“I’ll be more careful.”
Silence. Waiting.
He said, “I may convince her to talk. We were friends once. No.” He cut off what Hawk was about to say. “This isn’t as simple as dragging one more Caché out of hiding. We need the information inside her.” He glanced at Doyle. “It’s important.”
Doyle didn’t point out that a traitor took a lot on himself, giving orders. “We could convince her to talk at Meeks Street.”
“Not by any method you’d be willing to use. She knows how to keep silent. As I say, we were trained.”
Doyle took another half minute, then nodded. “It’s your decision.”
His decision. He imagined the moment of capture. Overwhelming fear and then a fight she had no chance of winning. His gut kept saying it was wrong to give Vérité to the Service. He couldn’t remember a time he’d had to push himself forward on one path when every instinct badgered him to take another. “Give me time with her.”
“Some time. Then you need to report to Meeks Street. Galba’s patience is not infinite.” Doyle paused and said, “Don’t let her get behind you.”
“I won’t.” He pulled his mind to the last details that had to be arranged. This game could end in a lot of different ways. “Put McAllister and Stillwater on the front, left and right. You, if you will, take the far end of the alley, watching the back of Braid’s. Hawk takes this end. That corner, where he’s out of this wind. This isn’t the weather for somebody with a bullet hole in him.”
“Bullet wounds are no match for my well-practiced stoicism,” Hawk murmured.
“I’ll go in the window up there.” It was an upper-floor window on the front. Almost certainly, Vérité was sleeping in the back of the shop, near a fast escape. With luck, she wouldn’t hear him breaking in.
Doyle studied him for one more minute. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“There’s a good chance she’ll talk to me if I’m alone.” He buttoned his coat so it wouldn’t get in his way.
Hawk said, “Going by past behavior, there’s a good chance she’ll slit your throat.”
The window was fifteen feet up. “I will hold that thought in mind.”
He clamped his throwing knife in his teeth and backed down the pavement. He ran, hit Doyle’s cupped hands, and took the leap upward. Caught the windowsill with his fingers and hung. Found a toehold in the brick and pulled himself up.
Fourteen
It is not enough to know how to ride. One must know how to fall.
She slept darkly and dreamlessly. Someone touched her shoulder.
She came up clawing. Hitting out with the heel of her hand. Then he had her wrists trapped, caught, pushed to the straw she slept upon. A ton of solid muscle held her down. Her legs tangled in the wool of her cloak, kicking uselessly.
Shadows resolved into a face leaning over her. He said, “Don’t fight me.”
Devoir. It was Devoir.
She froze.
His fingers settled to a better grip on her wrists. He said, “Hello again, Vérité.”
She could curl upward, ram her head into his face, break his nose . . .
And that was an exercise in the futile. Even if he didn’t know exactly what she was planning, and she was quick enough to batter him raw, he wouldn’t let go. You could grind Devoir neatly into sausage and he wouldn’t let go.
His body pressed like rocks. His breath blew hot on her face. Strands of his colorless hair hung between them. Her gun, loaded and ready, hidden under the rolled-up dress she was using as a pillow, could have been in Northumberland for all the good it did her.
She considered this abrupt reversal of fortune from every possible angle and didn’t like it. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“You should have.” For a minute, his eyes glittered, fierce and unreadable. Abruptly, his weight was gone from her. He curled to his feet and stood looking down. “We didn’t finish talking.”
The British Service had found her. Her long deception was finished. Time to pay the piper. Icicles of panic shivered in her muscles.
Slowly, she pushed herself up to sitting. Her fingers brushed the pistol grip.
“Don’t,” he advised.
There are opportune moments for violent ambush. This did not seem to be one of them. She stretched her arms out, resting her elbows on her raised knees, on the cloak she’d used as her blanket. She intertwined her fingers, looking harmless.
He said, “Get over by the wall. Leave that cloak where it is. I want to see your hands the whole time.”
“I’m in my shift.”
“I’ve seen you naked.”
They’d all seen each other naked in the spartan dormitory at the Coach House. When they were Cachés. When they were children, spies in training, miserable and deadly. When they’d been friends. “I was twelve. Nobody was interested.”
“I’m not interested now. Get up.” The words scraped out of his throat one by one. If he still hurt, so many hours after she’d thrown the mélange de tabac at him, he wasn’t going to be in a forgiving mood.
She drew herself together against the cold, feeling hollow and weak. Once, she’d been questioned by men from the British Service. They’d been gentle with her because she looked like a child and they believed her well-practiced lies. The men who came for her this time would not be gentle. They wouldn’t believe her and they wouldn’t forgive her for deceiving them.
If they were in this house, they were quieter than smoke.
Devoir said, “Stand up. Get back against the wall.”
Not Devoir. Paxton. She would think of him as Pax and remove the last familiarity from her mind. Pax, the stranger. Pax, the unknown and unknowable. Dangerous Pax.
She kneed out from under her cloak, stood, and backed away till her spine encountered bookshelves. She was a model of docility.
“Very wise,” he said.
Thin red firelight leaked through the open door from the front of the shop, the half-banked fires that kept the damp out of the books. He crossed the room like a tall shadow, uncannily silent, and knelt on the pile of packing straw she’d slept in. He kept a prudent eye in her direction.
She said, “You’re safe from attack. You’re four stone heavier than I am and expecting it.”
“I’m glad we both realize that.” He pulled the pistol from under her makeshift pillow. Fluid, shifting gleams ran up and down the barrel as he inspected it. “Nice gun.” He weighed it in his hand. “It’s light.”
“I hollowed out the stock.” The first shock was ebbing away. She tucked her hands under her armpits to keep them warm. It also hid her breasts. She was shaking. In the most dire of her nightmares, she’d never imagined facing Devoir as an enemy, having given him so much cause to be furious with her. “I wasn’t going to shoot you.”
At least, she didn’t think so. She hadn’t considered the matter in depth. “I don’t shoot old friends.”
He tapped the pistol butt on the floor to knock the powder out and make the gun useless. “That’s reassuring.”
“If I did, your colleagues would be on me like a pack of wolfhounds. Where are they, by the way?”
“Here and there.” Pax wore the same dark clothes he’d had on in the afternoon, inconspicuous in the night. His hair was undisguised, pale as old ivory. He laid the gun aside. “Let’s see what other deadly things you’re carrying.”
His voice was deep and gravelly from the slight damage she’d done to it earlier with the mélange de tabac. He set about plundering her cloak with intent, efficient motions. He was not, she thought, merry hearted and forgiving.
“Knife,” he said, finding one. “And surprise, surprise, another knife.” He slipped that one from its sheath, admired it, then tossed both of them down beside the pistol. He began pulling four-inch pins from the seam of her cloak. “You’re a walking armory.”
“I’m not generally. Weeks go by and I’m innocent of anything but one little penknife to cut package string. Most days, I couldn’t menace a stalk of asparagus.” Not being obvious about it, she felt along the shelves behind her. Books were of no use in this situation, but perhaps someone had left a pair of scissors. “I’m no longer carrying a little silver box full of ground pepper and snuff. That bolt has been shot, so to speak. There’s some wire you haven’t found yet. It’s in—”