Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

He lifted the pistol and appraised it briefly. “I’ll make certain of that.” His voice was perfectly genial. His gaze, emotionless as the stare of a doll.

There are men who chill the blood when you glance into their eyes, passing them on the street. There are reptiles who walk in human form. Monsters with no soul looking out of their eyes. This was one of them. It amazed her that most people did not recognize them at once.

She said, “You’re wasting time and I have none to spare. The man is nothing.”

Nothing. She had called Devoir “nothing.”

The wind from the street blew in and skipped across her and lifted the smell of snuff from her clothes. For a vivid instant, she was back in the sparring field of the Coach House.

It had been one of the very bad days. The Tuteur had thrown the snuff mélange in her face and beaten her till she collapsed in the mud. They called this training, but its purpose was to break her spirit.

When the Tuteurs put their coats on and left, Devoir took her up into his arms and carried her to the pump. He held her head tight against his belly through the cold, drenching shock of bucket after bucket the others drew from the pump. His muscles were hard as a wall and warm under her cheek. His fingers, careful, parted her eyelids and he dribbled water across. He said, “Open your eyes, Vérité. You have to do this.”

The pain and helplessness didn’t break her because Devoir was there. For her. For all of them. The Tuteurs had never understood Devoir.

Today, ten years later, she betrayed him. “The man is nothing,” she repeated. “Get out of my way.”

The blackmailer’s eyes went from her to the dark of the church. “He’s seen me.” His gun leveled past her, toward Devoir.

“Dozens of men saw you walk in here. They’re watching you through the door this minute, wondering who we are and why we’re standing here. I intend to become less conspicuous.” She jostled his gun aside and pushed past.

If she wanted to kill a blackmailer, she could do it now. She could draw knife from sheath, press it to his kidney as she passed, and slip it home. It would rid the world of some moderate amount of evil. But it wouldn’t protect the Fluffy Aunts from this man’s colleagues. It wouldn’t lead her to Camille Besançon.

She let the moment for murder pass. One does not seize all opportunities.

At the door, she said, “Shoot him, slit his throat, smother him with a pillow. Please yourself. I leave you to deal with the corpse and these interested onlookers.”

“Don’t turn your back on me.”

She ignored him. She wrapped her cloak tight and strode off, taking his attention with her, out of the church. Before she got to the iron pickets that separated the sacred of the church from the profane of the street traffic, her blackmailer abandoned the church and followed her.

Devoir would not die today.

Through the roaring in his ears, Pax heard Vérité talking to the Merchant at the door of the church. He couldn’t catch the words over the noise he made strangling on his own breath.

That son of a bitch wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her. Death was nothing to him. One death or twenty. The Merchant sowed it wholesale.

Gasping, sweeping his hands in circles on the cold stone, he found his gun. Took up the dark, familiar shape.

Air knifed his throat and raked in his lungs. He grabbed the end of the pew. Pulled himself to his feet. He forced his eyes open to splinters of shattered color and indescribable pain. The doorway was an empty rectangle of agonizing light.

He staggered toward it.

They were gone. Vérité and the monster. The Merchant was out there somewhere. Alive. Loose in London. Had to find him. Had to—

Someone ran toward him, a dark shape against the light. His fingers were so clumsy it took both hands to cock the gun.

“It’s me,” Hawker said. “Don’t shoot. Where are you hit?”

“Not . . . Not hit.” He choked. He couldn’t get the words out. He pointed the gun to the ground and let it hang loose in his hand. It wasn’t doing him any good.

“Bloody hell.” Hawker pulled him forward, down the steps. Three steps. “She threw something in your eyes. Gods in hell. Your eyes.”

“Follow him. The man . . .” Words were fire and ground glass in his throat. “Go after him.”

“Right.”

The stones of the path tripped him. Hawk was under his arm, keeping him from falling.

“Water. Ten more steps. Hang on.” Hawk dragged him the last of the way, pushed him to his knees, and thrust his head into the horse trough.

He breathed water. Came up gasping. “Follow him.”

“She’s poisoned you. That bloody bitch of a woman did this to you.”

“You have to—” Coughing racked him. Twisted his lungs inside out. “The man. Go after him. Now!”

“One of my priorities has always been doing what you tell me.” Hawker raised his voice. “I need a bucket here.”

“He’s . . . French spy. Important.”

“Keeping you alive is important.”

“Kill him.” The explosion of coughing was a poker of hot iron in his lungs. He dropped the pistol, shut his arms tight around the pain in his chest, and spoke through fire and vitriol. “Find him. Kill him.”

“I’ll just do that. Kill him out of hand. Damn. And they say I’m bloodthirsty.” Hawk was talking to somebody in the crowd, giving orders. Saying, “Here’s money,” and “Take care of him.”

Hawk’s hand clasped his shoulder. “I’ll be back. If she’s blinded you, I’ll cut her fucking eyes out.”

He’ll do it. He had to say this. Had to get it out before Hawker left. “Don’t hurt her! An order. That’s an order.”

A dark shape blocked the hideously bright light. Hawk stood over him one last minute. “Hurt doesn’t begin to describe it.”

Cami inserted herself into the noise and confusion of Fetter Lane, slipping between stout workmen who were stolid and oblivious and nearly as good as a solid wall for concealment. The blackmailer followed her, fuming. She’d get well away from the church and its many opportunities for unpredictable violence before she talked to him.

Devoir needed—

She pushed Devoir out of her mind.

Fetter Lane was a fine noisy place to weave in and out of, smooth as a fish among waving weeds. She tossed tendrils of attention to left and right, to the traffic passing, to the laborers wheeling barrows, to men who lingered in doorways and chatted in front of shops. Under a fold of cloak, her right hand with its little knife, cum cultellulus as it were, was ready to slice or stab. She intended to be a difficult woman to hit on the head and haul away in a private carriage.

She’d given considerable thought, lately, to the business of daylight kidnapping in London. She wouldn’t attempt it on Fetter Lane, herself, but there was no reason to assume this blackmailer was equally cautious. Many things could go wrong in the next half hour. She was prey to a variety of qualms.

Her blackmailer had qualms and imperatives of his own. He caught up with her. “We’ve left a witness alive behind us. A wiser woman wouldn’t have stood in my way.”

She summoned up a Baldoni smile. “A wiser woman would have ignored your letter altogether. You write nonsense about a ‘genuine Camille’ and a code you’ve taken a fancy to. You—”

“Enough. We can’t talk in the open street.”

“On the contrary, this is a perfect place to trade confidences.”

“I did not come here to—”

She left him talking to empty air and continued toward Fleet Street. He followed, as she had known he would.

It had been a long time since she’d bamboozled a dangerous man face-to-face. She hoped she still had the knack of it. This was, after all, what she’d been born to do. To lie, befool, and cheat. If she was afraid, she’d press that fear into a small, coldly pulsing ball and set it aside from her. “Fear is meat and drink to a Baldoni. We eat fear. We thrive on it.” How often had Papà said that?

She wouldn’t think about what she’d done to Devoir.

A small boy, weighted sideways with a bucket, crossed the pavement and slopped some mess in the swale at the side of the road. A horse and rider passed on her left, trotting. The smell of cooked meat expanded from the kitchen of an inn.

She glanced back to see a man dodge horses and wagons and run to the door of the Moravian church. She could only hope he was a friend of Devoir’s and not one of the blackmailer’s confederates, taking a detour into the church with a sharp, silent knife.

She’d left Devoir easy prey.

Walk away. Don’t look back.

She matched the steps of one man, then another, hiding in the flow of the crowd. One bird in the flock. One herring in the congregation of herrings. It was a dark satisfaction to keep the blackmailer trailing after her.

He caught up. “Where do you think you’re going? I don’t plan to chase you across London.”

“Fleet Street. Just around the corner.” She didn’t pause. Didn’t bother to look at him. That would anger him, and angry men made mistakes.

Past the old inn, past half-open doors that smelled of fresh paper and held the creak of printing presses, she turned onto Fleet Street. The pamphlets and newspapers of the kingdom were printed here. Every fourth building was a bookshop. The taverns were filled with men who had ink on their hands.

She’d come here yesterday, as soon as she arrived in London, to assess possibilities and consider tactics. No actor, rehearsing a part, had ever walked the stage more carefully than she’d walked Fleet Street.