Joanna Bourne - The Black Hawk

“Set it down.” Doyle stripped down to shirt and waistcoat and slung his wet jacket over a straight-backed chair. He rolled up his sleeves, looking ready to hold off a few bruisers, barefisted.

Pax said, “Fletcher and his crew are working their way out from Braddy, asking questions, trying to pick up her trail. We think she may have come directly from her shop. Stillwater and a half dozen are searching the square. Everybody else is in the study, dripping on the rug, drinking tea.”

The men and women who belonged to him were gathering. They’d want to see how he was taking this. Want to lay down the words people said at times like this. They’d need orders. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

Muffin came over, looking worried, and nosed in under an elbow to stick his big square head up to the pillow to sniff over Justine’s hair, memorizing her. He approved of the Justine smell. Didn’t like the blood and antiseptic of the bandage. A few more whuffles up and down the bedcovers and he was satisfied. He clicked across the room to assist Doyle.

Doyle was hunkered down to lay coal on the fire, piece by piece, acting like his hands didn’t feel flame. When he was through and stood up, Muffin took his place and thumped down in front of the fire, taking one end of the hearth to the other. The coal scuttle rattled. He stretched his chin on his paws and curled the great plumed tail to his side.

“I brought the knife.” Pax set bowl and spoon from the tray on the table beside the bed. “Luke says it fits the wound.” He looked at Justine soberly.

“Show him.” Doyle motioned.

Pax had brought it up on the tray. He passed it over, hilt first. “Fletcher found this under a ledge, thirty feet from the blood. Tossed in on purpose, looks like. Don’t touch the edge.”

The knife was a flat, matte-black, deadly curve, elegant as a crow’s wing.

He knew it, of course. “Another of my children has found its way home. What well-trained knives I have.” The weight of it, the balance of it, were completely familiar. He turned it over in his hand. “And look. Somebody’s engraved it for me. The letters A and H . . . for Adrian Hawkhurst. That does make a truly personal gift.”

“From someone who does not wish you well,” Pax said dryly.

“They’re not friendly to Justine, either.”

“It’s yours? You’re sure?” Doyle said.

“Mine. Without doubt. See this?” He ran his thumb on the shaping of the swage. “That was supposed to steady the turn in flight. It didn’t, so I only made an even dozen. I gave one to Justine.” A glance at Pax. “You got one. Fletcher got one. I gave Annique one and she immediately misplaced it, careless woman that she is. I lost two in France, sticking them into people. And I left three behind with my baggage when I fled in undignified haste from . . .” he had to think, “Socchieve, in Italy.”

“So they’re spread broadcast over Europe,” Doyle said.

“That’s nine.” Pax was never happy till the numbers added up. A shop clerk at heart.

“There’s three tossed in a drawer in the workshop downstairs.”

Doyle hooked a finger in his waistcoat pocket and curled out with a pocket lens. Typical of Doyle that he walked around with a magnifier. Wordlessly, he handed it over.

Under the glass . . . “No wear on the edge, for all it’s sixteen years old. A few nicks, probably where it fell today. We have lots of dried blood, just turning brown. That’s an hour old, at a guess. And . . .” There was a white film, as if somebody had drawn the blade through milk and let it dry. Nobody ever put friendly things on a knife. “The blade’s dirty. Poison.”

Pax said, “Luke thinks so. He doesn’t know which one.”

Damn and bloody codswallowing hell. Poison. He dropped the knife down. Took the three steps to the bed. Pulled the blanket off Owl. He’d reopen the wound. It wasn’t too late to—

“Hawk—” Pax caught his wrist. “Hawk. Leave it. It’s clean. You didn’t see. She left a trail of blood all the way back to Braddy Square. Anything that was in there washed out.” Slowly, Pax let go. “There can’t be much poison left in her.”

It doesn’t take much.

“The Borgia touches don’t work.” Doyle wasn’t looking at him. He was pulling the covers back over Owl, studying her face. “It’s been over an hour. Pupils are normal. No sweating. No swelling on that arm. Her mouth isn’t dried out. Her pulse is fast, but that’s from the pain.”

You could buy five hundred poisons in London if you knew where to go. Fast ones. Slow ones. Name of God, Owl, which one? What did they put inside you? “I never used poison. It encourages sloppiness.”

Pax said, “Even in the middle of the war, there weren’t many men who poisoned. That narrows the field.”

The war was three years over. Doves of peace were flapping every bloody where. But something from the bad old days had slithered out of the past to reach up and claw Justine.

“They used my damn knife.” He stooped and retrieved it. Holding the knife, he could remember the feel of making it. The first time he shaped the edge on a grindstone. It took hours to get it exactly right.

Some knives wake up. They get to be a little alive. Nobody’d ever been able to convince him otherwise. This was an angry knife, full of purpose. A killer.

But you didn’t kill her, did you? There was that much loyalty in you.

He flipped it in his hand, threw it into the doorframe. It thunked in solid, an inch deep. Muffin jerked up out of a doze and trotted over to hide behind a chair.

He worked it out of the wood and set it on the mantelpiece, cutting edge to the wall, where it wouldn’t hurt somebody accidental-like.

Doyle said, “They’re piled up like cordwood downstairs, without orders, losing daylight.” When there was no response, he said, “I won’t let her die while you’re gone.” And then, “Don’t waste what it cost her, coming here.”

Justine would be the first to kick his arse out the door. She’d send him out to do his job. He could almost hear her telling him to get to work.

He leaned down to her ear and whispered, “Stay alive for me, Owl. Remember. You promised to slit my throat while I slept. I’m going to hold you to that. We have unfinished business.”

She lay, unquiet, her forehead pinched in tight lines, her lips shaping words that didn’t get spoken. Still breathing. Still alive. The knife had missed her heart because she fought back like the she-devil she was.

He straightened up. “I’m going to kill the man who did this.”

Doyle said, “I know.”

PAX wasn’t fast enough, following Adrian out the door.

“Stay,” Doyle said.

“I have to—”

“It’ll wait five minutes.” Doyle crooked two fingers. “Get on the bed and lift her up. We’ll put some of this broth into her.” He took the bowl.

“I’ll send Felicity up.”

“Justine doesn’t know Felicity. She knows you. Even half out of your head, your body knows when it’s strangers touching you.”

“She doesn’t know me well enough to want me handling her, naked.” But he went around and lifted her carefully, trying not to joggle the arm with the bandage. He kept the sheet between them so he wasn’t touching her skin. “She’s Hawker’s.”

“She won’t mind. Hell, she won’t know unless you go bragging about it. And we won’t enlighten Hawker.” Doyle took broth in the spoon. His voice hardened as he spoke to Justine. “Drink this.”

She swallowed. She didn’t open her eyes, but she swallowed.

“You’re a man of many skills.” Pax shifted uncomfortably, holding a woman who belonged to Hawker with discretion and disinterest.

“Four kids, and Maggie taking in every stray in England.” Simple pride filled Doyle’s voice when he talked about his wife.

Another mouthful. Justine came a little awake and drank thirstily when the bowl was set to her lips. Then she lay her head back against Pax, falling into sleep. After a minute, Pax shifted away and gingerly settled her down to the bed.

“That’s good then.” Doyle picked up a straight-backed chair, one-handed, and brought it over to the bedside. He sat and propped his boots on the frame of the bed. “I’ll take it from here. Tell Felicity to send in some tea.”

“Should I put that knife away? Hawk’s knife.”

“Might as well leave it be. I think he has plans for it.”

“You see what it means, don’t you? Using one of his knives?”

Doyle nodded. “I see, all right.”

“I don’t think Hawk does. Not yet. He’s distracted.” Pax let his eyes touch Justine.

“It’ll come to him when he’s thinking clearly.”

“Men all over Europe know Adrian Hawkhurst’s knives. The Black Hawk’s knives. Somebody wants to make it look like he killed her.”

“That’s the general idea. Yes.”

THERE WERE NOT MANY PLACES FOUR TRAITORS could meet. Their long association and their shared past were secrets held close as the fingers of their hands. At first, that caution was the order of the man who brought them to England so many years ago. After he died—after he was killed—it became their own wise and suspicious practice. Now it was habit.

The man dressed as an executioner said, “He’s almost six, isn’t he? And he’s big for his age.”

“He’s old enough to have his own pony, of course.” One of the women spoke. She wore the extravagant dress and blank, uncanny mask of the Carnevale of Venice. “I was hoping for a more . . . ponylike pony.”

Two men and two women stood in a curtained alcove outside the ballroom. They were a little patch of French bindweed planted in the garden of England. They committed treason by breathing. But it was old treason. They were a conspiracy with the juice long since dried up.