Mycroft drew a long, slow breath and drained his teacup in a single deliberate swallow.
The cup rose to obscure his face, hiding whatever unreadable expression had settled there.
One thing, however, was beyond dispute.
His mood was terrible.
When the last of the tea was gone, Mycroft set the cup down with unhurried precision, then placed the sheaf of documents beside it with equal composure.
His bearing remained as controlled and restrained as ever — and yet Russell could feel it.
He was furious.
If Malice Points could be absorbed from the ill-will directed at someone else, Russell was quite certain this would have been an extraordinarily generous haul.
Pity that wasn't how it worked.
"Sir Phineas Black," Mycroft said, his voice dropping to a lower register.
"Originally, given that he is a distant relation of Her Majesty, I was prepared to turn a blind eye to that tedious little club of his.
Ordinary corruption — that, I could genuinely have left until tomorrow.
But I'm afraid this isn't corruption."
He paused.
"This is treason."
"And so, Mr. Holmes," Russell said, rising to his feet and easing the velvet armchair quietly back into place.
"Are you ready to work overtime?"
Mycroft did not answer.
Instead, he reached out and lifted the small silver bell from the desk and gave it a single, gentle shake.
Its clear, crisp tone rang out across the quiet study.
In less than ten seconds, the butler's voice appeared at the doorway — soft, unobtrusive, as though it had simply materialised there.
"Yes, sir? How may I assist?"
"Anthony," Mycroft said, his voice settling back into its habitual calm authority.
"A pot of coffee, please. Black — no milk, no sugar. Bring it in ten minutes."
"Very good, sir." The butler Anthony asked nothing further. He received his instructions, turned, and was gone.
Silence reclaimed the study.
It held for a moment — until Russell broke it.
"Then, as for the matter of the wager —"
"I will honour it." Mycroft cut him off, his gaze returning to the stack of letters on the desk.
"Until the day the countdown ends, no one beyond the two of us will know of this."
He paused, then turned his head to look at Russell.
"Did you leave him a letter?"
"I did — though whether he'll actually see it is another matter entirely."
Russell gave a small shrug. "I left it in the box where he keeps his writing paper."
"Understood." Mycroft nodded.
"On the day the deadline in your announcement letter arrives, I will see to it that all of London becomes your stage.
Scotland Yard, the Royal Guard — they will all stand aside to clear the way for you."
He said it, and then looked at Russell once more. Something complex flickered in his eyes.
"I find myself curious, Mr. Moriarty. What exactly are you planning?"
"You'll find out when the time comes," Russell said.
He gave no answer. Instead, he offered an elegant, unhurried bow — the bow of an actor preparing to exit the stage.
"Then I won't keep you from your work any longer."
As he spoke, he stepped back, one pace at a time, his figure dissolving once more into the shadows by the floor-to-ceiling window.
"Enjoy your evening, Mr. Holmes."
The final words faded into the air — and with them, he was gone, his silhouette dropping away into the night beyond the glass and vanishing entirely.
Mycroft sat motionless in his high-backed chair for a long while.
Tonight would be a sleepless night.
——
After his excursion out into the city, Russell returned to Baker Street.
He slipped through the window with practiced ease, exchanged his Phantom Thief costume for his pyjamas, and was asleep the moment he hit the bed.
Not a single dream disturbed him.
The following morning, Russell made a point of spending a few pennies on a newsboy to pick up a fresh copy of the paper.
The press on Fleet Street had, as ever, kept the prime headline real estate reserved just for him — and were still tirelessly stoking the fires for the theatrical spectacle soon to come.
Not that they had anything new to report. That was no obstacle. They'd simply slap an enormous countdown clock across the front page and fill the space beside it by cataloguing their own past coverage as though listing battle honours.
Russell settled into an armchair with a cup of warm milk and leafed through his own legend with a look of mild, detached fascination.
Truly something to reflect on.
Back then, I was considerably thinner.
He set the empty milk cup on the side table, reached for one of Mrs. Hudson's biscuits, and sank back against the cushions, turning at a leisurely pace through the rest of the paper.
The headlines belonged to the carnival of Moriarty — but the inner pages were filled, as always, with the eternal, unchanging rhythms of the city:
Parliamentary squabbles. Stock market rises and falls. The romantic scandal of some prominent lady. And the usual scattering of inconsequential complaints about the weather and the price of bread.
After a cursory glance through two or three pages, Russell lost interest entirely, set the paper on the table, said a brief word to Mrs. Hudson, and headed out.
Charlotte, for her part, had been up long before him. She'd come downstairs, eaten something, and promptly shut herself back in her room.
"Both siblings — each with their own things to be getting on with," Russell mused.
"Busy, both of them. Busy is good."
When everyone was occupied, no one paid attention to you.
That was the art of hiding in plain sight.
He walked into the lecture hall and made his way, as always, to his seat in the back row.
He traded the usual banter with the white-tea-scented girl beside him, as always. Dozed through the lecture, as always. Then sauntered into the dining hall at noon to harvest his customary round of Malice Points.
After that, back to Baker Street once classes ended — and, as was his custom, a brief inspection of the great detective's progress.
When Russell pushed open the door, Charlotte was — unusually — not standing before the information wall.
She was seated on the sofa in her dressing gown, coffee cup in hand, staring into the fireplace with a distinctly absent expression.
"Charlotte?" Russell stepped closer, curious, and gave a little wave of his hand in front of her face.
Those grey-blue eyes — which had been fixed, unblinking, on the fireplace — shifted, blinked into focus, and came to rest on him.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just noticed you were zoning out." Russell withdrew his hand and sat down beside her, his gaze drifting to the information wall.
"Still no leads?"
"First of all, I was not zoning out. I was thinking." Charlotte said, her own gaze following Russell's toward the wall.
"Second — obviously."
She took a sip of coffee, getting in ahead of him, her voice carrying a distinct undercurrent of irritation:
"The suspects have nothing left to give us. Their base in Southwark District has already been swept — nothing there but a pile of documents burned down to ash, not a single thing of value.
Billson has vanished off the face of the earth. Charles either refuses to speak at all, or opens his mouth and does nothing but repeat the same deranged nonsense over and over.
Tch. This is all Moriarty's fault."
[Irritation and complaint from Charlotte Holmes — Malice Points +20]
"What does any of this have to do with him?" Russell raised an eyebrow.
At this rate, he might as well change his name to Moriarty-258.
"If he'd worn an ordinary mask instead of a human-skin mask, Charles would never have lost his mind like this." Charlotte said.
"He couldn't have infiltrated the place with an ordinary mask, and frankly a human-skin mask is more practical by any measure." Russell said, rising to his own defence.
"Practical for him, perhaps. Deeply unpleasant for me."
Charlotte muttered the complaint while gently stirring her coffee with a small spoon.
"If it's getting to you, stop shutting yourself in your room all day," Russell said, and stood up.
"Leads don't appear out of thin air just because you've been brooding at four walls long enough."
He paused, then extended a hand toward Charlotte.
"Dinner's still a little while off. Fancy a walk?"
____
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