Brill realized she was being watched as soon as she turned to lock the front door of the shop behind her.
She’d spent a frustrating hour in Burgeson’s establishment. The monitor on the door was working exactly as intended—she couldn’t fault Morgan for that—but the fact remained, it hadn’t been triggered. And it didn’t take her long to figure out that somebody had been in the shop recently. The drawers in the desk in the back office were open, someone had been rummaging through the stock, and the dust at the top of the cellar stairs was disturbed. She’d looked down the steps into the darkness and cursed, realizing exactly what had happened. Morgan had secured the front door, and even the back door onto the yard behind the shop, but it hadn’t occurred to him that a slippery customer like Burgeson might have a rat run out through the cellar. Better check it out, she thought grimly, extracting a pocket flashlight from her handbag.
The cellar showed more signs of recent visitors: disturbed dust, a suspicious freshness to the air. She glanced around tensely, aiming the flashlight left-handed at the nooks and crannies of the cellar. The floor…she focused the beam, following a scuffed trail in the dust. Right. The trail led through a side door into another cellar room full of furniture, and dead-ended against a wooden cabinet full of labeled cloth bundles. Brill walked towards it, staring. The back of the cabinet was dark, too dark. “Clever,” she muttered, peering past a bundle: there was a gap between the cabinet and the side wall, and behind it, she saw another wall—two feet farther in. The smell of dust, and damp, and something else—something oily and aromatic, naggingly familiar—tugged at her nostrils. She took a sharp breath, then slipped behind the cabinet and edged along it, through the hole in the bricks at the other end of the cellar, into the tunnel. There was a side door into another, hidden back room: the smell was stronger here. Tarpaulins covered wooden barrels, a thin layer of dust caking them. She raised a cover, glanced inside, and nodded to herself. If someone—Burgeson? Miriam?—hadn’t left the back door open, the smell wouldn’t have given it away, but down here the stink of oiled metal was almost overpowering. She let the tarp fall, then slid back out of the concealed storeroom. So Miriam keeps dangerous company, she reminded herself, her lips quirking in a faint smile. Maybe that’s no bad thing right now.
But it certainly wasn’t a good thing, and as she turned to lock the front door she paid careful attention to the reflections in the window panes in front of her. Maybe it was pure coincidence that a fellow in a threadbare suit was lounging at the corner of the alley, and maybe it wasn’t, but with at least twenty rifles stashed in that one barrel alone, Brill wasn’t about to place any bets. She walked away briskly, whistling quietly to herself—let any watchers hurry to keep up—and turned left into the high street. There were more people here, mostly threadbare men hanging around the street corners in dispirited knots, some of them holding out hats or crudely lettered signs. She paused a couple of doors down the street to glance in a shop window, checking for movement behind her. Alley Rat was trying to look inconspicuous about fifty feet behind her, standing face-to-cheek with one of the beggars who wore a shapeless cloth hat and frayed fingerless gloves as gray as his face.
Tail. Brill tensed, glancing up the street. “How annoying,” she murmured aloud. There were no streetcars in sight, but plenty of alleyways. Worse than annoying, she added to herself as she thrust her right hand into her bag. Try to shed him, first…
She started moving again, hurrying, letting her stride lengthen. She glanced over her shoulder—no advantage to be gained in hiding her awareness now, if she needed cover from civilians she could just say she was being chased—and spotted Mr. Threadbare and Mr. Hat blundering towards her, splitting in a classic pincer. Most of the bystanders had evaporated or were feigning inattention—nobody wanted to be an audience for this kind of street theater. Brill took a deep breath, stepped backwards until she came up against the brick wall of a shop, then held her handbag out towards Mr. Hat, who was now less than twenty feet away. “Stop right there,” she said pleasantly, and when he didn’t, she shot him twice. The hand bag jerked, but the suppressor and the padding kept the noise down to the level of an enthusiastic hand clap. She winced slightly and shook her wrist to dislodge a hot cartridge as Mr. Hat went to one knee, a look of utter surprise on his face, and she spun sideways to bear on Mr. Threadbare. “Stop, I said.”
Mr. Threadbare stopped. He began to draw breath. She focused on him, noting absently that Mr. Hat was whimpering quietly and slumping sideways against a shop front, moving one hand to his right thigh. “Who do you think—”
Brill jerked her hand sideways and shot Mr. Hat again. He jerked and dropped the stubby pistol he’d been drawing, and she had her bag back on Mr. Threadbare before he could reach inside his jacket. “If you want to live, you will walk ten feet ahead of me,” she said, fighting for calm, nerves screaming: Where’s their backup? Clear the zone! “Move.”
Mr. Threadbare twitched at Mr. Hat: “But he’s—”
An amateur. Brill tensed up even more: amateurs were unpredictable. “Move!”
Mr. Threadbare moved jerkily, like a puppet in the hands of a trainee. He couldn’t take his eyes off Mr. Hat, who was bleeding quite copiously. Brill circled round the target and toed the gun away from him, in the direction of the gutter. Then she gestured Mr. Threadbare ahead of her, along the sidewalk. For a miracle, nobody seemed to have noticed the noise. Mr. Threadbare shuffled slowly: Brill glanced round quickly, then nodded to herself. “Left into the next alleyway.”
“But you—”
She closed the gap between them and pushed the gun up against the small of his back. “Don’t turn. Keep walking.” He was shaking, she noticed, and his voice was weak. “Left here. Stop. Face the wall. Closer. That’s right. Raise your right hand above your head. Now raise your left.” Nobody in the alley, no immediate witnesses if she had to world-walk. “Who do you work for?”
“But I—” He flinched as brick dust showered his face.
“That’s your last warning. Tell me who you work for.”
“Red Hand thief-taker’s company. You’re in big trouble, miss, Andrew was a good man and if you’ve killed—”
“Be quiet.” He shut up. “You tailed me. Why?”
“You burgled the pawnbroker’s—”
“You were watching it. Why?”
“We got orders. The Polis—”
Thief-takers—civilian crime prevention, mostly private enterprise—working for the polis—government security? “What were you watching for?” She asked.
“Cove called Burgeson, and some dolly he’s traveling with. He’s Wanted, under the Sedition Act. Fifty pounds on his head and the old firm’s taking an interest, isn’t it?”
“Is it now?” Brill found herself grinning, teeth bared. In the distance, a streetcar bell clanged. “Kneel.”
“But I told you—”
“I said, kneel. Keep your hands above your head. Look away, dammit, that way, yes, over there. I want you to close your eyes and count to a hundred, slowly. One, two, like that, I’ll be counting too. If you leave this alley before I reach a hundred, I may shoot you. If you open your eyes before I reach a hundred, I may shoot you. Do you understand?”