Excerpt from Landfalls by Naomi J. Williams, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"You're tired," Webber says gently. "I'll take you home."

"Webber," Monneron says. "I must return to my lodgings tonight. I can take a cab from here."

Webber's face opens in disappointed surprise, and Monneron cannot suppress a flare of impatience. I have spent a day and a half riding all over London with you, he wants to say. Is that not enough? Instead he protests that he has much to do before he leaves, letters to write, accounts to check over—and it's all true, but still he sounds like a boor. "I am sorry, Webber," he says. "You have been so good to me." He does not add, I no longer have need of you. But the expression on Webber's face suggests he has heard it anyway.

He won't hear of Monneron taking a cab. They ride in silence to Mrs. Towe's. "I'll have your portrait ready tomorrow afternoon," Webber says when the driver stops.

Monneron gets out of the carriage, then turns around in the street. The portrait—he'd forgotten about it. And Webber can see that he has. "I will come tomorrow, Webber," he says, then compelled by some need to address his indebtedness, says, "May I help pay for the driver?"

Webber looks stricken. "Please don't insult me, Mr. Monneron."

On a tarnished salver in Mrs. Towe's entryway lies a message addressed to Monneron. "It came yesterday," the landlady says from her parlor. The note is short and unsigned:

Sir

have secured dipping needles for expedition which I should be honored to entrust to your safekeeping at earliest convenience

Influence

Sir Joseph receives him the next morning in the study under the stairs. He pats the top of a large box on his desk, then says: "On loan from the Board of Longitude."

Monneron sits up. The Board of Longitude? Clearly they are well past the fiction of Don Inigo. Sir Joseph opens the box, pulls out an instrument, and sets it on the desk surface. It's an odd apparatus, looking like a framed vertical compass set over an adjustable tripod. "There's a second one like it in the box," he says. He looks pointedly at Monneron. "They were on the Resolution and the Discovery."

The Resolution and Discovery—the ships from Cook's last voyage! Monneron breathes in sharply. "Sir Joseph," he says helplessly. "How—?"

Banks smiles. "There are quarters in which I have some influence," he says. Then more seriously: "We are honored to cooperate with your government in this."

Monneron cannot speak. He's struck, as he has not been before this moment, by the real importance of the expedition he represents. But also by the pointlessness of the secrecy he's been compelled to maintain—a secrecy that now seems like so much bureaucratic posturing.

Banks packs the dipping needle back into its box. "Take good care of these instruments," he says. "Discover much. Write everything down. And then, come back. It's very important that some of you come back."

Five Guineas

He's loath to leave Mrs. Towe's after depositing the dipping needles in the locked storage room. But he needs to collect the portrait and pay for it, and more than that he wishes to unburden himself to Webber, so he returns one last time to Oxford Street. He's surprised and vexed to learn that Webber is out. He has no right to his vexation, of course; he knows that. He's gone from expecting nothing helpful from the artist to having scruples about taking advantage of him to feeling smothered by the man's wanton availability to being, now, annoyed by evidence that he has other things to do. How can an acquaintance of four days have grown so tangled?

The dignified servant says no, he doesn't know when Mr. Webber will return, but there's a parcel for Mr. Monneron, if he would just step inside for a moment. This duty discharged, the servant doesn't invite him to wait. "May I—I should like to leave a note for Mr. Webber," Monneron says. The man returns with pencil and paper, then departs without showing him to the writing table in the parlor. Monneron leans awkwardly over a ledge in the entryway to write.

Excerpted from Landfalls by Naomi J Williams. Copyright © 2015 by Naomi J Williams. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.