Lord Robert signaled that he thought she was clear, but she wasn’t. So she waited, ignoring his increasingly flamboyant hand gestures.
When finally the watchmen rounded the balcony corner, she rolled to her feet and walked, calmly but swiftly, directly to join him. He waited in patience, offering her the corner of his cape. “You could have borrowed this.”
“I took the risk.” She played along. “Maybe next time.”
“No, the offer is over,” he said smugly. “My cape.”
“We have to get Nick.”
“We will. But they’re waiting for us inside, and they may not have much time. With haste!”
The open shutter was five or six windows away, a distance that they closed as quickly as silence could allow. No light came from the exposed room, which was likely a good sign. The bottom of the sill was nearly as high as their heads, and Marion was just about to suggest that one of them give the other a boost when Lord Robert sprung up and found a foothold in the stony wall, from which he pushed away and vaulted to bring one boot perched perfectly in the window frame. Marion was amazed. The earl was not young, but he moved as fluidly as a traveling contortionist, with the reckless abandon of a child.
Marion, instead, could barely jump high enough to get her elbows on the ledge, and scrambled with her feet noisily against the stones just to slide her belly onto its rough lip. She was instantly greeted by a feminine squeak, and a panicked bit of commotion. Then an orange rectangle of a doorway opened across from them and two shapes flew from the room, both naked.
When last she checked, Arable and John had entered the manor wearing clothes, which meant they were probably not the two people who had just fled the room.
“I don’t think it was the signal,” Lord Robert whispered, inches from Marion’s face.
She wobbled there like a dying fish, half in the room and half outside. “What makes you think that?”
Lord Robert sniffed the air. “It smells like sex.”
Regretfully, Marion agreed. “It smells like sex.”
“Just a couple servants, likely, in a place they shouldn’t be. They probably opened the window to hide the evidence.”
Marion frowned, still teetering on the window sill. “I’m smelling someone else’s sex right now.”
Thankfully she did not have to slide in headfirst. She eased backward to return to their hiding spot.
“Where are you going?” Lord Robert whispered. He had already crossed the dark room and was leaning out into the manor’s hallway.
She tisked him. “Get back! We need to get outside to watch for the real signal!”
“Don’t you suppose we ought to follow them?” he asked, far too loudly for discretion. He lowered his voice after she cringed. “What if they tell someone they saw us?”
“Then they’ll send someone, and they’ll find us, because we’re still here.” Marion gestured for him to return. “Whereas if we were not here, they won’t find us. So let’s be not here.”
“But we’re inside,” Lord Robert countered, “and outside is outside.”
Marion blinked. “Yes, I’ve noticed that.”
“And inside is better than outside. So if you don’t think we should be here, then we should probably be…” he glanced around the room and flashed a mischievous smile back, “… there.”
He pointed at another doorway to an adjacent chamber, and before Marion could protest he came to her, braced her by the arms, and pulled her through the window.
“What about Nick?” she whispered.
“He’ll wait for the real signal. Shh!”
This wasn’t the plan, ran a scream through her mind.
“If you disappoint him in any way…” the countess’s voice answered. “Lady Outlaw.”
Marion brushed herself off and followed the earl’s every inadvisable move.
* * *
LORD ROBERT BOUNDED PLAYFULLY, one hand at his rapier’s hilt, deftly maneuvering its tip to avoid any unwanted collisions. Its name was Tesoro, he had earlier explained, because the only point in naming a sword was to tell people about it. They moved through a cozy reading parlor which led to some smaller dining nook that reeked of garlic, and the door after that opened back upon the main corridor. He glanced twice in both directions and tugged her along, gliding past a few closed doorways before pointing at another to indicate his random target. He pulled open the simple wooden door and spun as he entered it, flashing a child’s grin.
This fool of a lord will be the death of me, Marion thought, but followed him into the small room, where she stared directly at two bearded guards dining at a wine barrel, neither of which looked pleased about the interruption of their evening.
In a single but admittedly dashing move, Lord Robert yanked the stool out from under one of the guards with one hand and threw up the loose tabletop that contained their dinner with the other. It was startling in its ferocity, impressive in its creativity, but downright idiotic in its volume. The table plank, the pewter goblets, the dinner—not to mention the guards themselves—exploded in a crash of noise that was sure to bring the entirety of the manor screaming down upon them.
Lord Robert pushed the fallen guard onto his back with his foot as he twirled the four-legged stool with both hands and brought it down with frightening accuracy over the man’s head, the legs creating a cage that pinned his skull to the floor. Robert sat himself on the stool’s top, one foot lounging lazily on its rungs, as he slipped Tesoro from his belt and touched its point to the remaining guard’s chest, who was now soaked in ale and reeling from the commotion.
“Holy fuck!” the guard swore, trying to push away from the steel tip but finding himself already pressed against the room’s back wall.
“Kindly don’t curse at me,” Lord Robert cooed. He wiggled as the man beneath him flailed to gain leverage against the stool. “I didn’t curse at you, and we may still have the opportunity to be fast friends.”
“Who the fuck…” the guard started, but Robert raised an eyebrow at the vulgarity. “Who are you, what are you doing here?”
“I can understand you wanting to know that, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you. I’m nobody, really, definitely not worth your concern. What you should be concerned about is your family. You have a family?”
“What?” The guard shook, breadcrumbs escaping the brown-red mess of his beard. His eyes were trained on the rapier, which bent very slightly from the pressure it kept against his chest. He wore no mail, and whatever strength it might take to pierce his outer coat would certainly be enough to slip through skin as well. “A family? Yes.”
“They sound lovely,” Lord Robert sighed. “They’d like to see you again. So I can kill you if you’d like, or you could promise to stay in this room and pretend you never saw us.”
Marion was baffled at the display, but she thankfully saw no weapons for the guards to fight back with. “We’re just going to leave them here?” she asked.
Lord Robert seemed to be genuinely confused. “Are you saying they’re not trustworthy?”
Marion honestly couldn’t tell if he was serious. “Maybe we should tie them up.”
“You should probably tie us up,” the upright guard gulped. “I think we’d catch hell something fierce if we just let you walk off.”
“Stop them, Fed!” growled the trapped guard from under the stool.
“No, don’t stop them, Fed,” Robert grumbled, then shrugged his shoulders. “Alright, Marion, tie them up. I don’t know that I really have any rope…”
Marion looked for anything to use, while the guard on the floor jerked his stool and tried unsuccessfully to wrestle it away from Robert.
“Now settle down there! We’ll tie you up as well, just wait your turn.”
“Fuck you!” the pinned man growled, kicking his legs uselessly about.
“I can make you the same offer.” Robert turned his attention downward, though he kept his rapier against the man named Fed. “You have a family?”
“No,” replied the guard on the ground.
“Oh. Hm. Well you have friends, at least.”
“No.”
“No?” Robert frowned widely and looked to the first guard for confirmation.
“That’s true. Nobody really much likes him.”
“What about you?” Marion joined in. “You wouldn’t call him a friend?”
“A friend?” Fed fidgeted. “Well, we … I mean, we work together.”
Robert exchanged shocked looks with everyone he could find. “You’re having dinner with him, but you won’t even call the man your friend? That’s … that’s awful, I’m sorry. Well how about, interests, then? You have … other things … that you like to do? When you’re not … guarding?”
The man twisted against the wooden legs of the stool. “No.”
“Good God, man, help me out here. Do you have anything in this world that you like? I’m looking for a reason why I shouldn’t kill you.”
“Fuck you. Go on and kill me.”
“We need to move.” Marion poked Robert’s arm. “Someone will have heard us by now.”
“I can’t…” Robert shook his head, baffled. “I can’t believe this. I’m really trying here. What am I supposed to do with him?”
“Stop them, Fed,” the friendless man gurgled again, “or I’ll tell Lord Simon you gave up without a fight.”
“Well that’s not very nice!” Robert snapped, prodding his prisoner’s belly with a boot. “If you want to die I can oblige you, but don’t make me kill your friend.”
“They’re not friends,” Marion couldn’t help but note.
Fed whimpered. “Please don’t kill me.”
“We’re not going to kill you,” Marion whispered back.
“Y’hear that?” yelled the second guard. “They ain’t gonna kill you. So stop your whining and push him off this fucking stool.”
Fed’s eyes shot open with indecision, fused to Lord Robert’s in a bit of a stalemate. Robert couldn’t move without freeing the man beneath him, and Fed couldn’t move without risking his favorite vital organs. The situation might have remained deadlocked for some time if not for the two additional guards that suddenly barreled into the room behind Marion.
* * *
THEY WERE RUNNING AGAIN, a riot following them, and Marion barely had the time to even think about how ridiculous the situation had become. They had spoilt their own trap before even setting it, and all she could really hope for was to stumble into an empty room with an open window that had a bunch of horses waiting conveniently saddled nearby.
Robert dragged her down one corridor and another, then quickly ducked through a small archway to hide in its recesses. “Are you enjoying yourself?” she chastised him.
“I am,” he said, fumbling to resheathe his weapon.
“And you think this is going well?”
“Oh, this is the height of embarrassment.” He winked. “But I think I know a way out!”
With that he led her through the other end of the room into something that could absolutely not be called a way out. It was the main corridor, clogged by a small host gathered outside an unusually sturdy door. One man was dressed far better than the others in a crisp white outfit. Next to him was a woman wearing one of Lady Magdalena’s old dresses, beside a large man with three heads.
“Holy damn,” Marion cursed.
John Little and Arable de Burel looked at her, their eyes as wide as the hallway.
And damn it all to hell if Lord Robert didn’t pull his rapier again and shout, “Ha ha!” as he flew glibly toward the Lord Simon de Senlis.
TWENTY-THREE
ARTHUR A BLAND
NOTTINGHAM
FUCK. THIS.
Fuck. This.
Fuck the slums and fuck the stink and fuck the shit and fuck the this.
Every left foot was a fuck, every right foot was a thing worth fucking, and, fuck by thing, Arthur made another pass around the Spotted Leopard. It was a whorehouse, insomuch as it was a place where whores sold themselves, but there was nothing exotic about it. There were stories of whorehouses in the big cities that catered to noblemen, elaborate parlors with silks and secret passwords and rows of virgins.
This was not that.
It was all stink and grime in this area of Nottingham, a place called the French Ward. Everywhere were doorless, uneven wooden buildings that leaned into each other and the sky, covered in horizontal swaths of mold and murk likely made by floodings from years past. The French Ward was the lowest point of Nottingham, both geographically and morally. Even though it was well away from the river Trent, it was probably beneath water level and not designed with any sort of drainage in mind. It didn’t seem designed at all, actually—it seemed like the random, inevitable result of a bunch of poor fuckholes trying desperately to pretend they were a part of the city. But that filth was probably exactly what attracted the man with the velvet cap.
The man was inside the Spotted Leopard now, though his velvet cap was not. He’d taken to disguising himself in the dirty rags common in this area, as had the rest of them. Will Scarlet was inside as well, trying to get information on their mark, while Stutely stood like a wart on the face of the building, keeping watch. Arthur was left to make watchful rounds about the block, doing everything he could to navigate around the puddles of questionable content and everywhere a consistent layer of caked shit.
Fuck the gangs and fuck the whores and fuck the man with the velvet fucking cap.
They didn’t even know his name, but Arthur knew their mark’s life was boring. Not the normal sort of boring that came with most folk, but a far more boring sort of boring. He spent his mornings inspecting food shipments that came by the river, he spent his afternoons inspecting food shipments that came by the roads. He lived in a humble but safe area of the Parlies, entirely alone. He never deviated from his schedule, and Arthur had never seen the man laugh. So when this boring man changed into a dirty smock and snuck away to a French Ward brothel, Arthur had reported the information back to the Red Lions as quick as a pup.
“Fascinating.” Red Fox had drawn out the word. “But most of the better half of Nottingham finds their sport between a poorer woman’s legs. Come back with something useful, or don’t come back at all.”
Tonight was the third time the man with the velvet cap had visited this brothel, and it was still the only scandalous thing they’d learned about him. Which was, apparently, not nearly good enough.
David was off with Zinn today, on another errand or gathering supplies—whatever lesser gruntwork it was the Red Lions assigned her. Technically she was a Red Lion, albeit one of their lowliest lieutenants who managed a small outside gang. That was apparently how the Lions controlled the whole city—not by stomping out their rival gangs but by recruiting those gangs’ leaders. Zinn had been a dockside runt with a tiny crew until the Lions brought her in, in exchange for a percentage of her gang’s work. She was just a child, the little bitch, but somehow she was now Will Scarlet’s gangboss.
Anybody who follows him is going to drown.
They were all Zinn’s pawns for the moment, thanks to Will’s recklessness. If Zinn’s gang got bottomwork from the Lions, she doled the bottommost of that bottomwork to them. Moving packages from the docks to the caves, counting traffic through the gates of the city, following nobodies and reporting back on their movements. Today’s bottomwork was to follow the man with the velvet cap again, as they’d done every day this week.
They’d become a joke, and leaping at every one of Zinn’s commands was the first and worst of their shame. This was not the glorious rebellion they were supposed to be sparking. This was just humiliation, and trying to scratch any success out of Nottingham now would only likely carve a gullet so deep it would become their grave.
“See anything?” Stutely asked, too loudly, as Arthur made his next pass by the Spotted Leopard’s entrance.
“I see fucking everything,” Arthur responded, pointing his fingers erratically to dem
onstrate all the fucking things he could see. He was the last person qualified to notice anything out of the ordinary. Because he didn’t know what the fuck ordinary looked like here. He was increasingly aware that the only thing that didn’t fucking belong here was him.
He needed to talk with David. Zinn often split their foursome up on different tasks, and at night they all shared the same room at The Peach and the Pear, which made it tricky to have a private conversation. If he could convince David, then maybe it was time to leave Will Scarlet behind. Will could stay, and earn his men, as planned. Once he did that, would it even matter if Arthur and David were still around? Instead they could make their own way to Huntingdon, and at least be with people who respected them. Stutely could follow or not, based on how intelligent he felt like being at the time. But Arthur wouldn’t go anywhere without David.
“Have you thought about what name you’ll take?” Stutely asked as Arthur passed the entrance, forcing him to slow his pace.
“What?”
“Your name,” the beastman repeated, then hunched up his shoulders as if to imply secrecy, while doing nothing to lower his voice. “Your red name. When they take us in.”
“What? No.” Arthur hated even the idea of the question. Everyone in the Red Lions took a red name. Zinn’s name was apparently short for zinnia, which she claimed was the name of some red flower nobody had ever heard of. That’s not what they were here for. “We’re not staying here.”
Stutely responded with a roll of his entire face that implied the opposite. It implied it so heavily that Arthur almost felt the fool to think otherwise. No. We’re not staying here. That wasn’t what Elena had died for, for them to go backward.
“I was thinking Bloodly Stutely at first,” Stutely explained. “Red Stutely is nice but too obvious. But now I’m leaning toward just The Blood.”
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