Heir of Danger (33 page)

As the tear in the world healed, a final voice rose like the dying shriek of millions. “
Erelth, skoa.
Soon.”

Macklins stood halfway down Cutpurse Row, the bow-front window fogged over with a half century or more of smoke and grime. From across the street, Brendan watched the crowds of vendors bearing carts of fish, crates of chickens, a knife grinder, a beefy-armed gentleman with stained teeth bearing what seemed an entire half a cow across his broad shoulders. The cries of the street merchants mingled with the screams of children shoving their way through the throng. A shout for a thief to stop. The bells of a nearby church. Beggars’ moans from dark doorways. The rattle of a noddy as it rumbled down the narrow street.

A buxom young woman winked at him from a nearby alley, bending over to retrieve a dropped handkerchief, allowing him a good long look at her bountiful wares. Hitched her skirts to her knees to give him a taste of what could be his for a few coins and a few minutes.

He tipped his hat with a smile, but remained where he was.

A blade pressed cold against his throat. “Tag. You’re it.”

For one heart-exploding moment, he thought it was over; then: “A little up and to the left and you can put us both out of our misery,” he replied, feeling the strength of Roseingrave’s hand behind the steel.

The knife withdrew. “Too easy, but if this is how you manage, it makes me wonder how you survived for so long.”

He’d never lost focus. He’d never let down his guard. And he’d never let himself indulge in stupid fantasies. That’s how he’d survived. Until the last few weeks. Until Elisabeth had tumbled back into his life.

He glanced once more up and down the street for signs he’d been followed. The young woman had retired into the alley with a sailor. The thief had been caught by a gang of enthusiastic youths who kicked and punched him as he rolled on the ground with his stolen loaf of bread.

“You’re here, make yourself useful. Any
Amhas-draoi
out there? Am I walking into an ambush?”

“Seems to me you already have.”

He shot her an evil look as she scanned the street, a small line between her brows. A tightness to her mouth. “None that I can sense. Now, suppose you tell me—”

“Let’s go.” He gave a sharp jerk of his head, forestalling further conversation. Stepped out of the alley without once looking back to see if she followed.

Crossing the street, he pushed open the door of the tavern. Smoke lay over the tables like a cloud. A maidservant yelled an order to the bar. A gruff shout came in answer. Men hunched over their tables, liquid escape hoarded between gnarled, work-hardened hands. The stench of spilled alcohol and the fug of unwashed humanity stung his eyes as he sought through the murk for sign of his cousin.

A hand lifted in weary greeting. A call to the maid for another beer. Brendan smiled. Success.

Threading his way through the tables, he grinned on hearing the dirty propositions and drunken catcalls following in his wake. At one point, a hand reached for Roseingrave. A startled yelp, and it was withdrawn in haste while she muttered warnings about what body parts would be stabbed next if the miscreant didn’t mind his beer and keep his hands to himself.

But it wasn’t the threatened man who answered with a startled oath but Jack O’Gara, whose face even in the tavern’s half-light drained to white. “Fuck all. What’s she doing here?”

“I still can’t believe my eyes, lad. It’s like staring at a ghost. I mean, here you sit. Alive. Barely changed from when I saw you last.”

“You need to clean your spectacles if that’s your opinion, Daz.” Brendan handled his untasted pint.

The old man pushed his glasses onto his forehead, blotting his bleary eyes with an enormous square of linen. Wiping his shiny forehead. Honking loudly into it before shoving it into the pocket of a gold-trimmed, once-scarlet, now-pink velvet coat.

Daz Ahern might have been of the opinion that Brendan remained unchanged in appearance, but the same could not be said of the great bear of a man Brendan remembered. He had a deflated look, as if the years had punched the life out of him. Shoulders hunched, hollowed chest, skin sagging on a once enormous frame. His hair had grown sparse and lank, his face ruddy with drink, and his gaze behind enormous spectacles held a myopic absentmindedness. To
top it off, he seemed to be attired in a stained, threadbare suit at least two decades out of fashion.

Daz had been Father’s closest friend. A jolly, happy-go-lucky mountain of a man who carried peppermints in his pockets and would pause in whatever he was doing to play with the children of Kilronan. A game of tag. A round of blindman’s bluff. Hide-and-seek. He’d been a favorite uncle. A doting, laughing adult in a childhood bracketed by a demanding father and a meek, inattentive mother.

Never allowed to breach the inner sanctum of the Nine’s meetings; still, he’d been an active participant in much of the group’s work. Assisting Father in his experiments. Helping him search for the Rywlkoth tapestry and the Sh’vad Tual when everyone called the old earl mad for investing his life in chasing legends. An adoring confidant who always felt privileged to be included.

It was only as Brendan had grown in years and in what he thought of as maturity that he had begun looking on Daz’s lively amiability with contempt and his unquestioning willingness to do whatever was asked of him with a cheery smile as a sign of weakness.

Yet Daz’s good-natured affection for Brendan had never wavered. And when events began spiraling out of control; when intimidation became a tool and murder a weapon; when the Nine’s influence spread like a disease and Father’s dreams of coexistence changed to a mania for supremacy—when Brendan could no longer ignore the voices invading his sleep and the guilt twisting his bowels—he’d turned in desperation to Daz and been surprised and relieved to discover his traitorous thoughts were shared by at least one other.

Together they’d sought to make amends. To halt the
encroaching madness of a march toward a war the
Other
could never hope to win. To satisfy the clamoring dead.

Daz rubbed his bulbous nose with one sausage finger. “When O’Gara arrived on my doorstep, I almost shot him.”

Brendan spun his pint round and round in circles upon the tabletop. “He gets that reaction a lot.”

And where was Jack, anyway?

He’d gone a rainbow of colors in the moments following Brendan’s arrival with Miss Roseingrave. White, then red, then a decidedly pucey shade of green. Brendan feared his cousin might be in danger of poisoning until he’d glanced at Helena Roseingrave and seen a matching multicolored display crossing her visage. Though she also looked as if her head might explode any second.

“You!” she’d hissed. At which point Jack had leapt to his feet, taken her by the arm despite her murderous glare, and hustled her away. The two had been gone for a while, necessitating a decision. Should Brendan remain here or start an alley-by-alley search for his cousin’s dead body? Would there be enough of him left to find?

“Thought the young gentleman was one of them come after me at last,” Daz commented, starting Brendan back to the matter and the man at hand with a heavy sigh.

He’d sent Jack to bring him old Archie’s ring. Not the whole bloody man. He wasn’t up to a frolic through old memories.

“Aidan says they won’t come now. Aidan says I’m safe from the
Amhas-draoi,
but I told him they remember.” He stuffed a hand into his pocket, a worried expression upon his features. “They won’t let it go. Not until we’re all gone. Until we’ve paid with our lives for what we did.”

“You’ve spoken with Aidan?”

Daz paused in his pocket-rummaging. “Aye, he came last spring with the diary and the girl.” Withdrew a cherry stone, a duck’s pinfeather, a small bent stick. Laid them out on the table. “Sweet thing, she was, though I don’t know if I believe the story of how they met. Apparently he caught her burgling his town house. Prettiest arch doxy I ever saw.”

Brendan gave a rough bark of laughter. “Aidan always did have a way with women.”

“He wanted to know about those days. Wanted to know about”—Daz lowered his voice—“him.” He stole a worried look over his shoulder. “I told him, Brendan. Told him all of it, even the worst bits. The parts we didn’t want to think about. The things we’d done. You and me and the others. Took it hard, he did. Don’t think he knew how far things had gone.”

“No, he hadn’t known any of it. Father and I agreed it was for the best.”

Though Brendan had wanted so many times to confide in his brother. He’d started so many letters to him in London before tossing them on the fire. At first afraid and then unable to involve his brother in what was growing to become an explosive situation. Best to keep him in London and safe out of the way.

Brendan’s hand tightened on the pint, the beer sloshing over his hand, but his voice remained calm. “His discovery of the truth was inevitable once Father’s diary came to his attention.”

“His Lordship’s more like the old earl than I imagined. Got his temper, for certes. He called me names. Cursed me for what I’d done. Threatened to kill me himself. I don’t blame him. I deserved that and more.”

Brendan swallowed around a sharp lump in his throat,
a tremble in his fingers. His older brother’s fury wasn’t unreasonable. He had nearly died for Brendan’s crimes. Still, it only emphasized Brendan’s isolation.

“It’s why I came with Mr. O’Gara. He didn’t want me to come. Said I’d slow him up, but I wouldn’t let him leave without me. Locked him in a cupboard until he promised to bring me to you. Can you ever forgive me, Brendan?”

“For telling Aidan the truth?”

“Not about young Kilronan, no. For telling”—another furtive glance around the room—“them. For betraying your trust. My fault. All my fault.”

“What are you talking about?”

Daz shoved himself back from the table. Slammed to his feet. Throwing the lapels of his coat open to reveal a grimy shirtfront. Squeezing his eyes shut. “Kill me! I deserve it!”

More than one startled fellow drinker looked up.

“Shhh, Daz. Sit down.”

“It’s no use, Brendan. I betrayed you to them. I deserve to die for what I did. Drive a dagger through my heart. Hilt-deep!”

Brendan laughed it off, casting a smile at the curious spectators. “It’s all right, everyone. An actor, you see. New stage production. Rehearsing his part. Jolly good, don’t you think?” Before turning his attention back to Daz, whispering, “Dash it all, man. Shut up and sit down before I gag you.”

“You’re right to be angry, Brendan. I sold you out. Offered up your life for mine. I was weak. But no longer. I’m here to pay my debt to you. A pistol. A knife. Choose your weapon.”

“Sit your bloody arse in the chair, man, and get ahold
of yourself.” Brendan shoved him back in his seat. “Here. Drink this.” He pushed the tankard in front of him.

The old man gulped it down, rivulets seeping over his sagging cheeks. He wiped his mouth the back of his hand. “Ta, son. I needed that. Good of you. A last drink before the end.”

“Daz, I am not going to kill you. Why—”

Daz reached across the table, grasping Brendan’s hand in both of his. Pumping it up and down. “You’re a great lad. Always knew it. Better than all of them. Didn’t have the madness in you. Not like the rest of them.”

“Debatable, but now’s not the time to—”

“A weight off my old chest. I’ve carried the guilt so long. Thought I’d sent you to your grave. Thought the
Amhas-draoi
had tracked you and killed you like the rest of them. My conscience wouldn’t rest. Then Aidan turned up telling me you were alive. Made up my mind then and there to face you and take my punishment.”

Brendan had the odd impression of wandering into the middle of a conversation or the end of someone else’s story. Though as Daz rambled a picture emerged. The answer to a question he’d carried for seven years: Why?

Why—after he’d sent word with Daz of his willingness to surrender the Sh’vad Tual into their hands—had they attacked him? Why had the
Amhas-draoi
hunted him with such persistence over the ensuing years?

He’d assumed the answer lay in the depth of his crimes. That Scathach and the brotherhood had proclaimed his death and would see anything less as failure to destroy all vestiges of the Nine.

“Slow down, Daz. What happened after I sent you to the
Amhas-draoi
?”

Ahern’s face crumpled, great leaking tears rolling down his blubbery jowls as he arranged and rearranged the feather, the stick, the cherry stone. Moving them this way and that. His gaze locked upon the strange patterns. “Went like we agreed. Did just as you said. None suspected me. None stopped me.”

“Did you speak to Scathach?”

“Aye, the warrior queen is as fierce as they say, Brendan. She just had to look at me and I felt as if she were picking my brain apart particle by particle. Seeing every guilty secret.” He whipped free his handkerchief, giving another horrid honk. “That’s when I failed. So many questions, all talking one over the other. Scathach never taking her eyes off me. I grew confused. Muddled in my thinking. Never meant to hurt you. Never meant to betray you. My fault, though. I claimed your information as mine. They never knew you’d sent me. . . .” Daz’s voice trailed off into a horrified, strangled whisper. “Never knew about you at all.”