“Because Lucia does not tend to her needle.” But Aunt Fortunata sounded indulgent.
Aunt Grazia draped the night shift over the back of a chair, absentmindedly stroking it smooth. “Amalia has a blue dress she will lend you for tomorrow. It will be most becoming. And for Monday, a dark green, inconspicuous and easy to run in. Would you like a gun? A second gun, I mean.”
“One cannot carry too many guns when going to meet an enemy.” Fortunata plumped the pillow on the bed and centered it carefully. “There.”
“Let me lend you one of mine,” Grazia said. “A lovely little Austrian cuff pistol my oldest brought back from the battle of Millesimo.”
“After having been told to keep well away from the fighting.” Fortunata clucked her tongue. “Headstrong.”
“The payroll funds were simply too tempting.” Aunt Grazia laid a round ball of soap in the dish beside the towels. “She is Baldoni, after all.”
Thirty-nine
Before a great enterprise, talk the plan over with friends.
“. . . not so different from the way you placed your men in Italy. Your street is an ambush in a ravine. Those houses have upper stories. That means snipers.”
Always good advice from Doyle, Pax thought. “If he wants Cami dead, he can reach out and do it. A sniper won’t stop him.”
“Sniper fire from our side closes off an escape route. Traps the Merchant in that canyon of a street,” Doyle said.
“Good point.” If I let him live that long.
Deep midnight and the smell of the Thames. Pervasive damp and the rustle and slap of water against the pilings. Doyle and Hawker didn’t hurry in this stroll along the nighttime docks of London, down to the ship that was supposed to take him to Italy. They were lax and lackadaisical guards. It was clear they expected him to escape before they got to the Pretty Mary.
“Complication with fighting in a city, though,” Doyle went on, “is you got civilians popping out of every doorway, just asking to be taken hostage.”
Cami would be a hostage the minute she stepped out onto the pavement. No comfort to know she’d be armed.
“Or they’re leaning out the windows trying to get themselves shot.” Hawker had helped himself to a handful of gravel a few streets back, stealing it out of a potted plant on somebody’s front steps. He’d been shying it, stone by stone, into the street as they walked along, hearing it skip and clatter, watching it when there was light enough from some lamp in a window. “I don’t know why they do that. If you asked a hundred citizens of London, ‘What should you do when people start shooting off guns?’ not one of them would say, ‘Go stand at the window and pretend to be a pheasant.’”
The last house they passed was a tavern with a light at the door and noise inside, even at midnight. The inns and public houses were busy all night at the docks, working to the change of the tides instead of the time of day.
The dock was dark, the uneven succession of long planks treacherous underfoot. Down at the end, an open boat was being loaded by three men under the light of a single lantern. Baskets of bread, more baskets—those might be eggs—and what looked like milk cans. The pile to the right was probably his luggage.
On the Thames, every ship on the water was slung with lanterns to keep thieves at bay. Light repeated in the water, rippling, broken into pieces. The Pretty Mary was one of those ships.
Doyle said, “You could just go to Italy and simplify matters immensely. I hear the light’s good for artists.”
“It’s good light.”
“I’m not new at this business. I’ll take the Merchant for you.” Doyle was in outline against the river. “I’ll take him alive because we need him for questioning. But he will die. It’s just a squabble over who gets to kill him.”
“He’s worried about the woman,” Hawker said.
“I know that.” Doyle watched the loading at the end of the dock. “We all know she’s walking into a trap. Whether she lives depends on what the Merchant wants and whether we can get to her in time.” He turned back. “When she walks onto Semple Street, I have as good a chance of keeping her alive as you do.”
Hawk said, “He’s not listening. He’s thinking about taking a dive into that dirty river when he’s about halfway between here and that boat out there.”
“Ship,” Doyle corrected. “The big ones are ships. The small ones are boats. Pax, I can’t promise to keep her alive or get her safe out of England. I can’t promise to keep her out of prison. She’s a spy and I don’t know what she’s done—”
“The difference is, he doesn’t care what she’s done,” Hawk said.
“But if it’s possible, I’ll keep her alive and loose on the streets,” Doyle said. “I have influence and I’ll use it for her. Will you go to Italy and spy on the French and Austrians and leave her to me?”
They already knew his answer. He gave it anyway. “No.”
“You’re disobeying direct orders. You know that.”
“I don’t have any choice.”
Waves slapped the mud under the dock. A metallic cold rose up from the expanse of water. Even if these two didn’t force the issue, even if they let him walk away, he knew he’d be walking away from the Service.
“I hope you’re not expecting me to tie him up and haul him out to that ship.” Hawker still had a few pieces of gravel held in reserve. He skidded one out across the water and listened to it splash. “He’d stab me, being in thrall to that devil bitch of his.”
Might as well make it clear. “There are two of you. I can’t win without hurting you. And I’ll fight. I don’t think you’re willing to hurt me.”
“We’re not going to do it that way,” Doyle said.
“Good.” Hawk threw his last piece of gravel and waited for a splash. “Because I’m bloody well not pulling a knife on Pax. Last time I did he almost gutted me.”
“I sliced your forearm. One cut,” he said.
“It is only by my supernatural agility that I escaped that encounter alive. Now I’m going to wander down the nearest alley to relieve myself against a wall, leaving Pax to disappear into the cool of the evening or take ship to Italy, whichever strikes his fancy. Mr. Doyle, if you want to stand between Pax and his murderous woman, I leave you to it.”
A dark chuckle. Doyle said, “I’m not that stupid.”
Hawker became silence and darkness, walking away.
Galba sent Doyle and Adrian to put him on the ship because he knew they wouldn’t force the issue. Galba had left him the choice—obey or disobey—and all the consequences.
He called, “Hawk.” He felt, rather than saw or heard, Hawker pause.
“Hmm?”
“I’ll be at the Baldoni’s, off and on, starting in the morning. It’s not my operation—”
“It’s your operation,” Doyle said. “I’ll send Hawker over about noon. Tell him what you need from the Service and I’ll see you have it.” He paused. “You will get me the Merchant. He killed an old friend of mine.”
It was like flame, the unwavering, burning cold inside him. “I will bring him down.”
Hawk had become invisible. The trailing edge of his voice drifted back. “Galba’s going to kill me for this.”
Doyle aimed his reply in that direction. “Cheer up, lad. Likely somebody’ll beat him to it.”
Forty
With a small decision, we change all the future.
The road back to Cami felt familiar, even though he’d only walked it twice now. It was all in the anticipation.
At the end, almost there, Pax went motionless in the dark at the doorway next to the Baldoni house. Men approached behind him on the street, walking without reservation or wariness. Two . . . three of them.