Transmuted (9 page)

Chapter Nine

The wiser recourse, and Hawke had obviously sensed the intent. The instant Ashmore passed through, men seized him by the arms, held him still and thrust a lantern into his face. His hair blazed like an orange halo, and he flinched from the closeness of the glare, but he did not fight.

Hawke slid his body before mine, one arm half-lifted as though prepared to catch me were I to attempt to push him aside. It was such an effortlessly protective gesture that I had little choice but to let it be. Wrestling here with him would only do our position harm.

That my heart and mind agreed the action to be sweet —a word not often attributed to Micajah Hawke—was something I kept to myself.

Truth be told, had those men laid hands on me in such a fashion, Hawke would surely have pounced like the tiger he was reputed to be. To enter the Underground was dangerous enough, but to mark the occasion with blood was as good a death sentence as any royal writ.

Instead, as the rigid length of his body hid much of me, I could only grasp the back of his coat and call,“Collector’s business!”

The term was one long held in esteem by any with the misfortune to hear it. Generally, scrapping with a collector was not the wiser choice, and by announcing one’s business, a collector gave those unwilling to risk death or dismemberment opportunity to retreat from the area.

In the Underground, matters were slightly less in my favor. Still, it was important they understood that I and my crew were here for legitimate business. Quarries running from the surface did not often bring with them coin nor service. They were a liability to most, and often a subject of wagers.

“So you say,” jeered a man whom I couldn’t see. The hands pulled Ashmore to the side, clearing the way. “Come out, or we burn his eyes out!”

My tutor remained calm. He did not, I noted with relief, speak.

To do so would like as not mark him as a toff right off, and end our charade. Wealthy patrons did not brave the Underground. They sent people—them what wouldn’t find themselves marked for the toffs they served and returned in bits.

Hawke moved before I. With the same confidence he exhibited everywhere, agile as a cat and so obviously marked by menace that even I would think long and hard before assaulting his person, he stepped through the door.

The first hand that reached for him earned a stare so pointed, so fraught with challenge, that the man who’d braved it hesitated.

A voice cracked. “Bollocks, it’s th’ ringmaster!”

Well informed, these door wardens.

“Take your hands,” Hawke said, every syllable encased in velvet and steel, “off what is mine.”

That he claimed Ashmore his was a small detail my tutor would no doubt counter later. For now, he was an intelligent man not accustomed to sacrificing his well-being for pride.

In the seam of light, only Hawke remained clear to my eyes. He stared down the faces I could not see; a man on two legs and yet for all the world, he seemed larger than the space he occupied—stronger, much more dangerous.

A monster in disguise.

I swear that he did not so much as growl, and yet every hair on the back of my neck lifted as though he had; the primeval awareness of man when faced with the great terror of the dark was a thing that ran deep in every one of us.

Every breath in that cavern stilled. Mine stuttered.

I was used to him, had seen him imprisoned and bloody. I’d felt his body within mine, and
still
, he gave me pause.

He was human. I had little enough doubt. But he was also something more.

The moment fractured on an unsteady clearing of the throat. “Let him go,” said a voice, this one slightly more polished in tone. Hardly the same as those agents of the Crown, but suggesting of some familiarity with courtesy. “If you please, Hawke, let them go, as well.”

Ah. So somebody knew of my companion direct. That might make this easier.

Or much more difficult, depending on how far that knowing went and what the man might feel was owed him.

Hawke had not taken a hold of anyone, not physically, but the sheer presence of him was as a serpent to sparrows. They had all but frozen in place beneath his stare.

That stare pinned upon the speaker.

“There’s no need for you to clarify your stance,” the voice continued. Reasonable fellow, really. “Bring out your companions. We will not lay hand upon them.”

Lovely an assertion as that was, I had no reason to trust it. That they let my tutor go only meant that both were now ringed with the lanterns, and the men dimly shaped behind the glare.

Still, it was something.

I stepped out of the tunnel without waiting for Hawke to summon me, but I was not so foolish as to let down my guard.

The three of us stood in a ring of light, each lamp held high enough with express intent to blind. At the very least, it soured my vision, leaving afterimages that popped when I blinked. My head struck up a painful echo, and I wondered if all the smoke I’d breathed had congealed in my scratchy throat.

What I saw of the area was as I’d remembered it. The Underground was made up of sewage tunnels, abandoned channels once dedicated to railways that had not lasted, and many times more of passageways that no map had charted. The ceiling remained low enough that Hawke could reach up and touch the dank stone, and the overwhelming fragrance was that of sewage and rot.

There were places where such things were less noticeable, but most who lived in the dark and dank had grown used to it. Numb, no doubt.

A figure detached itself from them what circled us.

He was not overly tall, and stooped beside, but thick of build and sturdy. A bit like a mule, even in face. There was little softness about him, and I garnered a glimpse of pale hair beneath a grimy cap. It was something of a top hat, but with the high bit cut off and sewn over with a patch of something that might have been red once upon a time.

For all the intellectual awareness that shaped his words, and some of his dialect, he had powerful arms that hung a bit lower than expected of one with better posture. A large, hairy finger pointed at me. “Who’re you, then?”

“Collector,” I said flatly. I preferred to get such matters out of the way.

“Where’s your notice?”

“I’ve none for my current,” I said, but offered a hand palm-up. The chit did not glow in the light; the glass was far too clouded for it. “Nevertheless, I’m here on business.”

Ashmore watched the ring with a sharp intensity I knew made some nervous. Less monstrous than Hawke’s brand of notice, but still universally reviled; Ashmore tended to study one with the inherent demand of a teacher scrutinizing an errant schoolboy. The men closest shifted foot to foot.

Even grimy as he was, the sheer paleness of my tutor’s complexion glowed like a moon where the lamplight touched. Soot and grime made him appear somewhat sickly, though little else about his demeanor suggested fragility.

That I had come with two powerful men, and one rather more obviously so than the other, marked me as a body to mind. It also, in the vernacular of the territory, declared me as something more than a guttersnipe—albeit less than one of the true powers that operated below. Who those were tended to shift according to the tides of fortune.

As ever, I occupied the uncertain role of
wart
. Best not to touch overly much lest it spread.

The spokesman of the wardens took from my gloved palm the glass. He looked it over, wrinkled the whole of his face, licked the glass once, and buffed it against the tattered lapels of his jacket. When it did or did not do whatever it was he expected, he grunted and stepped away to confer with someone I couldn’t make out. A shorter bloke, maybe a carrier. He was gangly of figure, and hunched.

He darted away, footsteps flapping against stone.

The man returned, chit in hand, and passed it back. “You’ll have to wait a bit,” he told us.

I pocketed the bit of glass. I’d return it to the wardens minding whatever exit I chose. This would ensure that only them with business carried the chits.

I intended to complete my business tonight. “How long?”

“Long as it takes,” the leader replied. His eyes were black, or perhaps just hard to see while the wardens kept us blinking.

I frowned. “For what purpose?”

“Any bleeding purpose we want,” the man replied, rather amiably for all the threat implicit within. “We say wait, you wait.”

The most aggressive of my companions did not like this. For all Hawke remained motionless beside me—a looming statue caught and yet unaffected by the glaring light—I could sense the palpable impatience he mercilessly leashed.

It startled me how much scrutiny I gave to this lack of motion; part of me still imagined Hawke that caged beast prowling back and forth before iron bars. This stillness, this utter control, felt odd upon him.

Yet didn’t he usually exert such constraint upon himself?

A telling thing that even I had begun to forget which was Hawke and which the beast the Veil had made of him.

Or maybe which was the man I’d known.

Of its own volition, my hand lifted.

As though he knew—as though he bloody well expected it—Hawke’s fingers closed hard over mine. Trapped my hand at his side. He did not look at me.

I could not, in that moment, look at him.

The tableau, I was well aware, did not give the appearance of a man minding his lover.

Yet a part of me thrummed in response. His hand was warm and dry, large and firm. Calluses that his ringmaster gloves had once hidden scraped against the knit of my glove.

That it had been over a month since I’d felt them upon me was an inappropriate thought for such a time.

Still, the whole of me calmed to know that he was close. That he was aware enough of me to catch my hand before it reached him.

That he held on.

The man who queried us did not pause to take note. “Your intentions?” he asked, politely enough for all it was directed at Hawke.

That set my teeth on edge.

Hawke must have realized it. Perhaps my fingers tightened in his. Perhaps it was some other instinct he bore, or simple awareness of those things that ruffled my feathers.