The Black Hawk

by Joanna Bourne

  He went first, ignoring some gesticulating from Owl. He didn’t trust either of his cohorts when it came to the fine points of being quiet. He trusted himself. He hit the floorboards loose and springy and turned it into a roll and came down at the end, flat and limp as a doll. He didn’t make any noise.

  He was alone in a long corridor with closed doors. No sound of breathing behind any of them doors, which was what you might call an indication they were empty, but not a promise you could take to the bank. Light leaked out of the hole they’d made in the wall. He braced himself on the plaster wall, making a ladder for Owl. Letting her put her feet on his shoulders and climb down, hand and foot, over him. Then Pax did the same thing, only heavier. Nothing like breaking into a house together for getting to know somebody.

  Owl dressed right—head to foot in black, boy’s trousers, hair pulled back and braided, covered with a dark scarf, soft boots. She’d left her woman’s clothes in a bundle outside when they first came in. She wouldn’t pass as a boy, not close up, not to a blind man, but she could move fast and easy and nobody cared how she looked anyway.

  Pax brought a lit candle with him and left the lantern behind in the attic where it’d be useful in the escape. That was showing a modicum of common sense. Hawker’s old master, who’d taught him to thieve, used to say, “Always take pains over your escape route. It’s never wasted.”

  The minute she was down, Owl slipped off to the left, going from door to door, looking in, and leaving everything open behind her. Bedrooms. Men’s clothing. Lots of books and papers. They’d have those rooms to hide in and leap from ambush if they were hunted along this corridor. Pax ghosted off to do the same down the right side, setting his boots to the floor silent as philosophy. All of this with no need for a word between any of them. That was a good sign.

  This was a barracks-looking sort of house. No carpet in the hall. No furniture. No place for a cat to sit. Ten or twenty framed samplers on the wall. Not like anybody lived here at all. Not like it was somebody’s home.

  The door to the attic turned out to be next-to-last on the right-hand side. He went straight to it, which was half figuring out where it must be from long experience in the way houses were laid out and half luck. He hoped he impressed everybody.

  Owl had worked her way to the head of the stairs leading down. She stood, breathing slow, getting herself steeled up for what came next. When she’d done that a minute, she took a little gun out of the pouch under her shirt.

  He trotted down the hall—quiet about it—to intercept her. She looked mulish, but she stopped.

  He held out his hand and she gave him the gun so he could take a look at it. It was small, but not a toy. A serious gun, well maintained. A working weapon.

  When he gave it back, she held it right—low against her side, on the half cock, thumb on the hammer. She’d been well taught. She might last all of a minute and a half in a real fight.

  He mouthed, “Good luck,” and hoped like hell she wouldn’t need it.

  Then he headed for the attic to play his part. He passed Pax, still searching rooms. Taking the stairs upward was like climbing into a dark throat. What they had here was—what would Doyle have called it?—Stygian darkness, whatever the hell that meant. Funny how his old profession—stealing—and his new one—spying—both involved a lot of fumbling his way around in the dark.

  The fourth tread squeaked, like he’d stepped on something that objected. He’d been hugging along next to the wall just so that wouldn’t happen. It was a shame and pity the way some householders didn’t fix these little defects in their house.

  At the top of the stairs, he ran his hands up and down the doorframe. The door was not just locked, but barred, like they were keeping jaguars and highwaymen behind it. A board thick as his hand was laid across the door in iron holders. Serious impediments to exit on this door. They were keeping somebody in, not out.

  He put his ear to the wood and there was not a sound inside, which would ordinarily mean he was about to break into some furniture storage. In this case, it probably indicated somebody was going to stab him the minute he nudged the door open.

  He’d had the chance, once, to apprentice to a fence, him being handy with numbers and knowing a fair amount about stolen goods. He should probably have pursued that line of work.

  He lifted the bar up. Set it to the side, out of the way. Next on his list was this padlock. Nice and solid. Cold. Heavy. Expensive work, by the feel of it. His picks slipped into his hand with velvet silence since he kept them wrapped up nice and quiet. There was no feeling in the world sweeter than a fine pair of lockpicks between the fingers.

  Except maybe a girl’s breasts. Maybe the flower between her legs. That was the sweetest toy in the world. But lockpicks were a close second.

  He shouldn’t be thinking about girls when he was on a job. Doyle would have said something sarcastic and made him feel like a fool.

  He saw Pax before he heard him, since Pax was bringing the candle and he made about as much noise as the ghost of a mouse. Pax didn’t creak on that fourth step. Then he stood, not flapping his mouth, holding the light at a useful angle.

  Hawker’d admit it—Pax knew what he was doing. Didn’t make him one wad of spit more likable.

  The tumblers scraped. The lock clicked free. Pax cupped his palm around the candle flame so it wouldn’t blow out if they encountered any breeze in the course of their next activities.

  The door swung out smoothly, showing a tight, narrow room with no lights inside.

  A pack of kids stood together at the far side of the room. They were dressed in short, white nightshirts—the same for girls and boys. Counting quick, he summed it up as thirteen of them. The girl with blond braids, the one he’d seen fighting yesterday, was in front. On her right, a boy the same size. Pink and blond for the girl. Really beautiful. Brown and wholesome-looking for the boy.

  Still as doorsteps, every one of them.

  So far, so good. “We’re friends,” he whispered. “Give me a minute to talk . . .” before you start yelling.

  This wasn’t much of a room for a baker’s dozen of kids to sleep in. Slanted ceiling. The only place you could stand up was in the middle. The little window at the end had no reflection in it. No glass. Just a hole in the wall with iron bars across it. Too small to crawl out of even if you were a skinny kid.

  No beds. No furniture. No dressers. Blankets were parceled out in two rows, one on each side of the attic, on the floor. That was how they slept. One blanket under them. One over. No pillow. No padding. No sheet. Clothes stacked in a neat pile next each blanket, a pair of shoes set square beside it.

  It was hotter in here than outside. He knew all about attic rooms like this. Roast in summer. Freeze in winter.

  The bedrooms he’d seen downstairs were comfortable enough.

  The kids’ faces and bodies were honed down into hungry angles. Not a plump one in the lot. And they were locked in. He felt Pax behind him, being silent.

  The blond girl said, “Who are you? What do you want?”

  She was the leader then. It showed in the way the others kept an eye on her and ranged themselves out from a center, where she was. Street thieves in the St. Giles rookeries traveled in mean, dangerous little packs that acted like this. They were run by girls, often as not.

  He said, “I want to get you out of here.”

  “Why?” One blunt word from the boy at the front.

  “Does it matter?”

  None of them blinked. Absorbed attention was the order of the day.

  He said, “Have they told you Robespierre is dead?”

  “We were told.”

  “Then you know everything’s changed. This Coach House of yours . . .” He didn’t spit on the floor. Doyle said gentlemen didn’t spit. That left him not knowing how to express his feelings with the eloquence they deserved. “This place. It’s done. Finished. Over. You’re the last.” He took a step into the room. He saw the girl think about attacking him and dec
ide to put that off for the moment.

  He said, “This is what they didn’t tell you. There’s no place for you in England. Nothing’s prepared. There’s no one left to set you up. You won’t be put in families or schools. You’ll go to brothels.”

  The girl remained cold-eyed. “Why do you concern yourself?”

  Damned if he knew. But Doyle would do this. Maybe this was what a gentleman would do. “Stay, or get yourselves out of this kennel. You have three minutes to decide.”

  “They’re testing us,” a boy said. Another nodded.

  “It is the British.”

  “They will cut our throats,” a girl said in a sweet voice.

  The blond girl said, “We serve France. We will do whatever we are called upon to do.”

  “We are loyal to the Revolution,” the boy beside her said. The others murmured about loyalty and revolutionary ideals and steadfastness.

  He didn’t have an endless supply of time.

  Light slid in and out of corners of the attic room. The faces of the Cachés shadowed and unshadowed. Pax came up beside him. He said, “Is somebody downstairs?”

  There was no noise at all. No light coming up the staircase. That was just Pax being nervous.

  He turned in time to see Pax change the candle from left hand to right. “It is the least of my worries,” Pax stretched and closed his fingers, uncramping them, and looked from one Caché to the other, “whether you believe me or not.” He could have been talking about the cost of radishes for all the emotion in his voice. “Take what we offer, or stay and accept what will be done with you.” Pax looked from one face to the other. “This is no test. No trickery.”

  A dozen seconds ticked off. The girl in long braids said, “We are not cowards. It is the moment to stop pretending that we are.” She swept around, full of authority, wearing a nightshirt with dignity. “Choose. Remain here or come. If you’re coming, dress. Carry your shoes.”

  Not everyone decided to leave. He and Pax argued with them for a while, but three stayed behind.

  Twelve

  SHE WAS NO INFANT IN THIS BUSINESS OF SPYING. She was on the rolls of the Secret Police, working for Madame and the great spy Soulier. For them, Justine became the servant girl, passing without notice, lingering and listening, gathering up whispers and rumors. For them, she had crept into the confidence of the tariff smugglers of Paris and kept their lookout and walked their secret ways. She had become a trusted member of La Flèche and plucked men and women from the very shadow of the guillotine. For two years, she had been a spy.

  This was the first mission she had planned by herself. This time, there was no one to turn to for advice and direction. When she stepped her way silently downward, she was on her own, and her stomach was filled with spears of ice.

  The stairway wall held samplers worked by the Cachés. There was sufficient light coming from the hall below to read the stitching. I live to serve France. The next one said, I will die to do my duty to France. The house was filled with such cheerful mottoes.

  She felt Hawker’s silent comments follow behind her as she descended. She ignored him. She carried her gun exactly as if she had killed battalions of men. It was comforting to play the role of an experienced spy, even if she fooled no one but herself.

  Hawker broke into the Coach House with a panache that spoke of many houses invaded, many schemes brought to illegal fruition. She had no such confidence. But everyone must begin somewhere. He had no special monopoly on death.

  The stage was set, the curtain rising. The Tuteurs of this Coach House, Hawker and his comrade Pax, the Cachés . . . they were all committed to the drama she had plotted. She was committed as well. There was no going back.

  Hawker’s job was to prod the Cachés on their way. He would be impatient and sarcastic and uncaring, what the English would call “damn your eyes.” The Cachés would believe him because rudeness is always convincing. Those who wish one ill are all amiability.

  She was their last defense. If they were discovered, she would delay pursuers and give the others a chance to get away.

  She had come to the bottom of the stairs where the banister ended in a soft curve, worn by many hands. She took the last steps carefully, her muscles thick and slow with fear. Her heart thudded inside the tightness of her chest, as if her whole body were a fist squeezed around that beat. Her mind was sharp as broken glass.

  She was sourly afraid. Sick with it. Some dispassionate part of her spirit looked at herself, being afraid. I will not let fear control me. If I do, I will become nothing. I will not do that. Never again. She wrapped up the fear to be a small, whining bundle tucked away inside herself. She had learned to do this in moments of great danger. This was why Madame had taken her as protégée.

  To the right, down the long corridor, forty feet away, a dim lamp cupped a yellow glow that sketched out the doors on both sides of the hall in oblong shadows. To her left, in a mirror beside the front door, the lamp reflected like a tiny star, hung deep and distant. The mirror was not here to set a hair ribbon straight or comb the hair. It held a view of the upper and lower halls. One would see every movement in the house. The mirrors in the halls of the Pomme d’Or were given the same work.

  The gun she carried felt natural in her hand. Endless hours of practice made it so. Perhaps I will kill tonight. I have told Madame she may use me for such work. I am ready.

  She was young. Thirteen. But someday, she would become the kind of woman who walked in the dark and carried a gun and performed great acts. Someday, she would not even be afraid.

  She rounded the newel post. The reflection of the candle in the mirror disappeared and reappeared as she crossed the hall.

  There were no obstructions to avoid on her way to the front door. No cabinets or cases or chairs to rest in. No small tables carrying a graceful statue or a Chinese vase. The masters of the Coach House were men of grim ideology and small, meager vision.

  At the front door of the house, she slid the bolt, disengaging metal from metal in utmost silence, and lifted the latch. The door swung in well-oiled discipline, making no noise, playing its part in her schemes. The night slid past her into the hall.

  The open door was a deception and a distraction for the Tuteurs. It would send them searching the courtyard before they went upstairs and found the gaping hole in the plaster. She gained three minutes of delay and confusion to cover their retreat, just by opening the door. If the worst happened, she would run this way.

  She slipped down the hall to stand beside the parlor door, her back to the plaster, the gun fully cocked now, upheld in both hands, cradled between her breasts, muzzle upward. Her clothes were soaked in dirty sweat. Inside her, she was an endless ocean of cold.

  Hawker went about his work with due care. There was no sound from the upstairs hall and no light fell upon the stairs. There was only the distant night candle, twitching in the great dark, and the infinitesimal answering light in the mirror.

  She set her ear against the plaster. She could make out a buzz in the parlor, a slow rhythm of exchange, back and forth. She heard the masculine voices, not the words. She did not know—and Madame had not been able to ascertain—how many of the Tuteurs still survived and were in Paris. But Gravois and Patelin, the Tuteurs who oversaw the daily running of the Coach House, would be here. Tonight, they would be on edge. They were familiar with every creak of every board of this house. No one could be more dangerous.

  From their tone, the men in the parlor spoke of some serious subject. Perhaps they made plans. There was a sense of purpose and organization in the shape of speech and response.

  She listened for any pause in the give and take of men’s voices. That would mean they had heard something.

  Her finger was a light caress on the trigger guard. She would kill the first man through the door, easily. Then she would be left with only her knife. She was no dreamer. She could not win in a knife fight against the trained killers who ruled the Coach House. They were twice her size, three times
her age, with a thousand times her experience.

  A vision filled her mind. Her own death, vivid and red. Falling under knives and gunshot and the blows of boots, messily splattering her blood in this spartan hallway, across these well-scrubbed boards, onto the whitewashed walls and the trite political cross-stitch.

  She shut the thought away. She would picture only what she must do. If they came out of the parlor, she would shoot, drop her gun, and run. She’d planned her path across the courtyard. The best route up and over the wall. She would escape into the streets and leave them shouting and bewildered behind her.

  She did not fidget. She knew how to stand long hours without moving. She relaxed each muscle except those she needed to hold the gun. She did not burn up her strength.

  When she was eleven and her parents had died and she was betrayed into the child brothel by her parents’ friend, she had learned to stand perfectly still. It had been a fancy of that house that the children played nymphs and fauns. They stood naked beside the dinner tables, draped with woven garlands of flowers, holding a lamp or a tray. Sometimes they were covered with fine white powder so they would resemble statues. They stood still as statues, hour after hour.

  She was not beaten when she trembled from weariness and failed in this game. They whipped Séverine instead.

  This was another house where children were beaten when they did not please their masters. She would enjoy killing Citoyens Patelin or Gravois or whoever was unwise enough to walk through this door first. The blood spattering these walls would be theirs.

  They did not deal with the innocent daughter of the noble house of DeCabrillac. That child was gone forever. They faced Justine DuMotier, agent of the Police Secrète. She had not been destroyed. She did not give her enemies that victory.

  Outside, the wind shifted and nosed into the hall with a sound like breathing. She narrowed her mind to this moment only and then to the next moment that came after it and did not think any more about dying or the failure of this mission. Madame said, “There is a mighty army of what could be. Do not exhaust yourself fighting it.”