Brazen Bride

by Stephanie Laurens

  The gallery was filling with smoke and disoriented people, jostling and coughing, some shrieking. Logan turned to the others’ door just as it opened and Deverell came out, followed by Charles, both fully dressed and armed.

  They swiftly looked around, didn’t bother asking what was going on.

  Hotel staff appeared from below, while others stumbled down from the attics above. All were panicked, but did their best to hurry patrons downstairs and out of the front door.

  Someone had flung the front double doors wide, allowing more smoke to rush in and up the funnel of the stairwell. Stepping to the gallery’s rail, Logan squinted down through the gushing clouds, saw more smoke pouring through the doors of the dining room and the hotel’s front parlor, adding to the thickening miasma now filling the foyer, and rising.

  Coiling and billowing, and with every new gust of air gushing up to fill every available space.

  Linnet returned, coughing, nearly choking. Glancing at the thick cloud below, she dragged her kerchief from her neck, quickly folded it, and retied it over her nose and mouth.

  The others did the same, not that it helped much.

  Linnet accepted her saber and cloak from Logan, buckled the first on, threw her cloak over her shoulder. “Come on.” She started around the gallery.

  Logan and the others followed. He was still thinking, assessing, trying to see. . . .

  Reaching the stairs, Linnet went to step down, and he suddenly knew—suddenly saw the danger. “No!”

  Grasping her arm, he drew her back.

  Surprised, Linnet let him. “What?”

  Behind his kerchief, his expression was grim. “That’s what this is for—to flush us out. There’s no real threat of fire—there can’t be.”

  Deverell joined them. “They’re using smoke to panic people into rushing ouside. They’ll be waiting for us to appear.”

  “Exactly.”

  They looked around, listened. Most people had already gone down. A few stragglers stumbled past them and hurried down the stairs. They could hear rushing footsteps on the ground floor, and shouts and wails from outside.

  “Let’s take a look outside.” Going to the door of a room overlooking the front of the hotel, Charles threw it open and strode straight to the window.

  The smoke was roiling and boiling upward, casting an increasingly dense pall over the street.

  “They must have men feeding the fires beneath that,” Deverell said.

  “Presumably close against the building.” Logan squinted down. “We can’t see them from this angle.”

  “No—but we can see the archers on the roofs across the street.” Charles pointed. It took a moment to distinguish the shapes against the night sky, but the fluttering ends of the scarves about the figures’ heads left little doubt as to who and what they were looking at.

  “Ambush of a different sort,” Deverell said. “We need to reconnoiter before we move. Charles?”

  Charles nodded, and the pair left the room.

  Linnet stayed beside Logan, peering down at the scene below. Beneath the shifting clouds, the hotel’s patrons and staff were milling about in confusion. Townsfolk, roused, were bringing flares, creating an eerie golden glow beneath the thickening pall. “When they try to put the fires out, they’re only going to create more smoke—at least in the short term.”

  Logan nodded. “That’s assuming the cultists will give up their fires without a fight.”

  “They’re actually down there, aren’t they—in full view.” She’d spied darker figures through gaps in the smoke.

  “Yes, and that means this is an all-out assault. They’re going to do anything and everything necessary to catch us and take the scroll-holder.” Logan considered the scene, then tugged her arm. “Come on.”

  They stepped into the smokier gallery.

  Charles appeared from their left. “There’s no way out on this side—the hotel abutts the next building. No alley, no windows.”

  Deverell emerged from a room along the right-hand side of the gallery. He shook his head as he came jogging up. “They’ve men along the riverbank, too. Under the trees, watching like hawks, plus others feeding fires against the walls on that side.”

  Around them, the smoke was steadily thickening, rising and filling the upper levels of the hotel. They all coughed; Linnet’s eyes were stinging.

  Deverell shook his head. “Regardless of the absence of flames, we can’t stay here.”

  “Smoke can kill just as easily as fire.” Charles tightened his kerchief.

  Grimly, Logan nodded. “Let’s see if we can get out the rear entrance.”

  Coughing, doubled over, they ran around the gallery, trying to avoid the worst of the smoke. Logan found the back stairs and started down, Linnet at his back, Charles and Deverell behind her.

  They descended half a flight into rising smoke, then Logan abruptly halted. He nodded at the window set into the wall beside him. “Look.”

  From his tone, Linnet knew what she would see when she did. He stepped down; she did, too, letting Charles and Deverell look out as well.

  Cultists were ranged behind barrels and carts in the inn’s rear yard. She counted ten.

  Grimly shaking his head, Charles straightened and met Logan’s eyes. “I don’t fancy those odds. We might be able to best those we can see, but if there are more within hailing range, which seems likely, we’ll be in big trouble.”

  And they had Linnet with them.

  Logan heard the unsaid words loud and clear; they were already ringing in his head. He looked past Charles to Deverell. “Charles said the building against the fourth side abutts the hotel, so it’ll have to be the roof.”

  No one argued.

  Deverell turned around. “I think the hotel is the highest building in the area. With luck, the archers across the road won’t be able to see us.”

  As quickly as they could, they went back to the first-floor gallery. “This way.” Linnet took the lead, heading for the door through which the hotel staff had come down from the attics. Beyond the door they found the attic stairs, blessedly less smoky. They climbed quickly up and Deverell shut the door behind them.

  Once in the attics, they spread out, searching. The air was clearer, but the smoke seeped steadily in. From the street below, they heard shouts, then yells, a building ruckus. Linnet tried to look out of the attic windows, but the balconies below blocked her view.

  “Sounds like a melee,” Deverell said. “As if the townsfolk have taken exception to foreigners setting their hotel alight.”

  “More power to their right arms,” Charles replied. “Unfortunately, we can’t risk going out and joining in.”

  Logan finally found the right door. “This way.”

  He waited until they were all assembled. “We go up and out, and with luck, there won’t be any cultists waiting, but be prepared—they might have thought of the roof.”

  Logan turned and climbed the stairs. Linnet moved to follow, but Charles caught her shoulder and drew her back. “Ladies to the rear, this time.”

  He pushed past her, and so did Deverell, before she could think of any reply. With a humph, she seized the moment to swing her cloak about her shoulders and tie it firmly at her throat, then she loosened her cutlass in its scabbard, and followed.

  Logan opened the door at the top of the narrow flight, gently eased it wide, giving thanks to whoever had kept the hinges oiled. Silent as a wraith, keeping low, he slipped out, through the drifts of smoke scanned the roof. It was largely flat, with no protrusions of sufficient size to hide a cultist.

  And it was empty.

  “All clear,” he murmured, straightening as Charles joined him. The noise from what sounded like a pitched battle below would mask any sound they made.

  Charles glanced back as Deverell, then Linnet emerged. He pointed to the side of the roof away from the river—the side beyond which the adjoining building lay.

  Swiftly, they crossed to the waist-high stone parapet. The air was so
mewhat clearer, slightly fresher there, and now the thick smoke worked to their advantage, wafting up the hotel’s walls and screening them from watching eyes.

  Deverell had been right. The neighboring building was shorter than the hotel, its roof lower, but thankfully not too low. And that roof, too, was empty of cultists.

  “They’ve positioned all their archers across the street,” Charles murmured.

  “Luckily for us.” After one glance at the archers, Logan took advantage of a thicker gust of smoke to swing one leg over the parapet, then the other, then he dropped lightly down to the lower roof.

  Charles and Deverell helped Linnet to do the same, then they followed.

  Keeping low—they were now at a level where, if they stood upright too close to the edge, the archers on the roofs opposite might see them—they scouted, but could find no access to the building below. No way to get down.

  Logan signaled. “Next one along.”

  The next building’s roof was lower still, but this time by barely a step. Even more carefully, they spread out and searched its roof for some way to get inside, but neither it, nor the next two adjoining buildings, all of similar height, had any direct way to get into the buildings below.

  Moving on, they looked down at the roof of the next building, which was smaller and lower, two storeys but with a many-gabled roof. From above, they studied it, searched, then Linnet pointed. “There—that covered porch.” A small, single-storey structure, it was built onto the back of the building. “We can go down that waterpipe from the roof, onto the porch roof, and then down into the little yard at the rear.”

  The building beyond the one with the gabled roof was significantly higher; climbing up to its roof would be a problem. Logan glanced back. They were sufficiently far from the hotel to risk going down into the lane that ran along the rear of the buildings. More, the small square yard into which they would drop didn’t open directly to the rear lane, but was joined to it via an alley some ten yards long. Unless a cultist came to the alley’s mouth and looked in, their party wouldn’t be seen by the cultists watching in the lane.

  And the longer they remained on the roofs, the more risk that they’d be seen.

  He nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Although the smoke was still thickening about the hotel, it was much thinner, a bare veil, where they now were. The flares in the street were largely concentrated outside the hotel, but every now and then some townsman would run past with a brand, on their way to join the fracas outside the hotel, throwing light up onto the wall down which they had to climb.

  They tried to pick their times, dropping down to the roof one after another, then making their way cautiously over the gables to the pipe that let them ease down to the porch roof.

  Within ten minutes, they were within reach of the ground.

  D aniel cursed. “Damned meddling gits! Why couldn’t they keep their noses out of things?”

  None of the men at his back volunteered an answer.

  Still cloaked in the alley’s shadows, they watched as the fight in the street swelled to an all-out brawl. More townsmen came charging up to join in; as the minutes ticked by, more of those arriving waved weapons—pitchforks, spades, whatever they could lay hands on.

  He’d overlooked the fact that the common English were not the same as the run-of-the-mill Indian—that they were more likely to react with belligerence than cower. His fault, his mistake; he knew it.

  The instant the gathering townsfolk and those flooding out of the hotel had comprehended that the source of the fires threatening the building was a group of foreigners, who were continuing to diligently feed the flames, they’d cursed, bellowed, and fallen on the cultists’ backs. For their part, the cultists expected anyone whose house they were burning down to cower; they’d struck back, expecting instant victory. Before Daniel could think of any way to intervene, battle had been joined.

  There were enough cultists to keep the smoke billowing and roiling up, but the ranks of the good townsfolk of Bedford were constantly increasing.

  A shot rang out.

  Daniel jerked his reins tight, caught his horse before it could bolt. Astride its back as it pranced, he cursed some more. The cultists hated guns—as fighters that was their one true weakness. Even the men at his back, far better trained, had flinched. Their edgy tension had ratcheted up several notches.

  More shots sounded, more than likely fired over the crowd.

  An instant later, three cultists fled past the alley mouth, heading away from the fight.

  Daniel ground his teeth. “Where the devil is Monteith?” Despite all distractions, he’d kept his eyes on the hotel’s front door. He had men stationed all around the building, watching every exit. If Monteith had gone out any other way, he should have heard of it by now.

  Should have been informed that the troublesome major had been seized. Heaven knew he’d assembled enough men to be sure of accomplishing that.

  Could Monteith be thinking to hole up in the hotel? As soon as the smoke faded sufficiently, Daniel would send in his assassins to scour the place.

  His mount stirred, as restless as he. Another local man came running down the street from the left, a flaming brand held high, a pitchfork in his hand; the light drew Daniel’s gaze.

  Up above the street, the light from the brand fleetingly silhouetted an object—one that fell from one roof to the next. A man-sized object; a crouching man. Daniel stopped breathing, watched. The man didn’t come to the front of the roof. He must have gone . . .

  “With me!” Daniel snapped out the order. Loosening his reins, digging in his heels, he plunged out of the alley. Wheeling left, away from the melee before the hotel, he thundered up the road.

  His assassins running as a group just behind, Daniel could almost taste success as he rounded the block, drew rein, drew his sword, and turned into the lane than ran along the rear of the buildings.

  L ogan dropped to the cobbles in the narrow yard. He swiftly scanned the cramped space. Stacked crates and empty barrels clogged the entrance to the alley leading to the rear lane. The yard was dark and relatively quiet, the high walls all around cutting off much of the sound and fury from the street. Even the smoke had barely penetrated there.

  Straightening, he reached up and helped Linnet down. While she untied the ends of the cloak she’d knotted across her waist, he checked the scroll-holder, resettled it against his spine.

  While Charles, then Deverell, joined them, Logan found the back door tucked inside the porch and tried it. Not only was it locked, it was also solidly bolted from inside. No access, no even temporary place to hide.

  He looked back down the alley. The walls were plain brick, unadorned, and vertical all the way to the neighboring roofs, no doors or windows. He glanced up and around. There was no other way out.

  “At least the archers across the street can’t see us.” Catching the others’ eyes, he tipped his head down the alley. “We’ll have to go that way.”

  They nodded, resettled their coats and weapons, then he led the way forward, Charles behind him, then Linnet, with Deverell bringing up the rear.

  They’d barely cleared the stacked crates and stepped into the alley proper when a dense shadow loomed at its end. As one, they halted.

  The shadow resolved into a horseman in a black coat, breeches, and riding boots, astride a black horse.

  Men moved behind the horse, forming up two by two and following the rider as he walked his mount slowly, clop by clop, down the alley toward them.

  The sound echoed eerily off the alley’s high brick walls, a portentious drumbeat.

  As if responding to the drama, the moon sailed free high above; it beamed down into the alley from behind them, bathing the approaching figure and his retinue, highlighting every line in icy-cold silver light.

  Silver light that glinted on multiple naked blades.

  The rider wore a black scarf wound about his head, concealing nose and chin; his eyes coldly observed them from above it
s upper edge as he halted—just far enough away to be safe from any attack from Logan or Charles, now standing shoulder to shoulder across the entrance to the small yard. Both had drawn their sabers. Logan couldn’t remember doing so; the hilt had suddenly been in his palm, his fingers locked in the grip, the blade held down by his side.

  His every sense, every instinct, remained locked on the rider, even when two of the cultists moved up to stand on either side of the black horse.

  Both cultists, like their fellows behind them, held naked blades in both hands.

  “Those,” Logan murmured, “are cult assassins.”

  “Ah,” Charles replied, and uncharacteristically left it at that.

  Linnet, behind Logan, heard the exchange. Looking over his shoulder, she finally comprehended just what had driven him and his friends to battle so hard, for so long, to face so many dangers to bring it down. To defeat it.

  True evil.

  It stared back at her, not from the cult assassins’ dark, unflinching eyes but from the shadowed eyes of the rider. He . . . somehow, he made the hair on her nape lift, made her skin pebble and crawl; when his gaze found her, and, as if intrigued, rested on her, she had to fight to quell a wholly instinctive shiver.

  An instinctive reaction.

  An instinctive fear.

  He wore a black coat, he rode a black horse, he had black hair. Yet it was his soul that was blackest; she knew that to her bones.

  Her cutlass was already in her hand; she tightened her grip on the hilt. Not a single thought—not even a fleeting one—of fleeing entered her head. She’d come to fight alongside Logan and she intended to do just that.

  Yet the odds . . . were by any estimation hopeless. That didn’t mean they couldn’t be overcome. She counted twelve assassins, but the biggest threat was the mounted man. He carried an unsheathed sword, held lightly balanced across the front of his saddle.