The Reluctant Assassin

The Battering Rams


HALF MOON STREET. LONDON. 1898

Riley felt himself go and initially presumed that the going would be similar to his previous journey through the tunnel of time. It was not.

In fact, this trip was the opposite of his first in almost every way. At the most basic level, he was going back as opposed to traveling forward. Just as a physical journey changed according to a person’s direction, so too did a quantum one. Where he had felt propelled, now he felt somehow suctioned into his own past life.

Riley had heard of primal recollection occurring when a subject was under hypnotism—indeed, Garrick had mesmerized him on occasion—but Riley could never remember anything that had happened while in the trances, probably because Garrick had bolstered his own mesmeric talents by swabbing the boy’s upper lip with an ether-soaked sponge.

But now vignettes from his life played out before him, projected on the shifting surface of the wormhole.

The ginger-haired boy. He is Tom. Ginger Tom, Ma always called him. We are half brothers. I remember now.

Teenage Tom looked down on little Riley, holding out a hand. Come on, brother. I have a penny for lemonade. We will share a bottle.

Tom ran down a beach, and Riley felt himself trot after, following footsteps in the sand. The brothers ran toward a pier, and Riley could hear the plinky-plonk music of a barrel organ.

Brighton. I live here.

Tom turned his head and called over his shoulder. Ma loves ’er bulls-eyes. Shall we bring her a twist?

The scene flickered, and now little Riley was a baby in the arms of a lady, gazing up into her kind, soft face. His mother wore a plain blouse and her hair in braids.

Tom is named for his sadly departed Da, and will be a heartbreaker like him, she said, tickling his chin. But you, my little shillelagh, will carry the name Riley, like your dad. And your Christian name shall be the name of my family, the proudest clan in County Wexford.

Riley would have cried if he could. She was Irish. I remember now, he thought, and, The name? What is my name?

But then the picture changed, and Riley saw his father looming large and warm above him. The similarity of his face to Riley’s own was instantly apparent.

This is a secret, his father was saying. I am only showing this to you because you can’t speak yet and you won’t remember. He opened up his hand, and lying on the palm was a golden shield with letters embossed on its face. And the letters were F, B, I.

Those letters mean I have to protect people. One person in particular. Funny little Mr. Carter. Look, he’s outside waiting.

The infant Riley followed his father’s pointing finger to see a man pacing beyond their front door. His legs flashed past, and all Riley could make out were shining black ankle boots and a horseshoe signet ring.

Riley’s father shook his head. This guy is a pain. A royal pain. He’s trying to weasel out of testifying after all this time. But no matter how much of a jerk he is, I have to thank him, because, without Carter, I wouldn’t have you, or your mother, or your half brother, Tom, for that matter. Without him, and this gadget.

The gadget Riley’s father referred to was a Timekey slung around his neck on a thick cord.

With this, I can take you to see my home. We will all go one day. It’s a new world, my dear son.

Another scene change, and this time Tom was beside him in the bed they shared, whispering.

“I’m off for a gentlemen’s engagement on the pier,” he said. “Just between us, eh, Riley boy? No need for Mater and Pater to be informed. On my return there will be barley sugar for you, and perhaps tales of a kiss from pretty Annie Birch.”

Riley watched his half brother slip through an open window and heard an oof and slap of feet as Tom landed on the street below.

Moments later the toddler Riley felt a presence in the room and a low-tide stink of rotten fish wafted through the window. A man stood in the shadows, a blade jutting from his fist. It seemed to the child that the man had simply appeared on the spot.

“Magic,” he said. “Magic man.”

The man moved so quickly that the shadow cast by the hall lamp seemed to lag behind.

It was Garrick, come on business, and he leaned over the small boy, knife hand raised overhead, on the point of ensuring his silence, when Riley spoke again.

“Magic man.”

Something strange happened to Garrick’s face: it warred with itself until a smile broke out. Not a happy smile; rather a momentary relaxing of his features.

“Magic man,” he said, repeating the toddler’s mumbled words. “Once upon a time . . .”

On hearing this phrase, young Riley burbled happily, certain that a story was forthcoming. And this innocent mumbling saved his life, for Garrick found himself judged a magical storyteller by this little fella and decided not to do away with him until after the main job.

When Garrick returned barely a minute later with blood on his blade, the boy Riley still expected a bedtime story and met him with a broad grin of baby teeth.

“Story, magic man,” demanded the three-year-old. “Story.”

Garrick sighed, shook his head, and blinked at the fanciful notion that had popped unbidden into his mind. Then, with only a moment’s hesitation, he tucked the boy inside his greatcoat and left through the same window he had come in by.

In the wormhole, Riley would have cried if he could.

Garrick murdered my parents and stole me away, he realized, and knew it was true. And for all these past years he has been swearing that he saved me from a bunch of street cannibals in the alleys of Bethnal Green. But it was he who orphaned me.

Riley allowed this statement to repeat itself in his consciousness, in case he forgot when he woke.

Garrick killed my parents. Garrick killed my parents.

Riley did not want to forget, because remembering this fact would steel his resolve.

For one day soon I must bring Albert Garrick to justice or be snuffed out me own self.

Their journey through the wormhole ended gradually as spacetime dissipated around them like cloudy fragments of a deep and detailed dream. Riley and Chevron Savano found themselves in a Victorian London basement, both smiling broadly in the grip of what Charles Smart called the Zen Ten.

“Garrick did in my whole family, except my brother, Tom,” said Riley. “I am truly an orphan.”

Chevie hugged the boy. “Hey, so am I. Two orphans, together against the world.”

“And my father was a policeman, like you.”

“Like me?”

“An agent in the FBI. He showed me his shining badge and his Timekey.”

“I saw that vision too, somehow,” said Chevie. “Your dad was a Fed. How did that happen?” This, she decided, was an important detail that she would definitely come back to when her mind was a little sharper.

“He was protecting someone who wore a horseshoe ring,” continued Riley.

“Horseshoe ring,” repeated Chevie, a little dopily, like a patient coming out of anesthetic. “And neither of us is a monkey.”

The basement had the same shape as it would in the future, differing only in the bare walls and floor of compacted earth, with brick pillars to support the rooms above.

Chevie stamped her foot and the ground resounded with a hollow bong. “A metal plate. We need that to land in one piece. This plate is specially designed to act as a guide for the wormhole, like a lightning rod.”

“I say we dismantle it,” said Riley, raising his hand as though voting in the House of Commons. “Perhaps Garrick will find his hands growing out of his backside if he manages to follow us.”

Chevie was trying to think beyond the time fugue, and Riley’s joking was not helping.

“Stop with the cracks,” she said, giggling. “We should check ourselves to make sure nothing is out of place. Sober thinking now.”

“I am sober. You won’t let me drink, not even beer.”

Chevie stepped from the plate. “We should get out of here. Put some space between us and Garrick. I need to get a gun. Do you know anyone? Gun . . . bang bang?”

“Bang,” said Riley. “Bang bang.”

Chevie pulled Riley from the buried platform and noticed a disk of light hovering in the air, like a spinning silver dollar.

“Silver dollar,” she said conversationally, pointing at the dwindling wormhole.

Riley nodded.

“Men with sacks,” he said, pointing at two men who had entered the basement and were stealing across the mud floor, holding open the mouths of two flour sacks.

Chevie spotted a third man, emerging from a corner, his mouth full of food.

“Not all of them. That one’s got a chicken wing . . . and a blackjack.”

“I claim the chicken wing,” said Riley.

Chevie was still laughing when the sack went over her head.


HALF MOON STREET. SOHO. LONDON. NOW

Garrick tumbled into the pod less than a minute after his quarry disappeared and no more than ten seconds before the entrance to the quantum tunnel disappeared altogether. Just before his dematerialization, the woman, Victoria, had staggered down the stairs and shot him in the good leg with a small-caliber bullet from an almost dainty rifle, and so focused was Garrick on the diminishing wormhole that he forgot to smother his nerve endings. The sudden hammer blow of agony almost rendered him senseless, which would have been a disaster inside the wormhole. A man needed his senses marshaled and ready for duty inside the time tunnel.

The fault is mine, he thought, for allowing that woman to live.

The last sounds he heard from the twenty-first century before he disappeared were the bitter curses of the old woman, damning him to hell for a murdering scoundrel.

Garrick had an inkling that sparing Victoria was not all his own doing. The ghost of that Scot muck-snipe, Felix Sharp, was making a nuisance of itself in Garrick’s own gray matter. The photographs of Sharp’s father lining the wall and the notion of harming Victoria caused a swelling of phantom emotions that had stayed Garrick’s hand twice now.

No more, thought Albert Garrick. I will be a dead man’s cat’s-paw no longer.

Once the orange energy transmogrified his atoms, enveloping him in the sea of quantum foam, Garrick felt a calm descend over him.

I am nothing but soul now. Immortal.

Contentment draped the magician, but then he felt Riley’s fear trail ahead of him, and it snapped Garrick back to himself. He followed it to the mouth of the wormhole, borne easily as a corpse in the Thames. As the end of his journey neared, he gathered his bodily parts, reassembling himself, healing his wounds and expelling wisps of Felix Sharp’s willpower from his thoughts, while retaining his multifarious knowledge. This was a delicate maneuver and Garrick felt that he had not been entirely successful, but certainly he had expunged enough of the Scotsman’s foibles that the notion of putting an end to Agent Chevron Savano did not upset him in the slightest.

Killing that girl will cause me no grief whatsoever, he thought, and with a catastrophic loss of energy his particles coalesced, subliming from gas to solid just as Garrick wished them to, relying on his muscle memory to rejuvenate his body.

My sinews and bones are young, but my mind is full of wisdom.

His powers were not infinite, he knew. There would be no more healings or transformations for Albert Garrick, but he felt young again, with a brain full of twenty-first-century knowledge, which should be more than sufficient to ensure that his life was a long and comfortable one.

Garrick emerged from the wormhole grinning . . .


HALF MOON STREET. LONDON. 1898

. . . to find himself in an empty dungeon. Garrick’s grin shriveled, but his disappointment soon burned off like brandy from a pudding.

I am home.

There was no doubt that he had returned to his own time. Even below street level, as he was, London’s signature blend of smells penetrated the air. The combined excretions of three million souls, and another million beasts besides, created as foul a stench as had ever been known by man. A stench that was breathed in by all, from the queen in her palace to the lunatics in their Broadmoor cells. There was no escape from it.

Garrick inhaled deeply, inflating his lungs with tainted air, and for the second time in his life, gave thanks for London’s foul fog, as it was known.

“I am home!” he shouted now to the ceiling, and a savage glee filled his breast.

And home would feel Albert Garrick’s presence soon enough. No matter that Riley and Agent Savano were in the wind. Where could they run to but the tenement rookeries, and maybe catch a knifing on account of their clean faces? It was true that Riley could lead the bluebottles back to High Holborn and the Orient, the foreclosed theater that Garrick had purchased and turned into digs for him and Riley; but it seemed more likely that the lad would get himself and his protector right out of harm’s way and not call any attention to either of them.

I will track him easy as pie, Garrick thought confidently. Riley is leaping in the dark, whereas I know every shadow in this city and every dagger monkey concealed there. I will squeeze my sources and spread the chink if need be, and before the morning slop pails are flung, there will be two more angels in heaven.

There were neither tenants nor squatters in the house on Half Moon Street, though Garrick could smell cooked chicken and found evidence of someone keeping watch. Cigarette ends and beer bottles. Waxed paper and a makeshift toilet dug in a corner.

Someone has been keeping a sharp eye here.

Albert Garrick did not like to be seen unless it was on the stage. He would have preferred to take some time to dismantle the landing pad, but, with eyes on the house, he decided to return when the heat was off. Garrick skipped upstairs, checking the pockets of his greatcoat for weapons. He was delighted to find that the three FBI handguns had made it through the wormhole with him, one with laser sights attached.

These weapons alone will make my fortune, he thought. I shall engage a gunsmith to tool up ruder versions, then it’s off to the patent office. This time next year, I shall be taking tea with the Vanderbilts in New York City.

Garrick toted up his bullets and vowed to stab contracts to death whenever possible in the future to conserve these precious shells.

“Thirty bangs, and that’s my lot,” he muttered.

The house on Half Moon Street was in reasonable nick, but it was obvious from the knee-high rising damp on the walls that this place had been a dead lurk for quite some time. Garrick slipped out the servants’ entrance at the rear and vaulted from the coal bin to the yard wall. From there he leaped nimbly to the alley, enjoying the shock of the impact thrumming through his young bones. All of his old twinges and weaknesses had been subsumed by the wormhole.

Garrick ducked into a gateway and held himself stock-still, to see if anyone was on his coattails. When he was satisfied that he was not being followed, he drew himself erect and strolled around the corner, setting his beak toward Piccadilly.

In a hundred years’ time, he thought, I would not be able to escape so easily. There will be DNA and fingerprinting and UVwanding, not to mention cameras on every corner and in outer space. But now, in my time, once I am clear, I am gone, and none can say different who did not witness it with their own eyes.

The sun was shining here, as it would be in a century’s time, though it had a harder job busting through the smog. Garrick spotted a boy wearing the familiar red coat of the Shoe-black Brigade and hailed him.

“You! You there! What day is it?”

The boy shuffled across the street, not bothering to avoid the puddles of seeping sewage. As he came up, Garrick could see that his jacket was tattered and closer to dirty pink than red from a hundred rough launderings.

He scowled at Garrick. “Well, it ain’t Christmas Day. And you ain’t no Mr. Scrooge.”

On a normal morning Garrick would have striped the cur’s cheek with his glove, but today he was feeling charitable toward most of England.

“Yes, well spotted, you educated scamp. Now, fetch me a cab to Holborn. Hop to it and there’s a shilling in it for you.”

The boy stretched out a hand. “Shilling in advance, guv’nor.”

Garrick laughed. “In advance? You’ll be getting your payment when I see you on the backboard of my cab. As you so cleverly pointed out, I ain’t no Ebenezer Scrooge.”

As the boy hurried off, whistling the customary three-note cabbie summons, Garrick realized that he had lost his wallet in the wormhole.

No journey can be embarked on for free, he thought. Not even one through time itself. Another thought occurred to him: I hope that boy can wait for payment; I don’t like to commit murders this early in the day.

The morning was not progressing swimmingly for Riley and Chevron Savano. Just moments before Garrick’s arrival in the basement, the time-traveling pair had been swathed in rough burlap, torsos mummified by bailing twine, and manhandled up a flight of stairs.

By the time Chevie shook off the wormhole bliss, she was on her back on polished floorboards with a knee wedged to her throat. She tried to call out to Riley but could do nothing more than croak through an obstructed windpipe.

Apparently her croak was enough to arouse the ire of her captors, as one rapped her on the crown.

“Shush yer gob, miss,” he ordered. “We is tired and hungry men and not in the mood fer shenanigans.”

Chevie responded by heel-kicking her captor in the knee.

How do you like those shenanigans? she tried to say, but all that emerged was a series of grunts.

Her stricken captor howled lustily, to the great amusement of his comrades.

“Aw, Jeeves, did the maiden injure your person?” said one, the chicken-wing man by the smell of him.

“Shall I carry you to a hospital, or is you too far gone?” said another, then spat noisily to punctuate his derision.

The injured party recovered himself, cracking Chevie once more on the head. “Do we need ’em both? Malarkey might be satisfied with one to spill the beans.”

Inside his sack, Riley jerked at the mention of the name Malarkey.

Otto Malarkey? The king of the Battering Rams? How had they come into his sights?

As there was no knee on his throat, Riley spoke to the men. “Which one of you bludgers wants to tell Mr. Malarkey how you murdered his kin?”

This question was met with a moment’s silence, until Jeeves spoke. “Oh, ho! That’s a fine bluff. A man would have to admire a lie so brazen, would he not, Mr. Noble?”

Noble spoke. “Are you calling it, Jeeves? ’Cause I certainly ain’t.”

“It’s no bluff,” shouted Riley through the sacking. “Trussing us up was insult enough, but threatening our persons will land you in the river by moonlight.”

Noble whistled. “Malarkey does favor the river by moonlight for his bye-bye business.”

“There is a safe way to put the quiets on these two,” said the third man.

Riley heard the pop of a cork from a bottle, and a sharp odor cut through the dull musk of burlap.

Ether! he thought. They’re putting us under.

“Chevie!” he called. “Close yer gob.”

Jeeves cackled. “That’s wot I told her,” he said.

Riley felt a dampness spread across his face as the liquid anesthetic seeped through the material. He held his breath until one of the men jabbed him below the rib cage, forcing a sharp intake of etherized air.

I pray that Garrick is not already here or we’ll never wake up, was the last thought he had before his mind sank down like a stone dropped into the midnight Thames.

Riley did survive to wake up, but before he opened his eyes to whatever new dreadfulness awaited them, he spent a moment reexperiencing his visions from the wormhole.

My family lived in Brighton, where Father was in the FBI. Mother was Irish and the most beautiful lady I have ever seen. My mate Ginger is in actuality my own half brother, Tom. Ma and Pa were slaughtered for money by Albert Garrick. But who shelled out for the job? And was my own pa from the future? How do these strands tie together? Where is Tom now?

These were big bites of information to swallow in one gulp. Everything he had taken for gospel was a falsehood spooned into his ear by Garrick.

Riley opened his eyes and was relieved to find he could see. A second cause for relief was the sight of Chevron Savano seated opposite him, tied to a sturdy chair, and they were alone. Her bonds, though not expertly fitted, were many and varied. Her captors had used whatever hodgepodge of tethers that lay handy, and therefore her torso was bound with twine, her ankles with manacles, and her forearms and wrists were done up with twists of waxed paper. There was a leather lanyard drawn tight around her neck, securing it to the chair’s high back.

At least she still has the Timekey, he thought, seeing the instrument’s outline through Chevie’s shirt.

Riley was sure, without glancing down, that he was similarly trussed.

“Chevie,” he whispered as loudly as he dared. “Agent Savano. Stir yourself.”

Chevie opened her eyes, blinking away the ether’s aftereffects.

“Riley! You’re okay.”

“I am well, Agent. The ether fog will lift momentarily, trust me—I have experience.”

“Get out your pick,” said Chevie. “Free yourself, then me.”

Riley wiggled his ankle. “My pick is gone. Lost in the day’s exertions, or found by the coves what lifted us.”

Chevie breathed heavily through her nose, like an angry young bull. “Great. So now we gotta sit here, trussed up like Thanksgiving turkeys, and wait for this Malarkey character to show himself. Who is that guy, anyway?”

“Otto Malarkey is a person of considerable importance in the city. He is the mister-master of the Battering Rams, a criminal gang of bully boys who take a slice of everything from thimble rigging to opium dens. Nobody pulls a stroke in the Great Oven without first tipping their cap to Mr. Otto Malarkey.”

“I understood about half of that,” admitted Chevie. “So what you’re saying is that we’re in trouble again.”

Riley looked around. They were imprisoned in a large storeroom, possibly underground, judging by the chill. Sides of beef lurked in the shadows, suspended by chains from a ceiling beam, and wedges of light shone through gaps in the ill-fitted floorboards overhead. The hubbub of both commerce and merriment filtered down from above, punctuated by crashes and cries of dispute. Various liquids slopped through the boards, splashing on the mud floor. Riley saw wine, beer, and the slow drip of blood.

“We ain’t swine food yet, Chevie. Now, tell me a tale.”

Chevie started. “Tell you a tale? I gotta say it, Riley. I was not expecting that request.”

Riley began to tense and relax his muscles. “I am Garrick’s apprentice in murder and magic. One leaf of that book is escapology. But a get-out like this one is the veriest devil of a job. I don’t know the knots and I ain’t humping no tools. So tell me a tale while I wriggle my way free.”

Chevie was stumped. “I don’t have any stories, Riley. Books are not my thing. I like a good movie, though.”

“Tell me something of yourself, then. Why the strange tattoo?”

Chevie glanced at her right sleeve, which covered the tattoo spanning her upper arm. “The Chevron? Yeah, maybe that is a story.”

“This may be your last chance to tell it.”

“True enough.” She rattled her manacles in frustration. “I cannot believe any of this is happening. How can I be trapped in the past?” The rattling produced nothing but noise, so Chevie settled down. “Okay, you want to hear about my tattoo?”

Riley’s face was slick with sweat, and his body was rigid as a board. “Please.”

Chevie closed her eyes, trying to imagine herself out of the past, into her own past in the future. “My mom and dad grew up on the Shawnee reservation in Oklahoma. They call it trust land, these days. As soon as my dad could afford a motorbike, my mom hopped on the back and they took off across the country. Got married in Vegas and settled in California. I came along a while later, and Dad told me that things were just about perfect for a couple of years, until Mom was killed by a black bear over in La Verne.” Chevie shook her head as if she still could not accept this fact. “Can you believe that? A Native American on a camping trip killed by a bear. Dad never got over it. Oh, we were happy enough, I guess. But he drank a lot. ‘When love dies,’ he told me, ‘there are no survivors.’”

Chevie was silent for a moment, wishing for the millionth time that she could remember her mother’s face.

“We had ten years together before his motorcycle blew up on the Pacific Coast Highway. Dad had a tattoo just like mine, a Chevron symbol. It’s what I was named for.”

“You were named for a symbol? That is a strange custom.”

Chevie scowled. “You asked for a tale, remember?”

Riley twisted his own arm backward at the elbow. “I apologize, Agent. Please continue.”

“My dad had the same tattoo. Same shoulder. He told me that all the Savano men back to the Shawnee wars have borne this mark. William Savano fought the Long Knives with Tecumseh at Moraviantown. For every officer he killed in battle, William daubed a Chevron on his arm in blood, as this was the sergeant’s symbol. He was a fearsome warrior. So, in memory of William, the Savanos have worn the symbol. I am the last of the Savanos, so I bear the name and the symbol. The first girl to do so.”

“That is indeed a fascinating tale,” said Riley, shrugging off his bonds until only the solid manacles on his wrists remained. “And well told.”

“Yeah, a pity I can’t talk off your handcuffs.”

Riley winked. “These are screw bracelets. The walking dummy what put ’em on botched the job. See these barrels? They should be at the bottom.”

“Because?”

“Because if the barrels are on top, a prisoner can do this . . .”

Riley brought his hands together as close as he could, crossed thumbs, and used the opposable digits to unscrew the handcuffs.

“Hey, presto,” said Riley, taking a deep bow.

A slow handclap echoed across the room, floating down from the top of a rickety stairway.

“Bravo, boy. Well done to you.”

A giant meat cart of a man ambled down the stairs, each step creaking under his weight.

“Otto Malarkey,” whispered Riley. “The big boss himself.”

Malarkey jumped the last three steps, sending the hanging carcasses swinging on their chains. This man would be a character in any age. He wore leather breeches with pirate boots, no shirt covered his barrel chest, and his flowing black locks were barely contained by a shining silk top hat. Two revolvers hung in cowboy holsters on his hips, and in one massive meaty paw he swished a riding crop.

“You show some considerable talent, boy,” he said, his booming voice bouncing off the ceiling. “Of course that glocky tree stump, Jeeves, screwed on yer bracelets rump-ways. I could use you in the Rams. With that clean mush and full set of teeth, you would make a fine burglar boy for the genteel jobs up at Mayfair and the likes, where my oafs attract peelers like horse biscuits attract flies.”

Malarkey stepped forth, emerging from the shadows, and Chevie noticed a ram’s head tattoo on his shoulder and a pricelist on his chest that read:

Punching_2 shillings

Both eyes blacked_4 shillings

Nose and jaw broke_10 shillings

Jacked out (knocked out with a blackjack)_15 shillings

Ear chewed off_same as previous

Leg or arm broke_19 shillings

Shot in leg_25 shillings

Stab_same as previous

Doing the Big Job_3 pounds and up

Malarkey noticed her gaze. “Some of the diverse services offered by the Rams. Of course my prices have elevated with my stature. I’ve been meaning to update the ink since they booted me from Little Saltee prison. I was king of that dung heap.” He spread his muscled arms wide. “Now I am king of the greatest dung heap on earth.”

Riley circled the giant warily. “What is your interest in us, Mr. Malarkey? Why were the Rams keeping eyes on that particular basement?”

Malarkey kicked Riley’s vacated chair, sending it skittering across the floor.

“Cheeky cur, posing questions to me in my own gentlemen’s club. The Rams took a contract to murder anyone who showed up in that lurk. For two years now we’ve been pocketing quite a stipend for doing nothing but keeping an eye, and that’s all the information you’ll be needing on the subject.”

“Of course, sorry, guv’nor. My mistake.”

“Hark at him,” said Malarkey. “All manners and how-doyou-do. I suppose that’ll be the rearing I gave you. You being my kin and everything.” His chuckle was gruff with cigar smoke and whisky. “That’s a smart mouth you have on you, boy, and it kept the both of you alive. You are a deal smarter than the numbskulls who brought you in, saying you appeared in a puff of genie magic. I could have room for you in the Rams. The girl, however, seems less valuable.”

Otto squatted before Chevie, taking a lock of her hair between two fingers and sniffing it. “Mind you, you do have the glossiest hair, miss. How do you make it shine so?”

“Well, Mr. Malarkey,” said Chevie sweetly. “What I do is I slap the hell out of Battering Rams, then wash my silken locks in their tears of shame.”

Taken at face value, these comments would seem unprofessional at best and psychotically foolhardy at worst, but as Cord Vallicose at Quantico had informed his young students in the Negotiating Tactics class, In certain confrontational situations, for example when dealing with a narcissist or psychopath, an aggressive tack can sometimes prove useful, as it will pique your captor’s interest and prompt him to keep you alive a little longer. Chevie had never forgotten this quote and used it to justify her regular outbursts. Riley, of course, had not been to this lecture and could not understand why Chevie repeatedly antagonized their captors.

“She’s a simpleton,” he blurted. “There was an accident with a high wall . . . and some laudanum. Her marbles rolled clean out her earholes.”

Malarkey was nonplussed. He stood and paced awhile, uncertain how to react.

“Well, I never,” he said, rather quaintly. “I ain’t accustomed to vinegar from gents. Now I meet my first Injun lady, and she’s spouting all this color at me. What’s a gang leader to do?”

Malarkey slapped the riding crop against his massive thigh. “Here’s the scoop, folks. My predecessor took a job in good faith to keep eyes on that house in Half Moon Street and slit the neck of anyone who arrived in it. So I find myself in a dilemma. Mine is not to wonder why the man who contracted us would want you two snuffed, but Otto Malarkey don’t like to kill without reason, especially a cove like you, boy, who could be of service. But the brotherhood accepted coin for a job of work, and the Rams be nothing if not reliable.”

Riley had a thought. “But you couldn’t kill another Ram.”

“Quick thinking again, boy. But you ain’t a Ram. A cove’s gotta be born into the brotherhood, or fight his way in. And, with respect, you might be able to climb a drainpipe, but you couldn’t bend one.”

“I might surprise you,” said Riley, and to prove his point, leaped high in the air and smashed the empty chair with a blow from his forearm.

“Not too shabby,” admitted Malarkey, flicking a splinter from his trouser leg. “But I got a dozen better. I need something with a little theater about it. The men are bored watching dullards pound on each other.”

Riley held out his wrists. “Put manacles on me, and I’ll still whip whoever you nominate.”

“I don’t know. We’ve been paid already.”

“Don’t you want to know why this man needs us dead? Knowledge is power, ain’t that so? And a king can’t have enough of either.”

Malarkey slapped his thigh with the riding crop. “You is a dazzling one, but perhaps too smart with your verbals. I have found in this particular kingdom that it is generally prudent to keep the gob shut, do your business, and ask no questions. I would like to know why such a celebrated man would want to see you in the dirt, but in this game knowing too much can see you dead quicker than knowing too little.”

An idea popped into Chevie’s head. “What if I fight, big man? How would that be?”

Malarkey’s crop froze in mid-swing. “You, fight? We couldn’t abide that here. We only started admitting ladies into the Hidey-Hole recently.”

Riley was thinking three steps ahead. “Mr. Malarkey, this lady has special Injun skills. I seen her punch out a Cossack and his horse. She don’t look it, but she’s a dervish, sir. A foresighted man could make some serious coin betting on Chevie.”

Malarkey rubbed the price list on his chest. “The odds would be long, so the gamble would be small. But one fight for one place. That still leaves you out in the cold, boy.”

“Not a problem,” said Chevie. “You pick your two best bruisers, and I’ll fight both of them.”

Malarkey guffawed in surprise. “Both of ’em? Fight ’em both, you say?” He winked at Riley. “Just how high was this wall she took a tumble from?”