Behind the line of horsemen, a man dismounted. He was big, broad-shouldered, his face hard and his muscles lean. He carried no sword or axe, but without a word the silent horsemen parted before him, edging sideways as if his mere presence were enough to move them. He walked through the line of men and across the space between the procession and the line of horsemen.
As he approached, a footman leapt down from a carriage to protect his charges, and then stopped. The big man looked at the servant and then looked back at the line of horsemen. Along the line were several mounted archers. Bows ready, arrows nocked, they stood ready to draw, eyes focused on the footman. The big man met his stare and he looked back to his coach for guidance. I could see it cross the servant’s face: this wasn’t bravery, this was stupidity.
The big man walked past him, nodding an acknowledgement of the bravery of a lone man prepared to stand against the line of mounted men. He swept his long hair back from his face in an unconscious gesture, plaiting it into a loose braid, and it was then that I recognised him. He’d grown since the incident at the river, putting on weight that wasn’t all muscle. He had stature that had been absent when he was being pursued, that came from more than the line of men behind him. This man was used to command, used to being at the centre of events. Townsmen and visitors, noblemen and women, servants and soldiers — they all watched him.
He walked along the row until he reached a young woman in a line of wealthy men. She was no more than a girl, and sat side-saddle on a beautiful grey horse, immaculately groomed and dressed with ribbons in its mane. She faced forward, and looked at the church across the square, not down at the man now standing beside her. The wealthy men around her moved restlessly, trying to decide what to do, but she ignored the man looking up at her completely.
He spoke to her. His voice was heard clearly across the square, but the words were alien to me. Her eyes didn’t waver. He spoke again, and this time he caught hold of the reins of her horse. She wrapped her hands in the reins and tried pull them from him, but he tugged them hard and she was wrenched from her saddle and pitched at his feet, skirts and petticoats trailing over the saddle as she slid to the ground. The fall was hard and she landed awkwardly, but she neither cried out, nor begged for assistance. She stood slowly, gathering her dress, brushing at smeared marks on her elbows and arms, and pulling her dignity together. She turned and faced the man, who watched her with apparent amusement. She drew back her arm and slapped him hard across the face.
There was utter silence. Neither the mounted men, nor the merchants moved.
He said something quietly to her that I did not hear. She replied in cold tones. The big man regarded her for a long moment. Then he drew a knife from his belt. One of the men behind her went to draw his sword and found himself the focus of the mounted archers. He took his hand away from the pommel very slowly.
The big man reached in and slipped the knife under the girth of the saddle, severing it in one smooth cut. He stepped in and pitched the saddle from the horse, dumping it behind her mount and making the horses behind hers dance back restlessly. Her horse stepped sideways and then recovered, standing shivering beside her. He regarded the girl, but she neither flinched nor gave way. He looked up at the merchants behind her, but not one would meet his gaze.
He stepped back, and gave a courtly bow quite at odds with his demeanour. With that he strode back through the lines and found his own mount, swinging easily up into the saddle. He surveyed the procession and the square for a moment as if he were committing it to memory, and then turned his mount and rode out of the square. The line of men followed, until the clatter of their passing faded from the square. Everyone waited until the last of them had gone and then let out the breath they’d been holding.
The girl, who had been left standing beside her unsaddled horse, was suddenly assailed by offers of carriages and assistance. She ignored all of them and, leaving the saddle where it had fallen, took the reins of her horse and walked with it along the line of the procession to the very front, passed the reins to a waiting footman, and with the all the grace she could muster, entered the church.
THREE
I came to on a cold stone floor. My cheek felt like it had been sandpapered. I tracked back through my memories, setting aside the dreams of stranger encounters, and tried to figure out what floor I was lying on. It was dark and cold, but not damp. Swallowing as I licked my dry lips, I winced in pain as I lifted my hand to my face, feeling the crusty trails of dried blood. I probed it with my fingers. Dry was a good sign: at least I’d stopped bleeding.
I pushed myself up from the hard stone, listening in the darkness for any signs of habitation around me. It was mercifully quiet. Tentatively I reached inside myself and let my power spill out, illuminating what turned out to be a small cellar with a shifting milky light. Rolling into a position where I could prop myself up on an elbow I swallowed several times before trying to sit. I sat like that, hands on knees, while I gathered my thoughts and figured out what to do next.
Exiting via St Clement’s Dane with a posse of do-gooders in pursuit hadn’t been too clever. In my confused state I’d just staggered in there and thrown myself down the Ways. I was lucky I hadn’t become lost there. I might never have found a way out.
My fingers traced a pattern of wheals and blisters on my face where the iron gates had hit me. No wonder I’d been disorientated. Being hit by half a ton of swinging iron, I was probably lucky to be alive. It’d happened so quickly. I explored the rest of my body gingerly, finding no breaks, but numerous bruises. The worst of it was the oblique cut across my forehead which still felt sticky when I probed it. At least the feeling of dislocation and nausea had passed. Standing slowly, using a broken and seatless chair-frame for support, I had a moment of dizziness, but nothing like the swimming vertigo from before. I took that as a positive sign.
I was going to be in deep trouble. Part of being a Warder was maintaining a low profile, which I had singularly failed to do. The other part was getting the job done. I didn’t even want to think about that. I couldn’t go back empty-handed. The safe in Claire’s office was long gone. It wasn’t my fault, but it would look like it. Perhaps that was the intention. It was not beyond Raffmir to achieve the twin aims of stealing the means to maintain the barrier and discredit me in the process.
Get the job done. That was in the job description.
At least I should find out what happened to Claire.
I let the milky light fade and then stepped gently onto the Way-node, letting it carry me and ignoring its usually exuberant ride, sliding over nodes to loop back on myself and turn back into London without passing back through St Clement’s Dane. I’d caused enough excitement there for one day.
The journey left me aching, but brought me out in one of the smaller parks, into the gathering dark — the day had slipped past without me. I shifted my glamour to conceal my blood-stained clothes and the cut on my forehead and hailed a taxi, keeping to myself, sitting huddled in the back while we navigated the streets of West London. We cruised to a halt in front of a row of townhouses converted into flats on a side street and I paid the cab-driver, watching him rumble away as I stood beside the road, suddenly chilled by the freezing wind.