Even if I were the quarry.
More fool, he who followed me.
I made my way down this narrow street, led us both out of the dull roar of the thoroughfare and into the quiet of the lesser traveled lanes. Now, though I made no sign I heard, I could pick out the faint echo of footsteps not mine as I splashed my way noisily through gathered puddles and shuffled over crumbling cobble.
There was a small apothecary down this way, its windows not as grimy as expected but covered by shelving displaying what wares the druggist could afford to sell. I paused here, pressing my face against the glass and cupping one hand against the glare from the lantern overhead.
I took the opportunity to glance down the road, but saw nothing untoward.
My pursuer was somewhat more clever than I assumed.
Fair. Stepping back, hands once more in my pockets, I continued my aimless route, studying my surroundings for any opportunity to force he who followed me into the open. I could not see him, yet I was sure that he had not given up on me. I was all too happy to return the courtesy.
I itched for the challenge.
An unfortunate circumstance for my challenger, whose trail I found again when I passed an alley mouth and caught a telltale swirl of black-streaked fog—the kind of eddy left when a body moves quickly through it.
I turned into the alley mouth, trod deliberately through an ankle-deep puddle until the splashes echoed down the eerily blank lane. I taunted my pursuer with such calculated brevity, painted myself as the hapless victim heedless of my own danger. My whistle bounced uncannily from wall to wall, then vanished into the suffocating shroud between them.
With single-minded intensity, I followed that alley, encouraged by the clatter of a foot against loose cobble, or the muffled thump of refuse kicked aside.
I felt as if I might laugh. I felt unstoppable. Here I was, an angry widow who’d just pledged the impossible to the Karakash Veil, and it was as if I’d done no such thing. As if I were destined to be victorious over all comers.
It was not to my benefit to be so reckless, but this day’s opponent would not be the one to teach me this.
The footsteps flagged. The alley was soon rife with the gasping breaths of one who could run no farther. My whistle did not cease as I allowed my pursuer to close the gap between us, slowing my pace. The tune did not falter as a silhouette slowly parted from the fog around us.
Yet what was to be a trilling crescendo to my chase cracked when a resigned, feminine voice said, “If I’d known this alley was this long, I’d never’ve dipped into it.”
My good cheer fled abruptly. The Devil’s own nerve. “Collectors,” I pointed out, frigid as the coming winter, “always know the lay of the streets. Maddie Ruth Halbard, you go home right this moment.”
She peeled herself from the clinging haze, and now I recognized easily her shape—unlike myself, she did not hide in trousers, or bulk her figure in too-big coats. The daft child wore her woolen skirt plain as day, though the heavy boots she sported beneath did her ensemble no favors. She was red-cheeked and holding one hand to her chest, as if her heart had not eased its thumping, and I could very much relate to this.
Mine now slammed in place, bolstered by the fire of my wrath.
“Please don’t be cross,” she began, but I did not let her finish the foolish sentiment.
“I’ve a mind to drag you to Hawke himself and make him deal with you,” I snarled over her. She blanched, nearly going bone-white in the gray shadows. “You could have been hurt!”
“I knew what I did.” She sounded for all the world as if she truly believed it.
“Of course you did.” Derision dripped from my every word as I gestured to the narrow alley around us. “Which is how you found yourself here, is it?”
“With you.”
“Yes, with me,” I repeated, “but I could have been anyone, you foolish thing.”
“You weren’t, though,” she said, with the same reasonable calm I employed when I was being stubborn and knew it. My teeth ground with frustration. “I knew it were you, I followed you.”
“No,” I returned, employing that calm now. I took a deep breath, forcing my fingers open. “You followed me down the street. You lost sight of me when you stepped in here. You had no way of knowing I would turn this way—there is no bloody reason why a sane person would,” I added emphatically. “For all you knew, I could be a Ferryman gone astray, or a footpad searching for an easy fogle. Yours, to be precise.”
Her expression did not soften from its brittle determination. “I could have handled it.”
There was just no reasoning with her. “Why were you following me?” I demanded, taking a step closer that I knew she would find intimidating. Claims of handling aside, she was a smart girl—if her pride would ease off long enough to let her intelligence shine.
“I wasn’t.” Maddie Ruth took a step back, one I followed with another in her direction. She looked up, as if she’d find help in the rusted grates set into the wall above our heads. Then, quickly, “I mean, I was, but it wasn’t for you.”
“Talk sense,” I suggested, rather quite coolly.
She fidgeted her weight, one foot to the other. “I was following you just to the collector wall.”
As if this somehow made her choices more tolerable? I glowered. “Do you think this a—”
—think this is a game, Miss Black?
The question died upon my lips even as it formed behind them. Suddenly, in my recollection, I saw Hawke glaring down at me as if I were naught but a nuisance, bloody-minded enough to attempt to stare him down as he held my arm in a secure grip. Close enough to make me acutely aware of the violence he could be capable of, were I to taunt him beyond patience.
I was turning into a replica of the very Devil himself.
Maddie Ruth’s chin rose.
Groaning out loud, I spun away from her and threw my hands into the chill damp as if I would beg supplication from invisible spirits. “I refuse!”
She was silent. Perhaps wary, now, for my outburst was not the sort a sane person may deliver.
I whirled on her, finger extended. Her eyes widened in her cold-chapped face. “You,” I half-snarled, lost on a tide of anger that was self-directed as much as aimed at my erstwhile shadow. “You and I are returning to the Menagerie right this moment, and you’d best pray—”
“No.” A finality that was not as firm as she should have wished. “You cannot force me,” she added quickly, as if it would help. How little she understood. Or, perhaps, understood all too well, for even as she did her level best to stare me down upon my own streets, Maddie Ruth clutched the lapels of her coat. Oh, would that maidenly modesty would help her—she’d find no peace from me.
Then, jarring me from my ire, I noticed the creases of straps pulled tight across her shoulders, as if she carried a pack behind her, all in stitched leather. They strained, pulled back on her shoulders—a heavy enough burden that I briefly admired her strength of back. If not quite that of her spine.
I opened my mouth to ask what in heaven’s name she’d dragged from the Menagerie.
Instinct, that fog-sense of rhythm and motion learned by them what spend most of their time within the drift, plucked a warning chord along my senses.
My gaze slid beyond Maddie Ruth’s ill-advised determination, narrowed on the blank canvas of gray surrounding us.
She saw opportunity, drew in a breath—to plead, to make her case, I didn’t know. It did not matter. I raised my hand, cutting off her voice with a sharp slash demanding silence.
We were no longer alone.
“Come here,” I said softly, my eyes on the fog.
Maybe there was hope for the girl’s obedience, after all. She said nothing at all, her gaze straying over her shoulder as she obeyed by quiet directive. Her footsteps were too loud in the brimming silence.