NOTHING AND SOMETHING
Nothing. That’s what stood in in the middle of Finsbury Square. An absence, a cesura where once had been…
Guinevere’s life.
She grasped the handle of her parasol so tightly something inside it creaked.
Shouldn’t have. Pure cherrywood had been carved into twining, curving vines—a strong wood and coated in potion to make it stronger.
Yet she gripped it so tightly, something must become dust—the handle or her hand.
That’s what her potion shop now was. Dust so small she couldn’t even see it.
At least the morning after the fire there had been piles of smoldering ash to mourn over. Now, eight months later…
Nothing.
Like her life. She’d been foolish to attempt to build something outside of her destiny. The curse would always destroy what it did not want. And because she’d taken a flat so close to the shop’s old location, she must walk by the reminder of her hubris every time she stepped into the world.
Some tasks should not require humiliation. Or grief.
“You done, Lady G?” Her bodyguard shifted behind her, and behind him, the busy morning of Finsbury Square clip-clopped and whistled and argued around them.
“Yes, Ned. Let us be on our way.” The Queen of England waited for no woman, no matter how notorious.
Guinevere left the gap where her potion shop had once been the way she would have had walls and doors remained, skirting empty spaces where there had once been large, well-worn tables cluttered with glass and gold bowls and plants of every variety.
She ducked where she’d used to duck to avoid hanging vines and large palm fronds.
Her body still remembered what no longer existed, even eight months later.
She stepped out onto the street and into the busy traffic of strangers, Ned close behind.
Should have been Bran behind her.
No. She wasn’t thinking about Bran.
“Slow down, Lady G.”
She couldn’t. “Speed up, Ned. We can’t be late.”
The tip of her parasol clipped into the walkway with every step she took, and she tilted her face to the sky. A fine day, blue and fluffy about the edges.
“I wonder what the queen wants.”
“Seems like she coulda told ya,” Ned grumbled.
“Given ya a hint.” Ned was several inches taller than her and made wide by muscle stacked upon muscle.
His short-cropped hair was almost white, and a thin scar slashed below his right eye.
When he was out of sorts, which was often these days, that eye thinned, crinkled at the corner, pulling up the right side of his mouth.
“I suppose the mystery of Her Majesty’s summons adds a note of intrigue.” Into what had become a decidedly tedious life. Good Gaia, she was bored without her shop. She could experiment only so much in the tiny rooms she’d rented since the fire.
“Lady G…” Ned was closer now, almost touching her back. Bran’s hand would have been on her, guiding her, reassuring her.
She wasn’t thinking about Bran.
“Yes?”
“There’s a fellow’s been following us. A few paces back and to the left. Don’t look!”
Of course she wouldn’t look. She slipped her hand into her reticule. Three sheathed blades its only contents. Two for throwing, one for up close, just like he’d taught her.
She was not thinking of Bran.
Then she couldn’t think of anything because a shadow slashed out from an alley and grabbed her round the waist, jerking her into the narrow, sour-smelling space between two buildings.
She dropped her parasol but held tight to the knife.
Her foot dragged through something that squelched, and she sighed. Her new boots ruined.
With her dagger in her hand and holding the handle tightly, she flicked the sheath away as her attacker yanked her against his large body, a meaty hand covering her mouth.
His nails were long and uncut, and one nicked her cheek.
She’d have to put a sage-and-basil concoction on it to avoid infection.
“Don’t think about screamin’,” her captor hissed near her ear.
Screaming wasted energy. She flipped the dagger in her hand so the blade pointed backward, and she aimed for the man’s middle. The blade had been tempered in a master alchemist’s forge, and it sliced through layers of wool and linen like a fish through water. Then it sliced through skin and flesh.
The man yowled—amateur—and Guinevere yanked the knife back out.
“Release me,” she said, “and I’ll let you live.”
“Bitch!” he hissed, sounding gutted. “You… You st-stabbed m—”
“And I’ll do it again.” She glanced toward the main thoroughfare. In the sunlight beyond the alley, Ned chained a second attacker’s head in his muscled arm like a snake squeezing its next meal.
“You all right, Lady G?” he called.
“I will be shortly. Thank you, Ned!”
Despite the wound, Guin’s attacker tightened his hold around her waist, adding his other arm to her neck. “You’re not the one making threats here.” He seemed to have recovered somewhat.
“Oh? Do you have a pistol?”
Silence.
She clicked her tongue against her teeth. “A knife?”
Silence. He shifted from foot to foot.
She sighed. “Did you at least bring potion to knock me out?”
Still no answer.
“You are the fifth attempt on my life this week, and it’s only Wednesday. I suppose you thought that since I’m a woman I’d be easy to abduct, easy to dispose of.”
“Well… yes.” He sounded sheepish, as he should.
“Good Gaia. Men are so terribly uninspiring.” Except for Bran. Rest in peace, old friend. “Listen closely, you oaf. I’ve stabbed you. Do you understand that?”
He grunted, and his breath—redolent of onions and ale—made her want to gag. “Only a flesh wound. I’ve had worse.”
“No, you’ve not. The blade has been dipped in a particular type of potion that delays the coagulation of blood.
If you do not get the antidote soon, the blood that is your life force will drain away entirely.
You’ll be nothing but a husk in a dark corner of London where no one will think to look for you. ”
He was quite still now, and his grip on her had loosened.
She whipped away from him, striding toward the main thoroughfare where Ned still grappled with the other man.
Bran would have had the fellow neutralized by now, unconscious or dead.
Bran had never seemed to care what state he left her attackers in so long as she was alive and uninjured.
She was thinking of him again, and that rocked the ground beneath her more than the attack did, shoved her irritation higher.
Her attacker pressed a hand to his stomach, and when he held it up, his palm glistened red.
“Do you want help?” she asked. “Would you like the antidote?”
“Yes!” His red hand was shaking.
She pulled a tiny vial from her pelisse pocket and threw it. “Catch.” He caught it with both hands. “Pour it directly on the wound. And tell whoever hired you I’m not such an easy mark. You are by far the least difficult assassin I’ve outmaneuvered this week.”
He wasn’t listening, though. Poor brute. He un-stoppered the bottle, and she moved toward the street where Ned had the second attacker face down in the dirt, his arms twisted behind his back.
“Who hired ya?” Ned demanded.
“Lord Pemberton!” the second attacker cried, parting with sensitive information like it was an invitation to lunch.
Another amateur. She sighed.
Pemberton… Pemberton… Ah. Of course. Guin had sold his wife a love potion before the fire.
Guinevere squatted near the man’s head, and he lifted it as far as he could, his face pale, eye bruising, nose bloody.
“Tell Pemberton to take whatever issues he has with my potion up with his wife. Murder is a hanging offense, even if it is by proxy.” She stood.
“Come along, Ned. We cannot be late. Not today.”
Ned finished wrapping a length of twine around the man’s hands and feet.
It had been dipped in strengthening potion and was unbreakable until cut.
Which the man wouldn’t be able to do on his own.
Ned jogged into the alley, and the crunch of bone on bone made Guinevere wince.
With the sound of a body hitting the ground, she lifted her skirts to inspect her half boots.
Perhaps the muck would clean off, but they were suede.
Damn it. She had much less disposable income for luxuries these days.
If she wanted to rebuild her shop—and she did—she’d need money.
Ned exited the alley, wiping his hands on his trousers. “All tied up.”
“Excellent. Let’s be quick.” She retrieved her parasol from a brown puddle and set her steps once more westward. She’d dressed with such care that morning; all ruined now. Not entirely, though. She could recover the cloth stretched across the parasol’s skeleton. The cherry handle was unscathed.
Ned fell in behind her, shaking out his arms and cracking his neck from side to side. “Let’s hope we don’t meet with more mischief today. The attacks are growing more frequent.”
They were. But she could do nothing about it.
She’d angered the male half of London, and while half of that set was pleased simply to see her shop burnt to a crisp, the other half wanted her burnt to a crisp.
Or stabbed or shot or strangled, merely dead by whatever means their hired murders most preferred.
They arrived at Buckingham Palace with no further incident, and a servant led Guin through the front and right out the back, moving at such a clip she could barely note the marble and gold of it all.
The gardens behind Buckingham Palace were little more than skeletons bowed beneath a winter wind.
A troop of evergreens lined the walkway, but even they seemed cold in their deep green finery.
The conservatory at the end of the path, though, pulsed with heat.
The glass windows steamed, and large, vibrant palm fronds splashed color into a gray world against the inside of the glass.
As soon as she entered the building, the servant took her pelisse, and Guin was happy to peel herself out of it. My. She should have dressed for warmer weather. Here it was summer.