Unraveled (Turner, #3)

Jeremy gave a short, jerky nod.

“There we are, then.” Smite raised his eyes to Mrs. Blasseur. “There has been some good in what you’ve done. I shouldn’t want to see it discarded entirely. But the days of justice funded through burglary and enforced by murder are over.”

His hands were growing cold. If he was beginning to go numb, Mrs. Blasseur, frail as she was, must be freezing. But she made no sign that she felt the cold. Her eyes simply bored into his, knowing what he had not yet said.

“Can it be that easy?” Jeremy asked, his voice shaking.

That hint of compassion touched Smite again, fleeting as butterfly wings. He shut his eyes. “No,” he said softly. “It won’t be easy.”

“What do you mean?”

That was Jeremy’s question, but it wasn’t Jeremy that Smite faced. It was Mrs. Blasseur. “You are hereby placed under arrest.” He spoke softly, but his words seemed to expand to fill the vast open space of the Floating Harbour. The snow was beginning to stick on the ground, and it blanketed everything he said with chill. “You will be held in custody until such time as the numerous charges are laid against you. If charged—and you will be charged—you will be held in a cell alone, isolated from those you care for.” He paused. “It is consumption that afflicts you, is it not?”

She nodded.

“Then I doubt you’ll live to see the Quarter Sessions. In all probability, you’ll die alone in a cold cell. That is the price you must pay. Your organization will survive in some form; you cannot.”

“Can there not be the smallest bit of mercy for her, then?” Jeremy asked.

“No dear,” his mother answered. “There is no room for mercy. That is what it means to take charge. You can show no weakness, no compassion. I know what it means to fill your shoes, Lord Justice. If you have any sense at all, you’ll bind my wrists and march me to the station at this moment.”

“March you?” Jeremy said, anguished. “You can scarcely walk!”

Mrs. Blasseur was taken by another fit of coughing. When she finished, she looked up with a resigned smile. “Don’t you see? He can’t show any mercy for me, or nobody will believe me defeated. He needs to drive me before him in the snow to prove I’m no longer a threat. That his…his regime will replace mine.”

Jeremy shook his head.

“He’s right.” There was a bitterness to her voice. “Only one of us will survive this night. And if I try to make it me…”

Jeremy choked. “There has to be a better answer.”

“There cannot be. There is no escape for me. If this is the way I get what I’ve built to survive in some manner… I haven’t long to live, in any event. Promise me that you won’t make a fuss. Whatever he has to do—promise you won’t interfere. Don’t help me if I fall. Don’t—”

He felt a curious kinship with the woman. She didn’t deal justice—not truly. But like him, she’d tinkered with the machineries of death. She saw the people she helped as human and real. Maybe, without the benefit of the law behind her, she had gone just a little mad.

“Mrs. Blasseur,” Smite said. “I had not thought to drive you to the station like cattle.”

She stopped and frowned at him. “No? Well, I suppose it might turn ugly if I couldn’t make it.”

Smite didn’t push aside that moment of sympathy now. He embraced it, let himself feel the sorrow that Jeremy did. And then—because it had to be done, because there truly was no other choice…he let that moment of wistful regret dissipate and he met Mrs. Blasseur’s eyes. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “I had rather thought I would carry you.”

“Carry me?”

“It turns out,” he said, “that my duty dictates only what I must do. There is no mercy in the what. But there is room for it in the how.”



THEY MADE A SOLEMN, silent procession as they made their way to the city center in a column. The men Mrs. Blasseur had brought with her had vanished into the night. Ghost trailed the remaining folk almost somberly. Mrs. Blasseur weighed almost nothing in Smite’s arms. She didn’t tremble. She didn’t fight. She scarcely even breathed.

Halfway through the walk, the snow turned back to slush, and from there to a hard, cold rain that drummed against him relentlessly. The streets were deserted.

But when they arrived at the station, it was lit brightly. Smite pushed open the door to see a throng of blue-uniformed police officers standing near the front. A corporal was giving out orders; to his side stood Ash, watching the proceedings with a grim determination.

“We have reason to believe,” the corporal was saying, “there is a large group of armed men there. Do not hesitate to use force if it should prove warranted. Assume that nobody means you well—not women, not even children.”