The cabbie had to wake him up.

When Rip kept snoozing after he stopped and opened the door, the man eventually climbed down from the driver’s seat, and shook Rip several times to wake up.

“You’re not dead, is you, guvnor? ’Cause that would be extra.”

Rip smiled and wiped the sleep from his eyes at last. He gave the man the rest of the fare and found another crown to tip him.

“Happy to come over to this part of town anytime for ya, guvnor. You say the word.”

He tipped his top hat and climbed back on top of the cab. With a click of his tongue he and the horse were gone.

Rip made his way through the gate. The house looked dark from the street.

Out of curiosity, he walked around the side, to the left of the door, to see how the library windows were coming along.

To his surprise, he found all new glass that practically sparkled in the dim evening light.

“Very nice. Quickly done as well. It must be good to be the king. Or at least, have the king’s blessing.”

He wandered back to the front door, retrieving the key Blair had given him. He wondered if coming in at night would alarm Nancy, and he paused with the key halfway to the hole, thinking about it.

Shrugging, he unlocked and opened the door, then stepped inside.

Nancy had been napping on a couch. She sprang up immediately, wide-eyed with not an ounce of sleep in her eyes.

“Oh, hello, Sergeant. You’re back!”

She gasped loudly and covered her mouth.

“Oh, no! Lady Brooke is dead, isn’t she? Oh dear, oh dear. I knew this day would come. I knew the moment she joined that dreadful adventuring association!”

“No, no. She’s okay, Nancy. We got separated, that’s all. She sent me a telegram and told me she’d meet me here.”

“Oh.”

Nancy deflated like a sail suddenly losing wind.

“Separated, you say? Do tell, I want to hear all about it. Oh my goodness, have you had something to eat? Let me go prepare something. I didn’t know when you would be back. Once I’m done, you can tell me. Unless you’d like to sit at the kitchen table. I can hear you from there, you know. But I wouldn’t want to impose.”

He chuckled and agreed to follow her to the kitchen. It was closer to the guest cottage, anyway.

As she puttered around heating something up, he gave her a bare-bones account of sneaking into the steam vault and finding the room with skylights and garden plots, then the mushroom garden and the mud golem. Finally, he mentioned the army of enhanced robots they discovered on Level Three.

He honestly did not know how much detail he should go into, recalling that Blair said she never shared too much with Nancy. So he glossed over many of the finer points, and skipped things like the Verez sisters misting inside robots to disable them, and other such items that seemed like they would be hard to explain.

He fast-forwarded to the runaway robots and how three made it onto a large airship. He said he caught a ride, but again avoided giving away too many details. He was also careful to keep the narrative from highlighting his own exploits.

“So then they attacked the army, and their tanks, uh, vehicles, and one of those ended up getting knocked upside down . . .”

He felt fairly comfortable telling her about the military’s actions, since that would almost certainly be in the papers. There had been a roadblock, but surely lots of civilians saw what happened. Nonetheless, he kept things vague.

Nancy did not seem to notice. She set down a plate of Cornish game hen and toast in front of him, along with a pitcher and tea service.

He wolfed it all down, suddenly realizing how hungry he was.

Rip reflected that he probably had plenty of meals left in his wallet from Tomfoolery’s. But the woman seemed almost starved for company and soaked up every word he said, so he kept talking.

At last, with all the food gone along with half the tea, he leaned back in his chair and said, “So tell me about your day. I saw the windows in the library are done.”

“Did you see that? When did you see it?”

“I walked around outside to look before coming in.”

“Oh. Well, yes. I must say, the palace has been quite helpful. Not only are the panes replaced, it’s enhanced glass imported from Frankfurt. Quite the nice set up, let me tell you. I doubt anyone can shoot through it. They might be able to blow it up, but it’s much more of a bother, don’t you know.”

“That is nice. Sounds like the Prussians have quite a bit of enhanced material.”

“Oh, I don’t know anything about that. I’m just a maid. Do you have a maid back home, Sergeant? On your world?”

“No. Most of us don’t have maids.”

“Really? Oh, my. How do things get clean?”

“Well, if we need to, we’ll hire a maid sometimes, to clean our homes. But I don’t know anybody with a live-in maid, although I’m sure there are some out there.”

“Oh, so you do have maids.”

“Well, only for short-term contract labor. In fact, I had a buddy who worked as a manager at a hotel. He told me hotels hire a lot of women fresh out of prison. They need a job, and the hotels need maids, so it all works out.”

Nancy’s mouth dropped open.

“You hire convicts for your maids? Heavens to Muckleroy! What kind of world do you live in?”

“Well, not all maids are convicts of course. Or former convicts. It’s just that . . . Our, uh, our society . . . the one I’m from, doesn’t treat that job as a career, or a calling. Like you do here. So, most of our maids work at it for a while before going on to something else.”

It sounded weak to him, but Rip honestly had never had to explain this to anyone before. Nancy settled back and considered his comments for a while.

They heard the door opening in the front of the house.

Nancy jumped up and went to greet Blair while Rip poured himself another cup of tea. He stood up when Blair entered the room and smiled at her.

“The sergeant here is telling me all about his world and how they use prison labor to clean the hotels! Apparently it’s some sort of punishment over there.”

Blair ignored Nancy, staring at Rip. He gave her a lopsided smile.

She raced across the room and wrapped him up in a hug, squeezing tight.

At least this is not like that robot, he thought.