Joanna Bourne: The Black Hawk

“One does not slit throats in a public square.”

She had never, in point of fact, slit a throat, but she would not admit this to Hawker. He was the entirely genuine murderous spy, and she was not. With a small pang, she envied him.

He strolled beside her, his pace relaxed, his posture all ease and enjoyment. His eyes were amused and sleepy. Lies, all of it. The energy contained within his skin hummed in the air between them like a sound. He was more alive than anyone she had met. It was as if he carried an invisible top in the center of his chest, spinning strongly, that made her own nerves buzz in sympathy. He was not a restful person.

Ah, well. She would put his deadliness to use. She let her basket swing free. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

MOST GIRLS, WHEN YOU FOLLOW THEM INTO AN ALLEY, are selling you a quick poke, with the possibility of getting knocked over the head by their pimp. Owl, on the other hand, could be engaged in a broad range of sinister plots.

She brought him to a stone church, small and so old it was sooted up black. There was straw and paper blown up against the bottom of the iron railings of the fence. He’d had a map of Paris pounded into his head, so he knew where they were, but he didn’t know the name of this church. Either he’d forgot or it wasn’t marked on the map in London.

Whatever saint used to own the building, now it was a shrine to Saint Horse. There were three big geldings out in the churchyard, standing together, lipping at the straw spread around, filling the place with horse droppings and attracting a swarm of flies.

The French did that when they kicked the priests out and closed down the churches. They used them as stables and hay barns. They’d built a wood ramp up the front to the big double doors with the carved statues around it so the horses could get in and out.

The door at the side was locked up snug and suspicious-like. Owl produced a set of lockpicks she had about her person and set about dealing with that. He stood in the doorway, scratching his privates, which was going to make most people look away, shielding her from the curious.

There were various touchstones that said you had fallen among disreputable folk. Carrying lockpicks was one bad sign. On the other hand, Owl was taking long enough getting the lock open she almost counted as honest.

“I’m not going to offer to do that,” he said. “It’d just annoy you.”

“If you do not wish to annoy me, be silent. I am trying to be quiet about this.”

Which was what he would have said if he was housebreaking and one of his confederates kept flapping his lips. Or churchbreaking. He hadn’t spent much time in churches, once he got past his first youth and graduated from the trade of snatching poor boxes.

She had pretty hair—shiny and light brown like good ale. When he wasn’t keeping an eye on the street he watched it make an escape out of the side of her cap. Every time she pushed a dozen strands up over her ear, a few more snuck out and started hanging down in the breeze. All this passed the time till she got the lock sprung and picked up her basket and went in.

It was cooler inside and dim and it smelled of horse. Two windows—one in the front, one at the other end—were still full of glass, colored like it was made of sapphire and ruby. The rest were boarded up, that being what you had to do if you go smashing all the glass out. A lesson to mobs everywhere.

This was all comfy enough, if you were a horse. They’d covered the stone floor with straw and put up wood slats to make some stalls across the front, under the windows. There were twenty good-sized horse bastards in here. A couple of them swung their heads around, looking right at him.

He didn’t know a damn thing about horses, except they bit you when they had a chance or kicked you if that end happened to be closer. If you avoided them in the stable, they ran you down in the streets.

Two grooms were working up at the far end, one of them carting a bucket, the other with his back to them, stroking his way down the side of the horse with a brush.

Owl hissed. It sounded like a little wind coming in at a keyhole. “Do not stand there like a turnip. Come.”

He followed her, sneaking past a horse left on his own in a big stall. Owl had decided that one wasn’t going to bite. She was probably wrong. Horses spend their time just waiting to break your bones and stomp on you. It’s all they think about.

The door she headed for opened up easy. Just as well, considering how long it took her to pick locks. They slipped into a room with cabinets on all the walls and a stairwell off in the back. He had only a second to take this in because Owl closed the door and it got black as under a hat.

He didn’t mind dark—it was what you might call his area of expertise—but if he’d known they were going to bump around in it for any length of time, he’d have brought a candle.

“This way.” Her voice came from a ways ahead, where he hadn’t expected her to be. You’d think she did that on purpose.

Fine. He put one hand out to skim along cabinets. Put a knife in the other. One of the prime characteristics of dark is that it’s full of people who want to do you harm. At least, that had been his experience.

They said the churches were rich before the Revolution. No telling what kind of stuff the priests left behind. Gold cups. Jewels. Bags of coin. If he’d been alone, he’d have stopped to take a look through those cupboards, just in case something trifling had been overlooked.

Ten paces and the cabinets ran out. Now he had stone wall under his fingers. His foot hit a stair—sturdy, solid-build, wood, curved in a circle, headed up. Air flowed down from above, carrying the wind in from outside and a small, sharp lemon smell with flowers at the edges. That was Owl. No aspect of that girl that didn’t have a bite to it. He didn’t hear footsteps, but she rustled the way women do, faint and subtle.

So. Upstairs. He counted the steps as he went in case he had to retreat with some deliberate speed.

The good news was, she probably hadn’t brought him here to gut him. If she wanted him dead, she’d be sensible about it and stab him in the street. She was complex, not perverse.

He took the steps two at a time, which was why he ran into her, full-tilt, in the dark. Because she’d stopped to wait for him. He didn’t run into her hard, but she jerked like he’d poked her with a stick.

He felt shock in her muscles. Her whole body went stiff, ready to fight or run. He stepped back, quick-like, but tension kept right on drumming in the air around her. “Sorry.”

“It is nothing.” A stiff little answer, in a tight voice that barely escaped her throat.

She didn’t much like men. He’d seen that the first time he laid eyes on her. Seen all the signs that said some man, sometime, had done a right professional job of hurting her. Where he came from, he’d known a lot of women like that.

She said, “Ahead, there is better light. Perhaps you will refrain from stumbling over me until we get there.”

He could have said he wasn’t the one standing stock-still in somebody’s path, but he didn’t.

When the stairs circled again, light started filtering down from the top. A hundred and six steps more and they got to the trapdoor, already opened. Owl crawled up onto the platform of the bell tower. His eyes stung, coming out into the sunlight. Sparrows came out of nests tucked up in the edges of the roof and flew back and forth, objecting.

He’d never been in a bell tower before, largely because there was nothing to steal in them. But this . . . This was prime. You could see all the way from the Seine out to the hill at Montmartre with the windmills on top. Notre Dame really was on an island. It looked like a bloody map.