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mention of it when we took our railway ride the following day. Yet we did not; I heard of it only by accident, yesterday in Leeds (one of the ostlers at the King’s Head is cousin to one of the injured men and happened to be discussing it with a companion when I stopped there to retrieve your letter).
    The clear conclusion is that someone has suppressed, to an extreme extent, general knowledge and talk of the accident. You know what gossip is like in small towns; it would take great authority, strong magic, or both together, to keep so sensational an incident from discussion.
    A similar silence surrounds my missing surveyor. Once out of Leeds, away from the inn where he stayed, no one seems to have seen or heard of him. Yet it is clear, from the innkeeper’s remarks, that Herr Magus Schellen behaved much as Cecelia and I have done—on his arrival, he made some investigation of the Darlington end of the railway, then paid his shilling to ride to Stockton and return. Someone ought to remember him, but no one does.
    The question is, why? The whole affair smells of old cheese. I am sorry to have brought Cecelia along, but unless you could persuade Kate to concoct some serious illness on the part of one of the children, there would be no getting her to leave now. (As such a deception would be quickly uncovered, with results I do not like to consider, I will not ask it of you.) Remaining at Haliwar Tower seems the lesser of two evils. It also seems the most likely means of discovering what they are about, not to mention finding out who is opening our mail, and why.
    One matter, at least, shows progress. You recall the letter that was waiting at the inn for my missing German? Wellington’s people have at last provided a translation. It arrived in Leeds just after we removed to Haliwar, and was waiting for me along with your note when I returned. It seems to have been written by a fellow magician and close friend of Herr Schellen’s, one Heinrich Kruger. Much of the letter was of a personal nature, but there were several relevant paragraphs, which I copy for you below:
I have searched the archives as you requested. The maps of England are woefully out of date, as you might expect, and several of the translations are very bad. Nonetheless, I can find neither mark nor mention of a ley line running along the Tees river, though at least one crosses it near Stockton-on-Tees. Not even the English could miss a segment of such density as you describe; it must have been left off the maps deliberately. Your theory that it is a new line is absurd; I pray you will not mention it to anyone else, as the damage it would do your professional reputation would be considerable. The fundamental stability of ley lines is one of their most predominant characteristics; they do not appear and disappear like images in a mirror.
    The area between Liverpool and Manchester has been more thoroughly surveyed. There are several ley lines in that region, but none that run along, or parallel to, any of the routes you asked about. I cannot, of course, vouch for any lines which may have been deliberately left off the maps. If you have English sources, I would suggest you check them, as only the most overzealous of British authorities would remove information from their own maps.
    I can find no observations on the effect of running a steam locomotive in the vicinity of a ley line. The stationary steam engines used in mines have, to date, not been located near enough to ley points for any difficulties to become apparent, if difficulties there are. I found, however, any number of papers regarding the tapping of ley energies. Most of them warn of inadvisable methods of attempting it, or deal with the catastrophic results of applying such techniques. The few successful methodologies are complex, and require diagrams of immense proportions, anchored by elemental energies. I will copy out the procedures, if you request it, but I am reluctant to spend so much time on the