The Black Hawk Page 2

  Another voice. “The house is secure.” A man’s face, grim and scarred, looked down at her and went away. William Doyle.

  Then Hawker was telling someone to knock on the doors on Meeks Street. Did anybody see anything?

  Under it all, the mutter of the surgeon. “Don’t you slip away on me, you bastard . . . And here’s the bugger causing all the problems. Little bleeder going at it like hell for no reason. I need to—Will you people hold the damn woman still!”

  There was a pattern of greater pain and lesser pain. The surgeon set stitches, talking to himself as he worked on her arm. It was predictable in its dreadful bite and pull. She counted. Put a number on each second. Stepped from one second to the next. She could get through ten seconds. Start again. Ten more.

  “Nice musculature. Healthy and no fat on her. I suppose she’s one of yours.” It was the surgeon’s voice.

  “Yes. Keep her alive,” Hawker said.

  Someone said, “Doyle is . . .” and a murmur after that. Someone said, “It’s coming down in buckets,” and then, “. . . found it under . . .”

  “I’ll look at it later.” Hawker’s voice.

  More voices. She did not listen. Soft darkness, most perfectly solid, crowded in from all sides like so many insistent black pillows. She had slept in a bed with black velvet pillows in Vienna.

  A clangor of pain struck and she was being lifted. Corners of the room spun by, confusing and dizzying.

  The surgeon said, “You know what to do. Watch her. Make sure it doesn’t start bleeding again. Put her to bed and keep her there.”

  “I shall devote myself to that goal,” from Hawker.

  “You are barbarians.” She did not say they were crétins and clumsy idiots because she was a marvel of tact and endurance. “I am naked. Deal with this.”

  She was being carried upstairs past the large mirror in the hall. Past the line of maps in frames. After so many years, Hawker’s arms were still as comforting as bread and milk. Familiar as the rumble of thunder.

  I have never forgotten.

  He was not tall or massive. Not a walking mountain of threat like William Doyle. Hawker was the menace of a thin, sharp blade. He was strong in the deep fibers of his body. Tough as steel in the sinew and bone and straps of lean muscle.

  Behind them, at the bottom of the stairs, she heard William Doyle say to someone, “She’s too old for you, lad. She was too old for the likes of you when she was twelve.”

  One of the young men of this household had looked upon her nakedness and become interested. Her last, thin thread of consciousness found this amusing.

  Three

  ADRIAN HAWKHURST, KNIGHT COMPANION OF THE Order of the Bath, former thief, master pickpocket from the rookeries of St. Giles, Head of the British Intelligence Service, stood beside Justine’s bed, watching her breathe. He could trap air in a bubble. Whistle it out a wooden reed. Wave it around with a fan. He couldn’t push air in and out of her lungs. He couldn’t do a thing to keep her alive.

  Doyle said, “Did you ever go into that shop of hers and talk to her?”

  “No.”

  “I wondered,” Doyle said.

  “She wasn’t a threat with Napoleon gone. She was nobody the Service had to watch.”

  “You kept an eye on her,” Doyle said. “Her and her shop.”

  “Yes.”

  Justine was naked under the covers, pale and vulnerable. Bricks, hot from the oven, wrapped in flannel, were tucked up and down the bed, keeping the chill out. He’d laid her down inside that barricade. When he pulled the blanket up over her, she didn’t move.

  She’d have a new scar when she healed. That made five. He knew the story of every one. He’d kissed them all.

  She’d always been pale as the moon. Skin you could almost see through. He used to lie beside her in the candlelight and trace the line of a vein up her arm to the pulse in her throat, then down to the mound of her breast. Or he’d follow one thin track up her leg to the silky, soft nest he never got tired of playing in. She was opaque now, as if the light in her had retreated to the core of her. It was gathered up there, keeping the chill out, keeping her life’s heat in.

  Fate carries a sting in her tail. He’d wanted Justine back in his bed. Now she was. But look at the price of it.

  Doyle came up beside him. “Luke says she has a good chance.”

  “It’s his job to say that.”

  “He’s too busy to lie.”

  “Friends will always find time to lie to you. A heartwarming thought in a cynical world.” He set his knuckles against her cheek. Skin fluent as running water, sleek as air. He felt the vibration inside from her blood pulsing.

  Even after all these years, he’d still wake up in the middle of the night, hard as a rock from dreaming about her. He’d never stopped being hungry for this woman. “I wanted her back, and here she is. Fate’s a perverse bitch.”

  “Always.” Doyle slipped his hand inside the blanket, to Justine’s shoulder, testing the temperature. “She’ll make it. She’s hard to kill.”

  “Many have tried.”

  Her hair spread everywhere on the pillow. Light-brown hair, honey hair, so golden and rich it looked edible. He knew how it felt, wrapped around his fingers. Knew how her breasts fitted into his hands. He knew the weight and shape and strength of her legs when they drew him into her.

  A long time ago, she’d shot him. They’d been friends, and then lovers, and then enemies. Spies, serving different sides of the war.

  The war was over, this last year or two. Sometimes, he walked outside the shop she kept and looked in. Sometimes, he found a spot outside and watched for a while, just to see what she looked like these days.

  The last time they’d exchanged words, she’d promised to kill him. He hadn’t expected her on his doorstep, half-dead, running from an enemy of her own.

  I have the most dangerous woman in London in my bed.

  Downstairs and distant, the front door to Meeks Street opened and closed again. He couldn’t hear what his men were saying in the study, just the front door and the sound of rain coming down, urgent and hectic, like it meant business.

  “Pax traced the blood trail to Braddy Square. That’s where it happened.” Doyle reached inside his jacket and drew a knife from an inner pocket and passed it over. “He found this, lying in a pool of blood.”

  “Justine’s.” A black knife with a flat hilt. Deep hatch marks on the grip for fighting. Balanced perfectly for throwing. “I gave her this.” Razor sharp, of course. Justine knew how to respect a blade. “It’s been a clever and useful piece of cutlery today. It’s drawn blood.” He looked past the knife, down into Justine’s face. “You cut him, Owl. Good work.”

  He remembered putting this knife in her hand. Saying, “You shouldn’t walk around without one.” Gods. They’d both been kids.

  “She’s carried it awhile,” Doyle said.

  “A long time.” He could feel that in the steel—the years she’d kept it close to her skin. Why had she held on to it? “Now all we need to do is find a Londoner walking around with a slice cut in him.”

  “Which don’t narrow the field as much as I’d like. And he might not be English. Could be the Prussians or Austrians are still irritated with her.” Doyle scratched the stubble on his cheek. “Or the French.”

  “Given the length and ingenuity of her career, there are Swedes and South Sea cannibals annoyed at her.”

  She’d kept his knife all these years.

  He slid Justine’s blade, still with the dried blood on it, under her pillow, putting the hilt to the left. That was the way she’d kept it at night, back when he knew her well. Maybe she’d thrash in her sleep and feel it under there and be reassured. Maybe she’d reach for it in her dreams and use it to hold death off.

  Her breath caught in her chest with a rattle. Then silence. Cold sluiced over him. Time stopped . . . till she grabbed air again and settled to a slow in-and-out.

  Not dying. She wasn’t dying. �
�I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “She hurts,” Doyle said. “They do that when they hurt. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  A friend always lies to you.

  She muttered something—he couldn’t make out the words—and turned her head on the pillow. She was shaking in all her muscles, as if the pain were trapped inside her body, trying to get out. He said, “This isn’t sleep.”

  “No.”

  “I used to watch her sleep sometimes, back when I knew her that well.” He’d get out of bed after they made love and go stoke up the fire. He used to stand in the cold, naked, looking down at her, thinking how perfect she was. Not quite believing it was real. “She falls in deep, every muscle loose. It’s the only time she’s not a little watchful. Then she wakes up all at once, all over, smooth as a cat. Probably there’s cat in her ancestry someplace. Those old noble French families . . .”

  “No telling, with the French. Inventive people. And she is still strolling about armed to the teeth, even in these piping days of peace. We took a gun out of the pouch in her cloak. Loaded. Not fired recently.”

  “I keep telling her—” He steadied his voice. “I used to tell her, you can always trust your powder in the rain. It’s reliably wet.”

  “Might be why she had that knife in her hand instead of a gun and she ain’t dead. She was also carrying this.” Doyle took out a handkerchief and unwrapped it carefully to show a soggy, square mass, layer on layer of thin paper, pale pink with dilute blood. “Newspaper clippings. Unreadable at the moment.”

  Wet paper. That would be fragile. He didn’t touch. “That would be the papers she’s talking about. Somebody thinks the popular press is worth killing over.”

  “Might be the Times. Might be the Observer. This had the bad luck to fall in an inch of water. We’ll dry it out and separate the sheets and see what we got.” Doyle refolded the handkerchief. “It’ll take a few hours.”

  “She’ll tell us when she wakes up. Shouldn’t be long.”

  Doyle nodded. He gave a last long look at Owl before he walked over to the window. He was dressed like a laborer today . . . a big, ugly, thuggish, barely respectable giant in sturdy clothes. His hair was wet and the gray streaks didn’t show. The scar that ran down his cheek was fake. The imperturbable strength wasn’t. “Still coming down like all the saints’ frogs. Hope the basement doesn’t flood.”

  Good weather for killing. Nobody would have seen Justine or the shadow that stalked her. Back when he hunted men, he’d chosen this sort of day.

  “I sent word to Sévie. She’ll want to be with her sister.” Doyle started to close the curtains.

  “Leave the curtain. It’s still light out. She likes light.” Then he said, “She’s shivering.”

  “The room’s warm enough. The chill’s coming from inside her.” But Doyle went to nudge at the fire basket with the toe of his boot. Sparks shot up the chimney and out onto the hearthrug.

  Soft thuds on the stairs turned into clicks headed down the hall. Muffin had attached himself to one of the agents, keeping him company, making him conspicuous.

  A minute later Pax came in, carrying a tray. Muffin, a dog the size of a small pony, his rough, gray, untidy coat glazed with drops of water, followed. “Broth. Luke says to spoon this into her, if she can swallow.”

  “Set it down.” Doyle stripped down to shirt and waistcoat and slung his wet jacket over a straight-backed chair. He rolled up his sleeves, looking ready to hold off a few bruisers, barefisted.

  Pax said, “Fletcher and his crew are working their way out from Braddy, asking questions, trying to pick up her trail. We think she may have come directly from her shop. Stillwater and a half dozen are searching the square. Everybody else is in the study, dripping on the rug, drinking tea.”

  The men and women who belonged to him were gathering. They’d want to see how he was taking this. Want to lay down the words people said at times like this. They’d need orders. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Muffin came over, looking worried, and nosed in under an elbow to stick his big square head up to the pillow to sniff over Justine’s hair, memorizing her. He approved of the Justine smell. Didn’t like the blood and antiseptic of the bandage. A few more whuffles up and down the bedcovers and he was satisfied. He clicked across the room to assist Doyle.

  Doyle was hunkered down to lay coal on the fire, piece by piece, acting like his hands didn’t feel flame. When he was through and stood up, Muffin took his place and thumped down in front of the fire, taking one end of the hearth to the other. The coal scuttle rattled. He stretched his chin on his paws and curled the great plumed tail to his side.

  “I brought the knife.” Pax set bowl and spoon from the tray on the table beside the bed. “Luke says it fits the wound.” He looked at Justine soberly.

  “Show him.” Doyle motioned.

  Pax had brought it up on the tray. He passed it over, hilt first. “Fletcher found this under a ledge, thirty feet from the blood. Tossed in on purpose, looks like. Don’t touch the edge.”

  The knife was a flat, matte-black, deadly curve, elegant as a crow’s wing.

  He knew it, of course. “Another of my children has found its way home. What well-trained knives I have.” The weight of it, the balance of it, were completely familiar. He turned it over in his hand. “And look. Somebody’s engraved it for me. The letters A and H . . . for Adrian Hawkhurst. That does make a truly personal gift.”

  “From someone who does not wish you well,” Pax said dryly.

  “They’re not friendly to Justine, either.”

  “It’s yours? You’re sure?” Doyle said.

  “Mine. Without doubt. See this?” He ran his thumb on the shaping of the swage. “That was supposed to steady the turn in flight. It didn’t, so I only made an even dozen. I gave one to Justine.” A glance at Pax. “You got one. Fletcher got one. I gave Annique one and she immediately misplaced it, careless woman that she is. I lost two in France, sticking them into people. And I left three behind with my baggage when I fled in undignified haste from . . .” he had to think, “Socchieve, in Italy.”

  “So they’re spread broadcast over Europe,” Doyle said.

  “That’s nine.” Pax was never happy till the numbers added up. A shop clerk at heart.

  “There’s three tossed in a drawer in the workshop downstairs.”

  Doyle hooked a finger in his waistcoat pocket and curled out with a pocket lens. Typical of Doyle that he walked around with a magnifier. Wordlessly, he handed it over.

  Under the glass . . . “No wear on the edge, for all it’s sixteen years old. A few nicks, probably where it fell today. We have lots of dried blood, just turning brown. That’s an hour old, at a guess. And . . .” There was a white film, as if somebody had drawn the blade through milk and let it dry. Nobody ever put friendly things on a knife. “The blade’s dirty. Poison.”

  Pax said, “Luke thinks so. He doesn’t know which one.”

  Damn and bloody codswallowing hell. Poison. He dropped the knife down. Took the three steps to the bed. Pulled the blanket off Owl. He’d reopen the wound. It wasn’t too late to—

  “Hawk—” Pax caught his wrist. “Hawk. Leave it. It’s clean. You didn’t see. She left a trail of blood all the way back to Braddy Square. Anything that was in there washed out.” Slowly, Pax let go. “There can’t be much poison left in her.”

  It doesn’t take much.

  “The Borgia touches don’t work.” Doyle wasn’t looking at him. He was pulling the covers back over Owl, studying her face. “It’s been over an hour. Pupils are normal. No sweating. No swelling on that arm. Her mouth isn’t dried out. Her pulse is fast, but that’s from the pain.”

  You could buy five hundred poisons in London if you knew where to go. Fast ones. Slow ones. Name of God, Owl, which one? What did they put inside you? “I never used poison. It encourages sloppiness.”

  Pax said, “Even in the middle of the war, there weren’t many men who poisoned. That narro
ws the field.”

  The war was three years over. Doves of peace were flapping every bloody where. But something from the bad old days had slithered out of the past to reach up and claw Justine.

  “They used my damn knife.” He stooped and retrieved it. Holding the knife, he could remember the feel of making it. The first time he shaped the edge on a grindstone. It took hours to get it exactly right.

  Some knives wake up. They get to be a little alive. Nobody’d ever been able to convince him otherwise. This was an angry knife, full of purpose. A killer.

  But you didn’t kill her, did you? There was that much loyalty in you.

  He flipped it in his hand, threw it into the doorframe. It thunked in solid, an inch deep. Muffin jerked up out of a doze and trotted over to hide behind a chair.

  He worked it out of the wood and set it on the mantelpiece, cutting edge to the wall, where it wouldn’t hurt somebody accidental-like.

  Doyle said, “They’re piled up like cordwood downstairs, without orders, losing daylight.” When there was no response, he said, “I won’t let her die while you’re gone.” And then, “Don’t waste what it cost her, coming here.”

  Justine would be the first to kick his arse out the door. She’d send him out to do his job. He could almost hear her telling him to get to work.

  He leaned down to her ear and whispered, “Stay alive for me, Owl. Remember. You promised to slit my throat while I slept. I’m going to hold you to that. We have unfinished business.”

  She lay, unquiet, her forehead pinched in tight lines, her lips shaping words that didn’t get spoken. Still breathing. Still alive. The knife had missed her heart because she fought back like the she-devil she was.

  He straightened up. “I’m going to kill the man who did this.”

  Doyle said, “I know.”

  PAX wasn’t fast enough, following Adrian out the door.

  “Stay,” Doyle said.

  “I have to—”