Wasp (9 page)

The Fixer climbed into the cart, checked the baby and covered her with loose straw. The darkie took the driver’s perch and clicked off a series of sharp notes using his fingers. The cart lurched forward, back axle squealing. It should’ve been greased days ago but there’d been enough work to do around this stinking port.

Another job lost,
the Fixer thought,
and here I am running away again. The same fear. The same pain in the gut.

The Shire’s steps were laboured. It smelled of leather and stale dung. The potboy was supposed to see to the animal’s welfare but was getting more idle by the day. A taste of the rope across the backs of his legs would sort him. Not that it mattered now.

The quay remained quiet. No light appeared. No one came running. The watchman was gone, his brazier choking in the drizzle. He’d be in the gin house with his toothless doxy and fetch no grief because of it. Who, after all, would steal from a slaver port?

Into the lane. The squealing axle settled to a low whine. After a few minutes the cold started to bite deep, even under the straw. A distraction from the Fixer’s wounds. He’d had no time to stitch the cuts but had cleaned the worst with alcohol and bound them tight. None of the sword strokes had hit anything critical. He might not bleed to death but the buggers were going to scar. He took a vial of laudanum from his salvaged doctor’s bag and risked a few drops. Any more and he’d be no use to anyone.

They reached a crossroads, handpost stark against star-punctured clouds. The rain had fizzled out. ‘Go that way,’ the Fixer told the darkie, nudging his tar-spiked back. Another click of the fingers and the cart turned, wheels settling into soggy ruts.

Don’t let us get bogged down. Not now.

He fiddled with a tinderbox and lit the lantern hanging beside the driver’s perch. They were too far into the trees to be seen from the docks. In the yellow glow the young mother’s face was pale and drawn above the mound of straw under which she’d buried herself. Her baby had settled in the makeshift swaddling. The darkie muttered words in some incomprehensible tongue but the Shire’s tread on the road seemed sure enough. The Fixer settled in the straw next to the girl and slipped a warming arm around her. Already the pain was receding. As the laudanum deadened his body he couldn’t tell where his troubled thoughts ended and the dreams began.

He sat up, wide awake. The cart had left the road and was standing behind a screen of trees. They were in a sloping clearing, thick with wild grass and the skeletons of old brambles. Using the lantern, the darkie had set light to a small pile of grass. As the Fixer watched, a bundle of twigs was added to the guttering flames.

He checked the girl. Her eyes were closed, her breathing low but irregular. Sheer exhaustion had knocked her into sleep. The Fixer fumbled under the straw. No fresh blood. He’d take a proper look as soon as chance allowed. He eased himself away from the girl and out of the cart, throwing both arms around himself like a shroud.

The darkie stared at the smoky blue flames. ‘Bad wood,’ he said when the Fixer joined him. ‘Burns like wet hide, but we need to get some heat inside our bones. I have known cold before, but not like this.’

‘Is that why you left the road?’

He nodded towards the Shire. ‘The animal needs to rest or it will fall between the shafts.’

‘How far have we come? Did you see whitewashed stones spaced along the road with markings on them? Can you remember how many?’

The darkie marked them off with his fingers.

‘Sixteen miles. No sign of anyone coming after us?’

‘We joined a better road a thousand paces back. I saw no one.’

‘That’ll change. Dawn’s about two hours away. I slept harder than I meant to.’

‘I saw you swallow something. It made you snore like a wild hog.’

‘That may be, but it’s wearing off and I’m starting to hurt. We can’t linger here.’

‘Tell that to your horse.’

‘Hunger will soon wake the baby. She’ll get nothing good from her mother’s breast. We need to find milk or she might not survive the night.’

‘The girl cannot feed the child?’

‘I doubt she can feed herself.’

The darkie dropped another handful of sticks into the flames. ‘Warriors, in my land, sometimes eat a root before fighting. It unchains their minds. They go wild, see things others cannot see, but they forget to eat. To clean themselves. This one is in such a place. Her blood is singing. You cannot go there too. Keep your potion in your pouch. Use your pain to keep alert.’

He threw the last of the wood on the fire. It spat like a sick dog and billowed smoke into the freezing air. The Fixer mused over the idea of being needed. The darkie could snap both their necks, abandon the baby and slip into the trees. The journey over the ocean had eaten at his muscles, but enough strength remained, as had been demonstrated in the Fixer’s cabin.

No, my friend, you also have demons to answer to. I suspected as much on the quayside and I’m more sure of it now. I’m banking on those to get us through this.

They still had time. The port watchman would be well in his cups and the potboy seldom budged before cockcrow. The girl’s supposed brothers posed the biggest threat but the Fixer knew their sort. They’d whip up some men, likely from their own estate, to do their chasing for them.

‘How is the girl?’ the darkie asked. ‘She was speaking through much of the journey, saying things I did not understand.’

‘Sleeping, or as close as she can come to it. The straw is keeping them warm enough. I daren’t wake either. Noisy mouths will serve us ill.’

‘If not for them I would still be in that cage?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I must be grateful to them if not to you. I know what you were thinking, that I could kill you all and take my chances in the forest. You are right to do so, because I am a murderer. I have killed or enslaved my entire people, and what would be three more among these dark trees? But that is not how my heart works. I am a stranger in this country and will take your offer of life, if only to remember what I have done.’

‘D’you have a name, darkie?’

‘You could not say it. Your tongue is too stiff. Your race has forgotten how to speak. You do not name your children after living creatures. You are given nonsense titles that cannot be found in the skies, the land or the forest. I cannot speak to you of names.’

‘Fine. No names. Not for now. But I’d like to know why my language is so familiar to you. You speak better than many English born.’

‘My village once traded with your kind, until you found a better use for us. So, do you have a plan, healer, or shall we wander like this and let fate decide what becomes of us?’

‘I’ve fooled myself for months that working those docks was the only choice open to me. But no, there’s another.’

‘Another?’

The Fixer said nothing more and the darkie didn’t press it. Half an hour later they were back on the road, the fire kicked into ashes behind them. An orange smudge lined the horizon to the east. They had to pull onto the verge to let a post coach gallop past, but so far that remained the only traffic.

The darkie had a haggard look. The Fixer sent him into the back of the cart and took over the driving. When the baby woke and started crying she was soothed with gentle songs never heard in this patch of the world. The miles rumbled by. Every sound caused the Fixer to flinch. The nag snorting. A crow flapping out of a hedge. Soon the land opened out into pasture and the grey-green fuzz of trees lay well behind them. Not much of a forest. Any pursuers could likely comb it within an hour.

Another crossroads. The handpost marked eleven miles from the city. The right-hand road disappeared into the fields. Ahead, the lane rotted into a track. The brown husks of last summer’s weeds still poked out of the middle. Dead brambles encroached from either side.

The Fixer snapped the reins across the Shire’s rump. All around them fences were broken, walls had stones missing, the land looked bare and neglected. No good for grazing or farming. The only house they passed had lost its roof. The garden was thick with gorse.

The darkie was still awake. ‘Are we looking for something?’ he asked.

‘An acquaintance of mine. His home is tucked well off this track. We may have to walk part of the way.’

The horse strained against its harness. Thorns scratched the wooden sides of the cart. Ahead, the lane ran beside a line of tall, untended hedges. The Fixer halted the cart next to the crumbled bones of a wall almost entirely swallowed by undergrowth. All that remained of an old drover’s cottage. Beside it sat a ragged hole in the brush, not much bigger than a man.

It’s even worse than I remember
, the Fixer thought.
I’ve more chance of sprouting wings and flying than getting the horse down that.

He slid off the driver’s perch. The nag snorted its relief. The Fixer tethered him to the branch of a stunted tree and let him chew the verge. If he was found, nothing could be done about it. The Fixer lacked the time or patience to hide him.

‘Get the girl. I’ll take the baby.’

‘We are going through here? What lies beyond?’

‘A house with many paths to its doors, not all of which are safe. This way we won’t be seen.’

The darkie placed the child into the Fixer’s arms and scooped up the girl, again with no apparent effort. They had to duck through the undergrowth, but a few paces further on the bushes had been widened and the path cleared. Ahead lay a hunting lodge fashioned from stone and stout oak beams.

‘It suits my friend to keep a back route,’ the Fixer explained. He tucked the baby under his arm and banged his fist once, twice on the door. A crow clattered out of a nearby tree and flapped off, squawking.

The glade settled back into silence. The Fixer thumped the door again, harder. The girl stirred a couple of times but didn’t wake. In a sense he envied her. His ears and his nose were turning numb. They had no money and no other place to go. Besides, the Shire needed proper feed and a long rest.

If I’m wrong about this I’m taking the girl to an inn even if I have to sell the nag to pay for it,
he thought.
The darkie can take his chances.

The door ghosted open. A man appeared on the step, his profile mottled orange and yellow by the fire behind him. An old army musket was clutched in both hands.

‘You know that’s as likely to blow up in your face as cause any hurt to us, Crabbe,’ the Fixer said.

A lengthening silence. Even at this distance the Fixer could feel the heat spilling out of the parlour hearth. His bones sighed for want of it.

The gun lowered. Crabbe spat into the dark. ‘On the run again, John? I thought you’d had your fill of trouble over women. Yet here you are, out of the night with a lass in tow and, cross my heart, a baby too. I hope that big fellow is your rightful slave and not something you stole.’

He studied the darkie in the light from the door. ‘Cross my heart, the tar’s barely dry on this one. He’s fresh off the boat and not even sold, I’d wager. And what about you, John? Someone’s cut you up pretty fine by the looks of it. What trouble are you bringing to my door?’

‘We got a good start. Nobody knows we’re here.’

‘Not yet, they don’t. But you know what these Mango buggers are like when they’re sniffing out a blackie’s trail.’

‘Are you alone?’

‘Bless your luck, I’ve no other visitors tonight. Now get inside. I near broke my back feeding logs to that fire and I don’t want its heat leaking into the hedgerows.’

Crabbe stepped aside. A leather armchair hugged the hearth and, without being asked, the darkie sat the girl down. Her eyes opened, took in the orange-flooded walls, the stoic furniture, the animal trophies peering gawk-mouthed from their mountings.

‘That baby’s only hours old,’ Crabbe said, gesturing at the bundle in the Fixer’s arms. ‘You delivered it?’

‘I did.’

‘I never thought you’d have the courage. You took a fine chance bringing the mite and its mother out on such a night. When it comes to certain things you’ve got dust floating between your ears, John.’

‘D’you have milk for the child?’

‘Yes, fresh from the cow this very morning.’

‘And something for the mother?’

‘A pot of stew. Might still be warm.’

‘What’s in it?’

‘Don’t ask. I did you a big favour last time, John. My charity don’t stretch every which way.’

‘You’ll get a fat enough purse on the girl.’

‘Ah, so that’s your notion? You’re right, I shall, but the baby won’t get past their doorstep. House rules. Besides, I’m retiring.’

‘You? I thought they’d have to shoot you first.’

‘Age is creaking my bones, and I can’t go chasing over the country like I used to.’

‘Maybe I could help there.’

‘What, do my job? You’re too bad with women. No subtlety. No discretion. You’d leave a trail wide enough for a boatman to sail his barge up. Tell you what, though. The House might be looking for a quack. You’re good enough at that, despite your other failings.’

‘We can find someone to take the child.’

‘That we could. But I’m no baby farmer. If you want it gone you’ll have to sort it yourself. I doubt the mother will stop you. From the look of her she’d not notice if her head rolled off her shoulders. So what’s the tale behind that?’