Page 126 of Empire of Shadows

Adam frowned and risked leaning down for a closer look.

Two words leapt out at him amid the scrawl.

Smoking Mirror.

“There,” Dawson announced, straightening.

Adam took a quick step back from the desk and did his best to look innocent.

Staines fixed him with a quick, suspicious glare.

“Have a look,” Dawson continued, waving a hand over the maps.

There was a hint of a self-satisfied smile on the professor’s face as he took a step back and hovered there.

Adam braced himself over the table and picked up the pencil. He made another mark on his modern map, which elicited a wince from Dawson—but not a protest. Maybe they were making progress.

“You brought a lot of stuff,” Adam commented as he worked.

Dawson stiffened a bit beside him.

“This sort of travel is hardly pleasurable,” he retorted. “The heat gives me the most dreadful rash, and the mosquitoes! They are incessant. I don’t know how anyone can pretend not to be affected by it. I am quite within my rights to make myself as comfortable as possible while I endure it.”

Adam was quite aware that Dawson’s rights meant the guys outside wrangling a bunch of extra gear through the bush.

“Uh-huh,” he said instead, trying—but not entirely succeeding—in keeping the disdain from his tone.

Dawson managed to stay quiet for maybe another minute while Adam worked before he broke into an uncomfortable stream of chatter.

“I copied the route from the parchment precisely,” he asserted. “I’m sure you’ll see that it’s—”

Adam made another mark. This time, he moved to Dawson’s sheet of notes and firmly crossed out a line.

“Nope,” he declared flatly.

Dawson made a stifled sound of outrage behind him.

Adam crossed out another line, and then a third. He scribbled in a new annotation.

“Remind me again just how you are qualified for this?” Dawson demanded.

Adam paused and looked up at him.

“Are you forgetting I made the map?” He pointed to the document on the table with his pencil.

“How did you even gain a position at the survey office?” Dawson pressed. “You’re anAmerican!”

He made the word sound like a venereal disease. Adam resisted the urge to throw the pencil at him.

Trying not to get killed, he reminded himself.

“There was an opening. I applied,” he returned thinly.

“How would an American even hear about an opening in the civil service of a British imperial holding?” Dawson protested.

“The Cambridge postings board?” Adam suggested as he made another note.

“Youwent to Cambridge?” Dawson exclaimed. “As in the university? In England?”

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