He knew the answer. It was because of the devil who walked beside him.
He looked round, checking for pursuit, sweeping a quick glance over Jonah. He was silent, apparently thinking, features relaxed into their habitual expression of faint amusement. He smiled when he slept, Ben remembered, and the thought was a tiny adder-bite in his chest.
He knew how Jonah looked when he slept, and the sounds he made when he came, and the places to touch that made him writhe and beg. He knew that Jonah was ashamed that he could not read, shameless in his love of men. He knew that he liked his tea weak and his toast close to burned.
He didn’t know anything important. He didn’t know anything about Jonah’s powers or his past or his criminal nature. He didn’t know if Jonah had let other men have him in the last five months. He didn’t know why they were running together, except that it felt a matter of instinct to do so, and he didn’t know if that instinct was as self-destructive as every other instinct of his involving Jonah.
He knew about that torn, bloodstained pencil sketch that Jonah had protected at such appalling cost, and about Jonah perched on the rooftop of the police station, silhouetted against the sky…
“Did you organise that?” he asked. “At the station?”
“What, the costers? Yes.” Jonah grinned round at him. “I thought they were rather good, didn’t you? Particularly the fish.”
“They caused a public nuisance,” Ben said, and Jonah’s smile faded at the note of heavy, sober reproof. Which was right because it was one more grossly irresponsible act to Jonah’s discredit, but Ben found himself wishing he’d given in to the glimmer of a laugh he’d felt, the pale echo of the old lightheartedness. He stamped on a stupid urge to admit that it had, perhaps, been funny.
Instead, he asked, “How did you know I’d be there?”
“You won’t approve if I tell you.” Jonah sounded a touch sulky.
He probably wouldn’t. And if Jonah hadn’t done it, whatever it was, he’d be in a cell right now, and lucky if he was only being spat at.
“Thanks.” The word jerked out awkwardly. “For coming, for getting me out of that.”
“You warned me in the park,” Jonah pointed out. “I couldn’t just—” He stopped.
“Leave me to be arrested?”
Jonah pressed his lips together, staring at the pavement as they headed towards the station. “No. I couldn’t have left you to that again. Come on, we’re here. I’ll get tickets if you get us some food for the journey.” He produced a ten-shilling note. Ben glared at it. Jonah took his hand and shoved the note in. “Don’t be like that. It’s ours now, and starving won’t help. Ben, you need to eat.”
“I’d rather starve than thieve,” Ben said, low-voiced. “Understand that, Jonah.”
“Yes, well, understand this: if we get caught now, I’m not the only one who’ll end up with broken bones.” Jonah leaned in, hissing. “You’ve upset the Met and the justiciary, and when you lobbed a tile at that nuisance Saint, you made worse enemies than them both. If you care about tuppenny-ha’penny morals, there’s a police station round the corner where you can hand yourself in. Otherwise, we’re getting out of London with money that did not originally belong to me, but our need is greater than theirs, do you see?”
It was, in that moment, all too tempting to head for the police station. Ben clenched his fists. “No more of it. Once we’re out of London, no more stealing.”
“As you wish,” Jonah snapped, in anything but an accommodating tone. “Meanwhile, let’s get on a train, shall we?”
It wasn’t just all the things done, and the things yet to be said lying between them, Ben realised. It was fear. He was so tightly tensed it hurt to move his shoulders, and though Jonah affected his usual casual stance, Ben knew that terror was gripping him too. The white girders of Paddington Station’s roof arched over them in a metal spiderweb, and he had a sudden, appalling vision of the justiciar Saint perched above him, waiting to drop. He had to restrain himself from craning his neck to look up.
Instead he bought food with the stolen money, slabs of veal pie, buns and plum dough, and bottles of ale as well, and the serving girl did not hold up the note and cry him a thief. She grumbled about making change and found him a paper sack, and he met Jonah in the middle of the platform laden with spoils.
“There’s a train to Gloucester leaving in fourteen minutes,” Jonah announced. “So we’re going there.”
The train was not busy. To Ben’s surprise, Jonah waved him into a second-class carriage, and an empty, comfortable compartment.