Behind the mottled glass, a pale face hovered. The child’s little fingers clawed helplessly at the pane.
Accursed bad luck, the lad was trapped in one of the few houses in this old neighborhood that actually boasted glass windows. The ground floor was engulfed in flame. Black smoke billowed out, cloaking the street, a narrow, dirty alley lined with tall houses leaning forward until they nearly met their opposite neighbors.
Colin peered through the haze. Flames leapt from roof to roof, eating their way toward them.
Without thought, he bolted past another burning house to a third that seemed deserted but yet unscathed. He booted open the door and sped up two flights of stairs, coming out on the balcony.
The houses were crammed together. It was an easy leap to the balcony next door, and then once again to the one beneath the lad’s window.
“Stand back!” he implored the terrified face.
Climbing onto the balcony’s rail, Colin stretched toward the upper story to hack at the window with his sword. The boy disappeared into the smoke-filled room. Seeing flames lick up the far wall, Colin whacked at the window harder. But his elegant rapier blade was no match for the thick, uneven glass.
He dropped to the deck of the balcony and whirled in desperation, relieved to see Jason and Ford among a crowd that had gathered in the street.
“Rock!” he yelled, and the next second a chunk came sailing up; he caught and hurled it through the window in one smooth motion. A swipe of his blade cleared most of the glass from the sill. He dropped the sword and struggled out of his surcoat, tossing it up to drape over the frame before he jumped to catch the window ledge with his hands and hoist himself inside.
The small, towheaded child cowered against a side wall, wide-eyed with terror. Fed by the fresh air from the broken window, the blaze thundered. The fire seemed alive, a hideous monster come to devour all in its path.
Colin’s lungs burned as he swept up the boy under one arm and leapt out the window. They landed hard on the balcony, tumbling into a tangled heap, Colin’s surcoat twisted around one foot. Flames followed, orange and white and blue tendrils snaking through the window, threatening the wooden structure on which they huddled.
Colin unsnarled the garment and threw it over the rail to his brothers. He stood, pulling the boy up with him, and jammed his sword back into his belt. Below the balcony, several men waited, a quilt stretched tight between their hands.
“We’re going to jump!” he shouted to the child over the roar of the flames.
“No!” The boy squirmed out of his grasp. “No! No!”
He snatched him back. They hadn’t time to be scared of heights, but then again…
Colin’s gaze focused on the quilt. Three stories, and his considerable weight plus the lad’s—they’d likely not survive anyway.
Hot flames licked at his back; black, billowing smoke choked his air supply. Through tear-blurred eyes, he searched out Jason’s face, far below.
“Rope!” he bellowed, the word tearing at his raw throat.
Scarce seconds ticked away while he watched his brothers argue with a man intent on securing his worldly goods. At last they gave up and simply filched the rope from the laden cart, Ford tugging while Jason brandished his sword in the obstinate fellow’s face.
A moment later, the lifeline snaked up, thrown in a wide arc by Jason.
With shaking fingers, Colin knotted it to a balcony post and pulled tight. He hauled the child onto his back, yelled “Hang on!” and they were speeding toward the ground. After sliding to the dirt, Colin seized the boy and rolled out of harm’s way as the balcony fell to the street, landing with a mighty crash and a deadly shower of sparks.
Safe for the moment, Colin and the boy lay tangled together, coughing their lungs out.
“John!” The child’s brother rushed forward and scooped him up. “I thought for sure you were dead!”
John dissolved in tears. The older boy hushed him as, one on either side, Jason and Ford helped Colin stand and shrug back into his surcoat.
They urged him down the street, farther from the threatening flames, while Colin in turn tugged the boys after him.
“Wh-where are your folks?” he croaked between coughs.
The older boy shook his head. “We don’t know,” he yelled over the deafening racket. “They told us to wait, but that was”—he tilted his blackened face to the sky—“yesterday, maybe.” The smoke was so thick it looked like dusk, but the sun had risen, bathing the city in an unearthly glow.
The boy stopped walking. Clutching his sniffling brother to his side, he shoved the tangled hair from his face and fixed Colin with pleading eyes. “Can you help us, my lord?”
“I…” Nonplussed, Colin looked to Jason and Ford.
They shrugged.
“Can you help us? Please?” Without waiting for an answer, the boy grabbed his brother’s hand, pulling him along as he shouldered his way purposefully through the throng.
Colin’s gaze was glued to the children’s skinny, vulnerable backs. “I’ll see you at Cainewood!” he called to his own brothers before taking off after them.
He chased them through the teeming confusion of the intersection and onto Friday Street, where they ducked into a space between two buildings. Seven more children huddled there, most of them in tears.
“Davis!” a few cried in unison, running over to embrace the tall boy. They pulled little John into the center of their circle, a small island of camaraderie amongst the misery.
Colin’s chest squeezed. These children could have been himself ten years ago, and Jason and Ford and Kendra. They might be commoners, not aristocrats, and lost rather than abandoned.
But the desperate feeling was the same.
Davis withdrew from the group and returned to Colin. “We all live by Ludgate,” he explained breathlessly. Though tall for his age, the boy couldn’t be more than ten or eleven. “We waited there together, but our folks will never find us now. We had to move, to Warwick,
