CHAPTER ONE
“We all have hidden depths, dear boy. The question is whether those depths conceal treasure or monsters.” —The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to Lord Dunston at said gentleman’s annual hunt.
March 15, 1819
London
Most men saw poorly in the dark. Sabre was not most men.
Call it breeding or training or random fortune, but an alley beneath London’s coal-choked sky posed no greater hardship to his eyes than a candlelit ballroom. Less, perhaps. Here, at least, the vermin did not bother with disguises.
Which was why the rat caught his notice. It gnawed something boot-shaped and motionless.
“Like bleeding pitch,” muttered Drayton, a looming wolfhound at Sabre’s side. “Should have brought a light.”
The Bow Street runner had left the lantern with the coachman two streets over, fearing their contact would balk at being seen. That assessment might have been correct had their contact still been breathing.
He glanced again at the rodent’s furtive form. Heard the whisk of rodent feet, the squeak of rodent teeth on cheap leather. It knew what was becoming obvious, if only from the odor, floating beneath the stench of human refuse and animal waste.
“Return to the coach.”
Sabre’s grim order straightened Drayton out of his habitual hunch. “He’s a mite late, I’ll grant. But he’s the first source we’ve had in seven—”
“Late, yes. As in the ‘late’ Mr. Chalmers. Fetch the lantern.” He moved deeper into the dark, toward the rat’s feast. “Be swift, now.”
Behind him, Drayton groaned. “Ah, bloody, bleeding hell.”
Sabre crouched beside the corpse as Drayton’s loping clomps receded. The rat flew with one hand’s impatient swipe. The tang of blood entered his nose.
Three alcoves and two piles of rubbish in this alley. An attacker would have little trouble hiding long enough to dispatch a craven mouse like Chalmers. Sabre had warned him a public location was best. Instead, the mouse had insisted on this narrow spot between back doors and brick, far from the green glow of gaslights in more respectable parts of the city.
Stupidity had killed him, as it had many who entered the Investor’s sphere.
Sabre searched the man’s coat—rough wool suited to his recent poverty—and found only a gilt-brass watch, a wadded handkerchief, and a ruined pouch of snuff. He tossed them all aside with a curse.
This had been a fool’s errand. Ending in yet another fool dead.
After more than a decade chasing the Investor like a hound hunting smoke, Sabre should have known better. But leads were few in this particular hunt, and consequently, more tempting.
One breath before he attempted to rise, he felt the prickle. Heard the thwick of metal leaving a sheath.
Spinning low away from the sound, he sprang from his crouch. Withdrew his own dagger from the scabbard at his hip. Sliced upward in one ghostly motion.
Caught cloth and shadow but no flesh.
Heart slowed. Eyes sharpened.
By contrast, the shadow breathed fast. Probably surprised by his quickness. Rats who inhabited the dark often were.
Sabre grinned, bouncing lightly on his toes, the long knife’s ebony grip cradled in his palm like a woman’s breast. Warm and sweet. Familiar. “You should have contented yourself with Mr. Chalmers.” He tsked. “Your employer’s name, if you please.”
The shadow stilled. A blade shone in the meager light from windows along the adjacent street. The assassin must have wiped his weapon clean after withdrawing it from Chalmers’s kidney.
“Come now,” Sabre chided, slowly circling. Dancing. Waiting. “Few men desire an excruciating death over a swift one. Surely you are not among them.”
“Y-you’re him.” The shadow’s voice trembled and broke.
“Him?”
“The Sabre.”
Sabre tsked again. “Dreadful moniker.” He held up his knife, tossing it with a practiced spin. He liked the way it caught the light before returning home to his hand. “Inaccurate, as you can see. Well, perhaps you cannot, dark as it is. Knives are my preference. Portable. Efficient.” He nodded toward Chalmers. “I note your fondness for them, as well.”
The shadow’s greatcoat shrugged nervously. “Hardly that. Only doing what I must.”
His accent was warbling and odd. Part Manchester, part Dublin, if he didn’t miss his guess. And young. Too young.
Sabre slowly circled, drawing the man’s back around to face the street. Drayton would return soon. Better to catch the shadow by surprise.
“Your employer, old chap. Do let’s be reasonable. Gutting a man produces hideous stains. Removing them is tiresome. Do not force me to it.”
“Horatio Syder.”
“Nonsense. Syder has been dead for nearly two years.”
The shadow stilled. “His name yet lives.”
Sabre inched closer, disguising his maneuver inside a dance from front foot to back. Front to back. Front to back. Light and smooth. Shifting and deceptive.
They should have called him Dancer. Or Dagger. Or something other than a weapon he’d rarely used. He did not even possess one at present. Nevertheless, he was known as the Sabre, for reasons he preferred to forget.
“I watched that butcher’s blood soak an entire room, old chap. He is quite dead, I assure you.”
No answer.
Sabre sighed. “Very well. How were you contacted?”
A long pause. Rough breaths. A twitch of the shadow’s knife. His blade was several inches shorter than Sabre’s, duller and cheaper.
“M-my wife was given a letter.”
“By whom?” Front foot. Back foot. Front. Back.
“I don’t know.” The shadow’s arm swiped a sweating brow. “A lad, she said. Syder was the only name given.”
“And you did not bother to question a letter from a dead man?”
The shadow’s fist clutched his knife reflexively. “Stop movin’ like that.”
Sabre smiled, half amused at the young man’s frustration, half sick at what was coming. “There was a threat to your wife, yes? A few quid if you performed your task. Her death if you did not.”
Another pause. “Aye.”
The Investor understood incentives better than most. This assassin was merely a tool to be used and discarded, and scenting the trail back to his true employer would prove fruitless. If Sabre had learned anything, he had learned that. Still, perhaps he could spare the man the fate of all the others.
“You could flee. Take your wife to Dublin. Manchester.”
The shadow’s greatcoat shook visibly. “I cannot.”
Sabre went colder. “I have no wish to kill you, old chap. Run. Do it now.”
He did not run. Instead, he repeated in a whisper, “I cannot.”
Then he attacked. Lunged and thrust with that short, dull blade. Desperate, inexpert jabs. Once. Again.
Sabre danced away, first to his right then backward so the shadow had only air to puncture. “How may I persuade you? Run, for the love of God, man.”
Heavy breathing and another swipe, close this time. “The babe is comin’ soon. I have told you I cannot.”
Going still, Sabre felt old rage rising. Pure, bloody evil, that’s what this was. The Investor would use anyone—a half-Irish boy who couldn’t afford a decent knife. A woman who did nothing more sinister than accept a lad’s delivery. A babe who had not yet taken a breath.
“I shall help you. Get you all to safety.” Sabre didn’t know where the offer had come from. As a rule, he eschewed sentiment. With enemies such as Syder and the Investor, soft meant dead. Worse, it meant death for anyone cherished and close. A wife. A babe.
Which was why he had neither, despite a temptation of the utmost extremity.
“You cannot help me,” the shadow said. “He finds the ones he hires. Always. I kill you or she dies. That simple.”
Sabre knew it was true. But the boy did not have to die tonight. Not by his hand. “Take my offer,” he pleaded. “Give yourself a chance.”
The shadow’s answer was a sudden lurch right, a high stroke aimed at Sabre’s neck.
Sabre pivoted to avoid the slash, but it came too quickly. His forearm caught the worst of it, folded up beside his jaw to guard his head. The blade dug through wool and linen, gashed skin and muscle in a streak of fire.
His hand didn’t think. It was deadly and automatic, carrying his dagger up through the shadow’s belly into the shadow’s heart.
The motion dispatched the threat, killing a half-Irish boy with a warbling accent and an expecting wife.
“Ah, God.” The boy’s words were wet. Bloody. He hung on Sabre a moment. Staggered backward, his boots slipping in something wretched, his body falling, dying, sprawling wide. His chest went motionless within seconds. The gurgling stopped, leaving a shattering silence.
Light came, golden and dancing toward Sabre, but he didn’t want to see. He turned instead to face brick walls and piled refuse. A stack of discarded, broken crates. A heap of food scraps. A rat returning for a missed meal.
Light expanded as footfalls drew near. First fast. Then slow. Drayton had returned. Too late. Too late. Too late.
No saving anybody now.
“Bloody, bleeding hell.” Gold rocked wildly then stilled into a pool amid long shadows as Drayton placed the lantern on the ground near the boy’s outstretched hand. “It’s Boyle.”
Sabre turned, keeping his eyes upon Drayton, who knelt beside the assassin’s blue greatcoat. It splayed out like wings upon the ground. “You know him?”
The man who resembled a wolfhound—dark and unkempt, shrewd and loyal—shot Sabre an outraged glance over his shoulder. “He’s a Bow Street man.”
“One of yours?”
Drayton scratched his unshaven chin. “Nah. Horse patrol. But I’ve seen him before. Christ. Only been at Bow Street a year.”
So, the Investor was drawing closer. Previous assassins had been low men—ruffians and thieves, primarily. Easily persuaded to kill. Easily controlled by a bit of blunt. But a Bow Street runner was an entirely different matter.
Close. Too damned close.
Drayton flicked the tip of the boy’s blade with his boot, setting it to spin in place. He grunted as he pushed to his feet. “You hadn’t any choice.”
Sabre glanced at his long knife, still streaked with blood. Moving a few steps away, he bent and wiped it clean on Chalmers’s coat before returning it to the scabbard on his hip. “Perhaps I did.”
“Nah. Boyle was a mite green, but he could handle himself fine. I’d wager he was given no option. Neither were you.”
“His widow and babe might disagree.”
Drayton’s eyes flashed, that houndish face scowling. “Now, listen here. We’re hunting a bleeding monster. It ain’t your doing. The Investor—”
“Is no more within my grasp than he was two years ago. Or ten. I am hunting smoke, Drayton. Every time I catch its scent, my hands come away both empty and burned.”
The wolfhound wagged a long chin toward Sabre’s left arm. “Appears cut to me. Best wrap that.”
Sabre gave his own forearm a cursory glance. His sleeve was soaked. His hand was slick and weak. Throbbing pain grew with each passing heartbeat, echoing up his shoulder and neck.
“Were there papers with Chalmers?” Drayton asked.
Sabre shook his head, sighing and rubbing a forefinger along his brow. “He may have left them behind. If he ever had any at all. Who the devil knows? The man went from being a solicitor to hiding in his brother’s cellar. Clearly, he was terrified. I assumed with his ties to Syder, he must have something that would point to the Investor. Something. Perhaps he was lying.”
“Hmmph. Can scarcely blame him for that.” Drayton paced to the former solicitor’s boots and tapped Chalmers’s heel lightly. “Must have known he would end here, I reckon. You were his best chance for sanctuary.”
“He was stupid. Had he done as I instructed he would be alive.” Sabre’s eyes drifted to Boyle, saw the pale, open hand, the dull knife, and the black-red pool spreading beneath both.
He swallowed. He hadn’t vomited since his first kill, a Frenchman who’d fancied Napoleon a god rather than a tyrant. Young like Boyle, only a shave or two past twenty. Strange to think Sabre had been a similar age at the time.
We all die the same, don’t we? Paris or Dublin. Boy or man.
After more than a decade, the price of Sabre’s long, relentless hunt could be measured in blood.
He looked down. Saw his own hand dripping red onto the watch from Chalmers’s pocket. It lay where he had tossed it, the sole remnant of a solicitor’s comforts. He bent and plucked it up, his thumb smearing the engraved surface. Red tarnished the brass, settled into the engravings.
Chalmers had held this. Kept it close like a talisman. Sabre understood, for he held a talisman of his own.
Or, rather, she held him.
Once again, he ran his thumb over the watch’s surface. Then, he tucked it into his coat pocket. Eyed the carnage of battle. Felt the fire of the Dubliner’s cut.
And not for the first time, he considered whether the price of vanquishing a monster had grown too high.
*~*~*