My Lord and Spymaster

Nine

CINQ WORE BLACK—A BLACK GREATCOAT THAT fell to boot top and a black, low-crowned hat with a wide brim. A scarf of raw wool, colorless in the streak of light from the high, barred windows, covered nose to neck and hid what the gloom didn’t.

“Liam’s dying.” The Irishman sounded more annoyed than anything else.

Good, Cinq thought. If that hag in the corner didn’t kill him with her nursing, Lazarus would slit his throat. Lazarus didn’t allow outsiders to hunt in his territory. “Your share will be that much larger.”

“You’re a cold one.”

“I can be.” The voice was low and deliberately unmemorable. “Get me the girl.”

“Not so soon. It’s too dangerous altogether.”

“You will take her now, before they hustle her out of town. She’ll leave the house sooner or later to go to that warehouse in Garnet Street. I’ll send word. Grab her there.”

“And isn’t it brave you are, when it’s my neck.” The Irishman took a final look at the figure laid out on the pile of straw. Watched the labored breaths that kept the corpse an inch this side of death. “I need more money for this. Fifty pounds.”

“We keep to the agreement.”

“Sean and Fergus are dead in their blood. Cut down like dogs, God help them.”

“Then they’ve no need of money. Deliver the girl.”

“Ye said it’d be easy, damn yer eyes. There’s five men dead, and Liam’s on his last. Bastard Kennett’s after our necks. This ain’t the job we was hired for, not at all. Fifty pounds more.”

“Ten. For your losses.”

“Fifty, I say. Fifty now and the hundred when we bring the girl.”

“And I say you’re a bungler and a fool. I handed her to you on a silver platter. I told you where she’d be, and even then you lost her. There’s men upstairs who’d take this work and be glad of it.”

That was bluff. These Irish scum were the only men stupid enough to lay hands on Whitby’s only child. She was protected by Lazarus, too. And now Sebastian. It was simple suicide to touch her, and every thief and brawler in London knew it.

All the more reason to secure the girl before this fool found that out. “Follow her. Take her. And don’t hurt her again. Dog-meat’s no good to me.”

The man spat on the dirt floor. “She’ll be alive. The money better be waiting when we bring her to the boat.”

He wouldn’t live to enjoy it. Lazarus would see to that. Or Sebastian would. Really, it was laughably easy to eliminate witnesses.

“One more thing. Hire some harlot and get her into the house. There’s always a new slut cringing and whining at the door. They’ll take her in. She’ll tell you what the Whitby girl’s doing. Use her to bring the girl to you, if you can. This is five for the whore.” Cinq dealt pound notes onto the rough table. “It’s enough. Don’t tell the pimp, then, if he’s greedy.” More pound notes joined the ones on the table. “Five for you and the men. And five goes to . . .” a nod toward the dying man, “. . . his care. Or his family, if he dies.”

“I’ll see to it.” The Irishman scraped the money up. It was that easy to ensure death, muffled and swift, to the man in the pile of straw. To him and the crone crouching in the corner. Two more people who’d seen Cinq would be tidied away.

When the Revolution swept through London, this rabble would be washed away with the rest of the Old Order. Napoleon would find a use for them in the army of the Revolution.

Cinq pulled the scarf higher and climbed the steps out of the cellar, walked through the tavern, out to the wretched street, and stepped into the crowds of workmen, sluts, beggars, and thieves hurrying to work.