Thick clouds roiled with silent threat above the valley of bones.Jacobs studied Vanika with cold interest where she sat on her boulder with a purposefully innocent expression.
“Not just here for the astra, are we?”he noted silkily.“That does simplify things.”
Adam beat him to the words.“You’re about to threaten to hurt the kid if Ellie and I don’t walk away.Only that’s not going to work out quite the way you think.”
Jacobs tilted his head mockingly.“Isn’t it?”
A handful of the nearby soldiers cast them curious glances, sensing tension.
That was a start.Adam needed more.
He pitched his voice to be heard across the camp.“Say that again to my face!”
Confusion flickered across Jacobs’ features.
For one final moment, Adam pulled that other persona back around himself, dredging up every tattered fragment of the self-righteous sense of privilege he’d once had mercilessly drilled into him.He let it seethe through his voice as he stepped forward and drove his finger into Jacobs’ chest.“The problem with you is that you keep forgetting your place.”
The sepoys stopped what they were doing and stared.
Adam had been counting on that.Men on a long mission through the wilderness were bound to be starved for entertainment.
The nearest of the soldiers instinctively formed a loose circle, already sensing where this would go.
Jacobs stilled.“Whatever game you’re playing, Bates, I don’t think you’re going to like how it turns out.”
“Probably not,” Adam agreed.
He yanked loose his belt and tossed it aside—hopefully before anyone noticed that the sheath hanging from it was already empty.
“No guns.No knives,” Adam called out succinctly.“Just fists.Sound fair enough?”
It was Borthwick who answered, taking in the scene as he looked up from his map table.“I should say it does—even for a gutter rat like him.”
Jacobs stiffened, hands twitching into fists.
“Well?”Borthwick prompted with an air of arrogant impatience.
Jacobs’ fury was palpable.Adam could feel it through the air even from six feet away.
He’d made plenty of men mad before.Hell, he had something of a knack for it, even when he wasn’t really trying...but he wasn’t sure he’d ever made somebody quitethismad.
He had to give Borthwick credit for that.
Jacobs yanked a pistol from inside his jacket.For a moment, Adam wondered if his plan was about to go sideways in the form of a bullet to the head.
Jacobs threw the gun to the ground.
A switchblade from his pocket followed.Another knife fell from his sleeve.
He took out a third.
“How many of those things do you carry around?”Adam burst out in spite of himself.
Jacobs’ eyes flashed with recollection of all the times he and Adam had clashed in the past.“Not enough.”
He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it aside.His waistcoat followed, and he faced Adam from across the makeshift ring of sepoys, who were already passing around their bets.
Adam had never seen Jacobs in his shirtsleeves before.He was not surprised to discover that the man was as hard as a bloody rock—lean, lithe, and dangerous.
