Rogue Spy

Fifty

Pax pushed off from the wall, running. Before he saw Cami’s signal. Before the bloody Merchant took off down the length of the street. Before he knew why.

Cami clambered into the coach. A thousand alarm bells rang in his mind. He could feel death hovering over her like a vulture, claws stretched out.

Hawker snapped, “It’s Addington.”

The Prime Minister. The big black coach had the Prime Minister in it? That was the Merchant’s target. Assassination and the chaos that would follow Death.

He yelled, “Get him out of here,” in Hawker’s direction and dove through the door of the landau.

A woman, bound, gagged, thrashing, was tied flat to one seat. Cami crouched on the floor of the coach, prying at a hasp on the other seat.

“The gunpowder,” Cami snarled. “It’s here. That’s what he did with the kegs. He lit a fuse and it’s gone under the seat. I can’t get to it.”

The seats were built for storage. Lift the lid to toss a coat or blanket in. This one was locked. A blackened string of fuse hung over the edge of the seat and disappeared underneath.

“Back!” He pointed the pistol.

Cami threw herself over the wriggling woman on the seat, giving what protection she could in case the slug went wild in the coach.

The crack of the gun slapped his ears. The bullet hit the lock and ricocheted out the door.

It didn’t hit Cami. Didn’t hit Cami.

The coach shuddered, tilted up, and tried to throw him to the floor. The horse shrieked. Nobody’s holding the horse. We’re going to go over.

No time to think about that. He’d hit the padlock dead center, shattering the mechanism. In the rocking coach, he reversed the pistol, grabbed the hot barrel, and slammed the butt down, once, twice. The bar snapped open.

The landau thumped down level again. Somebody had hold of the horse. Not Hawker. Hawker was on the street, yelling and throwing rocks. Addington’s coach clattered away to the squeal of horses and the shouts of the coachman.

He threw back the seat and the cushions. The space below was filled with kegs and the smell of gunpowder. The smell of a fuse burning.

Behind him, Cami cut the woman’s feet free, flapped the door open, and pushed her, yammering and limp, out into the street. “Run, you idiot.”

A fuse was nailed to the wood on the underside of the seat, back and forth, back and forth, then down into the keg at the end. A jagged point of flame raced along the course of it. He couldn’t pull the fuse out of the keg. When he tried to pinch the flame out, it just raced between his fingers.

He spat on his fingers and tried again. Again. Searing hot pain and no effect on the white tip of fire. Nothing stopped it. Sparks flashed and fell on the kegs, any one of them hot enough to set everything off.

Cami reached across him with her knife. She slipped the blade under the line of fuse, inches ahead of the flame, between the last two bent nails that held it in place. She sawed at the line. The fire ate its way under the last nail. Inches left before it got past her. Breaths left before it reached the keg.

She cut through.

The line of fuse parted. The fizzing white fire curved down to the hanging end. It burned there for an endless moment. Then, abruptly, blinked out.

One tiny orange spark drifted lazily onto the top of the wooden keg below and went dark.

Silence. Cami’s breathing. His own. A woman screeched outside the coach. There didn’t seem to be a second fuse. He didn’t hear one.

He could notice the pain of burns on his thumb and fingers. “Cami . . .” He took the knife from her and opened her hands to show red burn lines where she’d tried to snuff the fuse before it snaked under the seat.

Of course. Of course. He said, “Good work.”

“You, too.” They were both breathing like bellows.

Somebody started shooting on the street.