“And will there be a mutiny?” Sherlock asked, feeling his heart sinking like a stone dropped into a pond. “Will Father be safe?”

Mycroft shrugged his massive shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said simply. That was one of the things that Sherlock respected about his brother. He always gave a straight response to a straight question. No honeying the pill. “Sadly, I don’t know everything. Not yet, anyway.”

“But you work for the government,” Sherlock pressed. “You must have some idea of what might happen. Can’t you send a different Regiment? Keep Father here in England?”

“I’ve only been with the Foreign Office for a few months,” Mycroft replied, “and although I am flattered that you think I have the power to alter such important things, I’m afraid I don’t. I’m an advisor. Just a clerk, really.”

“How long will Father be gone?” Sherlock asked, remembering the large man dressed in a scarlet serge jacket with white belts crossing his chest, who laughed easily and lost his temper rarely. He could feel a pressure in his chest but he held his feelings in check. If there was one lesson he had learned from his time at Deepdene School it was that you never showed any emotion. If you did, it would be used against you.

“Six weeks for the ship to reach port, six months in the country, I would estimate, and then another six weeks returning. Nine months in all.”

“Nearly a year.” He bowed his head for a moment, composing himself, then nodded. “Can we go home now?”

“You’re not going home,” Mycroft said.