HerOutlandishStranger (24 page)

Steele must have wanted him to panic. He dug powerful, hard
fingers into Jazz’s arm and prodded his side with the pistol. “You will never
return and you’ll be considered a deserter from the agency. I’m going to kill
you.”

Jazz wondered if the ale and whatnot still sloshing through
his system contributed to his calm. “Eh, no big surprise. I wondered why I was
stuck here after I gave in my instructions. I’ve been waiting and watching.
What a da’ pain it’s been. Why haven’t you gone after me before? Hey, more to
the point, why did you keep going after me when you knew it wasn’t time?”

Steele ignored his questions. “I am on a mission, White.
There may be no heroic Truthies, not while I have breath in my body. It’s
spitting on the graves of all those who died.”

“Okay, right, I get it. Shut up all ready.” Jazz was
entirely tired of bearing his sins. He hadn’t chosen to take them on, after
all. And he especially didn’t want to bother arguing innocence or guilt at the
moment.

And there was that other thing. Time to clear it up. “What
did you mean you know about Spain? Are you talking about me? I was the
protector. Nothing else mattered to the agency.” Not officially, he added
silently. “I asked the director and he wouldn’t answer. Why you? Why? I fear
the worst.”

“And what’s that?”

“You’re the father.”

The hand on his arm squeezed hard. Steele knew the truth.
Had he spotted some resemblance to her father in Maggie’s face? Or perhaps
Steele’d gotten it from Eliza before Jazz appeared. Jazz picked his words
carefully. “I’m stuck here so obviously you’ll get your way, Steele. I’m right,
aren’t I? I don’t return? And I’m your enemy—no one else is. Do you
understand?”

Please God, don’t let the man be fool enough to punish Eliza
for consorting with a Truthie. The baby would live, obviously. But Eliza. Those
small bits of history could shift, change, create another future. He wouldn’t
know because the CR wasn’t part of any web.

Steele’s breath was harsh. “I understand,” he repeated.
“You’re the enemy. No one else.”

Jazz almost sagged with relief. The man hadn’t promised to
leave Eliza alone, but this was more than Jazz thought he’d say.

They stepped over a low brick wall surrounding the
construction.

“I’m going to fight you,” Jazz said. “But you don’t care
because of course you already know I’m not going to survive. White will die
here.”

Steele gave a small huffing breath. Triumph. His teeth
gleamed in the dark. “Ah, you aren’t as clueless as I thought. That much the
director told me—there would be no return for you. I have to be sure.”

Did that mean the scheming little twerp of a director sent
Steele to kill him? Jazz supposed so. “Goddamn agency,” he muttered as he
looked for loose rocks around his feet, something to grab and throw. A fair
fight while he was in his right mind seemed only…gentlemanly.

He talked as he scanned the area. “When no one but you
looked at me during that first da’ agency meeting I thought it was because I
was a Truthie. Nah, because they’d send me off to die and they all knew it,
even before they fetched me from my cozy safe home.” Jazz paused. “No, wait.
They didn’t know it, eventually they
would
know it.”

He laughed, actually amused. “Language is a bugger for time
travelers,” he said. “Never can get the damn tenses right.”

Something gave a tiny gurgle. Both men whirled around.

Eliza had followed them. Blast the woman, Jazz thought, she
was a better sneak than actor.

“Jesus Lord.” But it was Steele who spoke, not her. “I’m
going to have to kill her too.”

His words changed everything.

Jazz hadn’t known if Steele came from the agency proper, or
some secret wing of it. With Steele’s strange mutterings about what happened in
Spain and the repeated unnecessary attacks on Jazz, Jazz had suspected the man
was cracked. But now he understood. How Steele had traveled and what he’d
planned was no longer of any importance. Steele’s mission was only in his poor
warped brain. He was not acting for the DHU but hell, Jazz didn’t even care if
he was.

Screw the fair fight. He bit down hard on his lip to cause
real pain, the first step in an almost forgotten process. The way it always
began, back to the original berserkers. Pain and blood.

Blood trickled into his mouth and from the nearly blocked
section of his own warped mind, he summoned the Truthie’s war cry.
Destruction.
Perhaps the alcohol he’d drunk helped him fetch it up
. Leave thought. Act.
Be death.

He twisted from Steele’s grip and allowed the long-repressed
frenzy to take control of his body and mind.

A hand cut to Steele’s throat along with a sharp side-kick
at his arm and the gun jerked up. Jazz’s other hand whirled around and grabbed
the gun as it started to fall. Steele was knocked to the ground. A
whomp
,
a groan, a sickening thud and it was over.

More to kill. More.
His body and brain clamored,
begged him to stomp on the man’s throat
.

No. Jazz slammed down a wall in his mind, the one he’d been
taught to build years ago.
I am not death. Stop. Wake up.

And he did. Shivering and dizzy, he came back. He slowly
straightened from a crouch he didn’t recall going into and looked around.

Eliza had dropped to the ground, smart woman. She’d
remembered the lessons for self-preservation he’d taught her in Spain. As she
rose to her feet, something in her hand caught the moonlight and Jazz realized
she held a sharp carving knife she’d carried out with her.

They panted for a moment without speaking. Jazz pulled out
his CR with shaking hands and squatted by Steele. When he rested it on the man,
the CR registered a heartbeat. “He’s alive.” His throat felt raw as if he’d
been screaming the war-cry of a Truthie. He wondered if he had.

Eliza walked to him, silent in her slippers. She stood over
Jazz, swaying slightly.

He licked his own blood from his lip. “How much did you
hear?”

“Not so very much. Enough,” she whispered. “Time travel. I
see. What you did to him and the man in Spain. Madame Blanro. It’s all true.”

Jazz looked up at her. “Yeah.”

She held out her hand, but not to help him to his feet. She
obviously wanted the CR. He almost turned off the disguise and handed it to
her, but he shook his head and dumped it back in his pocket. Too much.

Eliza sank down to kneel by him and looked at the too-still
figure of Steele. “You and this man. You talked about me, Jas. Now you must
tell me why and you owe me truth.”

Jazz hauled Steele up by an arm. “We can’t sit around out
here, Liza. May I take him back to your house?”

“Only if you tie him up.”

Jazz grunted and pulled the limp figure over his shoulders
in a fireman’s carry. He stumbled as he stepped over the wall. Steele was a big
man.

“You’re very calm, Liza. Are you all right?”

“I’m… I’m… Yes.” She wiped the back of her hand over her
mouth. “God help me, I think I rather knew the truth in the back of my heart.”

“I thought the phrase was back of the mind?”

“Usually, but in this case it was my heart.”

It might have been one of their discussions as they tramped
through Spain—familiar and nightmarish at the same moment. As they walked
across the square, a yellowish fog swirled around their legs. Even as Wimble
opened the door for them, the fog grew thicker.

Jazz went into the dining room and dumped the unconscious
Steele on a chair while Eliza fetched rope. He tied Steele with a great number
of random, not-very-competent knots. Obviously bondage was not one of the
skills he’d been left with.

He went to the side table and poured some port into a
crystal tumbler. “Come on, Steele, time to wake up.”

The man groaned as the wine touched his lips. One of his
eyes was swollen shut. After he made another small noise, he went limp again.

Jazz knelt by Steele again. “There is something wrong.”

They quickly untied him. “We should summon Mr. Grace,” Eliza
said.

Jazz nodded. The surgeon might have something useful to say.
Jazz had studied childbirth, not head injuries.

He and Charles grabbed Steele’s arms and legs and carried
him up the stairs while Wimble went to fetch the doctor. Eliza followed them
into the spare bedroom and she and Jazz stood near the bed. Charles was at
attention in a corner of the room so Jazz contented himself with shifting close
enough to Eliza to catch her lovely scent enhanced by the perfume of some
flowers she’d tucked into her hair. Had she been wearing them all this time?
That’s what he should have paid attention to when he thought he had only
minutes to live. Not Steele or his revenge. The flowers in Liza’s hair. He’d
remember that for next time.

“I read your note,” she told him in a low voice.

He’d forgotten he’d written to her. “Note?”

“Telling me goodbye. I had planned to come chivvying after
you this evening but was detained when your friend came to visit.”

“Chivvying after me?”

“As a hound runs after a fox. You promised, Jas. Twelve
months. Yet when I read that note I understood you’d break your promise to me.”

He rubbed his face. “I thought I had to. I mean, some of
what Steele said is true. I am beholden to…to the agency.”

“To the future, I imagine,” she said in a flat voice. “I am
still uncertain which of us is insane.”

At that moment, Maggie began to cry. “Your daughter is
hungry,” she said as she turned to leave. “I’ll go feed her.”

Mr. Grace’s heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. “You
again?” he asked Jazz, who met him at the landing. “You do make free with Mrs.
Peasnettle’s home.” He stuck out a hand and Jazz shook it.

Maggie’s cries were louder.

“Am I here to attend to the infant?” The doctor frowned as
he unbuttoned his frockcoat.

No, nothing that horrible, Jazz thought. I’ve only brutally
attacked another man. “Your patient is in here.” He led Mr. Grace into the
bedroom.

The surgeon stopped outside the door for a minute and cocked
his head. He smiled down the hall toward the room where the baby and mother were.
“Good. Her lungs are excellent. That’s a fine, lusty cry of hunger.”

In the darkened bedroom, the doctor hung up his outer
garments, rolled up his sleeves and to Jazz’s surprise poured out of a bottle
something smelling of alcohol into the washbowl and rubbed his hands in it.

“Don’t look so shocked, sir. I am not unwilling to learn.”

Mr. Grace strode to the bedside and examined Steele. He felt
the unconscious man’s head with a delicate, expert touch. “Ah, he’s sustained a
nasty crack on the head. Fell, you say?” He peered at the purple mark across
his throat. “Looks like he ran into something neck high first, then toppled
over backward and hit his head on a paving stone. Poor fool, probably did it
walking too quickly in the fog. Thick as soup out there already. Do you know
the man?”

Jazz shook his head.

“Keep him very quiet. Don’t move him. Or are you expert
enough to know this already?” Mr. Grace gave him a satirical smile.

“What else should we do?”

The doctor straightened, pulled out a handkerchief and
rubbed his hands with it. “I would bleed him. And if the swelling does not
decrease, I suggest trepanning.”

Jazz had no idea if either idea was worthwhile. The
medicines Mag had given him were for disease and pain, not a head injury. He
sighed and rubbed his arm.

“So, sir? What say you?” Mr. Grace watched him over his
spectacles. “Shall I ready my instruments?”

Trepanning. Removing part of the skull. “Perhaps we should
wait?” Jazz suggested.

“That’s another course of action I often follow, although
not in a case of possible subdural hematoma.” The doctor picked up his leather
bag and fumbled with the buckle. “Not much that can be done, but one does like
to make an effort.”

“He’s your patient,” Jazz said. “You do what you think is
best.”

From the bed came a thick, rasping snoring. It stopped then
started again. The doctor dropped the black case onto the floor. It landed with
a clank. “Help me roll the man onto his side.”

After they carefully positioned Steele, Mr. Grace didn’t
pick up his bag. He pulled a chair near the bed. “Perhaps it is just a matter
of time, and you’re correct, we should simply wait. One dislikes making a mess
of a man on his last day on earth.”

Jazz shifted from foot to foot. He fingered his CR. “How do
you know?”

“That noise. His reflex to swallow has been compromised—too
common with head injuries. But I’ll wager this is something else.” Mr. Grace
went to his jacket. He pulled a book and his glasses from the pocket and sat
down on the chair by the bed. “You should summon a clergyman. I’ll wait here.
It might take minutes, it might be a matter of hours.”

Jazz nodded and left the room. Liza, slightly disheveled
from feeding Maggie, waited in the hall. She looked enquiringly at Jazz who
said, “He’s a goner.”

Her brow furrowed. “I assume you’re saying he’s passed on?”

“Not yet. How do we find a clergyman?”

Eliza blinked and the frown grew darker. “I’ll send a
servant.”

By the time Reverend Harris arrived, the sounds from the bed
were less regular. Jazz found a wooden chair in another room and put that near
the comfortable armchair occupied by the doctor. He silently apologized to
Steele—there was no point in saying any words aloud, even if he’d been
conscious to hear Jazz. They dying man probably had no interest in Jazz’s guilt
in his own murder. Only the events of Jazz’s earlier life had moved Steele.
Events that wouldn’t take place for centuries.

The young clergyman mumbled over Steele then looked
uncertainly at Jazz. “I would stay and wait if you wished.” His tone made it
clear he didn’t want to be there.