Violence replaced dreamy amusement. Mockery to rage.
I would not be brought low by a tangle of men.
I unhooked the respirator, jammed it into my belt, and spread my arms wide. “Come on, then,” I taunted, and could not even mark the reasons why. “Take me down, if you dare!”
They dared. What had begun as two against my confident one became three, then five. Then seven. I held my own for a fraction of a moment, blooding more than my fair share, until I stopped caring of the pain in my fists, my cheek, my head. Anger was all that drove me, rage so black I could not understand where it came from.
My knuckles split, and it did not hurt. My lip bled from a gash caught on a grimy nail rather than from impact of another’s fist, and still I did not cry.
My back slammed to the unforgiving ground, wrenching the breath from me.
With every crack of fists on flesh, every gasp driven from my lungs, every boot stomped across the straining slatting of my collector’s corset, I heard the scream of a madman.
I would weep for
“Enough!”
The bullish roar erupted across the darkened streets, earning such obeisance that I found myself staring up from the street I’d fallen to, transfixed by the frozen tableau of men caught in various preparations of painful brutality.
I ached. Oh, heaven, I ached, but the laughter that spilled from me sounded more the insane mirth of my father than anything I had ever heard from my own lips.
And that was enough to seal the sound behind my clenched teeth.
“Out of the way,” came the deeply voiced command, and the men lowered fists, feet, rocks and bits of pipes.
I do not know how close I came to death that night, but I would wager that Ishmael Communion saved me a very short swim in the rotted Thames.
When the two men who’d begun the struggle were slow to move, a large black hand boxed one ear and shoved the other. They cursed, stumbling away, and I was left looking up into stony disapproval.
He was not pleased with me.
I gave him the hand he reached for. “You have impeccable timing, Ish.” It came more of a groan, for his ears and mine. I could not manage steady on my own.
“You’re out of your fool head,” he growled, but he was gentle as he lifted me to my feet. “What are you about?”
Standing upright proved painful, but not as painful as the beating I’d been spared. I could taste blood on my lip, feel a dull throb in the wrist I’d once hurt deeply enough to require bracing, and my skull would have much to thank me for soon enough, but I was surprisingly hale. Even my palms, where the rope had drawn furrows, did not ache as badly as they should have.
I felt as if I could take them all on again, and damn the consequences.
Quickly calculated, I deemed myself capable of mobility and turned my attention outward.
The Bakers had not left us. They stared, a full dozen in various states of physical description and degrees of outward malice. Hovering at the fringe, the scarred man I’d met earlier. He grinned, laconic and not at all interested in the proceedings, but did not linger with the others.
Among those, I saw the leavings of my own returned brutality. Blood smeared from one man’s nose, another nursing the bollocks I’d tucked a boot in. More than one would wake to a bruised eye or fat lip, and them I glared at with mad conceit.
No man would find me easy prey. Not tonight, when the tar rode high in my blood and body. Certainly not ever again.
Ishmael glowered, his rumbled grunt earning my guilty attention. No malice in that stare, but a great deal of anger. I’d placed him in a damned difficult spot, and I was suddenly very aware.
I could not apologize. Doing so would weaken me beyond measure in their watchful study.
I pointed at the men arrayed around us. “They’re hiding a quarry,” I declared. “Collector notice on your mate Coventry.”
There were grunts, curses. Even a snarl or two, and a threat I did not bother to address.
Ishmael’s looming figure did not so much as twitch. “Whose?”
“The Menagerie’s.”
I had not expected the noise to suddenly go quiet again. Ishmael turned, slowly, as if he had all the time in the known world to level a look of flat regard to his crew. “Is this true?”
Because he had been the man to begin the sortie, the rogue with the dark hair and spitting habit abruptly found himself in a widened gap of his mates. He thrust out his jaw, folded his arms. “Bartie’s a good bloke.”
“If he has crossed the Menagerie, you know the law.” There was no room for wheedling against that tone. The rogue went pale. “You angling to take his place, Godger?”
If possible, the one called Godger went even whiter, until his skin was nearly the same shade as the fog through my lens. I adjusted the protectives. “No,” the man admitted, but not willingly. It seemed pulled from him; from his pride, more like.
Menagerie justice was not the kind of promise one easily accepted.
“Then you know the outcome.” Ishmael turned to me, his jaw tight. “Talk with me.”
I nodded, only just resisted the urge to make a rude gesture to the men who quickly faded back to whatever holes they might have come from—the laps of willing women, the interiors of pubs, even patrols taken to mind their own territory. More than one would need a slab of cold to take the sting away.
The last to go was the man whose decision had not gone the way he’d planned. Godger glared at me as I turned away.
I made no friends, but then, I’d only come for one.
“Coventry will be delivered, but I can’t do it yet,” said Ishmael as he led the way across the lane and into a narrow doorway. He had to turn sideways to get in. Once past the doorjamb, the space beyond opened into a large, smoky pub. There were men and women alike inside, each as entertained by their own interests as they were curious of my arrival. There was a dip in the conversations, a lull in the rhythm of a good pub well-tended, and then it smoothed.
Ishmael only had to look at a small table occupied by two lanky men, one no older than eighteen, perhaps. They quickly found other places to be.
I was impressed. I knew Ishmael had some ranking among the Bakers, but I did not realize how much. He’d come up in the world.
The chair he sat in creaked alarmingly. I followed suit. Mine did not so much and shift beneath my wait.
“Why not?” I asked once we were seated.
“Baker business, girl. I need him for a time.”
“And after?”
Ishmael did not look bothered. “After, I’ll deliver him myself.”
“Does this have anything to do with the Ferrymen?” I asked him, and sighed when he only looked at me with the expression of one who was not intent on repeating himself. “Fine, fine,” I allowed, and withdrew a small swatch of black from my coat pocket. “Put this with him when he’s delivered.” Ishmael took it, pocketed with a simple nod. He’d do it. It was my calling color, as it were. Black from Miss Black. Hawke would know, when it came time to field the bounty.
It may not matter to the Veil, but it did to me.
“Why are you here?” he asked me, point-blank and with no preamble. A fine grasp of the Queen’s English he might have, but Ishmael was not one to waste words. “You’ve never attempted a collection on a Baker.”
Rightfully so. I fingered my lip gently. “I need Baker help.”
His near-black eyes were steady. “Funny way of showing it.”
“You think they’ll be sore a female caused some damage?” I asked, raising my eyebrows over the goggles still banded about my face.
“Among other things.” He leaned an elbow on the rickety, scarred table. “Help how?”
