“You think?” said Fowler. She was leaning against the opposite wall, head back. “Did your finely honed instincts tell you that, or was it my people saving your sorry ass that tipped you off?”
“A little of both,” I said, “but I appreciate the ass-saving more.”
“Damn well better,” she said. There was a strange catch in her voice, and I looked up to find her staring at me across the narrow space. “How long, Drothe?” she said.
“How long what?”
“How long have you been working for Kells?”
I froze. It was the last thing I had expected her, expected anyone, to say. Kells? How the hell had she connected me to Kells?
I blinked and tried to look more insulted than surprised. “What?” I stood up straight. “Where did you hear that?”
“Never mind,” she said. “Just tell me. How long?”
“I don’t—”
“How long?”
I glanced toward the street out of habit, then back down the hallway behind us.
Fowler tensed, likely wondering if I was going to run, or maybe remove a suddenly inconvenient witness. I shook my head to reassure her. She’d just saved my life and put her whole crew at risk in the process; I wasn’t about to dust her. She was Fowler.
Besides, she knew, which meant other people did, too.
“How did you find out?” I said.
Fowler slapped me. Hard. “You just told me now, you son of a bitch!” she yelled.
I had stepped right into that one. Dumb. “All right, clever girl,” I said. “Congratulations. You got me. Now, tell me how you knew to ask.”
“Tell me how long, first.”
“I’m the one who just had two Arms sent after him by Nicco,” I said. “It’s
my
turn to ask a question, so be patient and wait your turn.”
I watched her jaw work for a moment before she gave a grudging nod.
“It’s been coming from inside Nicco’s organization,” she said. “I only heard because of . . . Well, we’ll get to that in a minute. But word is he’s decided you’re a liability.”
“I doubt he used the word ‘liability,’ ” I said. “Liability” wasn’t nearly colorful enough for what Nicco would be feeling when it came to me and Kells.
“Probably a safe bet,” said Fowler. “Anyhow, from what I hear, some people are having a hard time believing you’d turn-cloak like that. Others are calling you a ‘Long Nose’ without batting an eye.” Fowler paused to give me a caustic look. “But either way, Nicco’s cut you loose, so it’s open season on your ass. Good thing you weren’t the kind to make enemies when you were under Nicco, right?”
“Yeah, good thing,” I said drily. I’d been a Nose; part of my job, by default, was making enemies. “Any idea
how
the story got started? From inside, I mean?”
Fowler shook her head. “None. Like I said, I was lucky to find out it was going around when I did. If he hadn’t broken into your place in the . . .”
“Wait,” I said. “Nicco broke into
my
place?”
Fowler looked up and down the street from the doorway. “I’d rather not talk about this here, in his territory, especially after what I just did to two of his people. Let’s get out of here first, all right?”
I didn’t argue. We headed out into the street. Fowler took us on a roundabout route, full of sudden turns and double-backs. Eventually, we ended up on a quiet side street in Rustwater cordon, just outside Nicco’s territory.
“So, how long?” she asked again.
“I thought we were still on my turn,” I said.
“Just answer the damn question, will you?”
I took a deep breath. “I’ve belonged to Kells since the beginning.”
A brief silence, then, “You fuck.”
It was about what I had expected. It’s one thing to talk about the idea of a Long Nose, but quite another to find out someone you know has been lying to you from the day you met him. It’s not personal, the lie, but people have a hard time seeing it that way. All they know is that you’ve been keeping something big from them for years. And with Fowler, it ran even deeper. Our occasional bedroom romps aside, she’d lost people keeping me alive. She’d put her life and reputation and crew on the line for me; in exchange, I’d hid who I was and what I did from her.
“Do you want out?” I said.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.” Fowler swore and kicked at a stone on the street. “Dammit, Drothe, why’d you have to be a cross-cove?”
“I’m
not
a cross-cove,” I said. “I came into Nicco’s organization working for Kells, and I never turned on him. It only looks dirty from the outside. I’m straight—it’s just the work that’s crooked.”
Fowler didn’t seem convinced, but then she’s never been one to appreciate a finely split hair. “I don’t think Nicco’s going to take it quite so philosophically,” she said.
“We’ve already established that,” I said.
“And I don’t think you will, either, once I fill in a few details.”
I glanced at her sidelong but kept walking. “Go on.”
“The place wasn’t exactly empty when Nicco came looking for you,” said Fowler. “The apothecary was there.”
“Eppyris?” I stopped in the middle of the street. “I thought he’d gotten Cosima and the girls out.”
“The woman and the girls, yes,” said Fowler. “But he stayed on.”
“And when Nicco came?”
“He and his boys worked him over,” she said.
There was more. I could feel it, hanging in the air between us.
“And?” I said.
Fowler cleared her throat. “When they were done,” she said, “Nicco made him open the door to your rooms.”
The door to my rooms. Oh. Oh shit.
“By the time I got to him,” continued Fowler, “he was closer to dead than alive. We managed to get a carver in to sew him up and stop the worst bleeding.”
“How bad?” I said.
“Between the beating and your . . . and the traps. Crippled at least, maybe blind. I found out from a neighbor where the wife and daughters were. I had Scratch and Rook take him there after the carver was done.”
“Will he live?”
Fowler shrugged.
I tried to imagine Eppyris without his apothecary shop, Cosima and the girls without him. It came all too easily. I pushed the images aside.
“How did Nicco get so close?” I said.
“What?” said Fowler.
“How did Nicco get so close to my place?” I said, my voice rising. “Where the hell were you and your people when all this was happening?”
“Don’t,” said Fowler. “Don’t you
dare
! Yesterday, as far as I knew, you were still working for Nicco. If I’d known what was going to happen, I would have dusted the big bastard myself. But he was your boss—I didn’t have any reason to stop him! We didn’t know it had happened until they came out, wiping the blood off their hands.”
“And you just let them walk?” I said.
“He was your fucking boss!”
she said. “Maybe, just
maybe
, if I’d known you didn’t actually work for him, and that you wouldn’t cut my throat for cutting
his
, I might have stepped in. But I didn’t know that, so I stayed put.”
“So you let Nicco just—”
“Damn it, Drothe!” said Fowler. “
You weren’t home.
My job is to protect
you
, not everyone who walks in and out of the damn front door!”
I opened my mouth, hesitated, closed it again. Raging at her wouldn’t solve anything.
I
was the one who had promised to keep Eppyris and Cosima and the girls safe, not Fowler. Me. And after all my promises and precautions and bravado, I still hadn’t kept the Kin away. I hadn’t kept Nicco away.
But I would handle that. Someway, somehow, I’d pay that bastard back. Revenge couldn’t help Eppyris, and I knew it would supply no comfort to Cosima, but it was something Nicco and I understood. He had come after me because, in his eyes, I had betrayed him; I’d go after him not only to protect myself, but because he’d bloodied someone under my protection, in my own home. It was street justice, simple math that any Kin understood, and it needed to be settled. Instead of just dusting me, Nicco had gone out of his way to humiliate and insult me. If I ever wanted to be able to hold my head up among the Kin again, I had to address that fact—personally.
I started walking again. All of a sudden, the shaded silence of the side street seemed oppressive. I needed people around me.
“Is anyone watching Eppyris and his family?” I said. I wouldn’t put it past Nicco to track them down, just to hurt me more.
“I have Rook hanging around their street,” said Fowler.
“Put three more on them,” I said, turning onto Tumble Downs. It was the main thoroughfare in Rustwater cordon, and we hit it right near the central square. There were people and traffic and shop fronts all around us, and I suddenly felt better for it. “And yourself,” I added. “I want them well guarded.”
“That doesn’t leave anyone to cover you,” said Fowler, slipping closer to me so we wouldn’t get separated by the crowd.
“I can handle myself.”
“Right,” said Fowler, “because that’s been working so well for you up until now.”
“With the number of Kin I have after me at this point,” I said, “I may be better off without a slew of people trailing after . . . Holy Angels!”
“What?” snapped Fowler, her hand immediately going to her knife.
I didn’t answer. Instead, I stopped in the middle of the street and stared, ignoring the traffic that split and flowed and cursed its way around me. There had been a gap in the people a moment ago—a gap that had let me see a face. I stood and waited.
The gap came again. Yes. There.
I immediately began pushing my way through the throng.
“Drothe?” said Fowler from behind me, sounding more annoyed than anxious.
I ignored her. My whole attention was fixed on the tall, thin man standing in the open air of a street-side barber’s stall. He had just gotten out of one of the wooden chairs. He was busy wiping his face with a towel to remove the last of the shaving soap.
“Baldezar,” I whispered to myself, invoking the name to make it true. “Angels, let him be dumb enough to be standing there in the open.”
As if in answer to my prayer, the man turned, a coin glinting in his hand as he reached to pay the woman who had shaved him. It was the Jarkman.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
I quickened my pace, my hand going to the dagger on my belt as I dodged through the press around me. Behind, I could hear Fowler calling my name again. She sounded farther away.
Not far enough, though, as it turned out. As Fowler shouted out my name a third time, Baldezar’s head snapped up and swung toward the street. I tried to duck behind a passing cart but wasn’t fast enough. Baldezar’s eyes grew wide as they lighted on me, and then he was off, sprinting down the street.
Idiot,
I thought as I rushed after him. Idiot me for not giving Fowler a sign to keep quiet; idiot him for leaving the barbershop. There are very few places we Kin will not happily kill one another, but a barber’s place of business is one of them. It’s as close as our kind comes to giving sanctuary. The truce between the Kin and the Sisterhood of Barbers had been in force for almost one hundred and eighty years—ever since the Seven Months of the Razor, just after Isidore’s death—and I wasn’t about to break it for Baldezar, no matter how badly I wanted him. If he had stayed in the shop, I couldn’t have touched him, but as soon as he hit the street . . .
I cursed almost continually as I dodged and shoved my way through the press of bodies. I could make out the back of Baldezar’s head now and then, bobbing above the crowd even as mine stayed well below it.
He took his first right, then a quick left. I stayed with him and even began to close the distance. Baldezar might have the longer stride, but I could duck through the gaps in the crowd more easily. I allowed myself a feral smile. All I needed to do was keep pace. He was a scribe—how far could he run?
As it turned out, farther than I would have liked. Maybe it was all the stairs I’d just run with Fowler; maybe I was pushing too hard; or maybe Jelem’s glimmer hadn’t finished its job yet; regardless, by the time Baldezar began to show signs of wearing down, my left leg was stiffening up. I gritted my teeth and tried to keep pace. It only made things worse. Baldezar nearly fell as he turned onto an empty side street, but, try as I might, I couldn’t take advantage of it. He might be weaving and stumbling like a drunk, but it was still better than the old soldier’s limp I was forced to imitate.
That was when Fowler sprinted past me, arms pumping, hat jammed down firmly on her head, hair flying out from beneath it. I don’t know how fast she was running, but, to me at that moment, it looked as if she could have given the wind a good race. I slowed further and admired the fit of her leggings as she closed on Baldezar.