Joanna Bourne - The Black Hawk

“You shouldn’t walk around without one.” Neither of them glanced to where her knife reposed in the chest of Citoyen Drieu. “Go ahead. I have a couple more on me.”

“You are very provident.” His knife was warm from being next to his skin. She felt this when she tucked it away beneath her shirt. “I will return it to you.”

“Keep it. We aren’t going to see each other again.” He had become entirely sober. Greatly serious. “I got something to say.”

He was wrong in that much. They would meet again. In the small world of spying, it was inevitable. And the next time they met, they would no longer be allies. “Tell me.”

“Go with the Cachés.”

“It is my intention. I will follow till they are safe. You need not worry.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean, go back to that brothel you call home, you collect your sister, and get out of France. The Cachés are going. You go with them.”

How strange this hard young English spy was in agreement with Madame. He said almost what Madame had said. “I have no intention of leaving France.”

“Then you’re a fool. You’re living in a goddamned whorehouse. You’ve got your sister there.” He chopped his hand down. “You’re trying to be a bloody damn spy. Of all the stupid—”

“You are a spy. True, you are only the very junior, new spy. The damp chick of a spy, fresh from the shell. But—”

“Will you be quiet and listen?” He ran his fingers up into his hair. His eyes swept left and right as if the words were floating in the air. “We’re not talking about me.”

“We are not talking about me either. At least, I have no wish to discuss this.”

“When I go spying, it’s better than what I was. Better than what I used to do. I’m making something of myself. But you’re not like that. You’re . . . you’re books and eating neat and using a handkerchief. You have all that inside your skin.”

“I have not the least idea what you are talking about.”

“You’re quality. Stop playing with the notion of spying. Go to England. Be quality.” He shook his head, impatient.

It was so simple. Why did he not see? “’Awker, I am a whore. I have been a whore for two years.”

“Then leave that damned brothel and stop being one.”

“I do not mean yesterday and the day before. They do not touch me at the Pomme d’Or. No one, not in the least instance. Not one finger.”

“Then you’re not a whore.”

“It does not change anything. It is too late. I cannot become clean again. I cannot be—”

He snorted. “You can be any damn thing you want to be. Go to England. Change your name. Lie through your teeth.”

“For some things, there is no lie big enough.” Did he imagine she had not thought of this? The knowledge of what she was lay down at night to sleep beside her. Stared at her from the mirror every morning. “I was a child whore in the most fashionable and degenerate house in Europe. Many men came to me while I was in that dreadful place. There will always be men who know me.”

That silenced him. It was the truth, and they both knew it.

She said, “I can escape France, but I cannot escape what I am.”

Hawker raised his hand as if he would touch her, but stopped, deliberately short. He let his hand drop. “What about Séverine?”

“I will take care of her. I have always taken care of her.” She knew what she must do, of course. She had made her decision. The sorrow of it expanded in her chest so she could barely breathe, it was so huge. Before she turned and left she said, “I will protect Séverine. I will do whatever is necessary.”

WHEN THE FIRST LIGHT OF DAWN CRAWLS OUT OF bed and staggers over the horizon, evildoers head off home and solid citizens take to the streets. In his disreputable past, Hawker would have been yawning his way back to his own den of thieves as the sun came up, having finished a long night of assault with intent or maybe breaking and entering.

He’d reformed, even if he still headed home at daybreak. Last night, he’d disposed of a corpse, picked himself a heavy pouch of coin off the dead man, and palmed a packet of documents, some of which might turn out to be interesting. It wasn’t much different than his old life, when you came right down to it.

He walked harmlessly alongside Doyle and Maggie and their bits and pieces of baggage and the donkeys. The sky was turning milk white, with most of the light coming from the east, behind them. The air was stuffy and flat. It was going to be scorching hot later on. The city was just going on the griddle.

Doyle had decided to leave Paris, since there were a number of men thirsting for his blood right now. He was also getting Maggie away safe, the political situation having become unsettled. Every time the good citizens of Paris got unsettled they started pulling aristocrats out of the houses and hanging them from the lampposts. Maggie was an aristo. Time for a cautious man to take his wife home to dull old England.

Doyle strolled at donkey pace, his thumbs hooked in his waistcoat pockets, portraying stolid and stupid to anyone who might take an interest. He kept an eye behind them and to the right, motioning Hawker to scout ahead and watch the left-hand side.

When they turned the corner and left the Rue Palmier, Owl was ahead, waiting for them.

She sat on the steps of a big respectable house, getting away with it because they were still in the damp and poorly lit dawn and the householders hadn’t come out to chase her away. She dressed like a housemaid—neat, with a big white mobcap on her head and a thick, plain fichu knotted on her chest. Owl had shoved a brown leather bag to the side of the steps, which might be important. She held Séverine on her lap.

Owl said, “Good day to you, citoyens. It is a pleasant day to be walking free under the sun, is it not?”

“Very.” Doyle came up beside him. “You’re waiting for us?”

“For Marguerite, though this is a matter of interest to you as well.”

Owl was . . . wound tight. She cradled her sister, gentle-like, but look close and you’d see her hands clamped like iron on the kid’s dress, as if any minute Séverine was going to fall off her lap and get eaten by rats.

The streets were empty as a beggar’s pouch. Nothing out of place and no tick of movement. The donkeys weren’t twitching their ears. But Owl was scared of something, or angry about it, or both.

Maggie went over to Owl, and they settled in to chat like market women passing the time of day. Looked like everybody was going to pretend like the donkeys and the bags were just decorative and nobody had anywhere in particular to go, least of all to the gates of Paris, and there was no hurry to get out of this town before something untoward happened.

Doyle’s hands kept being unconcerned and innocent, down near his knives. He gazed idly across the windows everywhere and kept close to Maggie.

They should be safe. Owl would never, under any circumstance on earth, put her sister in danger. But what the hell was going on?

Owl passed Séverine over to Maggie and they discussed the sprat for a while. Nobody in any of the houses coughed. Nobody came walking by. It was so bloody quiet they could have been standing in a painting. He distrusted quiet, just on general principles.

Funny how Owl looked different, sitting there without the kid in her arms. She looked alone, folded in and closed up with her arms around herself. She said to Maggie, “You were right. A whorehouse is no home for a child,” which was what everybody had been telling her. She said, “A war is coming.”

There was another giant revelation for you. War, riot, mayhem . . . It was all coming. Owl and him would be on opposite sides.

He eased his way back to keep an eye up and down the street since everybody else was talking single-mindedly and not paying attention to the surroundings.

Owl looked back and forth from Doyle to Maggie, making quick, brittle little comments. Maggie held the kid. It looked natural, like they fit together.

Then, word by careful word, staring into Maggie’s face, Owl said, “You will take Séverine as your own. You will take her away from France and keep her in safety. You will watch over her. You, yourself.”

Take Séverine? What was this?

“She will be no trouble on the road.” Owl was talking fast now, not giving Maggie a chance to answer. Owl’s hands pushed at the air as if she was shoving objections aside. “She has learned to be quiet. She will go with you willingly when I tell her she must. She knows to say nothing at all and to answer to any name she is given.”

Doyle got grave and quiet, deep voiced and dead serious. “You’re giving your sister to us?”

“I give her to Marguerite.” Owl fumbled around for the valise she’d stowed away. That would be clothes for the kid in there. She pulled the bag out and held it, looking at Séverine.

There was no way to say what he saw in Owl’s face. Once he’d watched a man get knifed in the belly and know he was going to die. It took him a while to get it done. That was how he’d looked the whole time.

Maggie and Doyle talked low, back and forth. Doyle nodded. Then he put his hand on the sprat’s head. “Séverine is mine. I’ll treat her no differently than a child of my blood, born in wedlock. I’ll set her welfare before my own life. I will love her as a father. You have my word.”

Back in London, back in the gang he’d lived with, they called that a blood oath.

Owl knew what she’d done. That flat, black, blank behind her eyes was her knowing exactly what she’d done. No telling how much Séverine understood of all this. Might be a lot. She was a smart little kid.