Stranger

by Zoë Archer

  “I often think,” he replied. “And find it to be a highly underutilized pastime.”

  A brief, real smile flashed across her face, and Catullus saw to his dismay a minuscule dimple appear in the right corner of her mouth. Precisely where a man might place the tip of his tongue before moving on to her lips.

  “We’re in agreement on that.” She stepped nearer. “But what I’ve been thinking about, and can’t seem to get out of my head, is the Heirs of Albion’s goal.”

  The mention of his old foes brought Catullus’s mind fully back into the present, and future. “A British empire that encompasses the globe.”

  “You’re British, aren’t you? Wouldn’t such a goal work to your benefit?”

  “I don’t believe any nation should have that much power. And I don’t believe one government should dictate how the rest of the world conducts its business.” Warming to his topic, he forgot to be angry with Gemma Murphy, and instead spoke with unguarded feeling. “Further, capturing the world’s magic to ensure that kind of despotism is abominable.”

  “And your friends, Mrs. Bramfield and Mr. Lesperance, they and others share your feelings. Mr. Lesperance called them …” She thought back for a moment. “The Blades of the Rose. Are you one of these Blades?”

  At her question, he felt a subtle pressure, a force working upon him, coaxing him. Tell her. She’s trustworthy. Just open your mouth and speak the answer. But he shoved that force away. An odd impulse, one he was glad he didn’t give in to.

  “This conversation is over, Miss Murphy.” Before he could take a step, she reached out and took hold of his arm with a surprisingly strong grip.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I won’t ask more about them. Only—don’t go.”

  He rather liked hearing her say that. Somewhat too much. Yet, despite his brain telling him to do just that—leave and never speak with her again—he stayed.

  “I also think that what the Heirs are doing is horrible,” she continued. “Not just because they might steal or use my magic. My Irish family in America fought against the British in the War of Independence. Some lost their homes. Others died.” Her voice strengthened, grew proud. There was no artifice here. “It’s always been a source of honor for the Murphys, myself included. We stood up and fought for freedom, regardless of the price.”

  “A justifiable sense of pride.”

  She accepted this with a nod. “I can’t be a soldier— I don’t want to be one. But I can do something to help, something to stop the Heirs.”

  “Miss Murphy, your help is not wanted.”

  She did not flinch from his hard words, even as he regretted having to say them. She pressed, “Tell me everything. About the exploitation of magic. About the barbarity of the Heirs. Let me write about them.”

  With a sharp movement, Catullus turned to go. Yet she dogged him, putting herself in his path.

  “You say no one will believe what I write,” she said insistently, “but I don’t think that’s true. The public will believe, Mr. Graves. And they won’t stand for such wickedness. They will rise up and—” She stopped, because he was laughing.

  Not an amused laugh, but a harsh and bitter one. “Newspapers mean nothing to these men. They couldn’t care less if you published their home addresses and bank accounts, plus a detailed description of every crime they had ever committed. A fly’s buzzing, nothing more.” He stepped closer, and, judging from the slightly alarmed look on her face, he must have cut a menacing figure. Good. She needed to be afraid.

  “And do you know what they do with flies?” He pounded one fist into his own palm. “Crush them. Destroy them utterly.”

  “But the public,” she foundered, “the government—” “Can do nothing. Not the president of your United States, and not even the Queen. The Heirs serve her Empire, but neither she nor the prime minister nor all the damned members of Parliament can touch them. They answer to no one but themselves and their greed. And they will take a tender morsel such as yourself and make you wish all the Murphys had died in the Revolution so that you might never have been born.”

  The pink in her cheeks was gone entirely. Her freckles stood out like drops of blood upon her chalky face. Catullus realized he had been shouting. He never shouted.

  He collected himself, barely. A tug on his jacket, a straightening of his tie. “I do not like yelling at ladies,” he said after a moment. “I don’t like yelling at you. But the moment the Heirs of Albion become aware of your presence is the day you become one of the walking dead.”

  “Like you?” Her voice did not tremble.

  “Pardon?”

  “Are the Heirs aware of your presence?”

  “Yes.” More than aware. They hated him and his entire family. Considering that the Graves clan had been supplying the Blades of the Rose with inventions and mechanical assistance for generations, the Heirs would prefer if every single member of the Graves family were cold in their tombs.

  “Yet you’re still alive.”

  “Because, in this war of magic, I am a professional soldier. And you are a civilian.”

  “Civilians can fight. They did in the War of Independence.”

  “This isn’t flintlock muskets and single-shot pistols, Miss Murphy. It’s magic that can literally wipe a city off the face of the map. And I am telling you now for the last time “—he jabbed out with a forefinger—” you are not to get involved.”

  He spun on his heel and stormed away. This time, she did not try and stop him.

  Several hours later, he was bent over the cramped desk in his cabin, adjusting the tension in some steel springs, when a tap sounded at his door. He found a steward outside, holding his coat.

  “The lady said I was to give you this, sir,” the young sailor said.

  Catullus gave the lad a shilling and, after taking back the overcoat, sent him on his way.

  With the door to his cabin closed, Catullus found himself holding the coat up to his face, inhaling. He pictured her in the coat, how deceptively delicate she appeared in its voluminous folds.

  There. The scent of lemon blossom and cinnamon. Her scent. He could smell it all day and never grow tired of it. Even this small sense of Gemma Murphy thickened his blood.

  A small square of paper was pinned to the lapel. He adjusted his spectacles to peer at handwriting, ruthlessly tamed into a semblance of legibility.

  It is a beautiful coat, but you look much more dashing in it than I. Thanks for the loan.—GM

  He ran his thumb over the scrap of paper, picturing her ink-stained fingers. Perhaps he should write her a note. Apologize for his rudeness.

  No. What he did was for her own protection, whether she believed him or not.

  He dropped the beautiful Persian cashmere coat upon the floor and went back to work.

  After the relative quiet of life aboard ship, the noise and commotion of the Liverpool docks threatened to knock one down to the floor. Catullus, Astrid, and Lesperance joined the rest of the Antonia’s passengers as the steamship approached the dock. From their vantage at the rail, they saw how the docks seethed with activity. Sailors, stevedores, and passengers all crowded along the waterfront in a chaos of sound and movement. Merchandise of every description was being hauled back and forth—American cotton, Chinese tea, African palm oil.

  But slaves had made Liverpool. Not with their hands, but with the sale of their bodies. As Catullus watched the bustling dock draw closer, it didn’t escape him that Liverpool—and England—once grew wealthy from the slave trade. Ships had sailed from the Liverpool docks, laden with guns and beads, to trade for men, women, and children ripped from their West African homes. Those same ships then made the grueling voyage to the Caribbean and the American South, and there sold their surviving human cargo—including Catullus’s own family, generations ago. Then back to Liverpool with sugar, rum, cotton, and profit.

  The slave trade had been officially abolished in England almost seventy years past, but Catullus felt its presence as the
steamship approached the thriving docks.

  All this, built by blood. Blood that ran in his veins.

  Yet, despite this, he felt glad to be back in England again. It was, in all its conflicting existence, his homeland. His friends, the Blades, and his family were all here. He missed his workbench, and his tools, and the smell of oil, metal, and electricity. His workshop, nestled in the basement of the Blades’ headquarters, remained his truest home.

  He glanced over at Astrid, who was also watching the dock come closer. Her mouth was pressed into a thin, tense line, and her hand was threaded tightly with Lesperance’s, her knuckles showing white.

  “Back again,” Catullus said gently.

  She gave a tight nod. Four years ago, a grieving Astrid had fled England, and the Blades, after her husband had been killed on a mission. She had exiled herself in the Canadian Rockies, until Catullus had been forced to bring her back. But she wasn’t returning with a broken heart.

  Lesperance spared not a look for the bustle of the docks. His focus remained solely on Astrid, a concerned frown between his brows. “You can face this,” Lesperance murmured, knowing what tumult she must feel. “It’s only a pile of rocks. Nothing compared to the strength of you.”

  The thin press of her mouth softened as she turned to Lesperance with a small smile. Despite the fact that they stood in full view of everyone on the ship and the docks, Astrid leaned close and kissed Lesperance. Such unguarded warmth and tenderness in that kiss, returned passionately by Lesperance, who clearly didn’t give a damn that anybody was watching.

  Catullus looked away, fighting a quick pain, a sudden loneliness. Astrid had somehow been blessed to find love not once but twice, both times with good men. At forty-one years old, love still eluded Catullus.

  His gaze alit upon Gemma Murphy, standing some distance down the rail. A group of passengers separated them, but he met her vivid blue eyes across the crowd.

  In that crowd, amidst the cacophonous din rising up like a fist from the docks, Catullus found himself aware of only her. The brilliant gleam of her eyes, alive with intelligence and humor and will. A quick, potent flare of desire answered within him. More than desire. Something else, something deeper than a body’s wants. And, in the way she suddenly drew herself up, widening those astonishing eyes, she felt it as well.

  “Haunted still by your redheaded ghost,” Astrid said behind him, her voice hard with suspicion.

  Catullus came back to himself, who and where he was. He broke from Gemma Murphy’s gaze to watch the dock.

  “No amount of silence on my part will exorcise her,” he said.

  “Determined,” Lesperance noted, admiring. Astrid shot him a glare.

  Catullus made himself shrug with indifference. “We’ll lose her once we come ashore.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Astrid. “That bloody girl’s resolved to attach herself to us—or rather to you.”

  He scrupulously avoided looking at Astrid and her sharp eyes. “I’m the unattached male in our party. For a woman like her, I present the easiest target.”

  “For a huntress, she’s damned fond of her prey,” Astrid replied, heated.

  The ship finally docking gave Catullus a reprieve. He, Astrid, and Lesperance joined the chattering, excited passengers as they disembarked. Somewhere in the crowd behind him was Gemma Murphy. But ahead of him was the most important mission of his life. He would forget her, as he must.

  A few satchels made up their minimal luggage. As soon as it was collected, they started toward the train station. Everywhere was thick with people and voices and heavy drays loaded with cargo. The cheerful chaos of commerce.

  Which made for hard going to reach the station on foot. It wasn’t far, a quarter mile, and hiring a cab was impossible in this bedlam. Yet each step found the trio buffeted by movement. At this rate, they would reach the station by nightfall.

  “Bugger this,” Catullus muttered under his breath. He signaled Astrid and Lesperance to a narrow side street off the busy dock, blissfully empty.

  They both nodded. It might not be a direct route to the station, but they’d reach their destination faster. And, in these circumstances, time was all. They had to reach Southampton as soon as possible.

  So the three of them ducked into the side street. The only occupants were a few crates and a dog. The dog noticed Lesperance and trotted forward to him, tail wagging. Lesperance gave the animal a good scratch under the chin before striding briskly onward. The dog scampered away, cheerful in its existence.

  “Always making friends,” Astrid murmured.

  “They aren’t friends,” Catullus said. He stared ahead, where the large figures of three men swiftly blocked the narrow street. He, Astrid, and Lesperance stopped, tensing. The men loomed nearer. All of them held knives. “Heirs,” growled Lesperance.

  “No—they won’t get their hands dirty here,” Catullus said. “Thugs hired by the Heirs to watch the docks. Should have expected this.”

  He started to reach for his revolver before checking himself. This was civilized England, where men didn’t wear guns in the streets, including himself. His pistol and shotgun were both packed away in the bags he carried. And, even if he could get to them quickly, firearms were too conspicuous, too noisy, too problematic for close-quarters fighting.

  Evasion was a better option than engagement. Only fools raced into battle, if it could be avoided.

  Catullus turned, thinking to lead Astrid and Lesperance back to the main dock. They might have a chance to lose their pursuers in the throng.

  He cursed as two more men blocked the other end of the street. One of them pulled a cudgel from beneath his heavy coat, and the other, smiling brutally, brandished a dockworker’s hook.

  “Hardly ten minutes ashore, and already in a fight.” But Astrid smiled coldly as she spoke, shifting into a ready stance. Meanwhile, Lesperance growled, half in warning, half in frustration. Even this side street was too public for him to truly unleash what he was capable of. His hands curled into fists as a substitute.

  “I’ll take the two behind us,” Catullus said lowly.

  “We’ve got the other three,” answered Lesperance. A shared, clipped nod, and they broke apart.

  Lesperance and Astrid sprang toward the advancing threesome. The thugs stood motionless for a bare second, stunned that those who were supposed to be the victims had, in fact, become aggressors. Catullus had a brief impression of Lesperance’s swinging fists, and Astrid’s own expert fighting skills as she dodged and struck. But Catullus’s attention had its share of distractions and he focused on the two toughs coming at him.

  He couldn’t use his guns, but pulled a shotgun shell from a side pocket on a satchel, then dropped the bag. He kicked an empty crate at the advancing men. They ducked, and the crate shattered into planks and splinters. The bloke with the cudgel recovered faster than his comrade, lunging forward and swinging out with his heavy club. Catullus neatly sidestepped the blow. Then the cudgel hit a brick wall lining the street. The bricks exploded with a flash of blue light.

  Catullus shielded his eyes from the glare. He leapt back to see a hole the size of a door where the cudgel had hit. The man wielding it laughed, a guttural rasp.

  “That’s right, guv,” he chortled with a Liverpudlian roll to his words. “Got me a little something extra, thanks to the gents what hired us.” He held the club up, and Catullus saw a small mark branded into the wood. Catullus had seen that lion brand before on other clubs, knives, and even the wooden handles of guns. It imbued whatever had been branded with the Heirs’ particular variety of dark magic—including a hired tough’s cudgel.

  The man swung the club again, this time hitting the ground. Another blast of light. Catullus staggered from the concussion as the pavement split apart into gaping fractures.

  As he struggled to gain his footing, the other thug pounced, hook swinging. Catullus blocked the wicked curved gaff, then planted a foot in the man’s gut and shoved him back.

&nb
sp; His comrade plowed toward Catullus again.

  “I have a little something extra, as well,” Catullus said. Gripping the brass shotgun shell, he slammed its bottom down onto a nail sticking from a shattered crate.

  The small blast shook him, ran in shock waves up his arm, but it was enough to shoot a little ball of glinting material from the cap. The ball spread into a wire net, which tangled itself around the advancing thug.

  For a few moments, the tough could only flounder and swear, snarled in the net, his cudgel useless against the snare.

  “Never tried that by hand before,” Catullus murmured to himself.

  His companion shoved past and came at Catullus. The hook swung. Catullus lightly stepped back, then grabbed the man’s arm. It was difficult, since Catullus’s hand still buzzed with the aftereffects of the shell’s blast. They grappled, fighting for footing and control of the gaff. Catullus was taller than the thug, but the man was heavier and furious that the intended target wasn’t going down easily. They wrestled, careening back and forth between the walls lining the street. A hot trail of pain gleamed as the hook caught the top of Catullus’s cheekbone.

  With a sudden grunt, the man collapsed against Catullus. Peering over the unconscious man’s shoulder, Catullus saw something rather amazing.

  Gemma Murphy held a heavy rope, one end tied into a large, weighty knot. The stain of red and clump of hair attached to the knot testified to how hard she had hit Catullus’s assailant.

  “Dead?” she asked.

  Catullus shoved at the man heavily against him. The man crumpled to the ground. “No, but he smells like it.” He strode to where the cudgel-wielding tough still struggled against the net. With one quick punch, Catullus knocked the man unconscious. Like his associate, the thug collapsed to the ground.

  “Deft,” Catullus murmured, glancing between the rope she held, then up at Miss Murphy.

  She looked back at him with a gleam of triumph hidden beneath careful sangfroid, then turned to the net, still covering the insensate thug. “What are you doing with a net inside a shotgun shell?”