The Black Hawk

by Joanna Bourne

  Time passed. And passed.

  Her eyes had become so accustomed to the darkness that she saw when the empty, dark space at the top of the stairs grew faintly light. She heard, not voices, but the softest shuffle of feet. A scrape against a wall. The Cachés were climbing into the hole in the wall. Escaping. Good. Good.

  Minutes passed, heavy as if they were cast in lead.

  Inside the parlor, a chair grated on the floor. The voices fell silent.

  They’d heard something. She swallowed. Gathered herself to fight. Tensed her legs, her arms, her shoulders. Prepared to spring and shoot the instant the door opened.

  Evil chances poured through her mind. Her death, Hawker’s death, and terrible revenge upon the Cachés. Madame disgraced. Séverine alone in a country at war.

  My fault. Everything. My fault. Suddenly and completely, she understood what it meant to be the one in charge.

  Don’t think of that. It’s almost time. Be steady. She laid her finger beside the trigger with immense care. The pistol was perfectly still in her hands. She listened for the scrape of the door. Soon, she would turn and fire. I am not afraid.

  When she ran, they would follow her out into the street. Hawker and his friend could kill at least one man. She was sure of it. Maybe two. Hawker’s reputation said he could kill a man.

  Blood pounded in her ears. She held her breath, listening.

  In the parlor, the rhythm of speech began again.

  So it was not discovery. Not disaster. Not yet. She removed her touch to the trigger. This was worse than fear, this reprieve. She was filled with nausea and cold, trembling. It was hard to keep her breath even and quiet. Words of a psalm repeated in her mind, stately, full of weight. I will fear no evil. I will fear no evil. She held on to those words. She, who had given up belief in God long ago.

  Then Hawker was at the top of the stairs, casting a gray, stepped shadow, coming downward on its path, making no sound. He was beside her, unexpected because he moved so quickly, as if there were no distance across this hall.

  He set his fingers on the barrel of her gun to say, “Put that down.” Made a motion to say, “We’ve finished here. Come,” and, “Good job. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  She lowered the gun, uncocked it, and tucked it away in the pouch under her shirt. The Cachés were on their way. It was done.

  There was light outside.

  Hawker turned the same instant she did. The window and the open space of the door lit up. Someone was in the courtyard, carrying a lantern, walking quickly toward the house, making little noises.

  There was time, barely time, to throw herself across the hall to the far wall. To take one side of the front door as Hawker took the other.

  The hall filled with light. A man stepped into the doorway.

  Thirteen

  SHE SAW THE MAN’S FACE AND KNEW HIM AND FELT a fierce exultation. She did not know when she drew her knife, but it was in her hand when she attacked.

  The moment hung clear and motionless in the air. Time did not move.

  Drieu had slung his jacket over his left arm across the valise he carried. In his right hand he held the lantern. His waistcoat was unbuttoned in the heat, his shirt blatant and white down the length of his chest.

  She used both hands to hold the knife. She drove it into that white, into his belly, up under the breastbone and almost cried out with the triumph of it.

  She had been taught to use the knife at the great marketplace at Les Halles, stabbing again and again into a great slab of hanging beef. She thought, His belly is softer than a side of beef.

  A sickening intimacy joined her with Antoine Drieu. He shocked and shuddered against her body. It was as bad as copulation—hot and bestial. His damp clothes and his horrible hot breath smothered her face.

  Hawker was beside her, at her shoulder, doing exactly what needed to be done. His hand closed over the man’s mouth, keeping the cry and gurgle inside. His thigh, his foot, cushioned the valise as it fell. Knocked the lantern onto the crumpled jacket, keeping it quiet.

  She held the hilt of the knife. Blood seeped warm and sticky onto her hands.

  They supported the body upright while it struggled and died. Till it became only an ugly, huge weight.

  Antoine Drieu was dead. She had dreamed of this a hundred times. She had schemed this. Planned to go to Lyon, undetected, and somehow murder him.

  She had killed a French agent. If they find out, I am dead.

  Her skin tightened to goose bumps. Her stomach heaved. She was filled with terror and relief and lightness and a kind of horrible joy.

  One less. One less, of the men who had me in the brothel.

  It was a shock when Hawker elbowed her impatiently. He said, “Leave the knife in,” using no breath at all. No sound. “Bring everything.”

  He took Drieu’s body against his shoulder. Bent halfway over, balancing the weight. Lifted it across his back. He was very strong, Hawker. She had not exactly realized that.

  The lantern had fallen to its side, but the candle had not gone out. She found drops of blood splattered on the doorstep and smeared dirt across them. All would be brown and unrecognizable by daylight. There was surprisingly little blood anyway. It seemed one must leave the knife in the wound. Now she knew.

  The lantern, coat, bag. She closed the door with exquisite silence. Followed Hawker and the ghastly load he carried. They both perfectly understood that the body must not be found in the courtyard. The Cachés must not be connected to this murder. She must not be. Even the British must not be connected.

  Hawker stopped and turned with the body so she could plunder the corpse for a key. It was in the vest pocket. Her hands were weak and shaking. She could scarcely draw it forth and fit it in the lock. The huge gate swung out to let them through, making no noise about it. She slitted the door of the lantern to show only a small, secret, unobserved light upon the ground, picked up the valise, and stepped out into Rue de la Planche. She pushed the gate closed behind her with her shoulder.

  The houses along the street were dark and silent. To the left, fifty feet away, candlelight slanted through a gap in the shutters of a second-floor window. Citoyen Pax stood in the street, square in that patch of light, showing himself in a manner that must be deliberate.

  He beckoned. A small figure emerged from the alley that ran beside the Coach House wall, raced past him, across the road, and hid in the long range of shadow on the other side. One could barely see others already there, two or three of them in a line, still as rocks.

  Hawker headed in the other direction. He was a dozen paces ahead, so she followed quickly. Where the road curved, just where they could still see the Coach House, he stopped to lean his burden against the wall. He scowled 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. When men came to free them, she had hidden in her room, trembling, hugging Séverine. She had feared them all, even Madame. “They do not know what will happen to them. They cannot know. They do not understand.”

  “You aren’t going to convince them.”

  “No.” She made a fist. Slammed the stones of the wall, hurting herself, making no noise. “I will not let this happen. I will not lose three children.”

  “Then you’re going to lose them all. These kids . . .” he jerked his thumb to the far end of the street, “the ones we got out . . . those ten kids are a mouse hair away from panicking and running back into the cage. They’ll do it if we don’t move them along.”

  “I will wait then. Wait until they leave.” Her body shook and she could not stop it. “When they are safe, I will go into the Coach House and drag the others out.”

  “Not short of knocking them over the head and tying them up, you won’t. You think anything else, and you’re just stupid. I don’t think you’re stupid.”

  He listed the reasons this could not be done. He would not be silent, though she interrupted him and sneered at him. Everything he said, she already knew and did not want to admit to herself. He battered her mind with his certainty. His relentless common sense.

  He ended up, “. . . at which point those Tuteurs are going to come pounding up the stairs and gut you like a fish.”

  “I have been taught to fight.”

  “I don’t
care if you’ve been taught to fly like a bird. They’ll kill you. They won’t even raise a sweat doing it.”

  The night was silent and heavy with heat. Tiny and far away, Blackbird gestured to the children. Each in turn slipped around the corner, out of sight, moving as small, slight darknesses rippling the greater darkness. Ten of them.

  I have saved only ten.

  Those last three would not be persuaded. She knew that in the pit of her belly. In her heart, in the cold reason of her mind, she knew that. She shivered under her skin, sick with the bloody murder she had done and this corpse that waited at her feet. Sick with failure. “If I do not go back, I condemn them to hell.”

  “Close enough.” There was light to see his lips twist. To guess at the expression in his eyes. She did not want pity from him. “You can’t save them.”

  “I must try.”

  “That’s not running an operation. That’s a complicated way to commit suicide.” He let her think about that. “Either way, you’re dragging me along with you.”

  “This is nothing to do with—”

  “If you go in, I go in. You decide if you lead me in there to get killed.” He did not look like a boy when he said that. She did not doubt for one instant that he would follow her back into the Coach House.

  On the stage of her mind, she could see many ways to die. Nowhere did she see a way to save the last three Cachés. “They are children.”

  “They’re not any younger than you.”

  She stood with her hands empty. It was defeat. “You are a bastard.”

  “My mother always swore she was married. I kind of doubt it. Owl, I’ve had longer to think about this than you. If I could come up with any way—any plan at all—we’d do it.”

  “I will not forgive myself for leaving them behind.”

  “Most of us have something to keep us awake at night.”

  “You make light of—”

  “The hell I do. You think I don’t have nightmares?” They stood awhile, looking at each other. He said, “If they weren’t trained fighters, I’d try it.” He nudged the valise with his foot. “You get rid of this.”