My Lord and Spymaster

One

ONCE YOU GET A TASTE FOR THIEVERY, YOU never lose it. Papa used to say that, clouting her on the side of the head a bit to let her know who he was talking about.

She missed picking pockets. Missed the cool, stealthy slide of fingers into a coat. Slithering away with a purse, wise and secret. She missed the best part—jingling the coins out on the cobbles, squatting down with her mates, and counting out the take. She’d learned to keep accounts, working out a fair cut.

Respectable was flat beer compared to that. Maybe that was why she’d talked herself into running this rig. She was so damn tired of being respectable.

It was a good day for robbery. Fog crawled up out of the Thames and made itself at home on Katherine Lane. It coiled over the drains and lurked in the corners, smelling like the river, which wasn’t precisely ambrosia and mead as smells went. Anything could hide in that fog. Probably did.

“Welcome home, Jess,” she whispered. She pulled her hood up and kept walking. The afternoon folded in around her, drizzling.

In the fog, on both sides of her, all the length of Katherine Lane, citizens were closing up shop, putting merchandise away, giving the day up as unprofitable. The street girls had moved inside, too, into the pubs, taking their sailors with them and the noise and the bright color of their dresses. More and more, she was passing dark doorways and rows of blank shutters. Pretty soon there’d be nobody in the street but her and that cat picking his way, finicky, across the cobbles. He had errands to run, that cat. You could tell by looking at him.

She’d have lots of privacy to pick Sebastian Kennett’s pocket.

The last thing Papa’d said when they were dragging him out of the Whitby warehouse in his shirtsleeves was, “Don’t do anything daft trying to get me free.”

Papa knew her pretty well. He wasn’t going to be pleased when he found out about this.

The alley to the right was Dark Passage—and wasn’t that a fine, descriptive name? To the left was Dead Man’s Way. Another piece of poetry. When she was a kid she’d run this warren barefoot. She knew these streets, knew every thin trickle of an alley that ran into Katherine Lane. She’d been born in a grim little attic a dozen streets to the north. Time was, she chatted friendly and easy with every beggar and pimp on the Lane. She could have ducked into any of these taverns and been welcome to dry out by the fire. Now she was a stranger. Not Jess. Now she was Miss Whitby. She didn’t belong anymore. I didn’t used to be scared here.

She walked slower as the Lane curved south and slanted down toward the Thames and she watched her feet. The cobbles were slick with muck. Every corner was a puddle. In the old days, she’d have brought Kedger with her, for company. The left side of her cloak, under her elbow, had a pocket sewed for him to ride in. Used to be she’d set him on her shoulder when she had a ways to walk and she was uneasy about it. He’d sit quiet, breathing in her ear, keeping watch.

But this wasn’t any place for Kedger. This she had to do alone.

Then she wasn’t alone.

She stopped cold, and her heart banged in her chest like a trapped rabbit. A shadow shifted. A hulking shape emerged from the dark of a doorway.

He came toward her, walking out of the gloom, soft-footed for all his size. He carried his lead pipe with the nonchalance of someone to whom this was not a novelty.

“Well now.” He slapped the pipe across his palm with a meaty thunk.

He was a thickset man about fifty, graying and weather-beaten. A thin, wicked scar slashed from his right eyebrow to the stubble at his jaw. A soaked and crumpled hat shaded his eyes. Those eyes were his best feature; he didn’t look half so villainous when you could see his eyes.

“You going to tell me what we’re doing ’ere?”

“Doyle.” She let her breath out. “You would not believe how much I enjoy working with someone utterly reliable. Can we go down that alley a bit? If somebody spots you with that pipe, they might just come rescue me. Could be drier in there, too.”

“Not much.” He lumbered ahead of her, parting the fog as he went. “I been standing here a while, wondering whether I’ll die of the ague or some bloke’ll come along and slit me throat, just fer a lark. Don’t know which I fancy.”

“That’ll be one of those moot points they talk about.”

“Moot. That’s the word I wanted.” In the alley, he picked a convenient spot, scattered some oddments aside with his boot, and leaned against the grimy wall. “You ain’t paying me enough for this, miss, if you don’t mind me sayin’.”

She followed him and found her own clean spot of wall, companionably face-to-face with him. The overhang of the roof kept some of the rain off. But not, as Doyle said, much. “Impressive piece of pipe, by the way.”

“Why thank you, Miss Whitby. I picked it out special when I got your note.”

A right old villain, Doyle. She’d been lucky to hire him. He’d been a Bow Street Runner, they said, before he went bad. Now he took jobs an honest Runner wouldn’t touch. There was no end of illegal odds and ends to this business of getting Papa free. Doyle was helping her with most of them.

“We’re expecting company?” He’d spotted the way she was keeping an eye on Katherine Lane. No flies on Mr. Doyle.

“One man. Largish fellow, by all accounts.”

“You want me to hit him over the head?” He hefted the pipe reflectively.

“Would you do that for me?”

“Not on your life.” When he smiled, the scar on his face creased horribly. “Leastways, not fer what you’re paying me.”

A man of principle. She liked that about him. “Happen I don’t want you to hit anybody today. Just chase after, with what you might call intent to clout.”

“Sounds easy enough. Who do I chase?”

“Me.”

“Ah . . . That’ll make a nice change from me usual habits. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Doyle wasn’t going to like this. She laid out what she had in mind. She didn’t go into details he didn’t need to know, which kept it brief.

“That’s why I work fer you, Miss Whitby. Yer always expandin’ me repertoire.” The leather of his coat was heavy with the wet. When he wiped his sleeve across his forehead, it didn’t dry things any. “Let me get this crystal clear. I waves this bit of pipe about like I was meaning to bash you a couple—menacing, as you might say—an’ you runs up and wraps yerself around our coney, quaking with fright. Is that it?”

“Exactly. Wet and sobbing and quivering in every particular. ”

“That’ll snag ’is undivided attention.” Doyle tipped up his hat brim and gave her a long, sarcastic study. “I ain’t never heard such a cork-brained plan in my life. Except the part about me trying to hit you over the head with this pipe. Plausible, I’d call that.”

Always pleasant to work with a man with a sense of humor. She checked the Lane again. Still empty. “I need three minutes to dip his pockets. Buy me three minutes.”

That was long enough to find the packet, if Kennett had it on him. Let her get her hands on that, and there’d be no more calculations and lists and guesses. She’d know. I am so bloody tired of wrestling smoke.

On the other hand, smoke didn’t turn around and knife you when you picked its pocket. “He walks by here regular, late afternoon, going down to the ship. They’re off-loading wool goods and furniture and some fancy tilework from Italy he’s not paying duty on.”

“A smuggler. It just gets better and better. Anybody I know?”

She had to tell him sooner or later. “The ship’s the Flighty Dancer.”

“God’s . . . avenging . . . chickens.” He did some muttering she didn’t catch the gist of, clanking his lead bar against the brick wall now and then for emphasis. She was right. He didn’t like it. “That’s one of the Kennett Company ships. Tell me you ain’t going after Sebastian Kennett.”

“I wish I could say that, Mr. Doyle.”

Clank. Clank. Doyle’s lead pipe tapped on the wall of the alley. Clank. “You ever hear what Bastard Kennett does to thieves?”

“Rumors.” They said Kennett cut the fingers off a thief once, in Alexandria. Lopped ’em right off with one of the big knives he kept handy about his person. They told lots of stories. “Exaggeration, most likely.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it. If you want what he’s carrying, send me to get it.”

But Cinq could have anyone working for him. Even Doyle. That was why she was out in the rain, cold and wet and scared, doing this job with her own hands. “I can’t.”

Papa was locked up in that smug, escape-proof house in Meeks Street, waiting for the hangman. The real spy, the man the French called Cinq, was walking around London, free as a bird. He might be strolling down Katherine Lane right now.

I hope Kennett turns out to be Cinq. I hope he’s carrying the packet. Hope he doesn’t gut me like a halibut when he feels my fingers wriggling in his jacket.

Clank. “I ain’t going to talk you out of this, am I?”

“No.”

She didn’t have a choice. She’d tried bribes, threats, blackmail—all the old standbys. Nothing worked. Not with the British Intelligence Service. Not with Military Intelligence. Not with the Foreign Office or the Admiralty. Seemed like half the British government wanted Josiah Whitby behind bars.

Hell of a world when bribery doesn’t work.

Doyle studied her from under the brim of his hat. “You ain’t safe here, Miss Whitby, not being who you are. Not even with me. You go traipsing along the docks—”

“I’m careful.”

“—past a line of pimps who got an immediate use for a tasty chit like you. Now you want to go annoy Bastard Kennett. You run mad, or what?”

Not mad, exactly. Sometimes there weren’t any good choices.

Back when she was engaging in criminal acts with some regularity, she’d have called this a right pig of a caper. She didn’t know what she’d call it now. When she stopped talking flash there was a whole plethora of things she couldn’t even say anymore. “You don’t have to stay.”

Clank. “I earns that pittance yer paying me, Miss Whitby, in caseernitby, i you was wondering.”

“You do indeed, Mr. Doyle.” He was going to help her. All that low cunning on her side. The knot in her stomach loosened.

“I should jest slit me own throat and save Kennett the trouble.” Doyle scratched his thumb along the line of his scar. “Sad way fer a man of my abilities to end. When does he show up for this nonsense?”

“Half an hour maybe. If he’s coming.”

“Not long then.”

It seemed long. She leaned against the wall. In a third floor window, a candle flared into light. That would be one of the girls, working. A wood shutter creaked in the wind. Funny how dry her mouth was, what with all this wet everywhere.

“Doyle . . .”

“Hmm?”

“Stay a good long ways behind me. These knives Kennett’s so good with . . . He throws them.”

“So I hear. I ain’t fond of knives sticking in me gut.”

“Always felt that way myself.” At the corner, wind piled fog up in a stairwell, pushing it back every time it tried to escape. In a pub down the street they were singing a fair version of “Rule Britannia.” They were scum here on the Lane, but patriotic scum.

This was the worst part of a job . . . before it started.

“You do things you’re scared of much, Doyle?”

“Time to time. It don’t show, miss, you being nervous. Look cool as a clam, you do.”

“Thanks. All this water’d cool off a stove.” She wiped her share of London’s drizzle off her nose and stuck her head out to look down Katherine Lane.

A rude dog of a wind nosed up under her cloak and started her shaking. Just nerves. Even Kedger shook when he got nervous, him being a ferret and coming by it naturally. She’d be fine once she started moving. “I don’t like the waiting.”

“Me, I ain’t delighted with what happens when we stop waiting.”

She flexed her hands, pretending she was warming up, trying to fool herself that she was ready for this. A few hours’ practice hadn’t brought the old skills back. It’s going to be bloody embarrassing if this Captain Kennett catches me fingering in his pocket.

She heard them before she saw them.

Down the Lane, two men took shape in the fog. The big one on the right was upright but unsteady on his pins. The scrawny-looking cove on the left was holding them both up.

They were roaring drunk, which wasn’t an astonishment in this street. They were singing.

“. . . A pretty little oyster girl I chanced for to meet.

I lifted up her basket lid and boldly I did peek,

just to see if she haaaad any oysters.”

Doyle whistled a long, irritated breath out between his teeth. “That’s ’im. Kennett’s the big man on the right. Cup-shot, the both of them.” He wiped his face with the sleeve of his coat. “Just what I need. Drunks with knives.”

“If he’s drunk enough, he’ll probably miss.”

“There’s that.”

Under the wool of her cloak, where it didn’t show, she wrapped her arms tight around herself. She’d picked a thousand pockets. She’d be fine.

Kennett was, as they said, a sizable man. Tough-looking, too, for all he was silly with drink. Through the fog she could make out black hair and the lines of a dark, rawboned face. No hat. His coat was hanging open, which was a gilt-edged invitation to getting his pocket picked, if you asked her. She couldn’t see much of the bloke on the left with Kennett draped all over him. He was dark and wiry, and he had his head down, watching his footing.

Voices carried in the rain. She knew the song about the oyster girl. It warned a man not to trust a lass he met on the streets. Sadly true.

“Some days,” Doyle said, “life is just a bloody great old trial.”

“How right you are, Mr. Doyle.” She pushed wet hair out of her eyes and waited for the right minute to start yelling bloody murder.