Scholar's Plot (24 page)

And I led Lady Katherine, fine court clothes and all, into the darkest, dirtiest alley I could find, looking for a hideout.

I leapt the fallen man’s body and darted into the street. One flashing glance told me the direction in which Fisk and Kathy fled, and I paused long enough to make sure the man I’d tripped could see me before I headed off in the other.

I was not as dismayed as mayhap I should have been. From my post at the door, I’d seen that Fisk and Kathy had the matter in hand. Now, hearing heavy footsteps racing after me, I was glad I hadn’t been forced to go to their aid — for more than one reason.

Ever since I’d heard Professor Dayless’ theories, I’d been wanting to test them — or rather to push them even further, by trying to shape the form my magic took.

Since the chance to do so would only arise if I was in dire danger, I’d chosen not to mention my plan to Fisk, who objects to that kind of thing. But now I was in danger, for the large angry man whose honor Fisk had impugned might well take his annoyance out on me.

The professor had said magic was in the mind, but to me it felt like a well of some glowing viscous substance, deep in my gut, with a stone slab atop it. That power now stirred uneasily, but the lid stayed firmly in place.

Clearly, I wasn’t yet frightened enough. Would it be too reckless to let the fellow corner me, mayhap strike me a time or two?

Probably, but as I ran toward the river docks another idea took shape. Could I use magic — which had worked upon the air to save me once before — to form a bubble of air around my head? ’Twould not do to get too deep in the river, for in those currents even a strong swimmer might be swept away. But near the bank it should be safe to experiment, to see if I could carry down enough air to breathe for a short time, and remain under the surface till my pursuer departed.

The footsteps didn’t seem to grow nearer or fall back. I risked a glance behind and saw him running steadily, a determined look on his coarse features. I’d seen the way he treated his poor sister — if Fisk’s accusation was true, I’m sure he bullied her into cheating for him. ’Twould be a pleasure to trick this man, and I began 
to form the bubble in my mind. I could almost see a thin skin of magic, rising in a perfect sphere about 
my head and shoulders to allow me to go on breathing when the water closed over it … but the lid on my 
magic stayed shut.

I was thinking, not panicking, and according to the professor these calm thoughts were what latched that lid in place.

Mayhap I had to be closer to the threat? As I ran down the road that fronted the riverside docks, its barges and warehouses only half visible in the light of the rising Green Moon, I began looking for someplace that both gave access to the river and would allow the hunter to corner me. Then I saw it; a long covered pier, extending out into the river for some distance, and mayhap open to the water inside. The doors were closed, but it looked as if a simple lever would lift the latch.

Ordinarily, I’d never allow myself to be trapped in such a place … but when would I next have a chance to test my theory? I had to seize it.

I pressed the lever and swung one big door wide. Inside, the first section was more warehouse than dock, holding bundles of cut wood and pallets of brick, loads too heavy and bulky for anyone to steal. Only as I ran down the dock did I see that next came a section in which one side of the building had been opened to the water, so the flat riverboats could pull up and load under shelter. On the dry side of the pier, bundles of cut hay were stacked, likely awaiting transport to Crown City. They covered half the floor with no space between them, leaving me nowhere to hide.

This might not have been as good an idea as it once seemed. My stomach sinking, I turned back just in time to see the big man step inside and close the great doors. He took in the room, and my position in it with a swift glance, then picked up a loop of wire that hung on a nearby pillar. I hadn’t long to wonder what he wanted with it, for he wrapped the latch closed, four loops of wire and the ends twisted. It could be easily undone, but ’twould take some time. Time I wasn’t likely to get.

I expected him to rush forward when he finished, but he moved with deliberation, reaching out to sort through a tool pile and extract a boat hook.

I found myself backing down the dock without making a conscious choice to move, a chill running down my nerves. Boat hooks are neither heavy nor sharp, but they’re sturdy, and it extended his already superior reach six feet. If I couldn’t wrest it from his grasp, which was unlikely with a man that strong, he could beat me to a pulp without ever coming into my reach.

A very bad idea.

“I’ve no quarrel with you, sir,” I said. “I’m not the one who accused you of cheating.”

“No.” The man drew nearer as his spoke. His voice was still deep, but no longer a furious roar. “But you’re with them. How did he know enough about our operation to set us up?”

This calm purpose was more frightening than his anger had been — faked anger, it seemed. But fear might still work in my favor.

My heart pounding, I backed out from under the roof and onto the open pier … where I found I’d made a misjudgment. We were deeper into the river than I’d wanted to go, and the light of the Green Moon rippled on the surface in a way that told of swift currents beneath. If I let myself be swept away, ’twould be hard to get back to shore.

Trying to convince him I wasn’t working with Fisk would be no use, but mayhap the truth would serve?

“He had no intention of setting you up. He’d no idea you’d be there. How could he? You came in after him, and added yourselves to the game, remember?”

“I do.”

The boat hook flashed out, without warning, and I barely managed to jump back in time.

“That’s why I need to know who betrayed us, and why.”

This man might not be nearly as dull-witted as he’d appeared, but his mind had fixed on his own conclusions. ’Twould not change, until I’d been beaten so badly no one could have kept silent.

I had to get out of here, had to hide…

We were nearly at the end of the pier now, moonlight glowing on the braided ripples where the pilings cut the current — too much current, too hard, too fast. But the shadows beneath the planks were dark … and 
my magic, finally, flowed sluggishly over the lip of its deep well.

I shaped the air bubble with all my mind, will and terror, and leapt off the up-current side of the pier.

There was no bubble. Water flowed over my face, my lips, and ran cold fingers through my hair. I was so startled by my failure that I hit the first piling before I realized the current was sweeping me along. I tried to grab the next dim shape as it brushed past — and missed. A rough band scraped across my chest and neck, and I grabbed wildly for it instead, the rope coarse and frayed, but solid under my hands.

The pull of the current against it raised me straight to the surface, not six feet from the pier where my assailant stared over the river. With me in the water and him swinging that accursed boat hook, the result of 
any fight was a forgone conclusion. I was about to release the rope and let the current take me, preferring the risk of drowning to the certainty of being badly beaten, when his gaze swept over me without pausing.

I blinked the water out of my eyes, hardly able to believe it, but he kept on looking, even kneeling down to look beneath the pier … only a few arms’ length 
from where I floated in plain sight. I kicked my feet to keep my head above the surface, taking care to make no sound, no splash to betray my presence. But how could he miss seeing me?

To my own sight, my magic now flowed strongly through my body, making my hands glow beneath the river’s skin like candle lanterns. He couldn’t see magic. Except mayhap the jeweler, I knew of none who could. But surely the moonlight showed me clearly!

Yet as I looked at the rippling water, around me there lay a patch of darkness several yards wide where far less light reflected off the waves.

I looked back at the Green Moon, two-thirds full and well-risen. If I saw it so clear, there was certain-
ly nothing to shadow me. And yet that curious dark patch remained. As the big man rose to his feet 
he looked around again, and again right at me … and 
he saw nothing.

He shrugged and walked back to the covered warehouse, his heels thumping hollowly on the planks.

He cast one more look back before he went inside, though this time he looked less at the area near the pier and more at the river downstream.

I stayed where I was, clutching my blessed rope with hands that grew colder by the minute. ’Twas some time later, far longer than it would take him to replace the boat hook and untwist his wire from the latch, before he came out from behind the corner of the warehouse and set off toward the Fighting Fish.

His size made him recognizable, even by moonlight. He turned his head several times, looking back at the pier and down the river. ’Twas only when he passed out of sight that the glow around my hands faded, and moonlight began to glint on the water around me.

I pulled myself up the pilings with hands numb with cold, even on this summer night. I felt as if I’d been in the river for an hour, though it must have been far less than that, and I clambered onto the dock with limbs that trembled and scuttled into the shadowed 
warehouse.

Eventually, I set off down the nearly deserted streets to Benton’s rooms. The socks inside my boots squished miserably with every step, though I’d poured them out twice. After some time passed, I finally stopped listening for footsteps behind me and was able to think about the results of my experiment.

The magic had come, in response to fear and need, just as I’d planned — though it had taken more fear and greater need than I cared for.

Why hadn’t it formed the bubble of air I’d wanted? 
I had thought of it, willed it with all my strength. Instead, it had hidden me. Not that I was complaining about that. In fact … in my heart, what I’d wanted was to hide. Not to breathe underwater, but to be hidden, safe from my pursuer. The magic had obliged, not my will — it had ignored that, as it usually did. It had obeyed the deepest wishes of my heart. This was good in one way, as I was alive and unharmed. But in the other… 
Professor Dayless’ theory was still intact, but it seemed to offer me little chance to turn this strange, unasked-for Gift into a useful tool.

As for the other experiment we’d attempted this night… I’d have to learn from Fisk why he’d revealed the other cheats, but it seemed that task had come to naught as well.

And my boots squished.

There were puddles in the alley, and given how long it had been since the last rain, I didn’t want to know what was in them.

Despite the narrowness of this gap between the buildings, Kathy had hoisted her skirts high. It wasn’t as if either of us could see where we were going, anyway. I bumped into two different barrels, probably set there to collect rain, and a sharp-edged crate that caught 
me on the shin. Kathy ran into something that clattered like a child’s block tower as it fell, and one piece of 
it got under my foot and rolled, nearly bringing both of us down.

By the time we reached the end and looked out into a moonlit stable yard, I was almost ready to go back to the streets and risk bumping into Squirrel. But even pitch dark alleys were preferable to an encounter with Pig, who might have lost Michael by now, so I looked around carefully before we emerged.

There was a large pen off to one side, with half a dozen oxen in it, and a very big stable with a huge load of tightly bound hay hanging up by the open doors 
of its loft. We were close to the river, and this was 
probably where freight drivers on the river road stabled their beasts, while they slept at some nearby inn.

The wagons those beasts hauled would be in the 
stable, which explained the heavy padlock on the door. If I had my lock picks with me, it would have been a great place to get out of sight … except for the fact that we’d no way to relock the door behind us. That missing lock would be clear as a signpost to anyone paying attention, and at this point I wasn’t about to 
underestimate either Pig or Squirrel’s intelligence.

“We have to go on,” Kathy said. “There’s no place to hide here.”

“Maybe there is,” I said, seized with a sudden idea. “How much do you think that bundle of hay hanging up there weighs?”

“About twenty-four stone,” country-girl Kathy said promptly. “Hay’s heavier than you’d think, packed tight like that. Why?”

“How much do the two of us weigh?”

“Mayhap twenty… Oh. Would that work? And how would we get down?”

“I could climb down the rope, and then lower you.”

“Without dropping me?”

“And there might be windows we could open from the inside.”

Despite her skepticism, she followed me across the yard to the stable.

“That pulley up there, it’s designed to let someone lift things heavier than they usually could. It should work in reverse, too. I bet that book we found had a formula for it.”

Thinking the process through, I took the loose rope that trailed from the cleat that held the load suspended, and tied two loops in it.

“Step into this.” I slid one loop under her foot. “And hold onto the rope above it.”

“Are you sure about this?” But she did as I asked, and I stepped into the other loop.

“Not entirely. But why not try? The worst that’s likely to happen is that the hay is too light to lift us, I refasten the rope, and we go on.”

I was unwrapping the rope from the cleat as I spoke, and I could feel the tension increasing.

“Or it could be so heavy it flings us into the air,” Kathy said. “Or against the wall, and we get knocked unconscious and fall and break our necks. Or end up hanging upside down from a broken leg, or—”

“Hang on,” I said, and the last twist of rope came free.

There were only a few feet of slack from the wraps, but I had only one hand on the rope I was undoing. I’d intended to release it slowly, but the weight of 
the hay yanked it through my grip at rope burn-inducing speed. The jerk on our looped feet would have knocked us down, if we hadn’t been holding the 
suddenly stiff rope above it. But once our weight started balancing the drop of the hay…

“’Tis like floating!”

I wasn’t sure floating entailed this much spin, but we were rising slowly now.

“’Tis like being lifted in some gentle giant’s ha—”

“Watch out!” The great mass of hay was descend-
ing toward our heads. “Push off! Push off! Take us around it!”

Since we had to keep one hand on the rope, we both had to push and pull our way around the huge, prickly bundle, but by dint of squirming, and a burst of panic on my part, we managed to keep from being crushed or knocked off the rope and slithered higher — quite high enough to kill us if we fell, by the time the ride ended.

Because of the extra rope twisted around the 
cleat and the height of the bundled hay, the bottom of the portal was closer to level with our ribs than with our feet. But since our counterweight had settled 
on the ground, the rope felt almost stable. A bit of swinging allowed us to half fall, bruisingly, over the threshold and wiggle into the loft. Which turns out 
to be hard to do if you’re wearing layer on layer of fluffy petticoats.

Thank goodness she wasn’t wearing hoops, or I don’t think we’d have managed.

“I should have disguised you as a boy.” I freed our feet, and hung the rope over a hook that was so handy it had probably been set there for that purpose. “Those skirts are a cursed nuisance.”

“I’ll admit, britches would be better for— Oh!”

Kathy wobbled on her feet, and then toppled into a pile of loose hay, but even her startled shriek had been sotto voce, so as not to attract attention.

“Did you turn an ankle?” I knelt and pulled off her shoes, preparing to check for swelling. It had better not be broken. We still had to get ourselves down and home, once I was reasonably certain Pig and Squirrel had moved on.

But it wasn’t her ankle that was broken — the heel of one of those fancy court shoes came off in my hand.

“Curse it. You can’t go home barefoot on the cobbles.”

“They weren’t designed for fighting and running in,” Kathy pointed out. “I’m surprised the silly things last-ed this long.”

She’d turned herself over in the hay, and was picking straws out of her rumpled hair.

The great Green Moon cast its light into the loft, sparkling on her spectacles, revealing the rueful amusement in her expression. Despite her fine court clothes, she looked no older than she had when we first met.

But that had been more than three years ago. She wasn’t fourteen, now.

The universe shifted beneath me, and began to revolve in a new direction. My heart was beating so hard my ears rang, and her slim feet were still in my hands so she felt me stiffen.

“Fisk? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m just glad you’re not hurt.”

So glad she was unhurt, and alive in the same world I was, that my whole body sang with joy.

But if nothing was wrong, there wasn’t much right, either. Even if I said something, and she reacted the way I so wanted her to — which she probably wouldn’t — the moment her father heard about this he’d clap her up in a tower, or marry her off to Rupert-the-Heir, or someone even worse. And as for what he’d do to me…

The baron had already seen one of his children run off with me, though Michael had been disowned at the time. I was pretty sure I’d end up dead if I tried to 
abscond with another. Particularly a child as precious to him as she must be.

“Fisk?”

My face was in the shadow, but I’d been sitting motionless too long. I let go of her feet, and turned as if to stare out at the yard. I should have been watching for pursuers, but in truth I paid so little attention it was a wonder I didn’t step over the edge. The only thing I was aware of was the soft rustling sounds Kathy made as she settled herself to wait. I wondered that she couldn’t hear the thunderous beat of my heart … but there was no reason for her to be as aware of me as I suddenly was of her.

And I didn’t dare try to change that. Her father would stop at nothing to separate us, the moment he found out. I couldn’t support her, either. I had no life but that of a roving con artist — which even
I
wouldn’t ask Kathy to share. Though with a bit of training, she might be quite good at… No. And I had no prospect of any other life.

“Fisk? What is it?”

“Nothing,” I said. Because it was nothing, and that wasn’t going to change. Even if she could be brought to feel something for me, her father… Be hanged to him,
Michael
might kill me for this.

“Are you sure ’tis nothing?” She came to stand beside me, but instead of looking out she was looking up at me. She smelled like sunlight on leaves… Why had I never noticed that before?

“Yes.” I had to clear my throat to go on. “Nothing out there.”

But what was here in the loft breathed and pulsed with life, growing stronger by the minute.

I had to get out of here. I had to give nothing away, get her home, and then run as fast and as far as I could.

Even though I was indebted to her, till Benton was proved innocent? Forget the legal debt — I really did owe her for getting me out of gaol.

And Michael? What did I owe him? And what about poor Benton, and even the jeweler…?

How had I ended up with so many people in my life who
mattered
? It might not have been Michael’s fault, but I had no hesitation blaming him for it, anyway.

“We have to get out of here,” I said aloud. “Let’s go down to the stable and find a window we can climb out of. Then I’ll take you home.”

Back to her brothers. Because no matter what else might happen, this woman wasn’t for me.