Arms wrapped around the taut, sea-dampened ropes, the hemp fibres rough against his cheek, Sherlock Holmes watched from a position high up in the Gloria Scott's rigging as the ship ploughed through the tumultuous ocean. Above him, seagulls cried like hungry babies. He could taste salt on his lips from the spray that filled the air. He'd lived with that taste for months now. He wondered what life would be like without it, without the constant pitching and tossing of the deck beneath his feet, without the regular crack of the sails suddenly filling with wind, without the constant shouts of the sailors and the orders barked by ship's first mate, Mr. Larchmont.

The sky above was grey and heavy with unshed rain. The sea was grey as well. For months he had been used to seeing blue skies above him during the day and black, star-splattered skies at night; of seeing jade waves sparkling like jewels all around the ship. But now everything seemed to have had the vibrancy sucked out of it. The sky and the sea were both the colour of the smoke that poured out of factory chimneys in England's industrial areas.

He was nearly home.

Somewhere just over the horizon was the west coast of Ireland — the closest point to England that the ship was going to dock on this trip and the point at which he planned to get off and find his way home. He hadn't planned to leave England on the Gloria Scott, all that time ago. He had been ripped away from his family and friends, kidnapped and sedated and hidden away on the ship by a secretive organization known as the Paradol Chamber. He had crossed the Chamber by accident several times over the previous two years, enough to make them want to get rid of him. Or perhaps they had done it because they wanted him to do some work for them in China, where the ship had been heading. Perhaps it was a bit of both. As far as he could tell, the Paradol Chamber never did anything for only one reason. They had plans nestled inside plans nestled inside yet more plans, like intricate clockwork mechanisms.

According to Mr. Larchmont, the Gloria Scott would dock in Galway at the Spanish Arch and stay for a few days before heading to Antwerp. That was where the cargo that they had loaded in Shanghai would sell for the most money. Sherlock was going to disembark in Galway, take his pay like any regular member of the crew, and head across Ireland to Dublin. From there he could get a ferry to Liverpool, then travel down towards London on the train.

To what? That was the question he kept asking himself. Back to Holmes Manor, in Hampshire? Back to his aunt and uncle as if he had never been away? Or maybe back to his close family, if his father had returned from India and his mother had recovered from her lingering illness. And what of his friends — would Matty still be there, or would he have set out along the canals for some other place where he could survive on his wits? Would Rufus Stone still be teaching violin and chasing girls in Farnham, or would Sherlock's brother, Mycroft, have sent him somewhere else to collect information for the British government? What about Sherlock's teacher, Amyus Crowe? And what about Crowe's daughter, Virginia?

His hand crept up to touch the outside of his shirt. Inside, in a leather pouch strung around his neck, folded up small, was the letter that Virginia had written to him and given to brother Mycroft to pass on. He had read it on the quayside in Shanghai, and his world had caved in