Chapter Sixteen #2
miss, he could hear the pains her mother had taken in her upbringing. She spoke with the elocution of a lady, even as she
had the mouth of a sailor.
Lockwood was like Knights and Knuckers, the exasperating children’s game his uncle had insisted they play as some misguided
lesson in managing a loss of control. Each roll of the dice was an invitation to chaos, a chance to win or lose.
It incensed and intrigued Hugh at every turn that he couldn’t immediately anticipate Lockwood’s responses, that he hadn’t
yet—yet—decrypted the pattern of her. But there was something addictive about it, too. The danger of that challenge was like a yawning
chasm widening at his feet, beckoning him forward toward the exhilaration of falling. Hugh had to take care to live only at
that edge, enjoying the temptation but not the weightless plunge.
He hurried past the shadowed temple ruins, his steps at a quick clip as he navigated the borough’s knot of streets. By the
time he reached his destination, he was a minute early to the meet.
Fleetwood was a broad lane of austere storefronts and offices; it was a place of business, where one was neither expected
nor invited to linger. Better yet, the street was awash in Hugh’s favorite sort of scattered darkness, which promised anonymity
and plausible deniability. He followed it to its end, before turning onto Bridle Street, winding through the back channel
of an alleyway until he found the door marked for deliveries, left ajar.
Unsurprisingly, it was Audette herself who met him there, as long-necked and elegant as a swan, her downy white hair pinned back in such a way to suggest wings.
Madame Audette could claim the bone structure of a Gallian aristocrat and possessed the unimpressed gaze of one as well.
But when she spoke, her true self, Sally Williams, slipped through with her rip-roaring Riverside accent.
“Yer late.”
“Madame Audette, a pleasure as always to be in your presence,” he said smoothly. “I take it my man is already here?”
Madame Audette lashed out an arm, gripping the doorframe to block his path into the back room of the shop. “This here is the
last time, ye hear me? Consider me account with the old canker sore closed. Kicked up his ’eels, he did, and ’e took the debt
I owed with ’im.”
Hugh’s smile sharpened dangerously. “Of course.”
The modiste had been one of Uncle Giles’s best sources of information on the Patricians. He’d played the long game of funding
the early years of her shop, of putting her name in the Queen’s ear, knowing modiste shops were the conduit through which
all society gossip flowed.
Hugh followed her into the back room, its shelves overflowing with bolts of fabric. Dress forms with half-finished gowns circled
the dark space like wraiths, waiting to judge and shred his soul for what he was about to do. He thought about asking for
a candle, but no—this was business best left to the dark.
Whimpering filled the silence. Hugh reached into his coat for a handkerchief, pressing it to his nose and mouth as he rounded
the last of the shelves and came upon the two men waiting for him: a pale-faced gentleman sweating through his shirtsleeves
and bound to a chair with rope, and Stratford.
“Ah, there you are,” Stratford said, a handkerchief pressed to his own face. “Was worried I misheard you earlier about the
time.”
The Roach, Reddy called him, for his dark hair and beady eyes, as well as his ability to slip into places he neither was wanted
nor belonged. But also, Hugh suspected, for his innate ability to make one feel slightly repulsed and want to look away. That, too, was a gift in spycraft. The false beard he’d worn earlier when he’d played the role of a jarvey
was gone, and now it was as if he were a different man altogether.
“No little miss tonight?” Stratford said, sounding disappointed. “I liked her.”
“You applied the Crown of Veracity?” Hugh asked instead of answering.
The perfume, which demanded the truth from its scenter or else dealt immense pain, was the most useful in his repertoire for this exact purpose.
Stratford nodded, returning the small black perfume flacon to him. “Already started questioning him. Seems you were right
about his connection to Glenmoor’s secretary—”
The bound man whimpered at the duke’s name.
“—he’s been importing Gallian contraband for the duke for the better part of a year,” Stratford finished. “But he only has
dealings with the secretary.”
Of course. Glenmoor never dirtied his own hands if he could help it.
Hugh turned back to the merchant, a Mr. Joseph Angleson of Bonding Street. “What sort of contraband do you import for the
Duke of Glenmoor?”
The man was well into his graying age, and for a moment, Hugh feared the perfume might bring on an apoplexy. Angleson’s eyes
bulged, and a sound like an unoiled hinge escaped him as he tried to resist the effects of the perfume.
“The pain will worsen as you resist and if you lie,” Hugh warned him, using his foot to turn the man’s chair to face him.
He leaned down to the merchant’s level. “What contraband? Silks?”
He suspected that was how Gallia was paying Glenmoor for his services and intelligence, allowing the duke to pass off the
finer Gallian silk as having come from the silk mills he owned. The connection had to have been made a year before, when the
duke’s private secretary had gone to Gallia for some unknown end. Hugh had chased that lead for six months before Angelson’s
name emerged in connection to it.
“No, no—” The man shuddered, spittle and sweat spraying from him. “Wine, artwork . . .”
“Perfume?” Hugh asked, and was surprised when the man shook his head.
Interesting. He was getting the DeForest perfumes another way, then.
“He—he mostly—” Angleson shuddered again. “The secretary, he uses the ship mostly for passage to Gallia or to hold meetings.”
“Meetings, eh?” Stratford said. “Did you hear any of their names?” He began to list off courtiers and known Gallian spies.
“Debelle? Chalier? Jouve?”
“DeForest?” Hugh interjected.
The man’s eyes widened. “Yes—that one—one of the cabin boys, he accompanied him to a meeting with a DeForest.”
There were only a handful of DeForests left, as far as Hugh knew. And none with the fairyborn magic. Rosebourne had been thorough
in that matter. “To one of their estates?”
“No—they went to the Archives Nationales,” Angleson said.
Hugh and Stratford exchanged a speaking glance.
“What were they looking for there?” Hugh demanded.
“I don’t know,” Angleson said. “Records of some kind. A store of old perfumes. Please—you must believe me. I didn’t want to
bring in his contraband, I would never have avoided the duties owed. It’s only, he—the duke—he found out about my desertion
in the war. He said he’d arrest me, hang me. He’ll do it if he knows I told you any of this.”
Glenmoor would, and gladly. Still, there had to be more to the shipments themselves. He wanted his own eyes on them.
“I can protect you,” Hugh told him. “But I need to know when the next shipment of goods for Glenmoor arrives.”
Angleson wheezed out a pained breath, still foolishly fighting the perfume’s thrall. “I don’t . . . I don’t . . .”
Stratford gripped the man by the waistcoat, shaking him. “You do know.”
Sweat or tears slid down the man’s full cheeks, indistinguishable from each other. “Th-the Cecilia. She’s expected tomorrow at half past midnight. M-moored at East Basin Dockyard.”
Hugh asked him a few more questions, but by the man’s paling color and the unhelpfulness of his answers, the tap of useful
intelligence had run dry. But this was something. His heart kicked in his chest as he gestured toward Stratford, leading him away from Angleson.
“You making for the ship tomorrow, then?” Stratford asked, lowering his handkerchief now that they were at a safe distance.
Hugh nodded. “Do you have plans?”
Of course not. Stratford was one of the few spies who hadn’t shifted their allegiance to Glenmoor at Uncle Giles’s death.
He was everything his great-uncle had valued, packaged in a short, dour-faced man: unflinching loyalty to Albion, no emotional
attachments to friends or family, and dogged in the pursuit of intelligence.
He was everything Hugh ought to have been. What he could still be.
“I’ll be in touch,” Hugh said, heading for the delivery door. “Douse him with Spring Renewal and cut him loose where you found him.”
The second most useful perfume in his arsenal: it would leave the man’s memory muddled on where he had been, what he had said,
and whom he had seen.
Stratford nodded. “Off to the next?”
“Always,” Hugh confirmed, turning back suddenly. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Reddy lurking about?”
“Not tonight,” Stratford said. “But he’s been hanging about Fenwick’s lately.”
Hugh sighed, making for the door again. That was what he’d been afraid of.
Two streets up to the east was Fenwick’s, his own gentleman’s club, which would no doubt be starting to shed its lords at
just this hour. Hugh felt reasonably confident in his disguise—the night beard he’d grown in would be more than enough to
outwit the foxed lords stumbling out to their coaches. It was a risk . . . but it seemed the night for them.
His stomach knotted, twisting as the classical face of the club came into view. He hadn’t been back since Rosebourne’s death,
but he’d heard it had opened its doors again after three paltry days of “respectful” mourning.
The familiar hackney coach had stopped just short of the black scar the blast had left in its wake. With a deep sigh, Hugh
began his approach.
The driver had tilted his gaze up, marking the constellations just visible through the hazy cover of clouds. Hearing Hugh’s
steps, he straightened, putting on an exaggerated east city drawl as he turned: “Where to, guv?”
The question withered on Reddy’s lips.
“Straight to hell,” Hugh said dryly, prying open the door and climbing inside before the other man could stop him. Reaching
forward, he slid the window open between Reddy’s seat and the passenger compartment.