“Got yerself a tail, guv,” the lad said softly.
Jacob gave a barely perceptible nod and kept walking. Sure enough, he heard footsteps behind him, trying to match his stride. A shadowy presence was betrayed by the slap of leather on cobbles every few steps. He chided himself for not paying attention before. As long as this business with the dagger was in play, he needed to stay focused on the game. Considering the way Julianne’s husband had died, it was clear the other side was playing for keeps.
He’d been as stubbornly blind as she, ignoring the dangers and pressing ahead.
When he came to the alley he usually cut down, he pressed himself into the shadows as soon as he rounded the corner. Jacob held his breath lest a puff of vapor in the cold night reveal his location.
The footsteps behind him quickened.
Jacob’s muscles tensed, ready to pounce. After the argument with Julianne, he almost welcomed the chance to throttle someone. His shadow rounded the corner.
It was another boy, smaller than Gil.
“What do you think you’re up to, lad?” he asked.
The boy startled and tried to run, but Jacob grabbed him by his grubby collar and held him fast. Despite his small size, he kicked like a Thoroughbred with a burr under his saddle and wasn’t above biting if Jacob gave him half a chance.
“Stop that or I’ll tan your backside for you,” Jacob ordered.
Gil came jogging up to them. “Let me have a whack at him, sir. I’ll knock some sense into his noggin.”
The boy stopped struggling then, as if sensing that while Jacob might not strike him, the older lad had no such compunction.
Jacob loosened his grip, but didn’t release the boy completely. “Now, who are you and why are you following me?”
“Me name’s Pete.” The boy scratched his head vigorously and then shoved his hands into his pockets. “I was told to keep an eye on ye.”
“By whom?”
Pete studied the hole in his left shoe where a broken-nailed toe protruded. “I can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“I don’t rightly know his name, see? And every time I ask someone what lives near him, they gives me this.” The boy’s fingers curled into the sign against evil. “And then they tells me I should keep my nose out of that beehive if I knows what’s good for me. But he pays, so I does what he tells me. A bloke’s got to eat, don’t he?”
“Let me guess at your employer,” Jacob said, releasing the boy completely since he seemed to have settled. “He’s a big chap, about my height, with blond hair. And he always wears black.”
The boy’s eyes grew round and he made the sign again.
“Sir Malcolm Ravenwood,” Jacob said to Gil. The older lad let out a low whistle. Evidently, he too was aware of Sir Malcolm’s reputation.
“What sort of thing do you tell him about me?” Jacob asked.
“Where ye go. Who ye see. Like that.”
“And he pays you for this?”
The boy named the insultingly low amount.
“Well, Pete, I have a proposition for you,” Jacob said. “I’ll pay you four times as much for you to report on Sir Malcolm to me.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that, sir.” The boy bobbed his head like a nervous sparrow. “He’d catch me at it sure.”
Jacob tapped his temple in thought. “Not if he thought you were hanging about in hopes that he’d hire you again.”
“Ye mean to get me sacked?” Pete said, clearly distraught.
“Exactly. It’s the only way you’ll be able to watch him safely.” Jacob fished some coins from his pocket and held them out to Pete. “Will you do it?”
“Aye, sir. I’ll be yer eyes on Sir Malcolm.”
“My distant eyes.” Jacob dropped the blunt into the boy’s outstretched hand. “I don’t want you caught and I’d be obliged if you didn’t return to him for your last report.”
“No, sir.”
“Now off with you and mind how you go.”
The boy scampered away clutching his newfound wealth.
Jacob turned to Gil, who was frowning after Pete. Clearly, he thought the boy had been rewarded overmuch for changing employers.
“I have an assignment for you that’s beyond your usual scope,” Jacob said. “It’ll mean a permanent place in my household, if you accept it.”
Gil straightened. “I accept.”
“Wait till you hear what it is. It’s not without risk,” Jacob warned. “I want you to go to Sir Malcolm and tell him you caught Pete skulking after me. Since you work for me, you felt obliged to protect me by beating the truth out of him. Then tell him you saw an opportunity. You know a lot more about me than Pete ever could and you’re willing to share what you know for the right price.”
“While I’m still workin’ for you?”
“Yes. He’s the sort who’ll appreciate the subtlety of a turncoat and think he’s stolen the march on us. In reality, you’ll be in a position to feed him only the information I want him to have,” Jacob said. “But look sharp, lad. The man is dangerous.”
One corner of the boy’s mouth turned up. “So is sleeping on the street.”
“Well, then, it looks as if we have an accord,” Jacob said. At least one thing had gone well this night. “Mrs. Trott will fix you a pallet in the kitchen for tonight and by tomorrow I’ll have figured out what I want you to tell Sir Malcolm at your first meeting.”
C
HAPTER
17
S
ir Malcolm eyed the boy who’d come calling shortly after daybreak. His name was Gilbert Stout. With his spotty cheeks and stringy hair, he didn’t look much like a Judas, but he offered to play the role. Malcolm judged Gil to be about fourteen, though his deep-set eyes seemed much older. Like most street urchins, poor food and constant scrambling had left him undersized for his age.
“And so, after I sent your lad Pete packing with a black eye for dogging my employer,” Gil said with a little swagger, “I says to meself, that Sir Malcolm Ravenwood’s like to be needing another bloke to help him, since Pete’s no good at all. I figure ye need someone what can get more information than a boy what just follows a body around is likely to hear. So here I am.”
When Malcolm merely sat in silence, the new boy cleared his throat and went on. “For example, I figured you’d want to know Mr. Preston broke it off with the lady he’s been squirin’ about.”
Malcolm knew this already. Since the countess had started spending so much time with Preston, his gazing ball had been cloudy whenever he tried to observe her. Last night, the magical orb was clear as a cold midnight sky and Preston was nowhere to be seen near the lady. “And you know this how?”
“He left the countess at Lord Kilmaine’s last night and nipped back to his own place,” Gil said. “I was in his kitchen eating a bite this morning—his housekeeper’s got a kind heart, ye see—and I hear Mr. Preston’s valet tell her as Himself wouldn’t be stirring from his bed till noon and didn’t want to be disturbed. Usually him and Lady Cambourne are out larkin’ about long before the rest of the upper crust, so it stands to reason he’s not dancin’ attendance on Lady C. no more. He don’t usually waste time on women once he leaves ’em. Though to hear Mr. Fenwick tell it, he’s taken to his bed over the lady. I expect he’ll be looking to meet up with her again in the future.”
“Hmph! Much as I appreciate the information, I have to wonder why you offer it,” Malcolm said. “You eat in the man’s kitchen and take his coin and yet you’re willing to turn on him?”
The boy frowned. “I can see where that might look bad, but think on it from my point, sir. A fellow like me has to shift for himself. Won’t no one else shift for me. I ask ye. Who’s a better employer for a likely lad looking for the main chance—a man who’s only got the chinks thanks to his brother the earl or a knight of the realm in his own right?”
The boy sketched a clumsy bow.
Malcolm recognized flattery when it reared its frilly head, but it pleased him all the same. “Yet what you’re actually proposing is to take payment from both of us?”
Gil gave him a crooked smile. “Well, ye’ve the right of it there, I expect, but then I’d have to, wouldn’t I? If Mr. Preston still thinks I’m his lad, he’ll keep me close and tell me the things ye’ll be wanting to hear.”
“But if you have to choose between your two employers, where would your loyalty lie?”
“Why, with ye, sir,” Gil said quickly.
A little too quickly.
Time to give the boy a lesson in what it means to be in the employ of a Grand Master.
Malcolm stood, retrieved a candlestick from the mantle and placed it on the desk before the boy. Calling fire was the most elemental of all magicks. Malcolm could do it as easily as breathing. When he passed his hand over the wick, flame leaped to life.
The boy startled like a spooked colt and might have bolted, but Malcolm clapped a hand on his shoulder. Then he grasped the boy’s delicate wrist. The small bones grated together in his firm grasp.
“Unclench your fingers,” he ordered and Gil Stout complied, his breathing unsteady. “Good. The first thing you must learn is obedience, Master Stout. What I tell you to do, you must do without question. I need to know how well you can hold your tongue.”
He pulled the boy’s hand forward until it was positioned above the flame. Then he forced his palm down till the fire licked at his skin. Gil Stout trembled and bit his lower lip, but he didn’t cry out.
A small blister formed and Malcolm heard the boy’s back teeth grind together. When he released him, the lad yanked his hand back and cradled it against his chest. All color drained from his face and his eyes were over-bright with unshed tears, but his white lips were firmly clamped. He refused to give voice to his agony.
Giving pain held a special fascination for Malcolm. Unusual tolerance for it never failed to impress him.
“Very well,” he said. “I believe you’ll do. Let me know if Preston contacts Lady Cambourne again and anything else you find that’s pertinent as it touches the two of them.”
He pulled a few coppers from his pocket and laid them on the desk. Gil reached for them with his uninjured hand.
“No.” Malcolm slapped his palm over the meager amount. “Use the other.”
With obvious difficulty, Gil made the fingers of his burned hand work long enough to pick up the coins and pocket them.
“That’ll be all, Gil.”
The boy walked unsteadily toward the door.
“Oh, by the way, there is something specific I want you to find out for me,” Malcolm said. There had to be a reason he couldn’t view the countess in his gazing ball when Preston was near. “You saw me take fire from the air, so you know I have some unusual abilities. Mr. Preston does too, or I’m much mistaken. Find out what it is that’s out of the ordinary about him. Or don’t come back.”
The boy nodded mutely and kept walking.
“But if you don’t come back,” Malcolm called after him and Gil stopped in mid-step, “I’ll want to know why you didn’t. So I will find you. And I’ll make learning why you didn’t return to me very unpleasant. For you, at least. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good lad. Off you go,” Malcolm said with as much cheer as if he’d been taking tea with the boy.
Once, Malcolm’s conscience might have bothered him over giving the lad that painful lesson. Now he realized it was really a kindness. Better Gil Stout should know the way of things from the outset. Less chance of him going astray later and requiring Malcolm to take sterner measures with his new acolyte.
With the boy gone, Malcolm positioned his gazing ball to take advantage of the wan morning light stabbing through the shutters in long thin shafts. There was no point in having special abilities if one wasn’t willing to use them to bring about the greater good.
Once Malcolm reunited all the daggers, he’d be in a position to affect so much—turning the minds of princes without their knowledge and silently directing events to rid the world of inequities. It made no sense for some to bask in wealth and others to suffer in squalor. Everyone should be equal.
Almost everyone. It was only right Malcolm should claim more than most. And decide who else among his closest associates would benefit from a double portion of wealth.
Of course, there was also the promise of immortality for the one who wielded the reunited power of the daggers. But that was really no more than his due once he set the world to rights, wasn’t it? People were sheep. If the shepherd sheared them once in a while, it was for their own good.
Bands of illumination struck the gazing ball. The interior of the orb glowed and a vaporous mass began to swirl. Then the mass coalesced into a recognizable shape.
“Ah! Lady Cambourne,” Malcolm said softly, as if he feared she might hear him. “There you are.”
Even though Jacob hadn’t returned to his cousin’s town house to accompany Julianne that morning, she still needed to learn what Dr. Snowdon had gleaned from the manuscript they’d left with him. When she alighted from Lord Kilmaine’s carriage, her insides jumped with nervousness. She wasn’t sure whether it was because of the way Jacob had deserted her or because she was calling on a doctor who specialized in hysteria patients.
Fortunately, there were no sufferers waiting in the corridor. After putting her ear to the examination room door for a few moments, she decided none were being treated that early in the morning either.
She rapped on the thick oak.
When there was no answer, she knocked again.
“Come in, come in, confound it. Can’t a man study in peace?”
Julianne pushed open the door and found Dr. Snowdon hunched over the manuscript, scribbling notes on a separate paper. He glanced up with annoyance, but then a smile lit his face when he recognized her.
“Ah! Of course, I should have expected it was you, countess.” He shoved his spectacles up onto his creased forehead, giving him the disconcerting appearance of having four eyes, the top two scrunched tightly closed. “My apologies for being so surly, Lady Cambourne, but when I’m deep into a mystery, I loathe interruption. Fascinating stuff, this is. Positively riveting.”
She held out her gloved hand for his slight obeisance and noticed his notes scrawled over several pages, covered with ink blots and scratched out portions. “It looks as if you’ve made splendid progress. What have you learned?”
“I decoded everything I could, but there are some disturbing blanks since the key is incomplete,” Snowdon said. “Then because the text is in Latin, I’ve been working on a translation.”
“Good show, old chap,” came a voice from behind her. Jacob leaned against the doorjamb with his hands in his pockets, looking cool and unflappable, as if their “wake the household” argument had never happened.
Julianne stiffened at his unexpected intrusion. If he meant to abandon her, he ought to at least do her the courtesy of staying gone. She’d wept over his departure last night, once all the lights in the Kilmaines’ home went dark. Balling her fist in her mouth to muffle her sobs, she hadn’t imagined there were that many tears in her. When the sun rose this morning, she resolved not to let herself care what Jacob Preston did.
It was all she could think to do to protect her heart. Though the way it throbbed now, she knew her resolve was utterly useless. Jacob had marked her and there was no escaping.
Blithely unaware how his presence unsettled her, Jacob sauntered in and peered down at Dr. Snowdon’s work. “Wouldn’t want an academic lightweight like me trying to translate it, after all.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Snowdon said with a grin. “Here’s what I have so far. Please forgive the crudity of the rhyme, but I was trying to capture the spirit of the original.”
Julianne picked up the topmost piece of foolscap, grateful for the distraction from Jacob’s nearness, and read:
“Beware the blades from Merlin’s Staff
The final dagger’s final laugh.
A mage’s curse on he who finds
A double curse on he who binds.
Sons of forest brave halls of stone
To leave one lying ne’er alone
’Neath—”
Then there was a section of squiggles and lines Julianne couldn’t make sense of.
Dr. Snowdon shrugged. “As I said, incomplete. If you find the other part of the manuscript, I ought to be able to decipher the rest for you with no trouble.”
She turned back to the page.
“Once and future king of kings
Powers tremble, riches brings
At the source the end is hidden
Meet at grave and ring and midden.”
More squiggles and scratched out sections followed. Even if they had a full translation, the meaning of the text was pretty obtuse. Her respect for her late husband’s mind ticked up sharply. Working by himself, Algernon had untangled five similar riddles and located the daggers associated with them. Surely with the assistance of Dr. Snowdon, she’d be able to do the same. She resisted looking in Jacob’s direction. If he continued to insist she not go alone to the Druids’ gathering this evening, he’d be more of a hindrance than a help.
“Merlin’s staff, curses galore, graves and kings and all that rot. Cracking good stuff, what?” Snowdon’s eyes sparked with enthusiasm. “Wherever did your husband acquire this manuscript in the first place, milady?”
“He was known to be a collector of oddities. A troop of gypsies came through Cambourne one spring and offered it to him for what he said was a ridiculously low sum. They told him he was meant to have it and they dared not ask for more,” she said. “The earl always said it was the most significant find of his life.”
And yet it had led to his death. “A mage’s curse on he who finds,” she repeated. “Do you suppose that’s why my husband died?”
“Now we’re treading on lunatic ice. There is no such thing as a curse.” Jacob gathered up all Dr. Snowdon’s notes and the manuscript. “It’s just an old book about some old daggers, but all the same, not something to trumpet about. Right, George?”
Snowdon nodded his understanding and Julianne suspected the two of them had collaborated on a number of unusual “mysteries” in the past.