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There were hungry, barely clothed children who were eagerly in position in case he dropped or tossed that ruined bountiful bread.
She should have kept them. But she thought it early enough that she could return them without him knowing. What she hadn’t been aware of was the baker had already reported it to the guard, who dragged her across the market to confirm the loaves...and thus confirm the thief.
Very fine loaves, and an extremely arrogant baker. She was a woman grown and felt the scrutiny of shoppers. Gabriel would have been in tears with no chance to negotiate.
‘They’re not ruined. I returned them and I’ll work for the other two.’
‘Other two? I’m missing four loaves this morning. Four! And these...things! I’ll never accept bread from your filthy fingers! If I sold it, I’d be ruined as much as these loaves!’ He waved them again. A section fell to the ground and disappeared.
It wasn’t true that Gabriel stole four, but with the bruising grip of the guard and the salivating baker, it wasn’t the time to argue. ‘I’ll work for the others as well.’
‘You’ll go to gaol,’ the watch guard said.
‘Cut off her hands now!’ Ido said. ‘Gaol is too kind for one such as her.’
‘No. Please! I meant no—’
The crowd parted and two men silently approached. One whispered low and heatedly in the guard’s ear. The other flanked her right side. Neither touched her, nor gazed at the crowd. Neither acknowledged the abruptly silent baker. The men were identically dressed, hair identically cut. Their size the same, their build the same. Their manners the same. If not for the colour of their hair and eyes, she’d think them twins.
Hired mercenaries, but for whom?
A look at Ido told her much. His face unearthly pale, mangled bread fell from his hands to disappear before it hit the ground.
‘See here.’ Ido looked from one man to the other. He looked to the crowd who had backed several paces away. Some of them continued to jeer. Others had gone quiet or vanished.
‘I didn’t know she was part of his house,’ Ido said. ‘I have no grief with his house.’ He scampered to shelved loaves and proffered several to her. ‘Take these if you wish. They are the best I made today.’
The guard let her go. Startled, Aliette gaped as the mercenary gave him a small bag with the unmistakable jingle of coin. Without a backward glance he walked away.
But the mercenaries stepped closer to her. She couldn’t run. The crowd that was left stood solid at her back, their attention on the baker who looked as if his hand was to be chopped.
‘I was mistaken.’ Sweating, Ido was almost stabbing her with the loaves he held. ‘Take these. They’re yours for free. Tomorrow’s as well.’
‘I don’t want them. I told you, I’ll work for the ones already eaten. Free me and I’ll work twice what those loaves are worth.’
Ido stepped back. ‘Free you. I can’t—’
The men snatched the loaves in one hand and took her arms in the other.
‘Wait! Who are—? Please!’
They dragged her away from the baker’s stall. She yanked and fought, but these men weren’t a fattened guard or an even fatter baker. These men were warriors. Deadly. Paid well, with weaponry tucked at their waists.
‘Where are you taking me?’
They didn’t answer. Panic set in. She’d been worried to go to gaol, for her arm, for her hand. For Gabriel. But this was far worse. In gaol, there were people to plead with, to beg for mercy. These mercenaries dragged her away from anything she knew to take her somewhere she didn’t know. She’d made promises!
Stomping on a foot caused one mercenary to curse in surprise, the other swiftly wrenched her arm behind her back and brought her to her knees.
Sharp agony in her shoulder and she cried out. The other mercenary gripped her assailant’s arm until the wrenching eased, but not enough for her to break his hold. Just enough to be aware of the two men over her, and others walking by, but not offering help.
She was in trouble. The kind with consequences she couldn’t return from. The men didn’t talk, but maybe she could talk to them. ‘I need to return. Please, I don’t want to do this.’
Nothing, although the second mercenary didn’t ease his grip from his comrade.
‘At least...tell me what you want to do with me.’
Silence while she was held down, while she heard the regular sounds of the marketplace. Shoppers going about their day while hers was turned upside down.
‘Please—’
‘Orders will be followed,’ the kinder one said.
She waited for him to explain, but he offered nothing else. No words that all would be well, or what would happen when they arrived at whatever destination they took her to. All she knew was that these men weren’t from this city. As large as it was, she would have noticed them before now, and she wasn’t sure they were French because the accent was strange. Yet she was to go with them, away from Gabriel, Helewise and Vernon.
What were the alternatives? None. Slowly she stood again, but now her knees and arm throbbed. On and on they threaded her through the parting crowd.
Around the stalls and a building or two until they abruptly stopped at large double doors. It was one of the many tall residences in the area that overlooked the market.
‘This isn’t my home.’ She wrenched her arm. If she entered, she feared she’d never return. ‘Let me go.’
The doors in front of them remained closed. The men remained still, waiting for something.
For what? This wasn’t a grand home that had servants. It wasn’t in much better condition than the boarded house she occupied.
But the men flanking her were rich, or at least well provided for, and they had parted with that bag of coin as though it was simply a loaf of bread. The owner of such men should have had a great estate or, if in town, a residence in the more luxurious boroughs.
Two other men opened the great doors and her captors marched her through the entrance. The house was larger than it looked from outside. As if one house was constructed to appear like many. Gawking, she was walked through a courtyard. More men swiftly crossing the small space as if they had great distances to go, or important matters to attend.
The home was a crumbling palace and a battalion occupied it. All mercenaries, all men. There was only one commodity she had that would be of any use to them. One commodity that she fought to protect ever since it was the only thing she was left with: herself.
‘No!’ she called out.
Some men looked their way, but none paused in their duties.
When she dug her heels in, her capturers tossed their bread loaves to men around them and bodily carried her to another large door that was opened effortlessly by others. Nothing in this small room but stone and a staircase that looked new.
Up and up, her feet hitting each stair until they reached the landing. There they released her and she flexed her tingling fingers.
‘Now what?’
Neither said anything, but both blocked the stairway down.
A short landing, nothing but three closed doors. Two at her front and another to her left.
‘I’m to go through those?’ She pointed to the ones at her front.
Again, silence.
A few stolen bread loaves had brought her to this dark door. Bread she hadn’t eaten so she was hungry. Scared. But if going forward meant getting this day over with and back to Gabriel as she promised, it was what she would do.
Releasing the latch, she stepped into the room. The men behind her closed it.
Then there was only her. And a man cradling a child.
Chapter Five (#u72a54595-01f8-5158-94d4-7601fb1ba97c)
Reynold did not wait to turn as he had with the wench before. He needed to know immediately if the thief he’d spotted at the market would suit his purposes.
If not, he’d have his men march her to gaol and start again. So he turned, expecting no more or less than what he always expected. Except... Something was different.
Maybe it was the night of no sleep, that underneath it all he felt his hand still tremble at a killing he couldn’t complete and one he didn’t want to make. Last night had shaken him and he’d altered his course from past deeds because he had Grace, who remained quiet and watchful.
It was different and he blamed the child in his arms for his reaction to the woman in front of him. Standing still, remaining quiet, letting her gauge him as a man with her large eyes.
What did she see? Dirt, blood, his weariness. Running, always running, and last night his mind unable to let him sleep since he held his greatest vulnerability. He didn’t have the advantage he usually desired.
He never allowed strangers to simply stare at him. Customarily, he hid in corridors or corners and waited to emerge. He liked watching. The waiting made the person he watched reveal more than they wanted to.
Most never knew he was inspecting their mannerisms for weaknesses as they paced and twitched. As they lifted his enamel boxes off his tables or inspected his books. When he’d eventually emerge, to hide their moment of vulnerability they’d cover their shock with spilling words.
There’d been an exception to this once. Not so long ago, a maiden, scarred and far too loyal to another knight, taunted him out of the shadows, but she was a rarity. He knew immediately that this woman in front would also be an exception. How she would, he didn’t know, because he’d been foolish.
For a while he ruminated on his situation and last night. He’d been standing in front of her, so that he was fully exposed to her, revealing his weaknesses and vulnerabilities. It was time to inspect her in turn.
She reminded him of a pixie. Despite the years of filth marring her skin and dishevelled clothes, everything about her was delicate and frail. The only abundance was the length of her thick wavy black hair, bound in an irregular plait, and the freckles across her nose.
If there wasn’t such poignant awareness in her large eyes and the tell-tale sign of soft curves under her threadbare gown, he’d mistake her for a child instead of a woman grown.
Her eyes were not dark as he’d thought. Blue? Difficult to tell with the curtains closed in this room. But her hair was so dark it was almost as dark as his own. This would be useful when it came to his daughter, to his plan.
There were questions in her eyes. Fear, too, but not the sort he was used to. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but she wasn’t skittish as though she worried about her own life. Another’s, perhaps. He’d seen that once before.
She was quiet, which surprised him, as she made a perusal of him, of Grace in his arms, and then her eyes took in the room.
His favourite room filled with tapestries, silks, comforts and stacks of books. Because it was hard on the bindings and parchment, he never placed the books upright if there were enough tables to support them. As his only true family, he liked to take great care with them.
Her eyes didn’t gleam with greed as Cilla’s or with awe. Instead, she looked curious. He should have met this thief in one of the bare rooms on the other side of the house. A room that wouldn’t have revealed anything of himself. She now knew more of him then he of her. Since the fateful day he’d overheard his family’s intentions to kill him, he’d never revealed anything of himself.
It was the child in his arms. Any act he did from this point on wouldn’t be as he had done in the past. The game had changed.
Another turn of her gaze around the room. Another one of him. ‘Why have you brought me here?’ she said.
Her voice. Direct with an elegant lilt to her words. A common demeaned thief should have spoken with guttural accent like Cilla. Instead, she held almost a cultured accent that both intrigued and confounded him. It was a boon. A dark-haired woman with a pleasing accent and desperate to survive. He didn’t deserve it, but Fortune favoured him greatly this morning.
Aliette had been afraid of only one thing her entire life. Darkness. As a child, she knew shadows hid bad people. As an adult, she avoided them for in a building’s crevice was inevitably a man with a knife. Around a corner would be a guard or a hand to grab what food she’d scavenged.
At night, when Darkness came, she huddled in whatever sliver of moonlight she could under her bridge. Night was always worse, for she’d fall asleep and remember that, when she woke one morning, her family had left her in the night.
Darkness was cruel. And though logically Aliette knew the man before her stood in daylight, his surroundings were clear and every feature of him was there for her to see, every instinct in her clamoured the opposite.
This man before her was shadow and night. He was Darkness.
Dishevelled raven hair, dark tailored clothing and a black gaze lit with a feral light. He was clutching a child wrapped in a tattered white gown that drooped almost to the floor.
Blood. Unmistakably blood was streaked across his clothing and his cheeks. Mud splattered along his breeches, his arms and thickly encrusted on his boots as if he had tromped through freshly turned graves.
The child’s crumpled swaddling was also streaked with dirt and blood, and it remained unnaturally quiet and still. As if it was dead...or pretending to be. She couldn’t see its face for the man held it far too tightly to his chest.
Would it escape if he eased his grip? Perhaps it was a changeling he’d dug up for some ritual.
The room was no comfort from her thoughts. The sumptuous surrounding only confirmed her certainty that this man was Darkness. For Darkness was powerful and encompassed everything. Perhaps kings could surround themselves with such opulence, but she couldn’t imagine they possessed such extravagance as this man.
Too long had it been since she had been to church, but she fervently wished she was there now so she could beg for sanctuary and stand under a hundred candles. To beg for Helewise, Vernon and Gabriel as well, though they weren’t in this room with her.
For she had feared Darkness all her life and finally he bared himself to her. His ruthlessness apparent in the savage edges of his cheeks and square of his jaw. His arrogance drawn by the refinement of his nose and arch of his brow. But the eddying dark grey of his eyes, the lush frame of lashes and soft curve of his mouth bore him a cruel beauty. If this was how Darkness deemed to personify itself, it wasn’t safe for any of them.
Because Darkness enticed.
‘Why have I brought you here?’ he said. ‘It is an interesting question that you ask.’
Fanciful thoughts she couldn’t stop that beat with the hammering of her heart. The low rumble of his voice did nothing to help her. Neither did the fact he found the question on whether she lived or died interesting.
‘An important one, I think,’ she said.
One brow raised. ‘Extremely, but most do not dare ask it.’
The others he brought to his lair? Aliette shook herself to stop her errant thoughts. She wasn’t a child anymore, and this was daylight. Despite the warning hairs on her neck, he could be no more or less than a mere man with a child. Mud, blood and gold aside, he was human and not the most important one in her life. Gabriel, Helewise and Vernon were above such fears. She needed to, she must, return to them. Whatever this man wanted, she wanted it over. She’d been gone long enough. Gabriel might leave the house and search for her. If so, Ido could snatch him for gaol.
‘Whatever it is you want of me, tell me now and have done with it.’
‘So much haste.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but not for my death.’
A quirk to his lips. ‘Most of us aren’t hasty for death.’
Us. He wasn’t Darkness. Of course he wasn’t. But he was dangerous. He had enough wealth and power to drag her here with no interference.
‘Why am I here?’ she repeated.
He adjusted the child in his arms. She saw tiny fingers curl, but little else. For a child, it was unnaturally quiet.
‘Do you have a family?’
She couldn’t answer that and remain safe.
His brow rose at her silence. ‘Do you have a father? And a mother?’
