for a moment. "Disappointing," she said, with the precise dryness of someone who has revised an estimate downward and is being honest about it.
"I have a wife," Sherlock said, simply. "Why would I be trying to impress you?"
Scarlett, walking behind, heard that. She kept her eyes on the treeline and her expression entirely neutral, which took slightly more work than it would have yesterday and she was not going to think about why.
Her hand had found the ring on her left finger — a small, cheap thing, plain brass, bought in a hurry from a market stall the morning of a wedding that was a cover story — and she was turning it with her thumb without having decided to, the metal smooth and slightly loose on her finger. She made herself stop. Filed it under later, alongside everything else.
The Princess glanced back at her — brief, considered — and then at Sherlock with the look of someone who has updated a model in a direction they find interesting. "Fair enough," she said.
James had been listening to all of this with the expression of a man who genuinely enjoys watching other people's dynamics play out, like it's a sport he has opinions on. He stepped forward. "Frankly, I don't know what you see in him." He looked at the Princess with the particular magnetism he turned on when he wanted to be charming and couldn't help it. "I mean — yes, he is some way handsome in a sort of obvious, clumsy kind of way, but if you were looking for something a bit more niche, a bit more bespoke —"
"James."
Her voice. Pleasant. Perfectly pitched in her London register. The warmth in it was genuine, which was the part that made it effective.
"If I didn't know better, I would think you also have a crush on my husband."
Sherlock tripped but managed to catch his balance. A short silence. The kind that arrives when something accurate gets said out loud.
James turned. Scarlett met his gaze with a completely composed expression that gave nothing away and somehow made everything worse. She'd aimed for light. She'd hit something else. She wasn't entirely sure what.
"I was —" He stopped. "That is not —" Another stop. "I was being rhetorical."
"Of course you were," she said, agreeably.
The Princess, for the first time since they had met her, looked like she was suppressing something that was not a frown.
Sherlock was looking at James with an expression of mild scientific interest. Scarlett glanced at him — quickly, sideways — and he was already looking back at her, and the look lasted about a half-second before they both looked somewhere else, and she resumed adjusting her glove and he resumed watching the road and neither of them said anything about it.
She didn't know what that was either. She filed it. Later.
"As stimulating as this is, chaps," the Princess said, stepping forward, "I must return to my carriage. The gala opening. Hodge's new science building." She turned. "Thank you for your help."
"Your Royal Highness," James said, with a formal bow — most of his dignity recovered now, or at least enough of it to count.
They watched her walk away.
James looked at Sherlock. Sherlock looked at James. A beat passed in which both of them clearly decided not to say anything about what had just happened.
Scarlett pulled her glove straight and didn't look at either of them.
"The coaching inn," Sherlock said, and started walking.