Chapter 8 #3
A beribboned prostitute, smelling of gin and sex, looked Noble up and down. “I seen another man, yea. He was standing over both of ‘em—the girl that got herself killed and the boy they arrested.”
I froze, my arm still wrapped in Noble’s as it had been most of the night.
“What did he look like?” Noble’s tone was casual, but tension vibrated through him as well.
“Hard to tell, yea. But dark hair. Clothes dark too.”
“Could you recognize him, were you to see him again?”
The prostitute blew out a breathy laugh, and curled a ribbon around her finger. “Coulda been you for all I seen.”
“Why didn’t you tell the watch?” I asked. Noble squeezed my arm.
“Cor, you sound right gilded, your highness.” She laughed at her own joke, making the ribbons in her hair dance. “Best get those airs gone. Though I s’pose some men might toss for it.” She eyed Noble again. “Maybe should get me some airs.”
My speech turned crisper when I needed an answer—a hindrance—Noble wasn’t wrong about that. Though the prostitute seemed too far in her cups to care. I tried again in a more relaxed tone. “Why didn’t you tell the watch?”
“That ol’ Daise seen something that mattered?” She laughed riotously. “Gonna get back to me corner, unless you want somethin’ besides talk?”
Noble gave her a coin—well more than he had given the others—and Daise shuffled away.
“Why don’t we have her tell the magistrate? They’ll have to at least submit it at his trial.”
Noble shook his head, watching Daise set up on her corner with a complicated expression. “They would no more believe her than they would believe you were you to walk inside and declare him innocent.”
“Why? Her story matches Kennen’s and—”
He released my arm and turned to lift my chin.
He tilted my head gently as he searched my eyes.
“It does you credit to think she is a valid source of information, even if it’s only because you’re desperate to free your brother.
But most people would not trust a drunken prostitute. Would you have two weeks ago?”
I blinked at him. “I don’t know.”
I hadn’t even thought about prostitutes, drunken or not, two weeks ago. “That could be me on the corner were things different.” I swallowed. “Or if they go differently, it still could. I would want someone to believe me.”
His eyes fell into shadow beneath the gaslight. “If—”
“Isn’t this touching. A broker and his lady negotiating together on the street.”
Noble stiffened. We both turned to see the inquisitor standing on Daise’s corner. She must have beaten a hasty retreat.
The inquisitor’s gaze ran between us. “I’ve been watching the both of you. Stirring up trouble? Should I arrest you for harassment or should I try and discover your larger scheme?”
“You have nothing with which to arrest us.” Noble tipped his head, keeping his face away from the light.
Dresden strode forward. “I don’t need much.”
“Even an inquisitor needs evidence, and you might need more than most. Little trouble with your last case, from what I hear.”
The inquisitor stopped a few feet away. His eyes narrowed. “I thoroughly document everything. There is never anything wrong with my evidence.”
“More than five hundred captures to your name. And at such a young age. How do you find the time?”
The inquisitor’s eyes sharpened and fear spiked through me. What was Noble doing? He might be wealthy and weirdly powerful for a non, but an inquisitor could make justice bow.
“You seem to have an advantage over me,” Dresden said. “What is your name?”
“Master Terrence Jones. Not at your service.” Noble mock saluted.
“A smart one, I see,” Dresden said distastefully. “Why are you asking about the Vein Ripper?”
“My lady has taken an interest. And I make sure to sate all her curiosities.”
Gross. I dredged up a smarmy smile. I hated gossip chasers most of all.
The inquisitor gave a disgusted look and turned away, but his head whipped back, eyes narrowing on me. “And what is her name?”
Obnoxious toad. Not even asking me the question, as if a woman couldn’t have two solid thoughts between her ears.
“Mistress Cornelia Jones. No relation.” Noble smiled, posture lazy, his look sly.
The inquisitor continued his assessment, gaze piercing. “I don’t believe that her name at all. But I don’t plan on seeing either of you again. Do you understand?”
“Of course, most honorable inquisitor.”
Dresden stiffened, but turned and left.
I exhaled. “I think he might have recognized me.”
Noble straightened to his full height, pretense dropping like a shed cloak. “Agreed. Just our luck to have Arthur Dresden on this case. It makes our task more difficult.”
“What do we do?”
I had heard of Dresden even before Phineas had mentioned him.
Known for his tenacity, a terrier who brought peace and justice at any cost. Although he was reported to be a by-the-book investigator, he had been reprimanded more than once for his tactics in extracting information.
As long as the bad were punished and the good saved, he was reputed not to care if the means justified the ends.
He was not the kind of man one wanted to be noticed by.
But then neither was Noble. For all that Dresden might want to toss us in the nearest cell for existing below his moral code, Noble was far more dangerous in other ways.
He abruptly smiled, as if he had heard my thought.
“What?” I asked warily.
“The wind whispers.” His palm curved around to caress my neck.
“As to what we should do next, I do remember saying something about what position you might find yourself in at the end of the night.” One long finger touched my cheek.
“Over a pub table? Up against an alley wall? In a carriage—windows open, the wind blowing through as we race down the streets and you ride me to the end?”
The pounding in the vow marks stuttered, my heart forgetting its rhythm.
“Yes, I think I like all of those images.” His finger trailed down the side of my throat.
“I can see your head thrown back and that long, smooth neck exposed to me in all of them. Your eyes are even more smoky and sensual—from the inside out now, rather than the outside in. Shall we see what happens when that knowledge fully blooms?”
I swallowed, then swallowed again.
A muffled cry shook the night, and he yanked me behind him. The echoes continued from a darkened street west. Held flat to his back, he pulled me carefully forward with him. The connecting alley revealed the source.
A man, reedy with menace, was hitting a woman. The right side of her face was swollen and bloody in the faint gaslight.
Noble moved before I even registered his release. A sickening crunch echoed in the alley, and the reedy man howled—swearing at the woman, at Noble, at me.
Noble wiped his hands on his trousers as if the mere touch to the other man’s wrist had left him with remnants of the plague. “Shame about that arm.”
The man charged. Another unnatural crack sounded—an arm now snapped in two places. The swearing turned to gibbering.
Weirdly powerful for a non, indeed.
“Do keep trying. It would be a pleasure to watch you eat without the use of both hands for the next three months.” He leaned down, and the man instinctively shrank away. “I will find your address and happily feed you every bite.”
The man cradled his mangled arm and stumbled from the alley. His beating footsteps retreated, leaving the lane in silence.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” the woman said. “Eugene will be real mad once he stops being piss scared.” Her chin trembled.
Noble flicked out two fingers holding a spelled card. “Go here. Ask for Peg. She will help, if you want it.”
The woman grabbed the card, eyes weighing, no trust in sight, then turned and disappeared the same way the man had gone.
“Will she go?” I asked, still in shock—something in the woman’s eyes prompting the question.
“Perhaps. Some do, some don’t. One has to want to be helped. Come.”
Gabriel Noble stretched out a hand to me. I took it.