known this alley was this long, I’d never’ve dipped into it.”
My good cheer fled abruptly.
She peeled herself from the clinging haze, and now I recognized easily her shape—unlike myself, she did not hide in trousers, or bulk her figure in too-big coats. The daft child wore her woolen skirt plain as day, though the heavy boots she sported beneath did her ensemble no favors. She was red-cheeked and holding one hand to her chest, as if her heart had not eased its thumping, and I could very much relate to this.
Mine now slammed in place, bolstered by the fire of my wrath.
“Please don’t be cross,” she began, but I did not let her finish the foolish sentiment.
“I’ve a mind to drag you to Hawke himself and make him deal with you,” I snarled over her. She blanched, nearly going bone-white in the gray shadows. “You could have been hurt!”
“I knew what I did.” She sounded for all the world as if she truly believed it.
“Of course you did.” Derision dripped from my every word as I gestured to the narrow alley around us. “Which is how you found yourself here, is it?”
“With you.”
“Yes, with me,” I repeated, “but I could have been anyone, you foolish thing.”
“You weren’t, though,” she said, with the same reasonable calm I employed when I was being stubborn and knew it. My teeth ground with frustration. “I knew it were you, I followed you.”
“No,” I returned, employing that calm now. I took a deep breath, forcing my fingers open. “You followed me down the street. You lost sight of me when you stepped in here. You had no way of knowing I would turn this way—there is no bloody reason why a sane person would,” I added emphatically. “For all you knew, I could be a Ferryman gone astray, or a footpad searching for an easy fogle.
Her expression did not soften from its brittle determination. “I could have handled it.”
There was just no reasoning with her. “Why were you following me?” I demanded, taking a step closer that I knew she would find intimidating. Claims of handling aside, she was a smart girl—if her pride would ease off long enough to let her intelligence shine.
“I wasn’t.” Maddie Ruth took a step back, one I followed with another in her direction. She looked up, as if she’d find help in the rusted grates set into the wall above our heads. Then, quickly, “I mean, I was, but it wasn’t for you.”
“Talk sense,” I suggested, rather quite coolly.
She fidgeted her weight, one foot to the other. “I was following you just to the collector wall.”
As if this somehow made her choices more tolerable? I glowered. “Do you think this a—”
—
The question died upon my lips even as it formed behind them. Suddenly, in my recollection, I saw Hawke glaring down at me as if I were naught but a nuisance, bloody-minded enough to attempt to stare him down as he held my arm in a secure grip. Close enough to make me acutely aware of the violence he could be capable of, were I to taunt him beyond patience.
I was turning into a replica of the very Devil himself.
Maddie Ruth’s chin rose.
Groaning out loud, I spun away from her and threw my hands into the chill damp as if I would beg supplication from invisible spirits. “I refuse!”
She was silent. Perhaps wary, now, for my outburst was not the sort a sane person may deliver.
I whirled on her, finger extended. Her eyes widened in her cold-chapped face. “You,” I half-snarled, lost on a tide of anger that was self-directed as much as aimed at my erstwhile shadow. “You and I are returning to the Menagerie
“No.” A finality that was not as firm as she should have wished. “You cannot force me,” she added quickly, as if it would help. How little she understood. Or, perhaps, understood all too well, for even as she did her level best to stare me down upon my own streets, Maddie Ruth clutched the lapels of her coat. Oh, would that maidenly modesty would help her—she’d find no peace from me.
Then, jarring me from my ire, I noticed the creases of straps pulled tight across her shoulders, as if she carried a pack behind her, all in stitched leather. They strained, pulled back on her shoulders—a heavy enough burden that I briefly admired her strength of back. If not quite that of her spine.
I opened my mouth to ask what in heaven’s name she’d dragged from the Menagerie.
Instinct, that fog-sense of rhythm and motion learned by them what spend most of their time within the drift, plucked a warning chord along my senses.
My gaze slid beyond Maddie Ruth’s ill-advised determination, narrowed on the blank canvas of gray surrounding us.
She saw opportunity, drew in a breath—to plead, to make her case, I didn’t know. It did not matter. I raised my hand, cutting off her voice with a sharp slash demanding silence.
We were no longer alone.
“Come here,” I said softly, my eyes on the fog.
Maybe there was hope for the girl’s obedience, after all. She said nothing at all, her gaze straying over her shoulder as she obeyed by quiet directive. Her footsteps were too loud in the brimming silence.
And then there were too many echoes to put my concerns at ease.
“Stay close,” was all I managed to say before two shapes lumbered from the fog. Particulars were difficult enough, but I’d spent too much time in the murk—usually at night—to lose the ability of perception now. Two men. One squat and broad, one taller and thin but stooped.
Two sets of blatantly forthright eyes, two kinds of cool, self-satisfied leers. One, the lean one, tossed a blade hand to hand, as if it were merely a toy he fidgeted with.
I allowed my lips to curve into a smile. “Dicker.”
He jolted, coming to an abrupt stop. “’Ow you know me name?” he demanded, gap-toothed confusion lending a little thrill of victory to my calm.
I couldn’t tell him the truth—that when last I’d come face to face with the bloke and his Ferrymen crew, I’d been a red-haired lady chasing an invisible woman in a cloak. Dicker had cracked me a good one across the face, effortlessly cruel in the presence of his mates, and my fingers itched to return the favor.
Instead, I cleared my throat roughly, and spit the contents upon the damp street. Charming, really, but there were no ladies present here. “This isn’t Ferryman land,” I pointed out.
The stocky bloke sized the both of us up. Then, his mate. “Who’re them?”
Dicker shrugged, his small, dark eyes firmly on me. Smart one, really. Of the two of us, Maddie Ruth was naught but a skirt-wearing kinchin mort posing no threat.
Unlike her, I’d shown some knowledge, and displayed no fear.
“Mebbe they live ’ere,” he suggested.
“Maybe you want to let us pass,” I offered instead. I could have invoked Ishmael Communion’s name—as a known man of the Brick Street Bakers, they’d have heard of him, at least. But it didn’t escape me that I was still out for a Baker’s collection, and it seemed unfair to invoke their protection with one hand and deliver one of their own with the otherother, so I said nothing.
The Ferrymen exchanged a glance; I read the shared commitment upon each unattractive scowl as they bolstered each other’s nerve. Maddie Ruth shifted behind me, her shoulder brushing against the back of my arm.
Damn that girl to perdition, I could not very well engage both men without concern for her well-being. One, certainly, and perhaps both if Maddie Ruth was not present—but the truth was not so kind. I was blind in this alley, ignorant of whether these two Ferrymen were walking alone or as part of a large group.
There was a maneuver used by low pads—the smart ones, unfortunately—that involved herding marks deeper into alleys and into the arms of a larger crowd of thieves. A loss of one’s possessions was only the start, and I could not engage either without knowing if more waited somewhere nearby to deliver a drubbing.
Neither appeared willing to back down.
I really, truly did not want to try this tact, not in front of the girl; she’d take the bloody phrase and run, I just
