Rogue Spy

Nine

Pax pushed breath past the strangling knot in his throat. Breathe in. Breathe out. Air clawed its way into his clenched chest. Don’t cough. Control the need. Fire tore at his mouth and lips. Raked his throat all the way down to his heart. But especially, fire burned his eyes.

The blur of a woman held the bucket while he sluiced water again and again over his face. He sucked it into his mouth and nose. Spat down onto the street.

He cupped water and held it against his eyes. Everything else was just pain. He could live through pain. But his eyes . . .

The jabbering, shuffling crowd let a voice through. “. . . no more sense than a gaggle of molting pigeons. Out of my damned bloody way. You there—yes, you—hop it!”

Hawk wavered into his line of vision, back too soon to have done a job of murder. Even Hawk needed a few minutes.

He’s lost the bastard. God damn it. He’s lost him. Pax steadied himself on the edge of the horse trough and pushed himself up to his feet. His voice came out in a croak. “Did you kill the son of a bitch?”

“Couldn’t find him.”

The monster had slithered away to his hole. He could be anywhere in London. “Go back. Try again.”

“I can’t catch smoke. I never got a look at him.” Hawk waved somebody forward. “Give me those.” And there were white towels. “Take this.”

A wet towel and a dry one. Breathing through the wet cloth helped. “Get back and track the woman. She’ll lead you to him, sooner or later. She’s pretty. Somebody’ll remember which way she went.”

“Later. I’ll find her again. I saw her face.”

“Follow her. Don’t hurt her.” Hawk’s planning to forget that part. “Won’t tell you anything . . . anyway. Police Secrète.”

“And will remain silent under all but the more melodramatic tortures. So I kill the man and leave that pustulant excrescence of a woman alive. You made yourself clear. How bad is it?” Hawker’s hand, shadowed and huge, came toward him and lifted an eyelid. Exquisite, precise pain stabbed.

“Damn it. Let be.”

“Your eyes are swimming in blood. Can you even see?”

“I see fine.”

“You’re not lying well. That’s worrisome. I’ll get you to Luke. No—Maggie’s in town. I’ll get you to Maggie. She’ll know what to do. And these upstanding citizens have found us a hackney.” Hawker dropped coins into an outstretched hand. “My tips are making Fetter Lane rich today. Let’s get out of here before somebody puts a bullet in you.”

He sopped water out of his hair with the dry towel. Tossed it aside. “Need my coat. Gun’s on the ground someplace.”

“Not even stolen. I have collected your various belongings. We will now depart. This way.” Hawker got under his arm and steadied him.

“I can walk.” He stumbled, saying it.

“You can dance an Irish jig as far as I’m concerned. Never known such a bloody-minded, damn-your-eyes bugger. And will you cod-sucking idiots get out of my way!” Hawker shed his upper-class accent and let himself drop into deep Cockney when he wanted to make a point.

Pale faces, the solid brown of a horse, bright dresses. When he blinked, the street was lines of color that shattered and broke. He’d paint this with mad, slapdash color. Lay down thick, writhing rivers of paint, like the man El Greco. He’d seen three El Greco canvases. Two in Paris. One in Venice. It needed searing color to capture this mad derangement of vision, this street. He’d paint it with—

If I can paint again . . .

Don’t think about that. Do the job. Everything else comes later. Tell Galba about the Merchant. Start the hunt.

He had a single clear view of the square block of the hackney coach, till he blinked and blurred it. His sight was coming back.

He needed enough sight to kill a man.

The monster walked under the sun. The French called him Le Marchand, the Merchant, but he was every dram and inch of him a monster. Even the Police Secrète were glad when he died.

I got roaring drunk the night they brought news the Merchant was dead. I was in Paris with Carruthers and Althea and the others in the house on the Right Bank. The kitchen filled up with agents and friends and we celebrated till dawn. I thought I was free.

He’s alive. He’s been alive all this time.

Rage set him shaking. Or maybe he shook with cold. And maybe I’m afraid. “I’m wet clean through. That woman kept slopping buckets over me.”

“Workmanlike job of drowning you,” Hawk agreed. “Let’s get to Meeks Street before you catch pneumonia.”

A half dozen paces to the coach. Colors jostled madly, detached from meaning. Faces floated against the gray-brown buildings. Shirts, dresses, and coats flowed and rippled white, umber, cinnabar, indigo. And, in the confusion, one streak of dull sienna brown stood still.

That exact and particular burnt sienna.

Vérité. She’d made a mistake and they had her. You know better than this, girl. Never look back. Weren’t you paying attention when they taught us that?

No reason for her to be here, except that she was worried about him. Damn Vérité.

He lowered his head so she wouldn’t see his lips move. “She’s twenty feet away. To my left at ten o’clock.”

He didn’t have to say, “Don’t turn and look at her.” He didn’t have to say who “she” was. Hawker knew.

There was too much anticipation in Hawk’s voice when he said, “I’ll follow her. We get in the coach. I’ll spill out of the coach after we start.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“You can’t see.”

“If I don’t keep up, leave me behind.” He pulled himself up, through the door, into the coach while Hawk gave instructions to the driver.

Hawk climbed in behind him, already sloughing off his own coat and reversing it. “He’ll slow down past the corner.”

“You take the lead. She knows me.”

“That goes without saying. It takes somebody who knows you well to want to kill you.”

“She wasn’t trying to kill me.” It wasn’t easy, dragging his coat on over the wet shirt.

“Could have fooled me.” Hawk pulled off his hat and tossed it over. “Switch hats. You put this on.”

“Let me tie the hair back.” He found a thin black ribbon in his pocket and hobbled his hair back in a club under the hat.

“Next time, dye your damned hair. A babe in arms could spot you at a hundred yards with your hair hanging down.”

It was too hard to explain the reasons he’d come to Meeks Street without disguises. “It’s not that bad.”

“Yes, it is.”

The coach rolled to a stop and they swung out, fast, Hawk on one side, him on the other.

Cami joined the thin outer edge of the crowd, well back from the unfolding drama. Men pushed a way behind her or in front of her and stopped to satisfy curiosity or strode on impatiently, going about their business. Glimpse by glimpse, she watched Devoir deal with the damage she’d done him.

A man—a colleague from the British Service, doubtless—jostled past her and elbowed through the onlookers, swearing at them in a ripe city voice. He was brown skinned, black haired, quick moving, and annoyed. That was another face worth adding to her memory.

Devoir staggered to his feet, dripping wet, eyes slitted against the sunlight. He moved like one of the great predators, wounded but not clumsy, like a tiger who’d fallen a long way and landed on his feet, jarred and dizzy but ready to fight. She was immeasurably glad she didn’t have to face him at this moment when his inner nature was so close to the surface.

She was one of the few dozen people on earth who knew this truth about his deadliness. His Service comrades would have seen it. Cachés who’d been in the Coach House with him knew. Maybe he had enemies who’d fought him and somehow survived. Nobody else.

The two men talked, heads together, words emphatic. They were friends, then.

In the glare of midday, Devoir stood in wet shirtsleeves and an unbuttoned vest. The linen of his shirt was almost transparent where it stuck down tight to his skin. Distinct, clearly defined muscles wrapped his arms and strapped long lines across his upper chest. He didn’t have the body of one of those hearty gentlemen who rode to the foxes or took fencing lessons and sat down to a comfortable dinner every night. She knew, in some detail, what the strength of such men looked like. Devoir was muscled like a workingman—a sailor, a soldier, a bricklayer, somebody shaped by unrelenting labor. The strength of him had been formed in days of work without respite and nights with too little sleep. He was, inside the drab, ordinary clothing, inside that tanned skin, a professional, a spy to the bone.

Devoir dried his hair with a white towel, vigorously, and talked to his friend. A hackney coach drew up to the curb. The crowd parted. The two men got in and it drove away.

Devoir would go back to whatever plans and schemes he pursued at Meeks Street. She’d go about her own business. They wouldn’t meet again. She would sink into memory. He’d call her to mind once in a while, when someone mentioned betrayal.

She knew nothing of his long-ago past, but she knew this much—before he’d been taken to the Coach House, everything weak in him had already been burned away. He must have survived terrible things to become a metal, like silver, like steel, that you could hammer upon or put through the fire, and it emerged unchanged. The Tuteurs had never broken the strength at the center of him.

She watched the hackney till it turned at the corner and was lost from sight. Then she walked briskly toward Holborn, Mr. Smith’s minion sneaking along behind, surreptitious and easy to spot. With luck, he’d never notice when she circled around and started following him.