CHAPTER 90: AFTERMATH

Madrid in late autumn carried a peculiar tension, as if the air itself had grown heavy with secrets. The rain that had soaked the city streets days before was gone, but the cobblestones still gleamed with dampness, catching the lantern light like glass. Citizens hurried along narrow alleys, cloaks drawn tight against the chill, speaking in lowered voices. To the ordinary passerby, life went on—markets bustled, taverns roared with laughter, priests tolled bells. Yet beneath that surface, the city had changed.

The Englishman was gone.

No public trial, no procession of soldiers, not even a rumor of where he had been taken. One day he was seen pacing the Consulado’s halls, and the next he had vanished as though Madrid’s stones had swallowed him whole.

For the common folk, it was a tale retold in whispers: El espía ha caído. The spy has fallen. Some imagined he had been strangled in the night and dumped in the Manzanares. Others swore he had been dragged to the dungeons beneath the Alcázar, where the walls echoed with screams. Mothers warned children not to stare at foreigners, for fear of being marked as accomplices.

It was a victory, though one draped in silence.

Colonel Valdés did not gloat openly. His office in the Alcázar remained as austere as ever: a desk stacked with reports, a crucifix on the wall, and maps pinned with neat rows of inked markers. Yet behind that severity lurked a quiet satisfaction.

Harrow had been more than a spy. He had been the lynchpin of Britannia’s entire web in Iberia. For years, agents had flowed through Madrid—runners, informants, merchants in name only—all feeding their threads back to Harrow. By plucking him from the web, Valdés had done more than remove a single man; he had set the entire structure to collapse.

Reports poured in daily: arrests in Valencia, disappearances in Cádiz, the unmasking of a merchant in Zaragoza. The Bureau’s coffers swelled with seized ledgers, intercepted letters, and broken ciphers. One by one, the hidden English contacts were smoked out. Some went to prison. Others vanished without a trace.

Valdés reviewed these reports each evening with a soldier’s precision. "Bit by bit," he told his aides, "we cut away the shadows until only sunlight remains."

But he was no fool. For every network dismantled, another could rise. The English were a hydra; strike off one head, and another emerged. That was why Valdés kept Harrow alive—not for mercy, but for utility. Broken men still had uses.

In the windowless cell beneath the Alcázar, Edward Harrow clung to what little remained of himself. His wrists were scarred from bonds, his once-proud bearing reduced to a hunched shell. He spent hours muttering to unseen companions—London, Wainwright, the ghosts of couriers long dead.

Sometimes he wept. Sometimes he raged, hurling curses at the guards who brought him food. But more often, he simply stared at the wall, lips moving silently as though reciting ciphers no one would ever hear again.

Valdés visited rarely now. The colonel had no need. Harrow had already yielded enough to cripple his networks. When he did appear, he would stand in silence until Harrow noticed him, then ask a single question, calm and direct.

"Where would they rebuild?"

"Whose hand wrote the cipher on the Marseille route?"

"Which tavern did you use in Seville?"

Harrow would answer. Always slowly, often with trembling hands, but he would answer. He told himself it was only survival, only until rescue came. Yet deep down, he knew no rescue was coming.

He was a ghost already.

Far from the Alcázar, in a shuttered safehouse near La Latina, Lancelot received the news of Harrow’s capture with a grim face. Isandro delivered the whisper late at night, slipping in through the back door with mud still clinging to his boots.

"They say he’s gone," Isandro reported. "The Consulado is near empty. The English vanish like smoke."

Lancelot nodded, though his expression remained unreadable. "Gone where?"

"No one knows. Some say the Bureau took him beneath the Alcázar. Others say the river claimed him."

Lancelot leaned over the map table, tracing routes with his finger. "If he were dead, Valdés would not hide it. They want him silent, but alive. That means the game is not finished."

Isandro frowned. "Then we should celebrate. The man hunted us for years. Without him, the English are crippled."

"Crippled men still bite," Lancelot said coldly. "Do not mistake silence for safety. London will send another. Perhaps more cautious, perhaps more ruthless. We must be ready."

For Lancelot, the fall of Harrow was no triumph. It was a shift in the balance. One enemy was gone, but others would come. And when they did, Madrid would once again become their battlefield.

The absence of Harrow rippled beyond the underground. Merchants who had once profited from English trade suddenly found their ledgers scrutinized. A banker near Puerta del Sol was arrested quietly, accused of laundering Britannian funds. A tavern in Lavapiés closed its doors overnight, its keeper vanished with his family.

Priests spoke cautiously in sermons, warning of foreign corruption. The press, guided subtly by the Bureau, printed articles about the vigilance of the crown, the strength of Spain against outside interference. Even the theatre joined in: a new play debuted at Teatro Español, in which a shadowy foreign villain was unmasked by loyal Spaniards. The audience roared approval, cheering as though the stage reflected their very streets.

Madrid became a city of watchers. Neighbors eyed neighbors, questioning who had taken Britannian coin, who had whispered secrets. The paranoia that had once gripped Harrow now seeped into the populace at large.

Across the sea, in London, the silence from Madrid had not gone unnoticed. Reports ceased. Couriers vanished. The once-steady stream of coded letters dried to nothing.

In a dim chamber off Whitehall, the Foreign Office convened a discreet council. Men in dark coats debated in hushed tones.

"Harrow has failed us," one declared.

"Or been taken," another countered.

"Either way, the Spanish know too much. We must assume the network is compromised."

And so orders were drafted. New men would be sent—not merchants and couriers, but hardened professionals, trained to rebuild in the ashes. They would come quietly, slipping through Lisbon, through Gibraltar, through the Pyrenees. Madrid would not remain uncontested.

The shadow war was far from over.

Wainwright, Harrow’s faithful adjutant, faced his own reckoning. Unlike Harrow, he had yielded quickly, giving Valdés a name in exchange for promises of leniency. For weeks he believed those promises.

But the Bureau of Security had no intention of freeing him. Instead, they kept him confined, moving him from one hidden chamber to another, never letting him know where he was. His usefulness waned once the Valencia contact was seized.

On a gray morning, Wainwright was led from his cell by two guards. He begged, he pleaded, insisting he had given all he could. The guards said nothing.

He was never seen again.

Word of his disappearance never reached Harrow. But had it, perhaps the last thread of his pride would have snapped.

One evening, as the bells of Madrid tolled vespers, Colonel Valdés stood at his office window overlooking the city. The rooftops glowed red in the sunset, smoke rising from chimneys, carriages rattling along the cobblestones.

He thought of Harrow, broken in the cell below. He thought of the web of Britannian spies now torn apart. It was, undeniably, a victory.

Yet Valdés felt no triumph. He knew too well the nature of shadows. Where one falls, another rises. The English would not abandon Spain; their hunger for influence ran too deep.

"Another will come," he murmured. "Perhaps worse than the first."

He turned from the window, extinguished the lamp, and left his office in darkness.

For now, Madrid breathed easier. The great English spider was gone, the Bureau triumphant, the city safer—or so it seemed. But beneath the surface, threads were already stirring.

In the cafés of Paris, in the taverns of Lisbon, in the smoke-filled rooms of London, whispers carried of agents preparing to move. Some sought to rebuild what Harrow had lost. Others sought vengeance.

And in Madrid, Lancelot sharpened his own blades, waiting for the next move on the board.

For the shadow war was not ended. It had only changed hands.

The city itself seemed to sense it. Nights grew quieter, yet more watchful. Doors closed earlier, shutters barred with extra care. The common folk whispered prayers before sleep, as though Madrid were no longer a city but a stage upon which unseen actors plotted in silence.

Lancelot, standing in the candlelit gloom of his safehouse, knew one truth above all others: victories in the shadows never lasted. Harrow’s fall had bought Spain breathing space, nothing more. Britannia would not let the wound fester unavenged. Somewhere, across the sea, a new hand already reached for the strings.

And when that hand pulled, Madrid would once again tremble. They won’t let Spain be the dominant power in the world.