Whitby saluted with his glass and drank. “You’ll find, Kennett, that there’s a fine art to giving Jess orders.”

Time to tell him and pray the man knew something that could help. “An hour ago your daughter ran into the Whitechapel rookery as if all the Hounds of Hell were after her.” He waited for that to sink in. “Unless you can think of some way to get her back, she’ll be in a brothel by tomorrow morning. Learn to take orders there, I should imagine. Salut.”

The old man’s eyes turned to brown rock. This was the Josiah Whitby who’d faced down the mob in Izmir and plucked a crew of men back from hanging. This was the king smuggler who ran his gang of cutthroats under the noses of the customs. “The Hounds of Hell being yourself, I take it.”

“Being the British Service.” He didn’t try to hide the anger that filled him. “She gave the slip to men who were supposed to protect her. Fast as a greyhound, your Jess. Comes from all those years doing your dangerous errands. And Lazarus’s. She must be used to running scared.”

Whitby slapped his drink down, rattling. “No games, Kennett. I don’t need to be rooked into helping Jess. Why’d she run from you?”

“We would have stopped her going to Pitney.”

There was not the smallest change in Whitby’s eyes. “Pitney.”

“The part of Cinq that used your company to commit treason.”

A minute passed. Whitby gave a nod. “I wasn’t sure myself, till they told me it was Whitby ships. Then I knew.” He wiped at the spilled drops of port with the side of his hand. “I wish it hadn’t been Jess who found this out. She’ll take it as her fault somehow.”

“He has a dangerous partner—the man who was behind this all. If Jess shows up, Pitney won’t be able to protect her. I have to get to her. Where are they?”

“What happens to Pitney?”

He didn’t answer. They both knew there’d be no amnesty for Pitney.

Whitby sat back in his chair and stared out the window, past the bars. Three sparrows were on the windowsill, tucking into crumbs of bread. It’d be Whitby who set that out for them.

“I’ve known Pitney for thirty years.” Whitby drank and set the glass down. “Jess is headed for the docks. There’s a warehouse. The old Belkey warehouse on Asker Street. That’s the conduit out of England.”

Asker Street. Jess had lost her bodyguard near Commercial Road. That was a long, treacherous walk for a woman. He stood up. “I’ll find her.”

A sleek gray muzzle poked out from behind the curtain. The beady nose sniffed in his direction and slithered toward him. Jess’s vermin.

He said, “Touch my boots and you die.”

There was no fear in the ferret. It was like Jess, that way. It stood on its hindquarters to snuffle up his leg to the thigh. Then it set a clawed foot on him, for balance, and started sniffing across his hand.

“He smells Jess on thee,” Whitby said.

“If it bites, I’m going to wring its neck.”

“I’ve thought of fricassee ferret, myself, from time t’ time.”

“She can’t walk through Limehouse alone. Who will she go to?” The ferret made an odd half scramble, still sniffing, following him to the door.

“It’s been too long, Kennett. Her old friends have gone. Everything’s changed. She doesn’t belong there anymore.”

“Then she should damn well stay out of there.”

The study door wasn’t locked. That was Adrian’s acknowledgment of Whitby’s innocence. The ferret, damn its furry soul, scuttled along at his bootside like a pointy-toothed dog.

“Take him. There’s a carrying cage in the hall.” Whitby stood to watch him go, his hands on the desk, balled into fists. “Take him along for luck, Kennett. He won’t get in the way. And if you get close to Jess, let him out, and he’ll find her for you.”

It was easier to bring the vermin than argue.

“She’ll get to Pitney, wherever he is,” Whitby said. “Whatever he’s done, she’ll get him out of England, and safe. Loyal to the death, my Jess. That’s another reason you have to be careful, giving her orders. If you belong to her, she’ll move the foundations of the earth for you.”


PITNEY dropped the seabag at his feet. It was the same one he’d carried thirty years ago when he signed on with Josiah. Nothing in it but some handfuls of money and a few changes of clothes. Not much to show for a lifetime. He was old now and a pariah and he’d sold his soul for a mass of pottage. It’d be hard to start over in some seaport in the East.

He said, “I left a letter.”

“Inevitably,” the smooth, cold voice beside him said. “The tool turns against its master. Napoleon himself was betrayed by Barras.”

“I named Buchanan. I told them he planted the false evidence and where and how. I named the Frenchmen. And you. I’ve left more than enough proof to hang us all. Josiah’s going to walk free before this day is out and he’ll come looking for vengeance. He won’t come after me, because we were friends, once. But I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”

“I’ve arranged my own protection against Whitby. He won’t touch me.”

“Maybe not.” It didn’t matter. There wasn’t much that mattered to a man after he’d betrayed his friends. He couldn’t even say why he’d done it. The company felt like his own, after all these years. The warehouse and the ships. It hadn’t seemed wrong to do some smuggling on the side and keep it off the books.

It had fallen apart. He’d done treason. He still didn’t know how he’d come to it.

The voice behind him just wouldn’t stop. “The Republic doesn’t forget its heroes. There’s a place prepared for me. I go into honorable exile, and only for a time. When the emperor rides in triumph down Pall Mall, I’ll be one of the men behind him. They’ll need Englishmen to lead the new government. I have experience.”

Pitney heard the cocking of a gun. He allowed himself one final look at the brown water of the Thames and the clean blue sky above it. He turned.

He didn’t want to be shot in the back.


LIMEHOUSE was full of sailors and stevedores of every country and race known to man, most of them rolling drunk, even in the middle of the day. It was a gauntlet she wouldn’t have wanted to run alone.

Belkey’s warehouse was a quarter mile farther on, in Asker Street, in a row of falling-down waterfront warehouses, slated for destruction. Most were empty now or holding bulk storage.

The Reverend kept beside her. His black jacket and white collar cleared a path for them through the sailors and whores. Men respected his cloth or wanted to avoid the sermons men of religion passed out in this part of town. The locals recognized him and knew he was under Lazarus’s protection.

Asker Street, by the docks, was mostly deserted. The Belkey warehouse, halfway along, had been closed up for a year. Grass grew in the spaces between the cobbles of the loading yard. The windows were broken, even up on the third and fourth story. Must have taken weeks for the local lads to throw rocks that high and break out every blessed pane. Nothing like a challenge.

No sign of life. Nobody had made himself at home in that rubble on the far side of the yard or in some cozy corner of the fence. That alone meant somebody stayed here regular to rout the squatters out. Dogs had set up housekeeping, though. There were a dozen of them, mean and hardy and wise, crouching behind the broken boards of the fence. They watched strangers cross the open space, staying safe in the shadows. The boys in this district taught dogs to be wary of humans.

The river smell was strong. Just the other side of the warehouse wall lay the stinking mud of the Thames. Cold, damp air blew off that water, leaving a bad taste in the mouth. At the wharves, just out of sight, ships creaked and snapped and banged. Chain rattled and there was a sudden loud pop, like a distant gun. It was never quiet down at the docks.

Pitney might still be here, waiting, out of sight, or he might have come and gone. Either way, there’d be a man inside the warehouse, alert and capable, with a boat ready any hour of the day or night. Papa always had a back door out of any city they lived in. Nobody more careful than Papa.

The door in the side of the warehouse was an inch open.

“This is unlocked,” the Reverend said.

“I expect the locks got pulled off some time ago.”

At first, when she walked in, the place looked empty. Gutted. The storage racks had been pulled down and the wood stolen for fuel. Bars of sun slanted through the broken windows.

Somebody was living here. She smelled beer and piss and charcoal and stale food. There’d be rats. There were always rats. “You better stay outside, Reverend, till I see what’s what.”

“I won’t leave you alone. I’ve seen worse, Jess.”

On the far side of the open floor, below the windows, a bedstead was shoved up against the brick wall. Beside that was a charcoal stove with a kettle on it. Good signs. Whitby’s man would show up soon enough.

She led the way inward, past dark, empty arches where they used to store cargo, toward that patch of domesticity. She didn’t see what stepped out behind her and looped a cord around her throat. The world was gone, sudden as snuffing out a candle.


“IT’S the Reverend,” Adrian said.

Sebastian rolled him over. The man groaned and his eyelids fluttered. There was blood on his forehead where he’d hit the floor.

Jess had been here. The ferret chittered in its cage, lashing its body back and forth.

“He was hit from behind. Here.” Sebastian’s hand came away bloody. “This just happened. A friend of Jess’s?”

“Friend of all the world. Jess must have gone to him. Smart, smart girl.”