Deadly, deadly children.
He said, “Be careful when you face her. She’s dangerous, even for a Caché.”
“I’m dangerous myself,” Hawk said mildly. “I’ll accuse you of the same.”
“‘But yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.’”
“Not the Bible.” Hawker frowned. “Shakespeare?”
“Hamlet.”
“Jolly fellow, Hamlet. I’m surprised it took five acts for somebody to kill him. I could have done it in three.”
He and Hawker leaned, side by side, against a damp, slightly gritty brick wall that was crumbling, flake by red ochre flake, to the dirt of the alley at their feet, powdering into dissolution. Give London five or six hundred years and it would reduce this wall to dust and wash it into the Thames.
He was eroding, himself. His eyes hurt. His mouth was dry as bone dust. Each breath was a long, stinging ache right down to his chest. The undercurrent of pain scraped away at his concentration. Every breath and blink was a distraction.
Ignore it. Set it aside.
He kept his eyes on Vérité. Hawker ran his attention up and down the street, into all the blind corners, across the windows that looked down on this road, and up to the rooftops. They’d worked together so long, in so many places, they didn’t have to settle how to divide up the duty.
Hawk said, “I am officially disgusted with this slinking along the byways of London, hoping your erstwhile female colleague leads us someplace interesting. Let’s drag somebody back to Meeks Street and be rudely inquisitive. I vote we start with the woman.”
“We’re not voting. And I don’t crack eggs by slamming them with a hammer.”
“That’s profound, that is.” Hawker began picking coin from his pockets and spreading it across the palm of his hand. “I like that word ‘erstwhile.’ I’ve been trying to work it into conversations. Right. Not the woman. We’ll go to the tavern.” He studied his hand. “Where I will carelessly set ten shillings, thr’pence, ha’penny spinning across the floor. While the assembly scrambles for coinage, we drag your Frenchman off to Meeks Street.”
“And warn off the man I really want.”
“The one yonder maiden went to meet in the church. The fellow you want dead.”
“That one.”
The man in the tavern belonged to the Merchant. They were always the same type—men who wore the dull skin and heavy, subtly stunted body of workers from the starved, laboring quartiers of Paris. Men who obeyed without question. Men with the angry, shrewd eyes and stolid, obstinate faces of fanatics.
He’s one of the Merchant’s men. He knows where the monster is.
Hawker sighed and put his money away. “They know we’re following, even though you’re reasonably skilled in the art and I am extraordinary. Hundred percent likelihood on the woman. Fifty-fifty for the man.”
“They know.”
Hawk pulled out his watch, heavy, embossed silver, worn dull, and opened it. “Two hours till dark. We can continue our tour of the public houses of Soho, pausing at intervals to let the Frenchman piss in alleys on the way between. After that, we won’t be able to see him clearly. No loss, in my opinion.” He put the watch away. “Are we learning anything at all from this peregrination around the capital?”
“We’ve seen a face. One of the men in one of these taverns came to carry a message.”
“We’ve seen one hundred and seventy-two faces. Half of Soho.”
“We’ll know him when we see him again.” He took a deep breath and didn’t think about the pain. Wouldn’t think about the pain. “When it starts to get dark, we’ll collect the woman.”
Hawker said, “That gives me something to look forward to.”
Grab Vérité. Get her to Meeks Street. Help question her.
He wiped his mouth and leaned on the wall, unobtrusive enough that nobody glanced at him as they went by. Ahead of him, Vérité crouched on her cellar stairs and watched the tavern like a cat at a mouse hole. Like him, like Hawker, she’d be memorizing every man who went in and out. They were looking for the end of a string that might lead to that bastard.
Whatever she knew about the Merchant—and she knew something—she didn’t know his lair.
Hawk looked up suddenly. “What have we here?”
At the far end of the street, three men left the tavern. They fell in, side by side, walking in step. The door of the tavern swung open and another two followed them.
Men with a single purpose. A gang.
Vérité. He straightened and tensed, about to run in that direction. Instinct shouted—She’s alone.
But this wasn’t years ago in the Coach House. This wasn’t Piedmont. Not Tuscany. She wasn’t one of his men, left in a forward position, vulnerable, unprotected, about to be surrounded.
And she didn’t need his warning. Vérité’s shadow vanished. Her cloak whipped away and was gone. None of those five men glanced in her direction. They headed for Hawker and for him.
“Soho Square.” He rapped it out fast. A place to meet if he and Hawker got separated. “Follow the man, if you have a chance. I’ll follow the woman.”
A grunt from Hawker. Then there was no time for talking. More men came from the alley behind them and suddenly they were fighting six, seven, eight men.
Now seven. Hawk had kicked one in the groin and stooped to scoop up a knife, saving his own blades for future use.
Damn. They were young. Younger than Hawker. Not one of them as old as twenty, armed with walking sticks and knives and—God help us—fists.
Hawker muttered, “Amateurs,” being contemptuous and also warning him, in case he was about to kill one.
He’d seen the same thing. So he didn’t draw a blade. He ducked under a cudgel aimed at his head, plowed his fist into a belly, and cracked the man’s jaw against his knee as he went down. Satisfying.
Hawker was shaking pain out of his hand, snarling. “He had a book under his coat. What kind of man walks around with a book under his coat?”
“Then don’t use your fists. Kick him in—” He grabbed another boy by his lapels and swung him around to crash into the brick wall. Hard to say what part of the lad hit first, but it made a satisfying thump. “Kick him in the bollocks.”
A dark shape ran in from the left, behind Hawk, fist raised, holding a brown bottle. It blurred downward.
Gunshot cracked and everybody froze.
I’m not hit. It took a second to decide this.
Hawker wasn’t hit, either. It was another man who’d started bleeding from his forearm down his sleeve and dropped his wine bottle and dropped the idea of fighting as well. He fell back against the wall, looking amazed.
He knew what he’d see when he turned around. Cami hovered in a slant of shadow ten feet away. She slid her gun back to its accustomed secrecy.
Damned if she didn’t smile. A conspirator’s smile. Rueful. Guilty. She swirled her cloak and slipped around the corner, gone. He heard her running away.
Then a fellow he thought he’d already discouraged got to his knees and picked up a brick. That was somebody who needed to be kicked in the belly to discourage him some more. Hawker obliged.
“She missed,” Hawk said, “if she was aiming at you.”
“She wasn’t.”
“Well, she missed if she was aiming at me.”
The man—the boy—who’d been hit was yelping about having a bullet in him. “She shot me,” he said. “Shot me.” All amazement.
The last three, the ones who hadn’t engaged in combat and hadn’t sustained any damage, edged shoulder to shoulder and slowly backed away. Scared boys. Damn it, who sent scared boys out to attack somebody like him? Like Hawker?