He walked harmlessly alongside Doyle and Maggie and their bits and pieces of baggage and the donkeys. The sky was turning milk white, with most of the light coming from the east, behind them. The air was stuffy and flat. It was going to be scorching hot later on. The city was just going on the griddle.
Doyle had decided to leave Paris, since there were a number of men thirsting for his blood right now. He was also getting Maggie away safe, the political situation having become unsettled. Every time the good citizens of Paris got unsettled they started pulling aristocrats out of the houses and hanging them from the lampposts. Maggie was an aristo. Time for a cautious man to take his wife home to dull old England.
Doyle strolled at donkey pace, his thumbs hooked in his waistcoat pockets, portraying stolid and stupid to anyone who might take an interest. He kept an eye behind them and to the right, motioning Hawker to scout ahead and watch the left-hand side.
When they turned the corner and left the Rue Palmier, Owl was ahead, waiting for them.
She sat on the steps of a big respectable house, getting away with it because they were still in the damp and poorly lit dawn and the householders hadn’t come out to chase her away. She dressed like a housemaid—neat, with a big white mobcap on her head and a thick, plain fichu knotted on her chest. Owl had shoved a brown leather bag to the side of the steps, which might be important. She held Séverine on her lap.
Owl said, “Good day to you, citoyens. It is a pleasant day to be walking free under the sun, is it not?”
“Very.” Doyle came up beside him. “You’re waiting for us?”
“For Marguerite, though this is a matter of interest to you as well.”
Owl was . . . wound tight. She cradled her sister, gentle-like, but look close and you’d see her hands clamped like iron on the kid’s dress, as if any minute Séverine was going to fall off her lap and get eaten by rats.
The streets were empty as a beggar’s pouch. Nothing out of place and no tick of movement. The donkeys weren’t twitching their ears. But Owl was scared of something, or angry about it, or both.
Maggie went over to Owl, and they settled in to chat like market women passing the time of day. Looked like everybody was going to pretend like the donkeys and the bags were just decorative and nobody had anywhere in particular to go, least of all to the gates of Paris, and there was no hurry to get out of this town before something untoward happened.
Doyle’s hands kept being unconcerned and innocent, down near his knives. He gazed idly across the windows everywhere and kept close to Maggie.
They should be safe. Owl would never, under any circumstance on earth, put her sister in danger. But what the hell was going on?
Owl passed Séverine over to Maggie and they discussed the sprat for a while. Nobody in any of the houses coughed. Nobody came walking by. It was so bloody quiet they could have been standing in a painting. He distrusted quiet, just on general principles.
Funny how Owl looked different, sitting there without the kid in her arms. She looked alone, folded in and closed up with her arms around herself. She said to Maggie, “You were right. A whorehouse is no home for a child,” which was what everybody had been telling her. She said, “A war is coming.”
There was another giant revelation for you. War, riot, mayhem . . . It was all coming. Owl and him would be on opposite sides.
He eased his way back to keep an eye up and down the street since everybody else was talking single-mindedly and not paying attention to the surroundings.
Owl looked back and forth from Doyle to Maggie, making quick, brittle little comments. Maggie held the kid. It looked natural, like they fit together.
Then, word by careful word, staring into Maggie’s face, Owl said, “You will take Séverine as your own. You will take her away from France and keep her in safety. You will watch over her. You, yourself.”
Take Séverine? What was this?
“She will be no trouble on the road.” Owl was talking fast now, not giving Maggie a chance to answer. Owl’s hands pushed at the air as if she was shoving objections aside. “She has learned to be quiet. She will go with you willingly when I tell her she must. She knows to say nothing at all and to answer to any name she is given.”
Doyle got grave and quiet, deep voiced and dead serious. “You’re giving your sister to us?”
“I give her to Marguerite.” Owl fumbled around for the valise she’d stowed away. That would be clothes for the kid in there. She pulled the bag out and held it, looking at Séverine.
There was no way to say what he saw in Owl’s face. Once he’d watched a man get knifed in the belly and know he was going to die. It took him a while to get it done. That was how he’d looked the whole time.
Maggie and Doyle talked low, back and forth. Doyle nodded. Then he put his hand on the sprat’s head. “Séverine is mine. I’ll treat her no differently than a child of my blood, born in wedlock. I’ll set her welfare before my own life. I will love her as a father. You have my word.”
Back in London, back in the gang he’d lived with, they called that a blood oath.
Owl knew what she’d done. That flat, black, blank behind her eyes was her knowing exactly what she’d done. No telling how much Séverine understood of all this. Might be a lot. She was a smart little kid.
Maggie put her hand out toward Owl. “How can I take your sister and leave you behind? Do you think I wouldn’t welcome you? Come with us.”
Hell. Hell and damn. That wasn’t going to happen. If Owl wasn’t on the rolls of the Police Secrète, she reported to somebody who was.
He didn’t stay to listen while Doyle told Maggie why Owl couldn’t come to England. Lots of things to do that didn’t involve watching that. The load on the donkeys had to be shifted and balanced and tacked down to take account of a new bag. He had to make a place for Séverine to ride.
They talked. He tried not to listen too much. After a while, Owl came over, walking like a marionette, stiff and awkward. She lifted the bag to where he’d made a place for it. “I have packed clothing for her. Things she will need. Her . . . doll.”
“Some people wouldn’t leave this to the last minute. The kid’s going to make them conspicuous.” He wasn’t gentle. Owl didn’t want to break down in front of Séverine. She was close to doing that.
“What is more inconspicuous than a child? Would anyone suspect a family traveling across the countryside with a small child? No and no. Everyone should take an infant or two with them upon their missions.”
He shrugged and made a clicking with his lips, which was one of those French noises he was practicing.
“She is a better companion than you, in fact, because she has been trained to keep her mouth closed and follow orders, which you have not.”
He’d made her angry. Good. She didn’t look as dead inside. “I follow orders.” He hauled out the blankets, rolled them, and tied them on the donkey, making a sort of half-moon shape where Séverine could ride. “It’s that hair of hers. Might as well attach a red flag. That has to . . . Here.” He took a string of leather and went to braid up the sprat’s hair and tie it. “That’s better. But she’s dressed too well. You should dirty her up. Put some mud on her.”
“I am pleased to know she will not be in your hands, Citoyen’Awker.”
That was enough prodding to get her spine stiff. To let her blink back tears. She walked with Maggie, saying good-bye to Séverine without saying it. Touching her sister’s back once.
Last thing, before she left, she handed over their real name. DeCabrillac. Their father was a count, which it was just as well he hadn’t known when he was shoving her arse out of his way back in the Coach House.