Dream Thief, page 4
Blackmail, after all, was an ugly term, but Augustus had gotten as well as he had given, when taking this job.
He let his scowl at the manager speak volumes, ever as his face never left a resting neutrality that suggested the other hand quietly held a stiletto against need.
The man nearly choked on his tongue, then fell all over himself getting a young woman to escort Augustus deeper into the building. He collected his two cards silently and followed.
It was the fact that such entities as Exeter Hall required the women serving the men of power and leisure to be so underdressed caught in his craw. As he followed the young woman, hardly more than a babe, though Augustus knew himself to be jaded and cynical on the topic, he noted that her outfit had a front that barely covered, a back that did even less, and those parts that were obscured were entirely emphasized by the cut and fabric.
He kept his growl internal.
Poverty of the type that required beautiful young women to sell their souls in such an establishment, if not their bodies as well.
He did not inquire. Nor did he seek membership, as that might require him to start voicing opinions on certain topics and thus make enemies. Necessary enemies, perhaps.
And he would not regret such foes. Not today.
She did not flirt, having seen his face. Did not tease. Walked like a bailiff leading a prisoner into court, for which he was grateful.
They got to that place in the middle of the building where all the twists had turns had him wondering if there might be a minotaur lurking, but the young woman knocked on a door, opened it, and stepped to the gap.
“Lord William, your guest arrives,” she said in a carefully neutral voice. As though she’d been able to smell the anger fulminating off Augustus’s head as they walked.
She stepped back and they exchanged formal nods. This woman had seen much for her tender years. He could appreciate her as a person, rather than the sort of walking sex object that men of this place seemed to prefer.
He entered.
Lord William rose and smiled as the woman closed the door behind. Then the man’s face fell into seriousness. He gestured to a side table, and Augustus fixed himself a drink as Lord William settled.
“That bad?” the man asked.
Derlyth had known Lord William for decades. Hadn’t trained under him, but they had served together on several expeditions as young men. Back when the man still had his left arm, instead of a stump just below his elbow.
They had bound and slain the beast, though at a Norse cost to the man. His other scars weren’t generally visible. They were still there.
“Yes and no,” Augustus replied, taking a moment to exhale consciously, as a few Oriental scholars had taught him, thus calming his heart and his mind. “I come again as a supplicant, Lord William, though this time I approach the target somewhat tangentially.”
“Tangentially?” Lord William asked.
“Montmorcy himself is directly involved,” Augustus stated. “Perhaps a driving factor, so my ability to call on governmental resources is far greater than normal. They have, as yet, yielded me practically nothing, so I have had to step back and recalibrate things.”
“Tell me,” Lord William commanded, seemingly transforming into that deadly young man who had held the beast with his bare hands before Augustus and others had managed to kill it.
The explanation took an hour. Dinner was ordered, delivered, removed. Port had replaced the whisky. Augustus found that his humor was somewhat better, for having a man like Lord William to tell such a tale to as he had assembled.
“At that point, all leads have dried up, like creeks in a hot summer,” Augustus concluded. “I have begun to see patterns in the bits I have learned that suggest lies carefully planted sometime in the past against someone like me ever seeking this man.”
“Does he even exist?” Lord William asked sharply.
Augustus opened his mouth to retort sharply—a thing he could do in private with this man—when he found himself stopping short.
Augustus blinked. Recalibrated yet again. Paused to take a long sip of his port and examine that simple question.
Lord William nodded sagely.
“Your stories suggest a radical change in personality, sometime three or four years ago, am I correct?” he asked.
“Indeed,” Augustus agreed. “Nineteen twenty-one.”
“And the man was active through the war years?” Lord William pressed.
“Regularly enough to have not been serving in any army, no,” Augustus noted.
“Then something changed.”
Indeed.
Augustus leaned back. Something had changed. It was almost like a new person had taken on the persona of Jean-Marie Lachance. One less a thief and more an assassin, though the change had been slow in coming. Subtle. That, or something had happened to him, causing him to suddenly take seriously an oath of vengeance on someone.
Anyone.
Everyone?
Augustus shook himself roughly, at least mentally. Chided himself for not seeing a forest for all the damned trees in his way.
Lord William smiled indulgently.
As Augustus had told Lady Claudette, there were many in the field of the esoteric arts who were simply smarter than he was. One sat across from him now. Few could be as ruthless, but again, Lord William put most of the rest to shame.
In some ways, the man was almost a modern embodiment of Tyr. Or Nuada. With all that such entailed.
“Do you still have that one contact in the south of France?” Augustus asked pointedly.
“The south?” Lord William pressed carefully.
“That one,” Augustus nodded.
“It has been a few years,” he said after a time in thought. “I believe that Avner may have retired from the business. We are none of us getting any younger, and he was an older man when I met him. Is it important?”
“Perhaps critically so, Lord William,” Augustus nodded. “I need someone with French connections, but not located in Paris or anywhere in the northwest where they might have easy access to England and thus some knowledge of who I am. The south provides that.”
“But why do you need a fence in Marseilles?” Lord William asked.
“Because I need to catch a thief, Lord William,” Augustus smiled. “In this instance, I suspect that honey will yield far greater results than vinegar.”
Chapter
Eight
Augustus looked around the port as he disembarked down the gangplank. It would have been easier to catch a ferry across the Channel, then take a train, but all such trains passed through Paris, which he wished to avoid at all costs right now.
Instead, he had made quiet inquiries with Clayborne and booked passage on a vessel running from London to Marseilles directly, via the Pillars of Hercules, allowing him to simply avoid most of France entirely.
And anyone looking for him.
As with all trips abroad, he tended to travel at once heavy and light. A steamer trunk would be delivered to the hotel he had contacted. He had a satchel slung over one shoulder with certain bits and sundries he didn’t necessarily trust in the hands of stevedores or bellmen.
The day was utterly glorious. Sun, but not that stifling ugliness that had been London. Had he spent too much time in England lately, to have forgotten clear skies and moderate temperatures? Perhaps he needed to take an extended trip to clear out his mind, as it were?
It could wait. He had other game right this moment.
Bowler on his head and hickory walking stick in hand, he set out to cross the area around the docks, listening and watching people move around him. It wasn’t that the French were more carefree about things, but they indulged in a certain cheerful nihilism at times, in stark contrast to the dour stubbornness that seemed a keystone in the English soul.
One he had inherited.
The crowd was not bad. Fishermen had left at first light and would not return until later, so the dock area itself was at something of an ebb tide, if he could be so jaunty about it.
Augustus felt himself smiling for the first time in…well, now, perhaps he had indeed been shut up in London for too long. Mayhap he needed to contact Digby and get that dour fellow out into the sun as well, though a man like Digby might not relax as easily.
Lady Claudette would enjoy herself, but he had left her delving into the underworld of journalism for the nonce, rather than wandering the places where scum and villainy tended to aggregate.
He walked, ignoring the occasional street urchins that might wish to plead for a few coins or try their luck picking his pocket.
They wouldn’t be stung too badly if they tried. Ye gads, it wouldn’t even leave that much of a scar afterwards.
Probably.
A learning experience, if nothing else.
But none chose to challenge their luck against his today. Perhaps the sly smile on his face intimidated, as he was not frightened of them as some English tourists might be, having accidentally wandered down into some of these parts of the old port.
Nothing accidental at all on his part.
Still, he did notice when it became obvious that he was being stalked. A shadow here and there as he traversed some of the narrower lanes that weren’t hardly more than alleys, possibly originally carved by Phoenician goats.
At least four men. They had the looks of sailors, though that was more a style of dress than anything, with baggy pants, striped shirts, and at least two with kerchiefs knotted around their necks in a jaunty way. Plus, the leader in his beret.
Augustus considered merely turning invisible until they lost his spoor and wandered off, but that might just allow them to bother him later, when he might not be paying attention.
Or any other tourist that might have gotten lost.
Heavens, when had he turned into a protector of the innocent?
But then, that was the entire mission that had brought him thus, wasn’t it?
If the nobles at risk had not necessarily earned their rank and station, they had also not likely done much to earn the enmity of an anarchist with access to terrible weapons, either.
So, he walked. Paused at a corner and sent a small pulse of power ahead of himself to map certain areas with which he was not entirely familiar.
Then he baited a trap.
Or rather, allowed himself to walk into one, confident that the four were both alone and mundane in the esoteric arts.
Two blocked the far end of a fairly narrow lane when he got about halfway, having cut between blank-faced buildings in a way that left him no side doors or alleys from which to escape.
Nor they.
Augustus maintained a tiny spark of power about himself, mostly to track the two behind, as well as to note that no fifth had taken to a roof from which to drop heavy things on him now.
He paused midway, as though suddenly surprised at being confronted.
The other two emerged behind when he glanced back.
Augustus nodded.
And charged.
Not what they’d been expecting from a lone, English gentleman in a nice hat, that much was obvious.
One held a sap, or something similar. A bag of some sort, filled with sand or loose stones. Non-lethal, at least under most interpretations of Napoleonic code. The other in front of him had a short stick. A belaying pin, perhaps, from the way it was ridged.
Augustus had spent too much time recently under the supervision of one Yun Shi Bao, an Oriental gentleman of Pearl River estuary provenance originally. In addition to certain open-handed forms similar to a type of boxing, Augustus had specifically undertaken to study a modified combat form centered around a gentleman’s walking stick, though it had many similarities to using an English longsword with a hand-and-a-half grip.
The chap on his right was closer as Augustus got there. That unfortunate raised his belaying pin and attempted an overhand strike. Augustus let his mind disengage, save to track the others.
Au-to-ma-TIQUE, as Mr. Yun had repeated again and again in his limited English.
Augustus gripped his stout cane two-handed and crossover-stepped to his right, blocking the pin then twisting around to catch his foe with the shaft and lever him into the second man with a pleasant thud and tumble so unlike the cold sterility of the dojo floor.
Both tumbled against a wall, and Augustus dealt the nearer a swift crack on the hardest part of his skull. A welcoming gift, in a mugging.
The two in back had rushed forward at the first hint of violence but were unprepared for the consequences. Augustus pivoted back and swung his cane horizontally, a good stinger to the upper part of the nearest arm reaching as he laughed and stepped into them again.
A quick reverse of his grip pommel up and off-hand down to block a punch coming at his chest, then bounced up and over a sweep indicating a foe with some serious training at Savate.
Automatique, as instructed, for Derlyth merely sensed the attacks and flowed hither and yon eluding them.
Unfortunately now—for the gentleman in his beret—he popped up from that aggressive sweep just as Augustus leaned forward again and crowned him rather abruptly. It made an indelicate sound, like a watermelon dropped from a second story window.
KA-THUNK.
Eyes glazed, the Savate gentleman removed himself from the fight by the expedient act of passing out. Pity, too, as Augustus found he was rather enjoying himself at this point.
Thusly, he turned to his final dance partner, just as said fool attempted a grapple, which put all his momentum forward. Augustus smiled and grabbed both ends of his cane to rotate his upper body to the left like a pinwheel on a breezy day, sliding by the man.
Because he so rarely got such a pretty opening in training, Augustus continued his turn, spinning completely around and cracking the fool on the back of the skull with both hands on the cane. Exactly as he was supposed to do, were they doing this for a score in front of a judge. Or a picky, Cantonese gentleman.
A sword would have decapitated the unfortunate. Here, he would merely be a threat to nobody for several hours as the concussion rose off.
That left one man standing. Blinking too rapidly at that, as he’d just seen the outcome for three close friends who had gotten up this morning and made poor life choices.
Augustus centered the tip of his cane on the man from about six feet away, as if it were an epee and this a formal fencing match with judges and scoring, instead of a back-alley brawl
“En garde!” he challenged jauntily, mostly to watch the man turn pale as a ghost and immediately flee.
It wasn’t hardly sporting, but Augustus reached out with a small dollop of power and tripped the man from behind, a polite tap at the wrong moment that pitched him face-first into a brick wall at speed.
He slid down it bonelessly but still breathing, from the look of him. Not that Augustus was above issuing an ultimate sanction against such ruffians, but they had opened the bidding with non-lethal force. And not escalated when it became clear that they’d chosen the wrong prey.
Augustus nodded and adjusted his bowler to an even jauntier angle before setting off again to locate the address Lord William had given him.
Chapter
Nine
Augustus paused outside the shop and pulled his wire-rim glasses from a pocket, polishing them once before putting them on. He was just old enough that he often needed them to read smaller print in some of those ancient tomes, rather than for everyday tasks.
Here, he was going with Lady Claudette’s suggestion that they made him look more like a scholar and less like a swordsman, however accurate both were. And so many other things.
Settled, he entered to the sound of a bell hung over the door and stepped into a tiny place. Barely large enough for four adults to crowd on this side of a horseshoe-shaped set of display cabinets, all glass fronted and seemingly made of a dark oak.
Each self held a few pieces of jewelry, most of it gold but several pieces worked in silver and even a pair of cast bronze chokers he found enticing. No loose gemstones, but he had been warned that such were rarely displayed.
Too easy to go astray, though in the past this shop had been more of a cover than anything. At least according to Lord William’s stories.
A girl emerged from the back, stepping through a curtain separating the small front from what appeared to be a jeweler’s workshop in back.
Girl. Ha.
Woman, and not even that young, though her youth did make Augustus feel his age. That mid-twenties spot, right before she underwent some subtle transformation not as drastic as eighteen, but still distinct. Perhaps a year or two younger than Lady Claudette, who would not hesitate to remind you that she was an adult.
Hair darker than blonde but not fully brown. Piercing green eyes sizing him up as he did the same to her. No longer the slenderness of youth, but she also hadn’t fully grown into her curves yet. The woman would never be a favorite of Ruben, but she hardly fulfilled the idolized images French artists of the modern school seemed to favor.
More the fools they, as she was classically beautiful such as one of the ancient Hellenes might have immortalized her in marble.
“May I help you?” she asked. In English, even, despite his Italian-style suit. Likely the hat, cane, and glasses.
He considered responding in French, but she had hardly any accent at all, so the woman might be polylingual. Useful, in this field. And this city.
“I came looking for Avner Penzig,” Augustus replied, reaching into his breast pocket for a letter of introduction Lord William had sent along. “However, I was also led to believe that he might have retired, and thus it would be necessary to go beyond the confines of this shop to locate him.”
He handed her the envelop and stood back as she opened it. The letter was brief. A note from Lord William including a brief physical description of one Augustus Dexter Derlyth, along with information on how to contact Lord William directly for clarification.
