Defiant (30 page)

Cig’s eyes hardened as the silence extended. “And the king has called for
you,
Jamie. When we’re done here, he wants you. At Everoot.”

Jamie controlled his start. “Everoot? The king is at Windsor.”

Cig shook his head. “This matter was important enough to bring him riding north. Where are you staying?”

“Ry is securing our lodgings,” Jamie said evenly. “I am to meet up with him.”

“Where?”

Jamie hesitated, for perhaps a second too long, he reflected later. The mercenary’s eyes slid back to Eva. “That good? She’s a pretty piece.” He gave a crude grin. “I shall not tell the king you were distracted.”

“I do not care if you do or if you don’t,” Jamie said coldly.

“As you will, Jamie. You are lead. As always.”

“Where is the auction to take place?”

Cig smiled shrewdly. “Where are you staying?”

They stared at each other. Cig’s eyes drifted back to Eva. “Mayhap we can share her.”

The sounds of the busy street faded to a low drone. Jamie thrust out his arm, indicating the alley. “There are but two more things.” They stepped into the narrow passage.

Cig turned to him. “Aye?”

“You have a foul mouth,” Jamie said, and punched him in the face. “And I do not share.”

The mercenary staggered backward, his feet slipping out from beneath him on the rounded cobbles. Jamie swung again, and there was a crack of bone. It felt good to swing and punch. No wonder Ry grew weary of the fights; they were Jamie’s way of making the blood surge through his body, of releasing pent-up energy so it was not all pooled inside him, dammed by reason and good cause. For twenty years, the answer to
when
? was always
Later.

A slight to Eva meant this answer became
now.

Cig hit the cobbles with a thud. Blood poured out of his nose and perhaps his mouth too; it was hard to tell where it was all coming from. Vagrants and stray dogs in the alley scurried away. Gushing blood and cursing, Cig scrabbled for his sword.

Jamie kicked the blade away, catching Cig on the underside of his chin, making the back of his head smash against the ground. He dropped to a knee and hauled Cig’s shoulders up. His head was lolling and his eyes kept shutting; then they rolled back in his head entirely and he went limp.

Jamie bent close and listened; Cig was still breathing. Glancing up, he saw a boy scurrying by. The urchin looked at him, then Cig, and turned to bolt. Just before he spun, Jamie
pinched a coin between his thumb and forefinger and held it up in the air. It glinted in the sunset light, the way Cig’s surcoat had. The boy froze, midturn.

“Bring the constable,” Jamie said quietly. “This man was wild. Too much drink.”

The boy hesitated, pitched his shoulders forward, and sniffed the air in an exaggerated way. “He don’t smell like it.”

“He will,” Jamie said grimly, getting to his feet.

The boy squinted one eye suspiciously. “Is he a bad sort?”

“The worst,” Jamie replied gravely. “He claims for the king.”

The edge of the boy’s lips curled in derision. Jamie extended the coin. “Is your word good?”

Something warred in his dirty, pinched face. Then he nodded, snatched the coin, and dashed off. “I’ll bring ’em, milord!” he shouted over his shoulder. “The ’ole Watch. It’s the blacksmythe’s night, milord!” he added in what could only be considered a tone of glee.

“Do not call me that,” Jamie muttered. He purchased a small beaker of ale from a tavern, poured it all over Cig, then turned out of the alley and walked back to Eva.

I
T
was two hours before Cig’s men found him and unlashed him. He was seething with anger, battered, and missing all the coin he’d had on him for negotiations.

“Send word to the king,” he snarled when his men freed him. He clambered to his feet, rubbing his wrists, and glared up the street. “Jamie has turned.”

J
amie strode back to Eva’s side as the world of the living raced home around her. She stood like only a hunted thing could, somehow managing to blend in with rock and wicker, and looking as if she were about to bolt.

But for her pale face and dark hair, she was brightness. She might be tromping through this shit field as deeply as he, but she did not stink of it. She was clean and clear and better than all this.

Jamie had not met many people who were better than the things they were doing. People’s sunken lives generally reflected sunken hearts. But Eva was bright and clear, like a little star.

“I was not sure if you would try to run,” he said as he drew near. They started walking.

She sniffed. “You may yet prove passing helpful in retrieving Father Peter.”

He snorted. “You vastly underestimate your use of the word
may.
And
passing.
And
helpful
.”

“If we must indeed assail people with swords and other sharp things,” she explained stiffly, “you shall prove passing useful. If, however, we must sidle up like stealthy things, perhaps your big and bold arrogance will bedevil us all, Jamie.”

He was walking half a step behind her and bent by her ear as he steered her toward a doorway on the right.

“You forget, Eva, I sidled up on you in an alley in London.” She inhaled slowly. “I sidled up on the last man I killed, as I will likely do the next. Shall we compare our sidling skills? Stealth is how I live my life, woman, and I do it in the cities, under the king’s eye, not hiding in the woods like you and the last wolves.”

He straightened and saw Ry coming out of the shadows, as agreed. Ry stepped up behind Eva as Jamie rapped sharply on the door. She started slightly at Ry’s unexpected appearance, and how closely he crowded in behind her.

“Roger?” Jamie murmured to Ry. Eva looked between them sharply.

“Stabling the horses at an inn, the White Heart.”

“Good. I had a visitor.”

Ry glanced over. “Who?”

“Cig.”

Ry’s brows went up. Heavy footsteps thudded inside, and the door swung open.

Eva’s face paled as she looked up a foot into the eyes of the huge, one-eyed Scotsman standing in the doorway. She took a reflexive step back and hit the wall of Ry. His arms went up, cupping her sides. Jamie stood to her right.

Realization swept over her features like a rainstorm, transforming them from confusion to fear to fury. She turned to glare at Jamie. For what seemed like the hundredth time, he closed his hand around her elbow to keep her from running away.

The Scotsman took swift appraisal of them, starting with Jamie, then ending on him as well. “Jamie Lost,” he muttered. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I need something.”

The Scotsman gave a bark of unfriendly laughter. “Ye need a whole mess o’ things, far as I can see, boyo.”

“You’ve never seen far, Angus. Let us in.”

He glanced at Ry, barely registering Eva, then back to Jamie. “Why?”

“Because I will make you sorry, once again, that you ever crossed me.”

He scowled, but swung the door wide. “I do it for the debt. Quick, now.”

Jamie didn’t say anything, just pushed Eva past him into the small apartment. Ry followed.

“I have changed my mind,” she spat, pushing dark hair out of her face as they bustled inside.

Her mind?

Jamie maneuvered her by the elbow to the center of the room just as Angus swung the door shut. For a moment, they were plunged into silence and darkness. Slowly their eyes adjusted, and the pale glow from a window on the far north side of the hut illuminated the room enough so they were all shadowy figures standing in a jagged semicircle in the center of the room.

“I can never be your friend,” she announced, looking straight at Ry.

Jamie looked at Ry too. Ry looked at him. Angus looked confused.

“Never,” she repeated firmly.

Ry? Never be Ry’s friend? When had she considered being his friend? And not Jamie’s?

He turned to Angus. “We need to talk.”

Angus gave a twisted grin. “Ye’ve confused me with yer confessor. The rebels have renounced their fealty. I hear they’ve even taken the City. What is your bloody king going ta do now?”

“Dismember you, should you not cooperate.”

Angus turned and strode to a back room. Jamie dropped Eva’s elbow. He hesitated, made as if to speak.

Her hand shot up, warding off the words. “I care not what
you have to say. You are leaving me here, with him? And what will you tell Gog? A lie. You
are
a lie. I wish for nothing more from you. Not even—”

She stopped. Simply stopped talking, her words falling like pebbles off a cliff, into silence, leaving a quietly burning fire and far too many ways to finish the sentence.

She stared at the wall, her slim, curving figure in a tattered blue gown. Her profile was all pale lines of sculpted jaw and those sensuous, crooked lips. Around her shoulders, thick dark hair streamed down to the perfect curve that was the small of her back. He needed more time with her, more touching, more of her pale skin and dark hair and devoted attention and—

“Jamie,” Ry said quietly. “I’ll stay with her.”

Eva didn’t move. Jamie jerked away and without a word followed Angus into the back room.

“I
need you to keep her here.”

“Her?” Angus glanced at the door. “The girl?”

“Aye.”

Angus hesitated, then gave a clipped nod. “How long?”

“Not long a’tall. Ry and I have some business this night. Keep her a few days, until”—Jamie hesitated—“things calm down. After that, she can leave.”

“Simple enough.”

“Don’t let her fool you.”

“Fool me?”

Jamie looked at him coldly. “Trick you.”

“That was a long time ago, Jamie.”

“Seems like yesterday. She is . . . clever.” An understatement akin to
it is cold in winter.

“Clever how?”

“She might ask for a drink, and when you return with it, she’ll be gone. Clever like that.”

Angus shrugged. “I’ll not offer her so much as a drop of water.”

Jamie’s face hardened. “Give her water. Food. Wine. Do not touch her.”

Angus’s face flooded red, his fists clenched at his sides. “I will no’
touch
her. You know that.”

Jamie pushed to his feet. “And do not let her escape, at least before the morrow.”

Angus’s voice dropped into an octave heard usually from chanters, low and reverberating. “I owe a debt, Lost. If holding her is the repayment, I’ll hold her till Michaelmas. But this is me, paying it, right now. I’m squared after this. Do ye hear me?”

“I hear you. Now you hear me: do not be fooled.”

He looked outraged. “She’ll no’ escape! Why do ye keep sayin’ she’ll escape?”

“Because she will. Just not before tomorrow night, when we’re far gone.” He turned for the door, then paused at its threshold. “And, Angus?”

“Aye?” he snarled.

Jamie looked over his shoulder. “The debt is paid when I say ’tis. If anything so much as scars her little finger, I will hunt you down for the rest of your days. Then I will end them.”

He shut the door behind him.

E
va listened to Jamie’s boots tromp away, without so much as a good-bye. Not the boots, the man.

So this is what she’d been reduced to. She ought to be thinking about what would happen next, how she would get away. She ought to be angry, planning how to find Roger, how to make Jamie pay.

Instead, at the realization he was leaving her behind, it felt as if her heart started breaking into translucent bits, like crystallized honey, thrown to the ground and stomped upon. Far more force than required. Smashed, when all it had needed was to be melted down.

“Y
OU
did not take your leave of her,” Ry said as they strode down the mostly uncobbled streets.

“My
leave
?” Jamie ducked below a low-hanging sign thrust above the doorway of a home-cum-alehouse. “You cannot mean say good-bye?”

Ry shrugged. “These are words you know, concepts familiar to many. ’Tis a courtesy.”

“I am not chivalrous, I am not courteous. Nor is she.” Jamie scowled at a woman closing up a shop of sewing needles. “She
is a hellion. Mayhap you recall she tried to stick me with a blade? And she started a quayside brawl, and—”

“I know what she did to you, Jamie,” Ry interrupted in the quiet voice that harkened to unnecessary things, such as conversations about what Eva did to Jamie. Which, he reminded himself, was naught.

“So why did you take her to Angus?”

Jamie looked up at the windows above. A few shutters were pushed wide for the evening spring air, candlelight reflecting off the walls inside. From a distant church, the sound of monks singing evensong floated through the streets. “Is there a reason we are speaking about this?”

“Since you just left her imprisoned with someone who despises you, aye, I thought it warranted a bit of attention.”

“You’d do better attending the chamber pot about to be dumped on your head.”

Ry leapt to the side of the street just as the arc of piss water came raining down into the gutter of the street.

“To get her out of the way. The risk of her disrupting our mission is too great.”

Jamie did not admit this was because of himself. Himself, with her self. Her vivid, unforeseen, remarkable self.

“Not to protect her?”

Jamie snapped his gaze over, all traces of strained tolerance gone. “I do not protect.”

“You protect the king.”

“I guard the king, with an end in mind.”

“And have you no intent for Eva?”