His eyes grew crafty but he nodded.
“One more thing,” Yvienne said. She pulled out an official looking document with several seals and the Guild mark. “Sign this.” She untied his right hand and shoved a wetted pen into it. If looks could kill, Tesara thought. Trune gave Yvienne a mute look of stubbornness, and let the pen drop. Tesara raised her hands, still fat with power, the crippled left hand as lethal as the right. His eyes flicked from one hand to the other.
“Oh yes,” Tesara said. “Even more powerful than you can imagine.”
Trune remained still for a moment, his eyes slitted, and then he groped for the pen and scrawled his signature. He ground out something through the gag that sounded like, “You’ll never get away with this.”
Tesara and Yvienne looked at each other and snorted. Yvienne capped the inkwell and they tied Trune back up again. The coachman groaned again, starting to come to. The men in the dining room began hammering on the door. It started to press open against the walking stick. Tesara and Yvienne took one look at each other, and ran for the door.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Yvienne took Tesara’s hand, wincing at the electric shock that went through her, and led her across the street, plunging them both into darkness. When she judged they had gone far enough away from the street, and dangerously close to the cliffside that plunged straight onto the ocean-swept rocks below, she stopped. She hung her small satchel onto a branch, and stripped her jacket and threw it into the air. They could just barely see it float out onto the air, drift onto the wind, and then fall into the water. Yvienne did the same with her neckerchief, waistcoat and linen shirt, then rummaged around in the bushes. She pulled out a dress, shook it out, and stepped into it, shrugging it up to her shoulders. She glanced back at Tesara, who was standing stock still.
“Help button me?”
That brought Tesara out of her trance. She stepped forward and with shaking hands pulled the back of the dress together. Little pinpricks of electricity ran up Yvienne’s spine with each touch of her sister’s hands, but finally, as if Tesara had gotten them under control, the pinpricks faded.
Yvienne grinned in relief. The feel of her sister’s hands on her back steadied her. They had been buttoning each other up from the time they were very small. She turned around and caught Tesara’s hand.
“Did he hurt you?”
Tesara raised a hand to her cheek. “Yes. But it will pass.”
“He’ll pay.” He’ll pay and pay and pay, Yvienne thought. She would make sure the news followed him wherever he tried to land.
“Good. What now?” Tesara said.
“You go home. I’ve one more thing to do tonight.”
“Are you sure? Yvienne, he’s dangerous. He’ll call the constables–”
“No, he won’t. He knows he needs to flee. By morning, the whole town will know what he and the Guild are guilty of.” She grinned again, and now it was out of nervousness rather than an expression of any real joy. She grabbed her sister by the shoulders and gave her a small shake. “Go home. Don’t sneak – go right into the crowds at the bottom of the Crescent and follow the street lamps home.”
“All right. But I’m sitting up until you get home.”
It would be a long night for her, Yvienne knew, she couldn’t tell her sister that. She grabbed her satchel, checked the pistols, and put them back in the satchel. The papers she rolled into a tube and lifted up her skirt, stuffing them into her britches.
Tesara gave her a quick hug, and then walked quickly back out onto the street. Yvienne watched her go with a sigh of relief. In a few minutes she would be among the throngs carousing along the Mercantile, and despite the drunks and revelers, she would be far safer than in Trune’s clutches.
After assuring herself that her sister was safely away from the Crescent, and the Mederos house showed no signs of agitation or alarm, Yvienne went off in a different direction, back up into the crooked mews behind the great houses along the row.
It was harder climbing the wall over into the next garden in a dress than in trousers, but she managed it, mostly by being ruthless about tearing the simple material. If anyone stopped her she could pretend to be a wayward servant girl; if she were caught in her boy’s clothes there would have been rather more hell to pay. So, the dress was an unfortunate necessity.
With the exception of an alert dog and a few distant shouts from passersby on the front street, she made her way in the darkness without incident. There were no streetlamps here, except for one or two of the houses whose owners felt that darkness was a breakdoor’s friend. Perhaps they had something there, thought Yvienne, as each time she encountered a dim pool of light it ruined her vision and she had to adapt all over again.
She was shivering with sweat in the cold air by the time she reached the small shed at the back of a low-slung outbuilding. How fitting, she thought, that Five Roses Street had turned out to be so close to her old home, although it could have been worlds away for all that the old Yvienne would ever have stepped foot in it under normal circumstances. That was why it had been so difficult to find. It took a great deal of time poring over old maps of the city before she finally identified it. This part of the Crescent was rundown and disreputable. The fashionable people who lived in the elegant townhouses probably didn’t even know this street existed. Here the roofs sagged and were falling in, and the houses were half sod and
