out from under a lolling head and arm.

Her heart beat, fast as a shrill little drum. She would not show Hawker her fear. She would not. “We will stay here a minute. I must wait till the Cachés are free.”

“Right. We’ll stand here gaping in the street for a bit.” He was annoyed. “Where are your friends?”

“My colleagues are not seen until they wish to be seen.” Hawker was glaring at her with many accusations, so she said, “I had to kill him. There was no choice whatsoever.”

“Probably not.” He did not sound appeased.

“It would be best to put that down.” She gestured with the lantern. “It looks heavy.”

“It is.” He grunted and lowered the corpse of Drieu from his back and propped it, as if sitting, against the wall. Improbably, the posture seemed quite natural.

They spoke low, though they would not be overheard by anyone inside the Coach House or behind any of these dark windows up and down the street. It was not respect for the dead. She did not know what it was.

Far down the Rue de la Planche another shadow flitted from the alley, crossed the road, and joined the others in the wide slab of shadow. One more Caché, free.

Hawker wiped his hands on the clothing of the corpse. “You would kill somebody sizable.”

“It is unfortunate, I agree.”

Hawker went down to one knee beside the body and started going through Drieu’s pockets, despoiling the dead.

She said, “The corpse cannot be left here.”

“I knew you were going to say that. When Pax finishes, we’ll take the body along between us like a drunken friend, being helped home. Give me his coat. It’ll hide the blood.”

“It is too far to take him to the Seine, but there is a graveyard a few streets north. I see a logic to putting bodies there.”

“The Cimetière des Errancis.”

He must show off his knowledge of Paris. “Comme tu dis. There are many unhallowed political dead in that place. Possibly no one will notice one more corpse among so many. There may even be an open grave.”

“And that is a pleasant prospect. Or I can leave him in an alley. That’s the preferred method where I come from.”

“He deserves no better.” Someday, she would be that cold-blooded. Someday, she would shrug, just as Hawker did at this moment, and turn her attention to the next pocket. “When they find him, no one will be surprised if he is left like refuse in the streets.”

She set the lantern onto the stones of the street and released more light to help Hawker’s investigations. Herself, she turned away and did not watch. How stupid that she did not want to look upon the body of Drieu, or touch it, though she had been glad enough to kill him.

“You know him,” Hawker said.

“Antoine Drieu. He is a corrupt and wicked man.”

“Was. He was corrupt and wicked. Now he’s just inconvenient.” Hawker methodically laid the bits and pieces of everyday life beside the corpse—a tinderbox, a watch, a penknife, a silver toothpick case. Deft and unconcerned. He made no wasted motion. “Was he one of those Tuteurs at the Coach House?”

“He works in . . . He worked in Lyon. But he was of the Jacobin faction. The Coach House is wholly their operation. He may have come there from time to time. He . . .” she made herself say it, “. . . he liked to mistreat children.”

“Ah.” Hawker did not ask one question. He saw too much with those cynical dark eyes. He guessed too much about her.

“I have not seen him in more than a year.” Drieu was dressed for travel in dark pantaloons and coat. The strip of light crossed his plain gray waistcoat, horrible with blood. The shiny red was a blow to the eyes.

“If you’re going to throw up, go do it somewhere else.” Hawker did not look up at her, which was delicate of him. He continued to turn out pockets. “The first one’s the hardest.”

She wanted to tell him this was not her first killing, that she waded to her ankles in gore every day of the week, but there is nothing more pointless than telling lies that will not be believed.

“It helps if it’s somebody you hate,” he said. “Next time you might give some thought to how you’re going to dispose of the body.”

“I know how I am going to dispose of the body. I will give him to you. You will leave all the papers you find upon the ground there and not attempt to steal them.”

“Me? Nothing here for me.” He turned his attention to Drieu’s valise. “Just a pile of travel documents. Looks like he was leaving France. Not fast enough as it turns out. And they are useless to me unless I grow six inches and get thirty years older all of a sudden. I’m keeping the money.”

“I do not give a damn what you do with the money.”

“Owl. Listen to me. You always strip the corpse. Otherwise you might as well tuck a note on him saying, ‘This was business, not stealing.’ Always take the money.”

She knew many spies—good and bad, skilled and clumsy, some nearly as young as she was. She had never met one like him.

If she had been with anyone else tonight, she would be dead. He had been keeping an eye on the street. He lifted his head from his pillaging of valises. “Looks like your friends have finally showed up. We may brush through this more or less intact.”

A sliver of moon, white as bone, hung in the sky, giving no light. An old woman hobbled out of the darkness toward Pax, bent over, leaning on a cane, approaching slowly so he would have time to study her. It was Blackbird.

“She doesn’t look like much.” Hawker buckled the bag and stood up.

“That is her genius. We are in luck. They have sent us one of the best of the smugglers, with a hundred lives saved at her hands. She will take the Cachés to safety.”

“Good. Because I am sick and tired of dealing with them.”

Tiny and barely lit, the figures of a shrunken woman and the tall Englishman leaned together, talking. A shadow ran across the road. All was going well. “It won’t be long now.”

Hawker said, “That’s ten. We’re done.”

“There are more.”

“Three of them aren’t coming.”

She did not understand at once. Then she did. “Damn you. Oh, damn you to hell. You left them behind.”

“It’s their choice.”

Her hand went to the gun that hid under her shirt, heavy and hard and cold upon her belly. She must go back. “You’ve made it more dangerous. I’ve wasted—”

Hawker grabbed her, jerked her around, and slammed her back to the wall. “Stop it.”

“I will not leave three children in that house. I will not. Never.”

He gave a hard push to keep her there. “They won’t budge. You’re not going to throw the others away trying to save three of them.”

“You do not tell me what I do and what I will not do.” Rage boiled from her heart till she choked with it. Till she could not speak for the thickness in her throat. “No one says what I must do. I decide. I—”

“They decide. Not you.”

She twisted, viciously, against the cage of his hands. He was incredibly strong. She threw herself, all her strength, against him, and it was nothing.

Then she was free. Suddenly and completely free. He released her. He stepped away. “Go ahead. Go in and convince them, Citoyenne Golden Tongue. Get yourself killed like a bloody fool.”

“And you are an idiot.”

“I’m not idiot enough to blunder in there, thinking I can change their minds.”

“You did not try hard enough.” But she stood where she was, shaking. With anger. With fear. With great and terrible grief. “You did not try.”

“We were lucky to get any of them out. They think it’s a trap.”

She knew. Oh, she knew. She had lived her months in captivity when she was a child whore. Trusted no one.

Вы читаете The Black Hawk
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату