"Goodness, I haven't a clue; I'm sure if I find out I'll let you know."

The teacup is, impressively, steadied before the tea spills.

And of course Patrice Clairemont exists!  Why, old Georg at the pharmacy swears her strawberry tarts are the best he's ever had, and don't you know Mme. Mondegreen only orders from her shop - really, the poor dear is the engine of the thing, but that nasty Boris won't recognize her, barely acknowledges her existence - when she hosts her occasional soireés?

And perhaps the little serving-platter that happens to have such convenient properties for spies will be a bit forgotten in all the hubbub before the last reading, -

- but Patrice will be back tomorrow; oh dear, she can hardly imagine how but she seems to have forgotten her serving-platter!  Might she retrieve it, please and thankyou?

"I'm very sorry," the hostess of this week's salon says, "You'll have to do without it a little longer, the dowager noticed you'd left it behind and took it to return herself. You could knock at the door to her townhouse, but - between you and me - I'd expect another invitation before too long."

Some snippets of conversation that took place in the vicinity of the serving platter around the time of the salon:

"...hardly going to help with the money troubles, the Dottoressa wasn't impressed by our club's contribution to the last greenhouse gala."

"- skin of both hands? That goes beyond the norm..."

"Funny, this tastes just like that other bakery I know."

"- must've been raised well, the finishing school wouldn't have opened in time for her to attend."

"- came to blows again, it's only a matter of time before the springheels -"

"Everyone has their own misfortunes. The value of beauty is in its scarcity, we must not be profligate." (The voice of the dowager is distinctive.)

"- eyes like a cat! I feared for my life, but he only returned my purse."

"I daresay she deserves a chance, the Fall dance season is approaching..."

"...an imported plasma globe from that foreigner's workshop, fries the blasted mosquitos - sorry, ladies - they shrivel up and char like crumbs on a fire poker."

"Don't worry, when wealthy men fight, it's the lawyers like yourself who profit."

"- hope I'm there to see her face when -"

"...assuming nothing amiss is uncovered, yes, she has potential."

Will the Lady in the Shadows be able to locate the resonator and pick up more sounds from it after the dowager took it elsewhere?

Oh, yes, most definitely.  Not because it has anything so crude in it as a homing-beacon, but because she can recognize the sounds of motion, and make educated guesses as to how, where, and by-whom.

She's quite careful in how she utilizes that information, however.  It would not Do, to be caught out in listening.

And really, just like this other bakery?  Has someone been stealing old Boris's recipes again?  (Because the best lies have truth in them, and it's quite true that Boris exists and has old family recipes from a Clairemont!  Just not quite that there was a daughter of the family remaining.)

Then some more can be heard after the tray is taken to the dowager's townhouse and those sounds of motion stop. These are a little clearer without all the background chatter.

A door is unlocked, opened for a moment, then closed and locked again. While it is open, part of a conversation can be heard: "I almost hope she does welch, the terrarium is looking a little bare."

The door opens again. "I wish she just had a catalogue we could see the prices in, instead of all this hinting and reciprocal gifting," one male voice says. "The Dottoressa is nothing like those industrialists, she's a natural philosopher!" another man replies. He sounds smitten.

The scratch of pen on paper. "Could you send a message? Yes, regarding the latest candidate, I do think she will welcome the news." It's the dowager again.

A rattling doorhandle. A coarser accent. "Caught on the -" "Yes, the bloody sicklevine again, I don't know why I can't keep the slugs in the garden shed instead."

"Remind him not to miss the next one. Unpleasant though it may be, the alternative is worse, and the Dottoressa would not approve of any carelessness with her gifts." The dowager once more, raising her voice down a corridor.

As night falls, the house quietens. There are the heavy footsteps of a guard patrol every hour, coming into earshot at fifteen minutes past and coming back the same way twenty minutes later. With some more educated guesses, the Lady may deduce the patrol route as well.

In a couple of days, there will be another letter that invites Patrice Clairemont to the dowager's townhouse for another salon. In the dowager's genteel handwriting, it is suggested that she make arrangements for her travel home late in the evening or to bring a valise to stay the night in a guest room, and that she postpones any physical exertions or public appearances she may have scheduled for the following day.

She will, of course, be delighted to attend.

...so soon?  That is...not a positive sign, especially given the comments about the terrarium...

Still...

Perhaps a friend of Patrice's, a nurse, shall be her arrangements for a ride to, and hopefully from, the dowager's.

She doesn't suppose the message-runners that took messages from the dowager lately were hers, incidentally?  If the dowager wasn't sending by telegraph.

(If it was by telegraph, well, there's a couple linemen who owed her favors enough to tap the central line with, and the Spark is quite good at finding secrets.)

The message-runner is a familiar face: Oskar, a pageboy in the dowager's service. The bowl cut part of the uniform doesn't suit the shape of his face and he shows signs of not getting enough sleep, but he's now filling out the livery thanks to the proper meals he's getting, and he carries himself with more confidence.

He owes his present employment to the Lady, he's one of hers. What does she want to know?

Here, a little extra for his trouble.  What did he see when he took the message that the dowager wanted sent to the Dottoressa?  What did she say to him?  Relay the tone she took.  (The Lady has a standing request that all mail to the Lettered that passes through her group's hands be given as full an analysis as possible, especially when it's from repeat senders, but she'd usually rather avoid raising suspicions.  She is quite good at putting a seal back together, but no-one and nothing is perfect; she risks this rarely.  She risks doing such tampering now; she must know much more of what's happening to properly weigh the risks of it, and she's on quite a short timetable to find out.)

That's right, the dowager gave him a message for the Dottoressa F., to be delivered to her scary secretary with all the eyeshadow and letter-openers and the living quill. He hasn't dared try to sneak a peak at the contents, but from the weight and the feel of it, it contains about a half-sheet of correspondence written by the dowager. Usually when she writes to the Lettered it's more of a production, gilt envelopes and thick pages full of pleasanteries, and that usually means doing some favor or donation to the Dottoressa and getting something from the menagerie shortly after. The last time he had to carry a short note was around the time that one of the guards went blind, but he doesn't know what that was about.

He sucks in a breath as the Lady opens the letter, expecting something to happen because of that transgression, but nothing does.

The short note is mostly taken up by a description of Patrice. It is primarily a physical description, including a detailed assessment of her scars that is well-observed but lacking the precision of medical terminology. The false identity has not been uncovered, and her prepared history is presented as fact. The dowager then adds that she intends to proceed, by default with the standard method unless she should be advised otherwise, and will keep the Dottoressa F. appraised of the outcome.

"When the dowager handed it off to me, she sounded... relieved? Hopeful, maybe? 'Good. Get that to the desk of F., run along now.' That's what she sounded like." Oskar's impressions need work.

In addition, he had some routine messages for orders of household supplies and collecting lists of the latest outputs from the Guildmaster's scrivenersmithy, and the typical set of invites for the main salon guests, confirming the dowager's townhouse for the next salon.

The Lady shall very carefully rejoin the wax to itself with the aid of a small device that can apply carefully controlled amounts of heat.

"Was the guard blind before, or after, the note, and does he remain so today?  And do tell me more of the secretary and her quill later.  Now, Oskar, remember your training and watch the pendant for me..."

And Oskar departs none the wiser of this particular encounter, save for a lingering desire to go down to the soup kitchen and tell Doctor Emm all about the scary secretary that he won't mention to anyone, and a particular attentiveness to details during that delivery.  (He was accosted by some toughs, but managed to evade them, if anyone's keeping track of his delivery times enough to notice the missing few minutes.)

"I don't know, he was gone after that, they said he retired or changed jobs."

The sun filters down through the perpetual smog surrounding Rueford.

Children run in the streets, splashing in the puddles from last night's rain in the rubber boots that the Marshal's latest factory is churning out. A cluster of schoolgirls poke at a dead pigeon with a stick and pretend to be an anatomy class.

A factory of the Guildmaster's workers are gifted with mass-produced pocketwatches 'to help them manage their time'; some wear them like badges, others gift them on, pawn them, or break the mechanisms at the first opportunity for a plausible accident on the assumption that they serve the boss' interests somehow.

Meals of meat and potatoes are cooked and consumed. Portraits are captured in paint or photosensitive plates, to hang on the walls of tenement and terrace houses. People drink, brawl, fall in love. Life in the city goes on as normal.

The salons are biweekly, so Patrice will be expected at the dowager's in twelve days.

The broken and regifted pocketwatches, especially, tend to find their way into the Lady's hands - which is good, because she needs the materials; she has secured a few of the Dottoressa's publicized products with which to tinker - ones whose effects she can imitate, with careful use of mesmerism.  She must tinker quite quickly to make sure Sylvia is not harmed by worse.

And, well, one can hardly go wrong with a good pocketwatch, when something simply must occur on time.  For example, examining the terrarium.

Things are procured, a valise (with a false bottom rigged as a mini-terrarium itself) packed - 

She prepares herself for war.

As Patrice and her friend the nurse arrive by carriage, they will be allowed in through the wrought-iron gates of the dowager's townhouse, past the high walls thick with bloodthirsty sicklevine.

The security this evening appears to be higher than normal, two liveried guards visibly patrolling along the known routes, their eyes glinting oddly when the light of the gaslamps catches them at the right angle.

The dowager maintains an orangery in the garden, and liveried servants will show the pair in through that interstitial space and into the subdued warmth and chatter of a salon that has yet to start in earnest. There seems to be more of a tension in the air than for the previous session.

Oh, what a lovely garden the madame dowager has!