sour wine warred with the stench of urine, sweat, and vomit.
As he shoved his way back toward the cluster of gaudily painted wagons, he fought off groping hands and pointed elbows, staggering shoves in the back and gin-heavy laughter blown in his face. Rounding a corner between a booth selling secondhand clothes and a stall offering gingerbread, two men stepped in front of him. A third closed in from behind. Within the space of a few pounding heartbeats before they rushed him, David detected the rancid odors of grease and cheap spirits, noted the lack of prickling along his nerves that would have signaled the presence of a Fey-blood among them, and caught the slide of steel from the corner of his eye.
He bested the first easily enough with a sidestep and a thrust of his elbow hard against the side of the man’s skull, a second crushing punch to his stomach that dropped the bastard retching and gasping into the dirt. The second attacker dodged David’s fist, spinning under his guard with his knife raised to strike. David caught his wrist, the bones snapping beneath his fingers. The man’s screams were drowned out by the chaos swirling around them. David grabbed up the fallen knife and slammed it hilt-deep into the man’s neck. The screams died to gurgling moans and then silence. The third man never saw the blow that killed him, a smashing close-fisted punch that shattered his nose and drove the bone shards into his brain.
“Hold, St. Leger or . . . or I’ll shoot.”
David straightened from where he crouched above the body, blood spattering hot across his face and leaking sticky and dark over his hand. Sam Oakham aimed a pistol at David’s chest, his eyes cold and hard and undaunted. His hand shook only slightly.
“The broadsheet said you need me alive else you’ll receive nothing,” David said calmly, though his nerves thrummed and his muscles twitched just as they’d always done when he was faced with an enemy on the field of battle . . . or, more recently, in the cramped alleys and mean back ways of London’s stews.
“Did I say I’d kill you?” Oakham answered. “Oh no. I can put a bullet in you that will deaden your legs. Alive, if not lively.”
“Do you intend to split the fifty pounds with Sally or keep it for yourself?”
David lunged, grabbing the woman lurking at the edge of his vision, dragging her in front of him, deaf to her curses and shrieks, though her heavy cheap perfume burned his nose and turned his stomach. Sally’s hair fell draggled and loose down her back as she wrestled with him, but his grip was firm, and a forearm across her tender throat quieted her quick enough.
“How skilled are you, Oakham? How desperate to win Callista’s heart? Do you think she’ll welcome you with open arms when you come to her with the blood of her lover on your hands?”
The pistol wavered as Oakham fought his temper. “You’ll never escape. The law has men scouring every road for you. You’re to be arrested and taken back to London in the name of the king.”
“The king of the stews, perhaps. I’ve just rid the world of three black-hearted killers. If I go to London, it will be to be accept a knighthood for my valiant action.”
Oakham steadied hand and voice. “Let Sally go.”
“By all means.” David leaned down, his lips almost brushing Sally’s ear. “You’d have been better off with my coins. Your loss.”
With a shove that sent her staggering into Oakham, David threw himself behind the booth, rolling to his feet and into the mob thronging the wider alleyway. He braced for the gunshot that would take him in the back, but it never came, and Oakham was left behind. Still, he remained armed and dangerous. Add his pursuit to Corey’s, who, once he realized his men had been killed, would send more and many to finish the job. The fair and Callista must be left behind now . . . this instant.
David’s body simmered with a wild, driving power like a summer storm charge. The wolf smelled the blood on his skin and woke hungry.
The woodland was close. He would lose himself within the tangle of trees and thorny undergrowth. No swayback mount for him. He would run beneath the moon, follow the hidden ways used by badger and hare and fox, slink unseen past lighted villages and lonely farms, until he reached Gray and safety.
Where, before, the fair’s crowds swarmed close, now they parted for him like waves breaking upon a rock. Fearful glances, hissed whispers, and shrinking bodies; he noted and dismissed them in the space of the same heartbeat. They might not know what prowled beside them, but they sensed his danger and his difference.
Even the sheep bleated and shuffled, huddling at the far side of the pens as he passed. A lamp hung outside the wagon he’d shared with Callista, but he dared not stop for the book. He’d return close to dawn. Or perhaps wait for word of his flight to spread and then come back to reclaim his possessions in a day or two. Time for Corey’s men to leave the fairground for the roads and tracks nearby. Time for Callista to hate David for leaving her.
He couldn’t help himself. He paused at the trees’ edge. Opened his mind to the pathing, sending his last farewell upon a ribbon of thought, though it came with the sting of mocking amusement.
Callista lifted her hand to knock at the door to Sam’s wagon. A lamp shone from inside, men’s voices too low to hear over the fair’s nighttime revels.
“. . . three men . . . dead . . . killer . . . should be sixty pounds . . .”
“. . . let him escape . . . girl . . . want them both . . .”
Gorge rising, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. She backed away from the wagon, nearly stumbling over Nancy, who’d come up quietly behind her.
“What’s wrong? You’re shaking.”
“You gave me a day. That’s what you said. A day to make my decision.”
“I haven’t given St. Leger away.”
“Then who is Sam talking to? Why has he betrayed us?”
Nancy steered her unresisting away from the wagon. “You’re mistaken. Let me go and find out what’s —”
“No. You mustn’t. They’ll know you warned me. I’ll gather my things and slip away. Now, before they come looking.”
“Sam would never turn you over to Branston. Not for any amount of money.” Nancy followed Callista as she stumbled up the steps into the wagon, shutting the door and bolting it as if a wooden latch might protect her. Mind racketing from thought to thought, she hastily snatched up her few meager possessions and stuffed them into the satchel. She paused, noting the carved box at the bottom of the bag. Someone had gathered her bells. Someone had carefully replaced them. Had it been David? Her mother’s letters were just as she’d left them, but for one, which had slid free of the ribbon. Or had it been taken out on purpose? Had David read it?
“Sam loves you, Cally,” Nancy argued. “You must have heard wrong. He wouldn’t betray you.”
Callista shook her head as she hefted the satchel onto her shoulder. Already she could barely catch her breath and the muscles in her back ached and pulled.
A knock at the door punched the breath from her lungs. “Nancy? Are you in there? Let me in. I need to speak with Cally.”
“You wait and see. There’s bound to be a simple explanation.” Nancy offered what was supposed to be a reassuring smile, though Callista saw the doubts in the woman’s eyes.
“Nan! Open the door,” Sam hissed.
Nancy unlocked the latch and turned the handle. Sam pushed inside, the wagon creaking at the added weight, the air within seeming to grow stuffy and unbearably hot, but perhaps it was only Callista’s fear making her dizzy and slightly nauseated.
Sam looked different. His eyes flickered dark and uncertain in a taut, pale face. His clothes were dirty, a long grimy smear across his coat, neckcloth untied, and dark brown mud edging a sleeve. She peered closer. Not mud . . . blood. But whose? His own? David’s?
“What’s this?” Sam’s eyes widened to see Callista dressed for travel, her bag clutched to her chest. “I expected you to be in bed.”
“I’m fine. Much better.”
His gaze traveled around the wagon as if he thought David might be hiding under a blanket or in a cupboard. “Where’s St. Leger? Did he come here? Have you seen him?”
Nancy and Callista exchanged a look before she replied, “I’ve not seen him for hours.” Though she’d spoken
