Again. This time, when her hold slipped, she stepped back. Panting, she measured the gap with her outstretched hands. It was enough. Just enough. Men who put bars across windows never believed how little a space is needed to squeeze through if you are small and know exactly how to do it.

Ten minutes. It had been all of ten minutes by now. Quickly, she tossed her bundle of clothing into the night, to the paved space in front of the house. She sent her shoes following.

Giles and Ferguson had knocked out the last of the glass, preparing for the glaziers tomorrow, but malicious splinters lurked everywhere. She sliced the palm of her hand, climbing to the windowsill. Naked, lubricated by fear and blood, she squirmed between the bars.

She had always been thin, and the long, dark road from the south of France had fined her down even more. But it was not easy getting through. Iron edges scraped skin. Unyielding stone and metal bruised muscle and bone. It was necessary to close her mind firmly against pain.

Soon Grey would awaken and find the bed empty. That was also a pain she must close her mind to.

And she was out.

She crouched on the windowsill, drew her legs under her, and launched herself outward, past the kitchen stairwell, with its little sharp spikes, to the paved space beyond. She hit and caught herself with outstretched hands and turned it into a roll. A kaleidoscope of pain. Stone blocks, glass, sharp edges battered at her. At the end of her roll she flopped flat, arms outstretched, sick, dizzy, half-unconscious.

It took a few seconds to come back to herself. The paving was icy under her bare back. She hurt with many varied, individual pains.

The house at Meeks Street stretched above her into the night. Behind it hung the gauzy ball of the moon. When she turned her head, the streetlamps were a long row of globes hanging in blackness, each one smaller than the last. They wavered, shimmering, because she was crying. She had no time to cry. None at all.

Fourteen minutes.

She struggled to her feet, naked except for goose bumps. The spies stationed in this street would see her, a hunched and pale ghost, as she scrambled into her clothes. First the white shift went over her head. Then the dark, concealing dress. She contorted to button it.

She must move fast now. Grey would search for her. Already, men must be creeping forward down this prim street. Stockings. Shoes. She had planned her escape in detail. One has much leisure to make plans, when imprisoned.

She took one last breath. The air of Number Seven Meeks Street smelled of sulfur and charcoal, as a battlefield does. Then, running, she crossed the road to a narrow walkway between two houses. The low fence was a mere hop, and the mews beyond led to Braddy Street.

Men waited for her there.

She dodged them. She ran, flat out, till her sides ached with each breath. Stopped suddenly and slid into a back garden. Became a passing wind that did not even awaken the dogs. Crept down the alley to another street. Ran again, in a different direction.

This was the Game she played so long and well. Again, she was the little fox who outwitted them all. But tonight she was not joyful with it. Tonight, the game she played hurt and hurt and hurt with every step she took.

The night was filled with spies. Some she outran and some she evaded and some she fooled altogether. But the best of them kept pace, and tracked her, as she had known they would. In the end, she let them trap her in a corner behind a shop. They were large men, firm and skilled, and they did not hurt her much. They were French.


ADRIAN held the lamp so they could see the gap in the bars. “Leblanc might have her. Or Soulier. Reams left four marines up on Braddy Street. The Russians are still sniffing around. And Lazarus. Those are the most likely.”

“Lazarus is angry at you.” Grey chipped the words off from the great, cold fear inside him. Among other criminal enterprises, Lazarus bought and sold women. They all knew what Lazarus did to women.

“If it’s Lazarus, we have time. He goes slow at first. He won’t hurt her much tonight. He’ll just…” Adrian started to say more, then looked at Grey’s face and stopped. “I’m not welcome there right now, but I can find out if he has her.”

Galba was swathed in a brocade dressing gown, the knot tied askew. He touched the bars. “Giles, get some chain and close this. Robert, what are the chances she’ll run the gauntlet and escape out of London?”

“None.” He shifted Adrian’s hand holding the lamp. Annique’s bloody fingerprints showed stark red on the windowsill and up and down the bars, still damp. “She won’t make it a mile. If Soulier doesn’t bag her, Lazarus will. He knows she’s important to Adrian, and he has a hundred thieves and murderers to set on her trail.”

Galba said, “Where do we send the men?”

He looked into the night, making himself cold and analytic. A gibbering madman rattled at the back of his brain. He was going to kill someone tonight. “We go to Soulier. Get dressed, Hawk. We may not have much time.”

Thirty-seven

ANNIQUE HAD KNOWN SOULIER ALL HER LIFE. He had been Papa’s friend. It was Soulier who came when Papa was hanged and carried her away in his arms from the king’s prison. Years later, Soulier had been one of Maman’s lovers.

When she had been the youngest of Vauban’s cadre, Soulier had visited often in Françoise’s house in the Quartier Latin to sit at the kitchen table and laugh and drink and plot with René and the others. She’d scampered to bring cakes and pour them coffee in big cups or little cups, depending on the time of day. He had chucked her under the chin and named her Fox Cub and she had called him Old Renard. They had been very witty together.

“Entre. Entre donc, petite,” Soulier welcomed her, just as if large men did not accompany her. They went to stand against the wall, regarding her every twitch. Six men. Did they imagine she would spring and attack Soulier with her teeth? Someday she would discover where this rumor of her bloodthirstiness had been started.

Soulier had not changed at all. He was thin and exquisite, somehow like a cynical old magpie, one who has seen many nests robbed and many eggs broken. She must lie to him tonight. It would be very difficult, lying to Soulier. One does not become director of spies in the stronghold of France’s enemy by being a fool.

“Come. Yes. Here to me. My child, I was pierced to my heart to hear of your mother’s death. It hurts me still. She was a great and beautiful lady and my friend. To die so suddenly, in such an accident. I am grieved beyond measure.”

In the midst of her plots and contrivances, she had forgotten Soulier would mourn her mother’s death. She had not thought once of his sorrow. It would seem she had become cold and unfeeling these days, as well as a traitor. She gave him the only comfort she had. “It was swift. There would have been a single moment only when the carriage tilted. Then…a fall into the sea.”

“Seconds only, and she is gone. The brightness of her snuffed out, and we are left, missing her. You most of all. Coming so soon after the other…But we will not talk of this. It is too new and painful.”

“I cannot quite believe it, even yet.”

“It is good you have kept yourself busy. That is always best at such times.” He beckoned. “But let me look at you. You have become a young woman since we last met. You will be more lovely than your mother, even.” He made a gesture toward her face. “It is there, waiting within you. I am glad you were able to escape the British.”

“I am as well, though I am fled from the frying pan to the fire, as the English say.”

“As to that…Fouché is annoyed with you, I’m afraid. But sit. Sit. Or you will make me play the polite host and stand up, and I am far too indolent to do that. Come next to me, in this armchair. I do not wish to shout at you across the room. Yves, bring the boule table, yes, here between us and set the lamp upon it. Just so. Now we may be cozy. Were you coming to see me, child? Somehow I do not think so.”

It was a great irony that she had escaped Meeks Street and put herself into the path of the French exactly so she would be brought to this house. “It is a long story. Where shall I start?”

“With Monsieur Grey, perhaps, and why you have chosen to travel with him across France and England. I am one of many wondering why you have done this thing. Do not hurry. Think upon it a while. I would wish your little history to be perfect.”

“Me, also.”

“I have every faith in you. It is even possible you shall tell me the truth.” He spread his elegant hands. “What will you take with me? Wine? Biscuits? Coffee? I shall send this great side of beef who stands here so idly to the kitchen to make himself useful. I do not even know whether this is early or late in London. A city that does not have proper bakeries to tell one that morning is come…How shall a man know?”

She lifted her hand, palm up, to show equal bewilderment. She felt herself being very French. Strange how she slipped back into it when she was speaking French. “Do you know, I have been almost starved in this dreadful country. Coffee, really good coffee, I would like. And a morsel of bread one can eat. You would not believe what the English eat for breakfast.”

“I have lived in this country for five years. There is nothing I would not believe of these English. Yves, tell Babette to prepare the little meal for us, and coffee.” Soulier meticulously adjusted the shade of the lamp, making the light fall across her face, unmerciful and bright. “We shall drink coffee together, and you will explain to me why you have been such a naughty girl that Fouché has sent me the orders he has. And why Leblanc has pursued you here from his proper station in France.”