Unhonored by Tracy Hickman

led to a closet but instead opened onto a steep, narrow staircase plunging downward. At the base of the stairs more than twenty feet below them, dim bulbs cast an amber light from wall-mounted iron sconces set on either side of a door with peeling, beige paint.
    Jonas stepped onto the stairs carefully. He glanced backward at Ellis, his free hand raising a finger to his lips, begging her to be quiet as well. The stairs creaked softly beneath their feet as they descended. At the next door, Jonas paused, listening for any sound on the other side. Satisfied, he turned the tarnished brass handle and pushed it open.
    Ellis stepped through into a broad hallway. It had a floor of fitted tiles that shone in the incandescent glow from punch-bowl lights mounted to the ceiling at even intervals. There was a bench set to one side of the hall between a pair of closed doors finished in white paint. Across from these was a matching set of open doorframes. Through them Ellis caught a glimpse of a pristine kitchen unsullied by a dirty dish or cooking sauce. It was strange, Ellis thought, that nothing was happening in the one room in the house that she knew should be busy nearly every moment of a waking day.
    I know you think you have to learn these things, but you upset Cook whenever she finds you in her kitchen.
    Ellis’s hand went to her head. That voice. Her mother’s voice.
    Cook is doing something every moment of the day in her domain and she has no time to take you on as an apprentice as well.
    â€œEllis,” Jonas said, carefully examining her face. “Are you all right?”
    â€œYes, I am fine,” Ellis snapped, stepping back and snatching her hand sharply away from his entwining fingers. “But, you … I remember you.”
    Jonas gave her a smile that was colored by the pain in his eyes. “Yes, I very much hope you do.”
    â€œDon’t be too certain that’s a good thing,” Ellis insisted, keeping her distance. “I’m not. Take off that mask.”
    Jonas drew in a breath.
    â€œNow,” Ellis insisted.
    Jonas sighed. He leaned his face forward, reaching up with his right hand. He slipped the mask up over his head and then raised his face to her. His hair was dark and wavy though now no longer carefully combed, disheveled as it was from removing his mask. His face still looked young to her as it was the type of face that would never look old, but there were lines at the corners of his gray-green eyes that she had not noticed on their previous encounters.
    It was the paisley-shaped bruise around his right eye that made her catch her breath. It was darker and more pronounced than she remembered it, with a number of abrasions on his cheek that she did not remember him having before. Instinctively, she reached up with her hand toward his injured cheek.
    He pulled away from her reach.
    â€œDid Merrick do this to you?” Ellis asked.
    â€œNo.” Jonas shook his head. “You said you remembered me. What do you remember?”
    â€œI remember a watchmaker’s shop,” Ellis said. Even as she spoke the words, she could almost feel the cool of the cabinet glass and smell the lacquer from the clock housings on the wall. “My watch was not running and I was trying to keep an appointment with…”
    â€œWith some suitor your mother had arranged for you.” Jonas smiled at her.
    â€œYes.” Ellis nodded. “I never kept the appointment.”
    â€œI pretended to take a long time fixing your watch,” Jonas said with a shy smile. “I didn’t want you to leave and certainly not to meet another man.”
    â€œHmm.” Ellis conveyed neither approval nor disdain with the sound, just acknowledgment of the statement. She stepped around him, surveying their surroundings. “This is the servants’ hall, I believe. We’re below stairs, as my…”
    Ellis stopped in thought.
    â€œAs your what?” Jonas