Let Pax live through this. If you’ll just let Pax live . . .
She caught herself bargaining with God, promising to light a hundred candles in gratitude. She knew better than to haggle with God like a fruit seller in the market. God expected her to pay attention to the business at hand.
But she’d light flocks of candles if Pax lived.
She slowed her breathing. Tensed and released the big muscles of her body a few times. No point in burning up all her courage and strength before the game even began.
Forty-seven coaches, carts, gigs, and carriages passed. Twenty-two people. One dog. Then the Merchant.
“I probably could put glass into this.” Hawker turned his head and considered the broken window. “It doesn’t look that hard.”
Pax said, “Planning to change professions?”
“Never hurts to be prepared. One of these days I’m going to push Galba just an inch too far and get booted out of the Service.”
“That day has come and gone.” Pax rested the pistol on the nail he’d driven into the drainpipe and sighted down the length of it. It was a Mortimer and he’d had the barrel rifled to give it some accuracy. At this range, it would work as well as a Baker.
Hawker was turning over the sheet of glass, holding the edges through folded rags. “I’ll bet you could throw this, if you added some heft to it.” He weighed it in his hands. “Who are they going to let torture the Merchant when we catch him? Not you.”
“Doyle, I imagine.”
Hawk nodded. “Then Doyle will be the one to kill him at the end. Or Galba will come in and do it, being Head of Service.”
“You’re counting your chickens before they’re hatched.”
“I’m wringing their necks, plucking, and stewing them before they’re hatched.” Glancing into Semple Street, Hawker added, “Just concentrate on sighting your gun. Our girl’s holding fine. Calm as a pudding.”
She knew it was the Merchant before she saw his face. The plain black landau, anonymous, secretive, with the curtains drawn, announced him like a blast of trumpets.
The Merchant was driving himself, which she hadn’t expected. He dressed like a coachman and counterfeited the bored competence of a hired driver. He’d come to this meeting without his henchmen.
He was five minutes early. She’d have thought he was a man to be finicky about unimportant details.
She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. That was her signal to all the neighboring deadly people. It said, This is the Merchant.
A hundred feet away, in a second-floor window, the curtain drew back. That passed her message to everyone who couldn’t see her directly.
The closed coach told her he’d brought something or someone with him. He could fit two or three henchmen inside, ready to kidnap her. Or he could have Camille Besançon in there.
The carriage stopped level with her. The leather curtains of the windows didn’t twitch. Up on the box, the Merchant took a lungful of the cheroot he carried, set the brake, and wrapped the reins around it.
Close up, he was a deeply unconvincing coachman. That pallid face gave him away. He wore gloves too fine for a driver. His boots were gentleman’s boots, smooth, glossy, well fitted, and soft. He made mistakes all over the map. The cheroot was another one. She’d never seen a driver carry anything in his hand but a whip.
The Merchant shed his gloves, matched them palm to palm, and dropped them on the seat. He shrugged out of the driver’s coat, which was a thick, well-worn, authentic garment of many capes that had been made for a fatter man. He climbed down to go to the horse’s head.
When he took the halter, he held the cheroot out to the side where it wouldn’t annoy the horse.
“I am glad you decided to come. You brought the code?” He ventured that as one would hope, politely, that a borrowed book was about to be returned.
“I have it.” She touched the bodice of her dress. That wasn’t where she’d hidden the fake code. One tells many minor lies to hide the great ones. “Show me the woman.”
“In a moment.”
“Now.”
“Patience. All in good time.” He might have been a very nice man, saddened and hurt by her suspicion. He smiled at her and his eyes were most perfectly empty. “I have her inside the coach. Let me . . .” The horse was an orderly and placid mare, but she shuffled hooves and shook her great head at the smell of tobacco and fire. The Merchant waved largely. “You, boy! Come here.”
She’d been aware of a rattle and click along the pavement behind her, but in a situation that held a choice of threats, she’d concentrated on the nearest and most deadly. She glanced over her shoulder, keeping the Merchant in view at the same time.
The boy approached, bowling a hoop, letter perfect in his role of Child Playing on the Street. He was dressed exactly as a loving mother in Semple Street would send her son from the house.
Carlo Baldoni. He was what—twelve? A child in the line of fire. Damn the Baldoni anyway, and damn her for not expecting this.
Carlo propped his hoop against the railing, a convincing, well-used hoop that he’d doubtless stolen. Respectful, curious, he approached. “Yes, sir.”
The Merchant dropped the halter, navigated in his pocket, and found sixpence. “You like horses?”
Breathless and high voiced, with exactly the right accent, Carlo said, “Oh, yes, sir.”
“Then hold mine. This is Dolly. She’s very gentle.” The Merchant sent the coin riding over and under the back of his fingers. Sleight of hand. Pax could do that, too. This might be where he learned it. “You’ll have another like it when I come back.”
When Carlo came to pick up the reins, the Merchant clasped his shoulder in a friendly way and gave him the coin. One could almost see nephews and nieces gathered about the knee of this genial man as he handed out sugarplums. “What’s your name, son?”
“Tommy. Tommy Goodall.”
“Tom. A fine, strong name. Men with that name have been great fighters for great causes.” The Merchant smiled down into the innocent, upturned face. “You’ll do something important in the world, Tom.”
The Merchant’s voice was like the sweetened cream that topped iced cakes. Sweet, cloying, full of wind, amorphous. She heard an inhuman emptiness whistling beneath.
He showed no inclination to reveal his larger plans to her. Not why he needed the Mandarin Code. Neither the purpose nor the location of the gunpowder.
She would make certain this woman in the coach was safe, then let the British Service have him.
Every moment she delayed was an invitation to disaster. Pax stood in the alley with a pistol pointed at the Merchant’s heart. Mr. Hawker would be lethally equipped. Innocent-looking Carlo was Baldoni and thus old enough to carry a knife. There was a sniper three houses down. She was armed herself, for that matter. The potential for death was strewn across the Semple Street landscape like brown leaves in September.
From inside the coach came a faint knocking sound, as if an animal were trapped there. Or as if a woman, bound and gagged, tossed herself back and forth on the seat.
The Merchant walked a little ways from the landau, to smoke his cheroot.
Why was he smoking? Her mind skittered off, pursuing that oddity. A clumsy disguise? A weapon? A signal to his men?
She said, “Show me that woman.”
Amiable as a basking snake, sincere as bread, he held out his hand and made curled beckoning with his fingers. “You will see the woman when I’ve examined the code. Give me the paper, Cami Leyland. Come, I think we must trust each other a little, at this point.”
Horribly, sickeningly, when he wore that expression of grave reason on his face, he looked like Pax.
Like Pax . . . and not like. The Merchant had the square jaw, the lean cheekbones, the long, mobile line to his lips. There was the shared blood, plain to see.