Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

Carriages passed, but none of them contained the Merchant. Not yet.

Pax said, “I like apples. I remember the time we went over the wall, hunting them.”

At the Coach House.

They must have been mad. Thinking back, that was the only explanation. But the two of them used to slip over the wall and go stealing in town. They stole food. The Cachés were kept hungry.

The apple expedition had been especially satisfying. They’d stolen a few dozen from vendors in the market on the quai de la Tournelle and sneaked a basket back over the wall. Then all of them had gorged on apples—two apiece, an amazing feast—in the back of the practice field behind the targets and bales of hay and old benches. Not a scratch on anyone. No one beaten for it. A wholly successful operation.

A good thought to carry with her today.

Reluctantly, she opened the watch and turned the face to Pax, silently. She felt cold inside and strange.

“It’s time,” Pax said.

She’d planned to walk away from him, calmly and bravely, as a soldier parts from a comrade to go to battle. But he took her wrist and pulled her to him and kissed her, strongly and thoroughly.

He said, “I love you. Be careful. We’ll move in when you give the signal.”

She’d been cold, so cold, inside. Now she carried that fire away with her, in her belly.

* * *

Pax returned to his selected piece of shadow where his choice of clothes made him invisible.

Hawker went on repairing the window, looking knowledgeable, using the tools pretty much at random. “It’s not the code,” Hawker said, just loud enough for him to hear. “It’s her.”

“I know.” It had been obvious from the start the Merchant was after Cami. “She knows.”

“There’s about no documents to decipher from Mandarin yet. It’s too new.” Hawk tap-tapped at jagged glass. “And we’d stop using it the day she disappeared from Goosefat-on-Tweed anyway. She could hand the real code over this morning, down to the last orange pip, wrapped up in a red bow and stamped by the post office. Everybody’s warned. It’s worthless.”

“If he wanted codes, he would have kidnapped one of the Leylands and beaten it out of an old woman. This is too elaborate for that. He’s wanted Cami, and only her, from the beginning.”

“Now he’s got her.” Hawk went on calmly scraping putty. “He’s brought Cami to this street, this morning, at this hour. We can assume that’s exactly what he wants. I’m glad somebody’s pleased with this morning’s work.”

“We’ve handed her over to him.” But that wasn’t quite true. Cami had handed herself over to the Merchant. She walked toward him now, without hurry or any sign of nervousness. The wind was strong enough to pull at the curls of her hair. Grey would have to compensate for that wind when he shot. She wore no cloak, no bonnet to get in the way if she had to fight or run.

Carts, horses, and the occasional carriage passed. Men and women went about their business on Semple Street. A child rolled a hoop down the street. The background hum of London filled the air. It was a bright day, an hour short of noon.

Hawker said, “There are a number of us keeping her alive. And she’s deadly competent all on her own.” He picked up a small trowel. “Good choice, by the way.”

“I think so.”

“Probably kill you on your honeymoon, but you’ll die happy.”

“I agree. Hand me that pistol, will you? Is it loaded?”

“Why do you ask questions when you know the answer? Of course it’s loaded.”

He didn’t care how careful and wise and deadly Cami was. A piece of lead the size of his fingernail could take her from the world forever. One bullet. Break the goblet, and life pours out.

Cami left the alley and walked out into the open, feeling Pax’s eye on her. In these last hours he had become a vessel, filled with purpose, solid and dense in his concentration. All for her. That knowledge burned like a flame in the back of her mind, giving off warmth. She was not alone.

She picked up her skirts as she stepped into the street, glancing left and right. The sniper was set up behind that window. Baldoni—her blood, her family—waited at both ends of the street, armed and ready, none of them in sight. Service agents practiced their form of well-armed subtlety behind some of the closed doors up and down the street. There were seven of them, six men and a woman.

Pax was one of them still. He didn’t believe that, but it showed in every word they spoke to him. In their faces. The fraternity of the Service had closed ranks around him.

This motley, disjointed, powerful, and clever crew was going to take the Merchant alive. It would be done. Had to be done. It was too late to wonder if there’d been better choices along the way. It was far too late to back out now.

She narrowed the world to here and now. Semple Street took on vivid clarity and color. The shadows had contracted to nothing, this close to noon. Birds chittered on windowsills. Voices leaked from open windows. Somewhere to her left she heard the sound of a broom sweeping. A fragment of newspaper rolled end over end in a gust of wind. A cat sat, artistically arranged on its doorstep. Women in black, heads together, talking, had settled in for the duration. A window opened and a small rug took an airing, shaken out.

She came to Number Fifty-six, to her own particular square of pavement, the exact cobbles, and set her feet firm and a little apart, ready to run or fight or be shot by one of the many men who might do that. It was taking her post as a soldier on the battlefield does, resigned and scared.

She could sense eyes on her, like the faintest itch on her skin. She felt Pax’s steady regard. She could have Pax’s attention out of the whole mixed brigade of watchers.

Let Pax live through this. If you’ll just let Pax live . . .

She caught herself bargaining with God, promising to light a hundred candles in gratitude. She knew better than to haggle with God like a fruit seller in the market. God expected her to pay attention to the business at hand.

But she’d light flocks of candles if Pax lived.

She slowed her breathing. Tensed and released the big muscles of her body a few times. No point in burning up all her courage and strength before the game even began.

Forty-seven coaches, carts, gigs, and carriages passed. Twenty-two people. One dog. Then the Merchant.

* * *

“I probably could put glass into this.” Hawker turned his head and considered the broken window. “It doesn’t look that hard.”

Pax said, “Planning to change professions?”

“Never hurts to be prepared. One of these days I’m going to push Galba just an inch too far and get booted out of the Service.”

“That day has come and gone.” Pax rested the pistol on the nail he’d driven into the drainpipe and sighted down the length of it. It was a Mortimer and he’d had the barrel rifled to give it some accuracy. At this range, it would work as well as a Baker.

Hawker was turning over the sheet of glass, holding the edges through folded rags. “I’ll bet you could throw this, if you added some heft to it.” He weighed it in his hands. “Who are they going to let torture the Merchant when we catch him? Not you.”

“Doyle, I imagine.”

Hawk nodded. “Then Doyle will be the one to kill him at the end. Or Galba will come in and do it, being Head of Service.”

“You’re counting your chickens before they’re hatched.”

“I’m wringing their necks, plucking, and stewing them before they’re hatched.” Glancing into Semple Street, Hawker added, “Just concentrate on sighting your gun. Our girl’s holding fine. Calm as a pudding.”

* * *

She knew it was the Merchant before she saw his face. The plain black landau, anonymous, secretive, with the curtains drawn, announced him like a blast of trumpets.

The Merchant was driving himself, which she hadn’t expected. He dressed like a coachman and counterfeited the bored competence of a hired driver. He’d come to this meeting without his henchmen.

He was five minutes early. She’d have thought he was a man to be finicky about unimportant details.

She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. That was her signal to all the neighboring deadly people. It said, This is the Merchant.

A hundred feet away, in a second-floor window, the curtain drew back. That passed her message to everyone who couldn’t see her directly.

The closed coach told her he’d brought something or someone with him. He could fit two or three henchmen inside, ready to kidnap her. Or he could have Camille Besançon in there.

The carriage stopped level with her. The leather curtains of the windows didn’t twitch. Up on the box, the Merchant took a lungful of the cheroot he carried, set the brake, and wrapped the reins around it.

Close up, he was a deeply unconvincing coachman. That pallid face gave him away. He wore gloves too fine for a driver. His boots were gentleman’s boots, smooth, glossy, well fitted, and soft. He made mistakes all over the map. The cheroot was another one. She’d never seen a driver carry anything in his hand but a whip.

The Merchant shed his gloves, matched them palm to palm, and dropped them on the seat. He shrugged out of the driver’s coat, which was a thick, well-worn, authentic garment of many capes that had been made for a fatter man. He climbed down to go to the horse’s head.