She was in bed, in a quiet room, under a soft blanket, held by Hawker. She glided back to consciousness, riding the currents of that certainty. She was with Hawker, so she was safe. In all the world, there was no flesh, no bone, no sound of breathing she would mistake for Hawker’s.
“I can tell when you’re awake,” he said.
Her mouth was dry. “You always could.”
“A matter of being cautious.” He unwound from her and tucked the blanket into the space he’d emptied. The bed moved. He sat up to lean over and look down at her. “I never quite trusted you, you know, not even when we were closest. I just thought it was worth the risk. You were always worth the risk.”
I was stabbed because I came to warn you. “You do not trust me. Wise.”
“We did well enough, for enemies.” His smile pulled down at the side and didn’t reach his eyes. He shifted his weight, careful not to joggle her. “You’re harmless for the moment. You were about half dead for a while.”
“How long?”
“It’s been three days. A little more.”
So long? She thought of days frittered away, like small coins out of a pocket. Pouring from her mind, like grains of silver. “I don’t remember.”
“Just as well.”
Someone had put her in a night shift. Her left arm was an ache from shoulder to fingers. Under the bandage, she itched. She held her hands up. So heavy. Her joints felt like old iron wheels and gears that had lain abandoned for a long time and were now set moving again, creakily.
Bruises circled her wrists and ran in regimented lines, forearm to elbow. Blue finger marks showed where someone had held her.
“I am bruised.” Events took shape in her mind like shadows in fog. She had been in Braddy Square, trying to get to Hawker, to warn him. She remembered being stabbed. Staggering toward Meeks Street. “Who did I fight?”
“I held you down when you were being sewed up. You objected to that for some reason. And later, when you were out of your head with fever.” He rolled smoothly off the bed and stood over her. “I hurt you doing it. No choice.”
His voice said how little he had liked hurting her.
Oh, Hawker. We have hurt each other so much.
He was unshaven, which always made a ruffian of him. He wore trousers and a loose shirt, open halfway down his chest. She had felt it next to her as she slept, cradling the edge of her dreams—the warmth of him, the creases of the linen of his shirt, the old, familiar comfort of his skin.
He poured from a pitcher to a small cup. “Everybody wants you to drink this. I have seldom encountered such unanimity of opinion. I’m going to slip in next to you and hold it up. You sip out of the side here.”
It was not water, but lemonade. Exactly right. She was very thirsty.
They looked at each other while she drank. He was deeply tired. His face was pared to the bone, to sarcasm and deadliness. He had watched her come very close to death, she thought.
“That’s better.” He eased her down to the pillow again. “You almost slipped away from me. There was one time there, you stopped fighting. I thought it was over.”
“It was not. Not this time.” When she lay still, the pain was not great. There was much to be said for holding still. “Lie beside me, if you would. For comfort. I am in pain and I’m cold.”
“My pleasure, anyway.”
She started to laugh and took the warning her body gave and did not. “The papers? You have them. Important.”
“I have them.” He lifted the blanket and crawled in beside her. So many times, he had done that.
“I will tell you what I saw . . . when I wake up.” One more thing to say. “Do not send for Séverine.” She would come all this long distance and worry about her. “It is unnecessary.”
“Go to sleep, Owl.”
“Do you know? You are the only one in the world . . . who still calls me Owl.”
The darkness was huge and friendly. She would rest in it awhile.
Twenty-three
HAWKER PICKED UP HIS RAZOR. IN THE MIRROR over the dresser, he looked back at himself with hard, steady eyes. A killer’s eyes.
“She’s alive for the next little while.” Alive. Exhausted. Sleeping. Just sleeping. Felicity was watching her.
He’d never got into the habit of using a brush to put soap on his face. Just lathered up between his palms.
“Let’s say there’s two groups. One of them goes poking knives into various Frenchmen. The other is trying to gut Justine. Both of them are mad at me and both have some of my knives handy.” He shook his head. “Not likely.”
No argument from the mirror.
He tried the razor along the hair on his arm. Nicely sharp. He did like a good edge on his steel. Swish his hands in the basin. Pull his skin taut with his thumb and shave the right side. No hurry.
Wipe soap off the razor on a towel. Rinse it in the basin. “Not two groups, then. One. They go after the Frenchmen to frame me. They go after Justine because it’ll hurt me.”
Finish the right side. Wipe the razor down again. “They know me fairly well.”
Now for the left side. “But it’s easier to shoot me one balmy evening. Who’s going to take the time and trouble to be that convoluted and that patient? Who hates me that much?”
One name came to mind.
Shaving’s a meditative business. He did the short, careful strokes under the chin. Always a tricky part.
Wipe the final soap off the razor. Wash the blade.
“Try this. Say Justine’s been collecting my knives for a while. She kills a pair of Frenchmen, planning to lay it on me.” Dry the blade with the clean corner of the towel. “Before she dispatches another hapless French cove, one of her confederates gets peevish and pokes the knife into her.”
Fold the razor. Lay it down beside the bowl. Take a new towel and wash his face. “That gives us one group, with infighting. And Justine behind everything.”
Toss the towel away with the other one.
A long time ago, he’d thought it was special between him and Owl. They were friends, right to the heart. Being enemies didn’t change that. Even when he was staggering around, half dead, with her bullet in his shoulder, he kept thinking they were friends.
His eyes looked back at him, particularly bleak this morning. “Owl won’t stop, you know. She never gives up. If she’s behind this, I’ll wake up one morning with my throat slit.” He fingered his throat. “Because I’m still a damn fool when it comes to that woman.”
No answer to that either.
He strapped on the arm sheath, settled his shoulder harness, checked the knives, and wished he was out in the field where he might get to use them. He was in the mood to confront somebody a good deal more dangerous than Lord Cummings, Head of Military Intelligence.
WHEN Hawker walked into his office, he saw that Cummings had taken a place behind the desk. He was sitting in Hawker’s chair.
He’d never decided whether Lord Cummings played the fool on purpose, or if it just came naturally to him. He looked the part of an aristocrat. He was straight-backed and silver-haired, sporting a long, thin, supercilious nose. He sat behind the desk, looking distinguished, pretending to be absorbed in the newspaper he’d picked up. He’d brought along his cur dog, Colonel Reams, who did not look distinguished.
Felicity leaned against the wall just inside the door of his office, keeping a gimlet eye on the visitors. She muttered, “About time,” as he passed.
He barely moved his lips. “You felt it quite necessary to put them in here?”
“You said to be polite.”
“Not that polite.”
She’d let Military Intelligence invade his office just to see what they wanted to get into. And to annoy him. He gave her a “we’ll talk about this later” look and motioned her out.
Back when Adrian Hawkhurst was still Hawker the Hand, stealing for a living and associating with questionable companions—in the flower of his youth, as it were—he’d walked into many an alley to find an enemy sitting in ambush. This felt the same. It was enough to make a man nostalgic.