“The guardsman? He’s here. Lord Skestinin took him on when the household …”
“I thought I remembered that,” Clara said, smiling to herself. “I must look in on him and pay my respects. It takes so little, you know, to maintain those relationships, and good servants are so rare. Now, Sabiha, dear, tell me all about that dinner at Lady Ternigan’s. I haven’t seen any of the new dresses, so you must describe everything.”
The danger for her was that it was so easy here. So comfortable and calm and welcoming. Some of that drew, she was certain, from Jorey and Sabiha’s guilt at turning her out. Some was the decades of practice she’d put into being Lady Kalliam, Baroness of Osterling Fells. But some was deeper. There was a genuine love between her son and his wife, and unaffected kindness was a pleasure to be near, even if only for a moment. Clara wanted to gossip and laugh and tell stories from when Jorey had still been in his small pants and watch Sabiha’s delight and Jorey’s blush. She wanted to be that woman still.
But already they had said things that she knew, despite her best intentions, would be in the next letter to Carse, and she didn’t want that. Jorey might say something that only he knew, and if then if the letter was intercepted, suspicion would fall on him. The fact restrained her, but it didn’t stop her.
And after breakfast, and after Jorey had discreetly given her a week’s allowance and kissed her cheek, she stopped at the servants’ quarters, found a private corner, and had a serious conversation with Alston the guardsman.
Four days later, she woke early, left her rooms, and met her old servants. Rain soaked the predawn streets, and the birds sang the songs that came before the light. The tiny, cool drops tapped against Clara’s cheeks and ran in an invisible runnel down past her collar and into the space between her breasts. Alston walked behind her, a looming darkness inside the darkness. His cloak was oilskin the deep brown of freshly turned soil. The other men with him were likewise dressed. The proper clothes, she thought, for the proper occasion. It was good to know the basic rules applied everywhere.
The taproom near the Silver Bridge hardly deserved the name. It wasn’t a business so much as an excuse for one—beer went in and and piss came out—but it was also the sort of place where men with no name slept during the daylight and stolen coins and food appeared without questions. The lantern by its door was filled with oil and lit only because Clara had snuck it away and put it back herself. And that only because she needed to see the faces of the men who stepped out to the street. Clara had been waiting for less than an hour when the rude little door swung open and four men tumbled out, their arms around each other’s shoulders. The only good thing she’d discovered about Ossit and his friends was the regularity of their habit. Three Firstblood men and a Kurtadam. The middle of the three Firstbloods was unmistakably Ossit, the man with the knife who would, she was certain, have split her from heel to throat if Abatha Coe hadn’t distracted him.
Alston must have seen the reaction in her stance, because he didn’t ask whether these were the men they were waiting for. He stepped forward, and the two men with him followed. Clara came behind. After all the time she’d spent and work she’d done to arrange this, it wasn’t something she could look away from.
From the way their conversation stopped and they closed ranks, it was clear that Ossit and his toughs sensed the danger even before the first of her old guardsmen stepped out of the shadows. Three of her men loomed up in the street before Ossit. Clara, Alston, and two more took station behind the enemy, blocking their retreat. The bared blades on both sides caught the light like tiny flecks of lightning.
The Kurtadam was the first to stop. His grin was wide enough to show teeth. The blade in his hand was long for a knife, short for a sword. Ossit, to his left, had the same curved blade he’d brandished at her in the boarding house. The other two had clubs of wood with their ends dipped in lead.
“Looking for trouble, are you, then?” the Kurtadam growled.
“Only delivering what was ordered,” Clara said, and the men started at her voice.
“Who in fuck are you?” the Kurtadam asked.
“Put down your weapons and come to the magistrates,” Clara said. “I’ll see you’re not hurt.”
“We’ve got numbers and experience on you,” Alston said. “No reason to do something you’d regret.”
“Well, then,” the Kurtadam said. “I guess there’s nothing to be done, then.” The words were calm, but the tone still spoke of violence.
“Put the weapons down,” Clara said again. The Kurtadam glanced at the three men around him and shrugged. With a shout, the four of them dashed toward the three men farthest from Clara, knives and clubs swinging. Alston said something obscene under his breath, and he and the other two dashed after them. She hesitated, and then followed. She had heard swordplay before. She knew the sound of blades. There was none of that here, only the thick masculine grunting, dull sounds of impact, and a cry of pain. She couldn’t tell whose voice it had been. Street fighting was mean and it was ruthless. Honor had no place here. One of Alston’s men—her men—lay in the gutter, his fingers holding in a long loop of intestine. The Kurtadam put his back to the wall, his long knife dancing in the pale and growing light. With a shout, one of the bandits leaped past Alton’s wide form and came pelting toward her, his club gripped hard in his fist.
“Lady!” Alston shouted, but too late. The attacker was too close for Clara to flee from, too close for anyone to intervene. Clara tasted the coppery flush of fear, but held her ground. She had never trained to fight—it wasn’t something ladies did—but Dawson had spoken to her many times on the strategies and tactics of a duel. The first rule was not to do what the enemy expected. A young man with a lead-tipped cudgel running at an unarmed woman in her middle years. He’d assume she would shy away, turn from the blow. Clara’s eyes narrowed.
The club rose in the air, ready to splatter her brain on the cobbles. Clara stepped in toward the man and brought the point of her toe up into his sex with a force she hadn’t used since she’d been a girl with rough cousins. The man’s yelp was as much surprise as pain, and he hunched forward, barreling into her. His shoulder struck her just under her ribs, and she felt the breath blow out of her. His club fell to the ground, bounced along the cobbles, then rolled. She sat down hard on the pavement, her hands to her belly, fighting the urge to vomit. The man scrambled to his knees, tried to stand, but Alston was on him.
“Are you well, my lady?”
“Fine, thank you,” Clara said, hauling herself to her feet.
The men had been subdued. One of her guards had Ossit’s face pressed in the gutter and his arm bent cruelly back. The clubman who hadn’t assaulted her lay on the walk, his hands held to his face and black with blood. Only the Kurtadam remained on his feet, his hands lifted in a surrender that managed to speak defiance.
“Well done,” Clara said. “We’ll take him to the magistrates.”
“You,” the Kurtadam said. “I remember you now. You’re the high-class bitch from Coe’s rooming house. I knew I’d heard your voice before.”
“I am,” she said. “And you made a mistake when you chose to steal from my household.”
“You made a mistake when you stepped in the street,” the Kurtadam man said and spat. “Go ahead, then. Take me to the magistrate. Hang me in a cage. It won’t be the first week I’ve spent pissing down the Division. But ask yourself what you’ll do when they pull me back up, eh? So how about instead you let my boys go and we call it truce. You made your point. I got it. The house is yours, we won’t be back that way again.”