Unbound (13 page)

Captain Dauntless frowned and looked at the painting as if she’d understood any of the absolute tripe that had come out of Professor Kirkland’s mouth. “So . . . that’s a good review?”

“As good as I can give.” She smiled brightly. “And I promise to post about the painting in glorious detail.”

Patrick had no doubt that she would. He could deal with the humiliation, if Dauntless let her live.

Dauntless nodded and turned to the nearest bodyguard. “All right. Load her into an escape pod and hold the rest of the crew for ransom. Or space them. You know the drill.”

Sagging with relief, Patrick turned the painting back to face him. He pulled the fixative sheet in place to protect it on the way back to the good ship,
Triumphant Beast Descending
.

Lila Kirkland leaned forward as he did. She whispered, “It’s really not bad. And your brushwork is lovely.”

He stared after his old professor as the bodyguard hauled her down the corridor. His brushwork was lovely . . . He studied the painting and grinned. It really wasn’t bad.

Jason M. Hough

Part One

On Old Kent Road, still six miles from London, the horses grew nervous. Their rhythmic trot became a stutter, their silence a chorus of fearful neighs.

A bend in the lane, with a hill falling away to one side and a wall of trees crowding the other, hid the source of this fear from John Crimson's view. But the horses sensed something. Smelled it in the cool air.

Bandits
, he naturally concluded, and thudded the ceiling of the carriage for the driver's attention.

"Sir?"

"Stop here," he said. His boots slapped in the muddy lane a few seconds later. He had no weapon, not while off-duty, but the driver did. Crimson held his hand out and, unspoken command understood, the man handed over a wooden baton without complaint. They had chatted amicably on the ride out to Canterbury, Crimson quizzing the old man about the state of the highway and the old man asking all manner of question about the more storied cases recently spilled from Scotland Yard.

"What is it?" the driver asked, voice low now. He'd been half asleep, from the dazed look on his face.

"I'm going to find out. Be ready to move, would you?"

"'Course, sir."

Crimson hefted the truncheon in his left hand and started toward the bend in the lane, keeping to the wooded side of the ancient road. Above, a sky of bulbous gray drifted lazily north on a chill wind. Crows watched silently from the high branches. Behind, the horses tapped about with their hooves and let out shuddering breaths. Crimson eyed the driver, willing silence as well as an order to calm the beasts. The old man fetched carrots from a basket on the bench beside him and tossed them into the mud between the two steeds. Their heads dipped in unison, lips practically reaching out for the treats, the cause of their worry temporarily forgotten.

Satisfied, Crimson turned back toward the bend. He walked forward at a casual pace, eyes scanning the trees on his left and, across the narrow road, the lip of the hillside. Farms stretched out below, but the immediate bank was not visible from here.
A great place for an ambush
, Crimson thought. Place a watcher in the trees, have the rest of the crew lay prone on the hillside, ready to swarm up and surround any passersby. Were it he, he would have a log or some other obstacle blocking the lane at the apex of the bend, forcing carriages to slow and stop.

No obstacle lay at the midpoint of the curve, however. What he saw instead was much more surprising and did nothing to calm his nerves.

A lone woman stood there, peach-colored dress muddy at the fringe. She held a shade umbrella in one gloved hand and a spyglass in the other, the device trained on the farm below. A brown leather satchel rested in the thin grass beside her, stuffed to overflowing.
She looked
, Crimson thought,
like a provocative painting
.
Lone Woman on Road, 1835
, a museum placard might say.

Golden hair curled about her shoulders, and she stood tall. Sturdy. Proud, or perhaps confident.

Crimson cleared his throat.

The sound did not startle her. She simply lowered her spyglass and turned, one eyebrow arched. "Hello," she said simply, yet it was enough to know she was a foreigner. Dutch perhaps, or Swedish.

"I," Crimson began, then paused. She unsettled him just as she had the horses. Yet there seemed to be no danger about her. Surely she was no lure in a brigand band. She was simply out of place. An oddity. "What are you doing out here alone, Miss . . . ?"

"Penar," she said. "Malena Penar."

Twenty feet still separated them, but she held out a gloved hand regardless, resting the spyglass atop her luggage between the two leather handles.

Crimson cast a glance across the tree line, saw nothing. He crossed to her side of the lane and leaned out, far enough to scan the surrounding slope. No bandits lay in wait. Just a carpet of long green grass marred here and there by jutting white stone.

"Inspector Jonathan Crimson of Scotland Yard," he said with deliberate volume, and took her offered hand.

She grinned. "I feel as if a child rescued after falling in an abandoned well."

A strange thing to say. Crimson had no reply. He tipped an imaginary hat, earning another smile.

"Crim-son," she said, sounding it out. "A criminal's son on the police force? How interesting."

He'd seen that apprehensive look his entire life. At least she hadn't made a remark about the color, as most were quick to do. "Son of Crimea, actually. And you haven't answered my question. What are you doing out here?"

"I'd hoped to glimpse a ghost," she said.

* * * * *

She rode beside him, her bag secured on the roof next to his own. Against the clatter of hooves and the sprawling countryside, her story came out. Traveling not alone but with her brother. Wealthy siblings from Scandinavia, in England to scout possible investments on behalf of the family confectionary business. Dairy farms, she explained. While visiting the nearby village in Kent she'd heard a peculiar story. A nine-year-old girl had apparently fallen into a well just across the field from that bend in the road, a decade ago. Local legend had it that her ghost could sometimes be seen to crawl from the stone circle and drift through the high grass, just before twilight.

"Rubbish," Crimson muttered.

Malena's ill-tempered brother had apparently said as much. When she'd demanded they stop and watch for the apparition, he'd flown into a fit of rage and decided to deposit his sister at the side of the road rather than indulge her superstitions. He'd taken their carriage on to London, leaving her to fend for herself. "How lucky you came along."

"Indeed," Crimson said, swallowing his own prejudices against those who believed in things like ghosts. "If you like I can search the archives, see if this incident with the girl even happened."

"That won't be necessary. I just thought it curious and wanted to see for myself, you know?"

"I do." Yet Crimson's thoughts had turned to her brother. Whether Malena wished it or not, he felt a powerful urge to find the bastard and instill some manners into him via his nose. It was one thing to disagree on matters supernatural, it was another to leave a woman alone on a country road.

"And you?" she asked. "You are one of these, what is the word, 'coppers'?"

"A police inspector, yes. Under Superintendent Goddard."

"Are you out here working on a case?"

"Attending a wedding in Canterbury, actually. Or was. On the way back when we found you."

"Your own wedding?" The barest hint of a smile played at the corner of her mouth. Something wicked about it.

"A friend's, alas." He smiled and she returned it warmly.

* * * * *

He found her well educated and very bright. Also vaguely cruel, yet her lack of British modesty somehow transformed this into an endearing quality. She found his occupation mildly disgusting, yet this seemed to only increase her curiosity about the finer details of the work. The last five miles to London went by altogether too quickly.

A dinner followed tea the next evening, and then again the evening after that. She had only two more weeks in London and wanted to see a show, so he offered to take her.

Of her brother there was no mention.

On the fourth day after meeting Malena Penar, Crimson found himself talking like a lovestruck schoolboy about her to Henry Goddard. His superintendent listened thoughtfully, though, and invited him to bring her along to their already planned dinner that evening. "I'll bring Annette," Goddard added, "so the lady does not feel intimidated, and you and I are less inclined to talk shop."

* * * * *

"Oysters and porter, nothing fancy," Crimson explained to Malena in the lobby of her hotel. "Pub fare. Sort of a tradition. I hope that is all right?"

She said it was and he led her through the damp and crowded streets of London at twilight, her arm entwined around his. She'd dressed somewhat somberly, though her mood did not reflect this in the slightest. Dark gray coat and dress, white blouse, and a silken black scarf around her neck, pinned in place with a circle of worn gold. A Roman coin, perhaps.

A puddle in the lane, no larger than Crimson's shoe, nevertheless caused Malena to insist they walk around rather than simply step over it. "Old superstition," she said. Then, at his dubious expression, added, "From my country. A spirit, it is said, will have no reflection."

Despite the attraction he had toward her, this reminder of her belief in such nonsense, however casual, made something in the back of his mind twitch. A little voice, easily muzzled, telling him to walk away now, that she wasn't right for him.

He kept beside her all the same.

Their path winded for a quarter-mile until, on Fleet Street, he led her through the aging front door of The Rainbow, where Mr. and Mrs. Goddard already waited at a table for four overlooking the street outside.

In a pool of candlelight beside a rain-streaked window they ate oysters, drank good ale, and talked nothing but shop. The presence of the visibly pregnant Mrs. Goddard did nothing to stem Malena's curiosity about the sordid underbelly of London.

"It's quite easy," she said, "to picture the two of you gentlemen kicking in the door of some burglar or pedophile and hauling them off to jail."

"Do we look so rough around the edges?" Goddard asked.

"Oh, absolutely," Malena replied. Again that hint of wickedness. Crimson felt a ripple of electricity course through him at the way she held herself. Undaunted. This was not a woman to keep at home and have dote upon you. This was a woman to travel the world with. To slog through jungles or across the savannah. He could picture her with a musket on her hip as easily as in her unmentionables. Crimson took a long pull from his porter.

"Of course those days are all but over," Goddard was saying. "John and I rely on intuition, on years of working these streets, to find the villainous. We kick in doors, as you so delightfully put it, because we simply know in our gut that the perpetrator is within."

"And yet you say this will change? To what?"

"Something more . . . methodical," Goddard said.

Crimson smirked. This was a discussion they held almost daily in Goddard's office. The coming intrusion of science into a job that thrived on finesse and gut feel.

"That sounds dull," Malena observed.

"It's quite fascinating actually." Goddard rested his forearms on the table and leaned in, dropping his voice to something conspiratorial. "You see, the scope of what we're dealing with here only grows. Too big for men like us to keep in our heads."

"Speak for yourself," Crimson said, and tipped his mug back to disguise his smile.

Malena laughed, but her attention never wavered from the superintendent. "Are you going to start talking figures and equations?"

Goddard's face scrunched up. "Not exactly, though you're close to the mark." Sensing the impending loss of his audience, Crimson's superior quickly went on. "I'm going to talk about India."

Malena cocked her head, confused.

"Oh not this, Henry," Annette said, face sour, one hand across her bulging torso. "I'll be sick."

"India?" Malena prompted.

"India," Goddard said, a twinkle in his eyes despite his wife's displeasure.

Annette looked to Crimson for help. He shrugged, and she let her gaze fall to her plate, annoyed.

"You see," Goddard said to Malena, "what we're dealing with here in London is nothing compared to a certain W.H. Sleeman."

"I don't know the name," Malena said.

"You will. Everyone will, I believe."

"Why? Who is he?"

"Major Sleeman," Crimson interjected, "is administrator of a small province within the colony."

". . . A province with more crime than London?"

"
Vastly
more," Goddard said. "And not just crime, my dear, but murder. Murder on an unimaginable scale. A sprawling cult of stranglers known as the Thugs. Their crimes are so numerous and broad that Sleeman, out of sheer necessity mind you, has invented entirely new investigative techniques just to get a handle on it. He's written me, detailing the situation. Remarkable work, and by God I think he's going to crack them. The horrors he faces, Malena! Mass graves. Strangled and mutilated bodies by the hundred--"