by Eris Adderly
“Yes, Mr Pyke?” She was wiping her hands with a rag.
‘Miss’ Margery. Emmat did her best to keep her sneer to herself when she thought of the other ‘services’ Pyke likely obliged the poor woman to provide him, aside from toiling away in his kitchen.
“A drink for our friend, will ye?”
A glance in Emmat’s direction made the other woman start, possibly at the unlikely sight of a lone female at this hour, but she nodded and disappeared back through the door.
“So, not in London, then, eh?” Worrall piped up from his side of the room.
“No,” said Emmat. “Not even close.”
Margery returned with a mug and pitcher, pouring as she reached the table. Emmat nodded her thanks and grimaced at the first swallow. Pyke had only ever served the sort of ale a person borrowed more than drank. She wanted to imagine it was better than nothing, but wasn’t sure whom she was trying to fool.
“Worrall here thought ye might have had an appointment with the hangman.”
“What?” She nearly spat out her drink, though that might have improved it.
“I say,” he said with more volume, “Mr Worrall thought ye might have managed to get yer neck stretched after all this time. Would have been a shame, that.”
Emmat lowered her hackles.
“A right shame,” Worrall said, burying his face in his cup.
“Ye owe me a penny now,” said Pyke.
“Add it to the rest, then,” the miserable gambler mumbled into his ale.
London. Emmat gave a dismal grunt and tilted back another eye-watering draught. Blending into the crowds there was no longer an option. Now that Peter had put the notion in enough people’s ears—fabricated on the spot as the story surely was—Vane or anyone else the hangman might send looking for her would decide to try there, first.
Perhaps it was time to consider somewhere farther than London. Much farther.
When the blonde ducked her head into the room again, Emmat raised her cup.
“Another.”
Margery glanced at her employer, who nodded. Pyke knew the elder of the Bird siblings was good for it. Knew it based on what he had locked away in his back room.
Emmat suffered herself to the bottom of the cup three more times, in rapid succession. A nastier medicine she couldn’t want, but it helped to blur the stray ends of all her problems that wouldn’t match up, no matter how she might try.
It was a risk to run. A great risk, and one that had held her back for weeks.
Well, and perhaps that voice of his in your ear.
She scowled. This was no place for foolishness. If she were going to take the risk, it would have to pay a return. There should be no chance of Vane finding her. She wouldn’t put it past the man not to hang her himself, if she were caught and brought before a judge. He was not a man, she imagined, who made idle threats.
“I can assume my brother did not have the Ridgewood take, can’t I, Pyke?”
“Of course!” The man sputtered, as though she’d caught him asleep. “I mean, of course not!”
He damn well better not. That money had been secret, even from Peter. Especially from Peter.
“I’ll have it, then,” she said, pushing her cup away on the table.
“Oh?” He pocketed his pipe. “How much ye want?”
Emmat levelled a stony eye at him.
“All of it.”
Even Worrall looked up out of his morose daydreaming, eyebrows climbing.
“Umm …” Pyke manoeuvred his way out from between the bench and the table, smoothing down his unruly vest as he went. “Er, all of it, Red?”
“You do still have it all,” she said, her hand moving under the table to finger the hilt of the dagger in the boot she had crossed over a knee. “I’d hate for us to have to reconsider the nature of our friendship.”
“No, no, of course it’s all here.” Sandy hair shot with silver lined a brow now beaded with sweat. “It’s just that…well, ah…Well. Right.”
So it was her second suspicion, then. Pyke had kept the money for her all this time. But the Ridgewood take was the last she had left, and it was by far the largest sum she’d allowed to remain untouched for any one time. Now that she wanted to leave with it, Roger Pyke knew Emmat wouldn’t be back. And neither would her coin.
Another bit that’s none of my concern.
“The rest of my things are where I left them upstairs?” she asked, standing.
“They are.” Pyke’s eyes searched her, as though she’d change her mind. Emmat was saying ‘no’ to a lot of men, these days.
“I’ll just be up to gather what I need. Have a change of clothes.” She flicked her eyes down to the flowing skirts, hardly suited to swift travel. “When I come back down, we’ll conclude our business.”
“Very well, Red,” he said, resigned. “Very well.
“Mr Pyke.” She nodded. “Mr Worrall.”
The gambler raised his brows as she turned to mount the stair, as though Emmat had become a different person before his very eyes.
Perhaps she was a different person now. A person who was going to get herself the hell out of England. After taking care of just one more simple matter.
* * * *
An owl made its lonely call from branches far overhead as Emmat tucked her shirt back into her breeches. Travelling had always been so much easier dressed as a man. With a coat and hair coiled up inside a hat, it wasn’t too much trouble to pass, if she kept to herself and no one looked too hard.
The stolen horse snorted as she approached from the thicket where she’d gone with an urgent need to dispose of Pyke’s ale. She went about pulling out the knot of the reins from the low branch she’d tethered them to, and then moved to adjust the cinch, which had grown too loose for her liking over the last hour or so.
There was enough moonlight to see what she did, and Emmat gave the beast a swat. “Stop that this instant!” Her quiet hiss came when the gelding inhaled, swelling up his ribs in a deliberate attempt to throw off how much she could tighten the buckles. “Stubborn beast.”
The owl called out again, the sound moving this time as the bird left one tree to glide for another. There was not much else to be heard, here at the side of the road, far from anywhere, under the meagre light of half a moon. A rustling stirred the leafy carpet behind her. More of whatever sort of rodents she’d sent skittering away on her initial trek out into the wood.
Then there was an edge in the soft meat under her jaw.
The bulk of a man at her back.
So a rat, then.
“I wouldn’t so much as sneeze, if I was you,” the voice said, switching the angle of the blade to better tell its dire tale. “Would be a shame to colour the front of this shirt bright red.”
Her dagger was in her boot. There would be no reaching it now.
Fuck. FUCK.
It was truly the only appropriate word.
An arm came around her, pinning her elbows at her sides. The stranger stepped backwards, obliging Emmat to step with him if she wanted to continue breathing in the usual manner. He turned them to face the direction from which she’d ridden and another figure stepped out onto the road. Emmat squinted.
What the devil …
“ ’S this the one, Mr Worrall?”
“Worrall!” she burst out, heedless, eyes agog in the near darkness.
“Shut it, you.” The stranger jerked her against him, driving his point home with a stinging sample of the sharp edge. She winced; lifted her head higher.
“I’m afraid so, Red,” the gambler said, approaching the horse.
She should have known not to ask Pyke for the money in front of an audience. Worrall’s debts must have outgrown his fears.
“And who’s this you’ve hired to come skulking around in the woods with you in the middle of the night?” Her question came heedless of the earlier warning to silence, but the tough at her back did little more than jostle her irritably this time, adjusting his grip.
> “Oh, never you mind that, now,” he said, rummaging in the saddlebag on the far side of the horse. “Ah, here we are.” The voice was entirely too cheerful upon finding its prize.
“That money was meant for my mother and father, you know,” Emmat said in a pointless attempt at dissuading the man. It was a lie, of course. Well. Only half a lie. She’d intended some of it for her parents.
“Now that’s rather unfortunate.” Worrall propelled himself up into the saddle.
Bollocks! Because of course he’ll take the horse, as well. Why wouldn’t he?
“Shall we expend this one then, Mr Worrall?” The edge of the blade encouraged just that, and Emmat tilted her chin up and away from its reach. The eager reach of a strange hand, however, she could not avoid.
Prick.
“There’s no reason we shouldn’t be sporting about it,” the gambler said, looking down at her now in the moonlight. “Wouldn’t want to deprive her of the chance to win it back, now would we?”
The roving hand found her breast and mauled it by the fistful. She ground her teeth and imagined caving in the nose behind her with the back of her skull.
“Then leave us alone for a bit, eh Worrall?” The voice had grown low and distracted by her ear. He pressed a growing erection into her backside, and his crude fingers travelled south. “Waste not, want not—isn’t that right, pet?”
“No,” Worrall said, with surprising vehemence. “There’ll be none of that. Red and I are friends.” The words turned sticky sweet. “Aren’t we, Red?”
“Sure we are, Worrall.” Emmat glared daggers up at him as she tried to duck away from worming fingers. “This is all right friendly-like.”
“Friendly’s all I’m trying to be, love,” he said, annoying her ear with a sloppy tongue. “Won’t take but a minute or two.”
“I paid you to catch her,” said Worrall, growing irritated. “That’s done. Enough of this rubbish—we’re leaving.”
The gambler’s orders brought the too-eager lout out of his lust for a moment, and he stepped back again, compelling her to follow with the steel threat at her neck.
“What’s stopping me from cutting both your throats and leaving with the whole purse myself?”
Worrall snorted. “What’s to stop me from riding off with the lot of it right now? Or are you outrunning horses and I’m unaware of it?” The derision was plain in his voice. Emmat sneered. The gambler hadn’t survived this long without some measure of cunning in his bones. “If you want your share, you’ll put away that blade and get your arse on this horse. Now.”
There was a long, taut moment of silence, in which Emmat wanted to call the bastard at her back any number of vile names but didn’t for fear of upsetting the outcome, and then the terrible line of steel came away from her skin.
For a single heartbeat, the body parted from hers and there was cool air between them. Then a boot was in her backside and the ground was leaping to meet her face. She hit the earth with a startled cry an instant before the same boot bid a sharp farewell to her ribs.
Emmat yelped and swore, curling in on the hammer blow of pain, dry leaves sticking to the side of her face and papering her open mouth.
“Enough!” Worrall barked from somewhere above her. “Let’s go.”
There was another kick, but this one glanced over her shoulder, no more than scuffing her skin.
There were footfalls on the grit of the road and then there weren’t.
Hoof beats, diminishing into the night.
The owl saw fit to chime in again, hooting an I-told-you-so.
Bloody son of a motherless whore!
Everything.
Everything gone!
Nothing for her parents, nothing for her. No means to flee for the continent. No peace from having to run. No one left to help, and nowhere to go.
You could go back.
She breathed in the damp, each draw of her lungs a ringing bell of white fire.
He might still be gone. Your bruises will heal. He might never know you left. He’ll hold you, Emmat, and kiss you, and it will be infinitely better than this. Than lying here alone and breathing nails.
The pace of her heart slowed. Her arms weren’t hurt, and she got them under her. Pushed herself away from the ground.
No.
Her feet followed and she managed to stand.
No, she’d left for a reason. A reason that would not disappear if she happened to change her mind about being the hangman’s wife.
She brushed the rest of the leaves from her clothes and spat the last of the dirt.
Emmat had made herself sufficient before Bartholomew Vane, and by God, she could do it again. She was deficient in any number of things, but patience and persistence were not among them.
I’ll do what I must.
The very thought brought a cackle from the thief in the midnight wood, and the cackle brought a hiss and a wince.
She set off in the opposite direction of her retreating purse. The jarring of her steps sang loud against her throbbing ribs, and she bit the inside of her lip. Indeed, she would do what she must.
She would start again.
* * * *
The usual demands to “stand and deliver” had never served Emmat so well as they did her male counterparts. A woman’s voice somehow failed to achieve the same arresting effect. Piteous pleas for help, on the other hand, rising from the side of a lonely road at night, almost never served her poorly.
Coaches would stop—especially in the dark, before they could see the surprise of a woman in shirt and breeches—their passengers often all too willing to invite her to ride. A wretched girl, all on her own, her horse having bolted after spooking at a darting hare and bucking her from the saddle? A turned ankle? Here, let me help you inside, poor dear.
Whether from altruistic motivations or the less frequent—but more irksome—discovery of an opportunity to get a young woman alone, they lowered their guard and Emmat slipped past into her nefariously earned fortune.
She’d show them her dagger and they’d show her their purse. It was only the rarest of nights in which it might be necessary to make any actual use of the blade. The threat was almost always enough, and easier to employ when there was more than one person. She could beg the mercy of one on behalf of the continued wellbeing of the other, all with the strategic placement of finely honed steel, of course.
The one thing she’d not managed to do at any point during her time relieving travellers of their coin, was kill anyone. There were lines. Lines Emmat Bird would not bring herself to cross. If the tip of her blade bit into any flesh—as it had on the uncommon occasions where her marks needed help in understanding the complete lack of idleness to her threats—it was nothing that wouldn’t heal. The worst she’d taken was part of an earlobe, and that had been because the unruly twit wouldn’t sit still.
There was often no need, however. If she could get herself invited inside, and could maintain her hapless country girl persona for enough time, the unsuspecting passenger might nod off to sleep. They would wake to a missing travelling companion, and a purse of the same disposition.
In the wake of Worrall’s treachery, Emmat laboured again afoul of the law. The days turned into weeks, and the weeks gathered together into a huddle and decided to call themselves a month. And then two months.
As most of her dishonourable trade began no earlier than evening, she tended to sleep during the light hours of day. The occasional wretched alehouse had a bed for her on the floor, but just as often it was a hayloft when no one was looking, or a wooded grove away from the road as the season wore towards summer and the nights were less cold.
It was one such outdoor occasion, towards the rosy glow of dawn, that Emmat lurched from a dream of a single, stormy grey eye and a voice that burned her in just the right places, to be violently, unavoidably ill.
Again.
Her most recent stolen horse nickered from where she’d tethered it to a tree a few yards off, stirring at her burst
of movement. She wiped at her nose and mouth with the back of a hand, clearing the sick away and cursing herself. It was not the best way to remain hidden, making so much uncontrollable noise.
After all the trouble she’d gone to in evading him, it was only natural her continued dreams of Vane would make her sick. If only they didn’t make her thighs slide together, at the same time.
She pressed a palm to her stomach, wishing she had anything left in the saddlebags that would make it better rather than worse. She hadn’t even eaten anything that—
Her heart stopped.
Vane.
Her eyes flicked up to the glowing horizon.
Made her sick.
The earth seemed to tilt and slide out from under her.
No.
But no sooner than the thought sparked to life, she wanted to be sick again.
When was the last time you bled, Emmat?
The answer loomed alone, like the very hallmark of the hangman’s trade, deadly and final in an empty field. It had been the night he’d offered her comfort and kneading hands. The only night of the four they’d spent together in which he hadn’t sown his seed between her legs.
And their last night?
Will you have me, Emmat?
Oh, she’d had him, that was for sure. Had him, and now …
And now?
Consequences.
She pushed herself up to her knees, and then to her feet. Sleep was as far behind her as childhood. A few staggering steps brought her to the horse and the welcome water skin. She swished the water around in her mouth and spat, the clean liquid cloying after the bitter taste it followed.
Today did not have to be the day she made decisions. She had a while. A while yet to choose a path.
Damn you, Vane, why?
But she knew why already. It was because Emmat had chosen. Chosen to trade her life for Peter’s. Chosen to not fight tooth and nail when the man made his first claims in the darkness. Chosen to insist the lamp stay lit, and to begin to feel such things as she refused to name. Not aloud. Not for him.