Not that Asti needed to. He moved to work floorboards in a far corner, and unfolded Win’s note.
Second floor, Lord’s study. Extra locks—very complicated. Special valet assigned. No regular staff admitted.
Asti ate the note. He knew all that he needed to from that. The study was now a key target. They just needed to find out why Lord Henterman put so much protection on it, and how to get around it. But whatever was in there, Asti was very interested in finding out.
* * *
“You’re the best one to keep an eye on everything in the neighborhood,” Asti had told Mila. “You’ve got your Bessie’s Boys, and Lesk’s crew don’t really have you in their sights.”
All of that was true, but that didn’t mean that Mila had to like it at all. She most certainly didn’t care for stomping down Frost in rags when Verci and Kennith were sleeping in the new safehouse in Colton. Didn’t seem fair. She shouldn’t have to keep pretending to be a street urchin while Helene and Julie had abandoned the sandwich stand.
Of course she, as Miss Bessie, could safely spend the night in the sandwich stand, or even Helene and Julie’s flop above it. She could sleep in Helene’s bed. That would annoy her deliciously.
“I’m worried about how this stuff will affect Josie,” Asti had added. “If she’s really lost her place, we won’t have the clout or connections to pull off what we need.”
So she was stuck in the neighborhood, while everyone else was working the gig. And everyone else seemed so blasted calm about things. They all acted like they could walk away at any point. All of them but Asti. Frankly, Asti was the only one she really understood in all of this, even with his crazy, dangerous ways. He was angry, and wasn’t going to stop fighting until he had gotten them all. He made sense, at least to Mila. Choking the life out of Mendel Tyne hadn’t quelled her anger one bit.
“Girl!” Mila turned instinctively. Too many people used that as a way to get her attention, but rarely was it a woman calling her. It was the stout woman who ran the pub Asti stayed in. Kimber? Nice enough woman. She was standing in front of her pub, wringing her hands and fiddling with a piece of paper.
“You calling me?” Mila asked, coming close.
“Yeah, you,” Kimber said, pulling Mila the rest of the way in. “You . . . you’re wrapped up with whatever business Asti is doing, right?”
“I’m, uh—” Should she trust Kimber? Did Asti? Mila didn’t know.
“I don’t want to know what he’s doing. I know it’s—I know I don’t want to know. But he told me he’d be scarce for a while.”
“If that’s what he told you,” Mila said as guardedly as she could.
“Can you get word to him? I went looking for Verci, but he’s gone from the bakery, and his wife snapped at me.”
“I can imagine,” Mila said. She was going to have to go over to the bakery, to deliver a note from Verci. She would probably get some sort of earful from Raych as well. Verci’s wife had always been relatively kind to her, but she definitely had opinions about Mila being involved in the things Asti and Verci did. “What sort of word?”
“Someone came here looking for him. Said they were from a newsprint, but I never heard of it. They left a note and a calling card for him.”
“I can take it,” Mila said. “I may not be able to—”
“It’s fine,” Kimber said, giving the note over. “I don’t want to know what he’s doing. I trust that it . . . he’s got the right intentions behind it.”
“I got it,” Mila said. She was about to step away, when she turned back. “Has anyone been giving you trouble? I, uh . . . I’m told I should be looking around for it.”
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Kimber said. “But if I know of something . . .”
Mila just nodded and walked off. No need to linger, especially with people watching on the street. It was true that the folks who were causing trouble didn’t really know her, but the other side was she didn’t know them, either. Verci had given her names: Poller, Essen, Sender, Ia. Helene had emphasized Ia. “Tall Bardinic slan in a stupid hat. You cannot miss her.”
And Treggin. That was a name Verci told her to keep her ears open for.
Mila headed to the bakery, keeping an eye out. No sign of this Ia. Or anyone else that fit the descriptions she’d been given.
“No beggars, no,” she was told as soon as she entered the bakery.
“I’m not—”
“I said no!” Raych yelled at her. No, not Raych. Same face, a bit thicker in the cheeks and hips.
“I’m looking for Missus Rynax,” Mila said.
“Well, you got Missus Elman instead, and she doesn’t cotton to beggar girls looking for day-old bread.”
“Good for you I ain’t one of them,” Mila shot back. “What I am is someone who needs Missus Rynax, so why don’t you run and fetch her before I get punchy?”
“You insufferable brat!” Missus Elman said, grabbing a broom. She raised it over her head, “I’m gonna—”
“I’ll make you eat that broom, miss.”
“What the blazes are you doing, Lian?” Missus Rynax came in from the back, baby on her hip.
“Chasing out this beggar girl.”
“Saints, leave her be,” Raych said. “You, girl. You buying something?”
“I might, if she puts the blasted broom down,” Mila said.
“Lian!”
Missus Elman put it down, grumbled something, and went in the back.
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” Missus Rynax said. “Forgive me if I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Mila.” Mila thought about it for a moment. “But for the time being, call me Bessie.”
She sighed and shook her head. “That sounds like an Asti thing.”
Mila pulled Verci’s note out of her pocket. “I’ve got this for you.”
Raych opened it up. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“He—” Mila stopped herself for a second. “He said he would gladly be going back and forth, but right now—”
“It’s—” She smiled ruefully at Mila. “I was about to tell you that it’s fine, but it isn’t, and you probably know that. But it isn’t your fault.”
“Missus Rynax, starting tonight there’ll always be a young boy in a newsboy cap outside your bakery. Not right on the stoop, but where you can see him.”
“And why is that?”
“Because if you need to get word to me or to Verci, you know, fast, you tell that boy. And he’ll run.”
“You’re Bessie to them?”
“That’s right.”
“And what’s Verci called?”
“He’s the Baker.”
Raych chuckled. “Is Asti the Butcher?”
“No, he isn’t,” Mila said. “But that’s good. I’ll use that.”
“You should be doing better things, girl.”
“I ain’t ever had better things, Missus Rynax,” Mila said. “Not until Asti and Verci took me in.”
“Be careful,” Raych said.
“Any message for Verci?”
“Yes. Tell him to stop being an idiot.”
“Would you like me to also stop the moons in the sky?”
Raych grabbed a roll and tossed it over to Mila. “Take that. You’re skinnier than a twig.”
Mila winked at her and went out.
That done, the last step was checking in on her boys. They mostly holed up in an abandoned assembly house down near the creek—a real rotten cesspool that one couldn’t properly get to without crossing two bridges, one of which was falling apart. The building itself was crumbling, half fallen into the creek bank.
Mila wondered why no one burned it down to get the land.
“Hello, boys,” she said as she came in. She always entered making it completely clear she was in charge. “I’
m going to need one of you to go hang out on Junk—oh, saints.”
Eight of the boys were there—Peeky, Nikey, Telly, Conor, Enick, Astin, Jede, and Tarvis—and all of them were laid up on the ground. Black eyes, bleeding lips, broken noses, and worse.
“What the rutting blazes happened?” Mila asked.
“Miss Bessie—” Peeky wheezed out. He was the oldest, only twelve, and he looked like he had gotten the worst of it from any of them. His left arm was twisted in a horrible configuration. “They just swarmed in here.”
“Who did?” Mila asked. “Scratch Cats?”
“Some of them were Cats,” Enick said. His right eye was a swollen mass of blood and flesh. Mila wondered if he would ever see out of it. “A few others, too.”
“Why?” Mila went to each one, looking them over. “What did they want?”
“Didn’t want nothing,” Conor said. He looked the least bad off, standing up and looking ready to dive into something, despite the caked blood on his nose. Mila wondered how anyone could be that ready for a scrap at the age of nine.
“They must have said something.” Mila went to Jede and Tarvis—the babies, the twins, just six years old but looking like they were four. Half of Jede’s teeth had been knocked out, and Tarvis had a shoe print on the side of his head. “How bad?”
“Bad,” Tarvis said coldly and quietly. “I’m very mad.”
“I am too.”
“I’m going to cut them all.”
“Not right now, hmm?” Mila said. She checked the rest. Everyone would live, everyone would have scars.
“They didn’t say much,” Peeky said. “Didn’t ask anything. Didn’t want anything besides giving us a beating.”
“Where’s everyone else?”
“Out and about,” Conor said. “Can’t rightly keep track.”
“Can everyone walk?” she asked.
Most of them nodded, save Astin. Peeky scooped Astin up in his good arm.
Mila went to a crate she kept hidden behind some shelving. The Scratch Cats, whoever else was here, they didn’t go digging through their stuff. They didn’t do anything besides stomp her boys. She took out her rope, a couple knives.
“Conor, clean your face and plant yourself on Junk by the bakery. The rest of you all, scatter about, tell the rest of the boys that this place is dead. You all know the goxie shop on Colt?”
Some of them nodded.
“Gather up in there. Crack the back door quiet as you can. Rest up there.”
“There? That rutting giant runs that place with his crazy wife!”
Mila kept herself from laughing at that description of Julien and Helene. She would not tell Helene how the local boys saw her.
“They’re not there right now. It’s safe.”
“How do you—”
“Because I’m Miss Bessie, and it’s my business to know.” She belted the rope and knives. “And those Scratch Cats hurt my boys, so I’m going to show them what else is my business.”
Chapter 10
MILA WAS HALFWAY TO the Shack before she realized she had no idea what she was going to do when she got there. She could hardly fight the whole lot of the Lesk Gang or the Scratch Cats, even if she knew who they were. Her head was full of steam and anger, especially over her boys getting stomped. That was on her. It might have even happened because of her.
Maybe she was fooling herself that Poller and the others in Lesk’s crew didn’t know who she was, didn’t know she was with Asti and Verci. It wasn’t like she had been particularly careful before they did the Emporium. It wasn’t like Kimber hadn’t known she worked with them. Probably Poller did as well.
But she didn’t know them yet.
As much as she wanted to pay someone—anyone—back for what happened to her boys, she knew she couldn’t just crash in there and crack skulls. She could scrap, but she wasn’t a fighter, not the way Asti was.
She needed to do this like Asti. Watch. Listen. Learn.
She hid her knives under her coat. She wrapped the rope around her waist like a belt. She shouldn’t need those things, not tonight. Not if things went right. She went into an alley, found some refuse and dirt, and smudged up her face.
Mila went the rest of the way to the Shack, placing herself on the corner with her hat out once she was in sight.
Three hours later, she had made a fair number of crowns. If she had needed money, it would have been a good night. But she had learned little. The Shack was definitely a Scratch Cats hole—they were coming and going throughout the night. But if they were working something or planning anything unusual for the night, she hadn’t heard anything.
“You need to stop being so scared, sjat?” Heavy accent. Mila glanced up. Tall woman, blonde hair, cropped short. Stupid hat. This had to be Ia.
“I’m not scared, I’m cautious,” her companion said. Skinny rat of a man. “We shouldn’t do anything unless we know what Rynax is doing.”
“Rynax is a nothing,” Ia said. “He was a washed out nothing before the fire, and he still is. Whatever he’s doing doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t be so sure,” he said. “The Old Lady always liked him and his brother. He’s got roots.”
“I don’t know roots. I don’t know the Old Lady.”
“Just because—”
“I do not care. The Old Lady, she does not matter. The snow is on the wind, and we can smell it.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Bardinic saying. It means a storm is coming and we must be ready,” she said, leading her friend down the street. “Treggin doesn’t care what Rynax does, and neither should we.”
There was that name again. Mila wanted to follow them, hear more of what Ia and the other one were saying. But there was no way she could do that without being noticed. Too conspicuous on empty streets.
“Hey, girl,” someone came out of the alley right by her. “What you got for me?” Boy about her age. Scratch Cat mark on his face. His hand grabbed her upper arm quick and hard.
“You want something from me?” Mila gave her best soft coo, which probably still sounded ridiculous.
“Why you hanging around here?”
“Oh,” she said in a breathy whisper. “I was looking for a Scratch Cat to play with.”
“Were you now?” He pulled her close to him. “Well, you found one.”
“Good,” she said. With her free hand, she pulled one of the knives out of her belt and sunk it into his belly. He struggled to grab his own weapon, but she pushed him deeper into the alley, twisting the blade. He was twitching and struggling with her, but that meant he stopped holding her arm, so she managed to pull his knife from his belt and throw it away.
“So, Scratch Cat, were you on the stomp today on Bessie’s Boys?”
“The what?”
“A bunch of Scratch Cats hit some boys, in the old assembly house. Kids. You part of that?”
“Just clearing out the trash,” he said, coughing and flailing with his arm. He was trying to give a fight, but he was already too weak.
“Who ordered it?”
“Came from . . . from . . . Poller. Why do you care?”
“Those are Bessie’s Boys. Can you guess who I am?”
The Cat could barely speak. “B—Bessie?”
“Tell that to the sinner that claims you,” Mila said.
She pulled out her knife and let him drop. She wiped the blood off on his pants and skirted off down the alley. There was little point to staying. No need to hang around and have that body stuck to her. It was enough of a message for now. She even dropped half the money she made tonight onto his body, so they wouldn’t think he was killed for coin.
She wasn’t any less angry. This didn’t change anything.
She needed to clear her head, come up with a plan, know what was going on. But clearl
y, whatever was going on involved this “Treggin”. Not some random name that Helene had heard. So now, go to the goxie shop and sleep. She’d go see the Old Lady in the morning.
Not that she and Miss Josie had ever exchanged more than a few words, but it was time for that to change.
* * *
Verci stood over the kitchen table, admiring his sketch of the interiors of the Henterman household. For a sketch based on Asti’s descriptions, he felt pretty good about it.
He didn’t feel good about any sort of straight burgle. Walls were high, too much open ground between the walls and the household. Lower windows were iron barred, doors had double latches. And Asti had counted at least six house guards, armed with crossbows and swords. Probably all ex-army, based on Asti’s assessment of them.
“You’ve got it solid,” Asti said, leaning over him while chewing on some concoction Kennith had made.
“Don’t eat that over my sketches,” Verci said. “Saints, it’ll stain if it drips.”
“Sorry,” Asti said, stepping back. “Kennith, I don’t know what the blazes this is, and it’s burning the ever-loving sewage out of my mouth, but saints is it good.”
“Ain’t it?” Kennith said, grinning to himself. “If I got to be stuck in this place, at least I can make it smell and taste good.”
The three of them were the only ones still awake in the safehouse. Helene was passed out on the couch, Julie on the floor next to her. Vellun had taken off around eight bells, presumably to meet up with Pilsen for something or another. Win had been given quarters in the Henterman household. That was good for access, but it made getting word to and from him challenging. Asti and Julie could come back here each night, but they had to take pains to not be seen together.
“How else is it going?” Verci asked.
“It’s work. You’d probably like it, but I’m rutting exhausted. And Helene’s taken the couch.”
“And the bed is Ken’s.”
“The bed is Ken’s,” Asti said. “He’s earned that. So where are you sleeping?”
“Oh, it’s easy,” Verci said. He wheeled his chair away from the table, and then locked the wheels. Then he pulled a lever, and the chair leaned back. “Saints be damned, it’s like I’m in bed.”
Lady Henterman's Wardrobe Page 12
