Vincent cupped one hand behind her neck and lowered his face so he could look into her eyes.
"Haven't I always known what to do?" The hardness was still in his eyes, but his voice grew gentle again. "Have I ever let you down?"
He never had. Tears still stung Kellen's eyes, but she obediently climbed the steps after him.
Chapter 5
Even though his old life was still within walking distance, Ger Owen felt like he'd traveled entire continents away from it. Crossing from the Liberties into Philadelphia proper had been no greater matter than crossing from the north side of Vine Street to the south. The same Delaware River ran past the shipbuilders and lumber yards of the Liberties as sloshed against the Philadelphia wharves. Returning to the Liberties would require little more than a thought.
Except he couldn't go back. Not now.
Ger lurked in front of a tippling house near the bottom of Arch Street, close enough to the river to catch the brunt of the chill wind snapping along its slushy surface, close enough to the building to hear the drunken shouts and laughter inside. He'd rather be shaping hulls or twisting rope, eating square meals and sleeping cozy above Comstock's workshop instead of cramming himself into whatever corner of whatever alley of Hell Town seemed safest for the night—"safe" being an incredibly relative term when speaking of the three-block sprawl of vagrancy, prostitution, and homelessness.
But he'd given up the rights to that old life. He couldn't allow himself to think of anything except collecting payment for the wrongs that had been done—for the wrongs he'd allowed to be done.
The wind whistled and wrapped itself around Ger's neck. Watching as men trudged through the pay line and then toward home, Ger shrugged deeper into his coat and patted the pocket sewn into its lining. Three pennies rubbed together with a wrapped heel of bread—all his worldly belongings. Pursuit of justice or not, he'd have to see about earning some sort of wage before long. Maybe he should be working the wharves instead of just watching them. Who knew, maybe that was the smarter method of looking for Ripley.
Assuming Ripley really did work the wharves, and Ger could figure out which company he hired with. Or that Ripley was even anywhere near Philadelphia at all. He couldn't have gone west—a man like Ripley could only get by in a city. But Ripley could as easily have taken a ferry across to Camden or boarded a packet for New York as stayed in Philadelphia. Ger was only guessing that Ripley's characteristic lack of ambition had kept him closer than that.
In the meantime, the day workers ebbed in restless waves away from the wharves and began to disperse, up narrow steps and slanted streets or into the alleys to which they belonged. Ger watched them, although he didn't bother peering at faces or stretching his neck to see better. Ripley wasn't the sort of man who was hard to spot, even in a crowd.
A small voice, deep beneath the suffocating gloom in Ger's head, suggested that Ger didn't really want to find Ripley. After all, crossing Ripley now wouldn't turn out any better than it would have if he'd had the guts to cross Ripley weeks ago. The smart thing would be to go back to his apprenticeship with Comstock, while he still had his health and a chance to build a better life.
Except Hagy's little girl was dead, and Ger could not shake the notion that he could've stopped it.
Even though Ger was looking over the tops of passersby for a glimpse of Ripley, movement lower and to his right was what caught his attention. A pair of men had stopped a few feet away, in front of the same tippling house where Ger stood. One of them, skinny and angular with a needle-sharp nose and small, close-set eyes, clutched a newspaper in one hand. Ger could just make out the "E-T-T" of the Gazette across the folded portion. Sharp-nose held the paper up and away from the second man, who had black hair and blue eyes framed by spectacles.
"Smart man. Think you're so smart, you and your reading." The first man, the one holding the paper, sneered and laughed. "Maybe I'd like to read this here paper. What do you think about that?"
"I think, Alvie Fox, that it might take you until next spring to figure out the first headline." The bespectacled man eyed the sharp-nosed man warily, but his mouth quirked up at one corner. His voice was as meek as his appearance and mellowed further by an Irish lilt. "I'd like to finish reading it myself before then."
Ger winced. The sharp-nosed man—Alvie—was small and not muscular by any stretch of the imagination. But the Irishman wasn't any bigger, and he didn't look much like a fighter. He was wearing glasses, for heaven's sake.
Alvie reacted just as Ger suspected he would. His sneer twisted into a snarl. He lowered the paper, but Ger didn't imagine he intended to hand it over.
This wasn't the trouble Ger had come to Philadelphia to find, and Ger really didn't need to either become distracted or to make new enemies. And of course, it wasn't like Ger was any bigger than the Irishman being harassed.
On the other hand, looking the other way wasn't right. It sure as hell hadn't ever made matters better in the past. Ger drew a deep breath and stepped closer to the men.
"Excuse me."
Alvie turned his head toward Ger.
Before Alvie could respond, before Ger could speak a single word more, the bespectacled Irishman took a half-step closer to Alvie. His arm snapped out, and his fist connected with a solid thump against Alvie's temple.
Alvie's snarl slacked into open-mouthed surprise. He wrapped his arms around his head and slumped to his knees on the paving stones, dropping the newspaper in the process.
Ger gaped, every bit as startled by the Irishman's actions as Alvie had been.
The Irishman crouched beside Alvie and picked up his paper. He moved with calm grace, but Ger noticed his hands were shaking.
"I learned a new trick since last time." The Irishman's voice shook, too, although not much. "A wee bit of advice for you, Alvie. Never mess with an Irishman."
Alvie's only response was a wordless groan of pain.
The Irishman stood again. He pushed his spectacles up his nose with one finger and smiled a mild, vague smile at Ger. "Thank you kindly for the distraction, friend."
This man had never needed Ger's help, not for a single second. If it had come to a fight, the Irishman would have been more likely to wind up saving Ger.
Ger snapped his mouth shut and smiled tentatively. "It was no trouble. Wasn't exactly what I had planned, but I'm glad it worked out for you."
The Irishman's smile flickered brighter for just a moment, and then faded again. "You might not want to linger. Alvie's not much to look at, but he has big friends. The whole lot tend to have short memories—not a great deal of thinking ability amongst them, you understand. But a little caution never hurts."
Alvie, still on the ground but apparently recovering, sucked in a breath.
"Ripley'll hear about this, Colley!" Alvie howled.
The Irishman glanced down at Alvie and tucked his rescued paper under his arm. His hands still shook.
Ger stared at Alvie. His heart thudded.
"Ripley?" Ger repeated.
"You don't want to know the name," the Irishman—Colley—said. "I wish I didn't."
"You think he won't hear?" Alvie screeched. "You assaulting his friends on the street like this?"
Ger's chest tightened until he felt he couldn't quite catch his breath. Let it go, a small scared voice whispered. Let Ripley slip away again. Didn't you just prove to yourself how useless you'd be in any confrontation against Ripley? Go home, now, before you can't ever again.
"Have a care, friend." Colley turned and and started to walk away. His gait was perhaps a little faster than his sedate manner called for.
Ger watched him go, frozen with indecision.
Nearby, Alvie struggled to get to his feet. In minutes, Alvie would leave and Colley would be out of sight, and whatever they knew about Ripley would be gone with them. If Ger didn't want to find Ripley, all he had to do was stand there.
Being too scared to act was what had landed Ger on these wharves to begin with. Was he really going
to make that mistake again? Ger forced his legs to move and trotted after Colley.
"Wait!" Ger called out. "Mr. Colley?"
"Bastard!" Alvie called out from behind. Ger ignored him and kept going.
Colley slowed his steps and turned his head as Ger caught up to him. He glanced past Ger and didn't stop completely, though.
"Ripley." Ger fell into step beside Colley. "Burke Ripley? You know him?"
Colley narrowed his eyes before looking ahead as they moved along the crowded wharf.
"Most people who work the wharves do. Unfortunately. You're not one of his cronies, are you?"
"No." Ger snapped the word out.
Colley glanced sideways at Ger and nodded. "Good to know."
They walked several more steps before Ger could work up the nerve to ask the next question.
"Where can I find him?"
Colley glanced sharply at Ger. "You're not serious."
Ger desperately wanted to tell Colley no, he wasn't serious. He wanted nothing to do with Burke Ripley.
"I am," Ger said, instead. "I have business with him."
Colley stopped walking and turned to face Ger.
"Colley!" someone shouted.
Colley and Ger both glanced in that direction. The man coming toward them was black-haired and blue-eyed and as obviously Irish as Colley, although taller and thin to the point of gauntness.
Colley lifted his hand in greeting before looking again at Ger.
"Listen, friend—I don't know what business you have with Ripley, but have a care. He's a tad tougher to take down than Alvie Fox."
"Don't I know it."
The other Irishman reached them.
"Colley, me friend, I'm glad I caught you up. I near forgot, it's I that have the news for you today." The new arrival paused and glanced at Ger. "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm interrupting, am I?"
"He shapes up at the lower wharf, usually," Colley said to Ger.
"Thank you, Mr. Colley." Ger tipped his cap to Colley and to the other man.
"Oh, it's Mister Colley now, is it?" The new man clapped Colley on the shoulder, and the two of them turned away. "Tell me then, Mister Colley—Has your learned self ever heard of a man named Tucker Ellis? For I'm thinking it may be fair time for an adventure, perhaps somewhere that isn't Philadelphia's scenic waterfront."
Ger didn't hear Colley's response. The two Irishmen ambled off, leaving Ger to stand with his back to the stiff wind and wonder if he had the courage to walk south.
Chapter 6
Vincent knew Kellen hated the idea of a job that would take him away from Philadelphia—she'd shouted it at him the night before, he could hardly have missed it. The next morning, he walked west along High Street to meet with Tucker Ellis anyhow.
Centre Square was the geographic center of Penn's plans for Philadelphia, but the city had grown according to its own plan, all clumped up along the Delaware River instead of spread evenly across the neat grid of streets. The would-be central square had been left stranded on the edge of town instead, and the road out was rutted, half-frozen mud with fewer and fewer houses the further out you got. Vincent walked the trampled, winter-dead grass at its edge, alone in the darkness before dawn.
A dog's bark shattered the cold still. Vincent had pulled his sleeves as far down over his fingers as he could, but the chill was one you could smell, sharp as salt in the air, burning his cheeks and the tops of his ears. Despite the cold, he could smell a promise of spring in the air, too, a stupid yearning toward better days that did nothing to warm him now.
What he wanted more than promises was gloves. And a warmer coat, while he was dreaming. Hell, he had a list of things to wish for. Screw the money, Kellen had yelled at him. But she was wrong. He'd told her he could make this work, and he could.
And if he couldn't, he'd go back home and keep leading the same miserable life as before, and that would be that.
Dark began fading to day as he drew closer to the square. Patches of gray showed through the black between the trees, leeching up from the horizon and illuminating the ghostly form of the pump house—a square building topped with a rounded turret and decorated with enough windows that it appeared to be more temple than part of the waterworks. Architectural magnificence, in the middle of nowhere.
But that was how it went, maybe. The entire city had begun in the middle of nowhere, one man's big plan for greatness and a lot of swampy land between two rivers. Maybe greatness always started with trying to build something where there'd been nothing before.
As night slowly lifted, Vincent saw a chaise parked alongside the square's northern edge. The silhouette of a horses stood proudly before it. Beside them stood a man with an equally regal bearing. Daylight or proximity weren't necessary for Vincent to tell the man was Ellis.
Vincent's steps faltered.
Who was he kidding? He was going to, what? Walk up to Tucker Ellis—a man with a new coat and gloves and a carriage, for chrissake. Him, with his clothes worn thin and too small and hair he cut with his own knife when he cut it at all. Walk up to Ellis and say what, exactly?
Ellis shifted his stance. Turned his head. In the dim light, it felt to Vincent as if the man were looking right at him.
Vincent could not go back to Kellen and admit he'd failed. He wasn't sure what would be worse, seeing disappointment in her eyes or happiness.
Greatness started with nothing, right? Vincent sure as hell had plenty of that. His boots flattened half-frozen grass as he left the roadside and skirted the rail fence around the square to approach Ellis.
Night crept ever closer to daylight, revealing that Vincent was not alone in approaching Ellis. Vincent recognized a few faces—sturdy Jan Bosch, short-tempered William Jennett, Viktor Kalvis of the reddened hands and lines of hard living cut across his face. Vincent was surprised to see Kalvis. He thought the man had a family in Philadelphia.
Then again, Vincent had reasons to not be here, too. The reasons for being here just outweighed them.
Many of the other faces seemed passingly familiar, but Vincent couldn't put names to all of them. They stood in clumps, mostly based on the color of their skin or eyes or hair. Vincent had no real idea to which group he might belong, so he stood with none of them. They all, Vincent included, assembled without spoken instruction in front of Ellis.
Ellis had said he'd hire twelve. Vincent had never learned his numbers very well, but he knew far more men than that stood rubbing chilled hands and stomping cold feet in the square. The odds weren't great.
But they were better than any given morning shaping up on the wharf. Vincent dared to hope.
Ellis said nothing at all as the men edged warily close enough to form a loose group. He wore a tall hat this morning, along with riding coat and dark breeches tucked into his boots. The hat's brim cast his face into shadow as he stood with crossed arms and watched them.
The men shot furtive glances side to side—sizing each other up, Vincent guessed. Ellis waited, shifting his stony gaze from man to man, until they all stilled and looked back at him.
"I suppose," Ellis finally said. "That I will need to determine which of you will be my twelve."
Clothing rustled as men shifted uneasily. Vincent focused on trying to read Ellis, to determine what the man was looking for. All he could see of Ellis's face was a hint of a thin mouth curled slightly at one corner.
The man was amused. Calculating. Enjoying a game.
Vincent's case of nerves dissipated, the edgy tingle of nerves replaced by irritation.
A game. Vincent had walked through winter darkness with a coat that couldn't hope to keep him warm, with nothing but emptiness in his stomach. And Ellis thought it was all a game.
Ellis pointed to the man directly in front of him, a stodgy middle-aged suck-up who didn't often get chosen by the foremen because once he'd been tapped he tended to slack on the job. Vincent couldn't remember his name. Johnson? Johansen?
"You." The one word jabbed out and fixed the man in place. "W
hy should I hire you?"
Johnson-Johansen flinched back and goggled wordlessly a moment before recovering enough to stammer, "I... got a strong back. I work hard."
Someone snorted. Vincent cast a quick glance around and spotted Robert Langston with a stupid, cocky grin on his face. Langston had fine blonde hair and a face cut in the kind of angles that girls seemed to like, and he was every bit as much trouble as young men with faces like that usually are. He was also usually too dumb to know when to keep his mouth shut.
If Ellis heard Langston's snort, he didn't show it. He let his arm drop to his side, but he stared and waited for Johnson-Johansen to go on.
"I can fire a gun." Johnson-Johansen shifted his feet. His statement sounded more like a question.
Ellis released the man from his gaze, leaving Johnson-Johansen to drop his shoulders and sag with obvious relief. Ellis pointed again, not to the next man in line but to another at random.
"And you. Why should I hire you?"
More stammering. Another answer much the same as the first man's. Vincent watched Ellis's face, but he could read nothing useful in it. Even the trace of amusement was gone from Ellis's mouth. Ellis kept calling out men at random, and every time Ellis lifted his hand to point to the next prospect, Vincent's heart lurched.
"I learn quick," replied a plain-faced Lithuanian whose dark blonde curls fell across his forehead. Vincent didn't know the man's name.
But that didn't matter. What mattered was the effect of the response on Ellis, who straightened just the tiniest bit. A good answer, Vincent thought, and he tried to think how he could improve on it.
"You?" Ellis asked, a moment later. This time, he pointed at a man Vincent did recognize. "Why should I hire you?"
Dale Ackermann was a short, barrel-chested man with a mane of golden hair and thick beard to match. Vincent had only worked the same crew as Ackermann a time or two, and he couldn't remember ever speaking directly to him. A deep furrow between his brows, Ackermann stared at Ellis long enough that Vincent's skin started to itch. When Ackermann finally did give an answer, a Dutch accent clung to its edges.
A Stillness of the Sun (Crowmakers: Book 1): A Science Fiction Western Adventure Page 4