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dor ripped open the letter, scanning the contents. Exhilaration burned along his twisted limbs, shook his palsied hands. Victory was near. “Prepare my traveling coach. We leave for Cornwall. The stone’s been found.”
sixteen
The dram shop smelled of sweat, urine, and stale whiskey. Brendan wrinkled his nose against the stench and played at drinking the hell broth, though he’d yet to have the grimy cup touch his lips.
On the face of it, he’d come here as a way to draw Máelodor’s hunters, though to be honest Brendan had simply needed to free himself from the never-ending spin of his thoughts. Impossible to do while cooped within the closing walls of the Duke Street town house. Not much easier here with every new arrival throwing his pulse into a gallop, his hand involuntarily closing around the dagger hidden beneath his jacket.
Experience told him he tempted fate. He should follow his own rule and stay as far away from Elisabeth as possible. Between Rogan, Roseingrave, and himself, they’d laid trails, dropped hints. Nothing obvious, but surely word had leaked in all the right places. Máelodor would know by now Kilronan’s heir had resurfaced in Dublin. An easy target for his bounty hunters. Which meant time grew short and nothing was certain. For every step he took to secure his freedom, circumstance chose to snatch it from his grip.
He’d come here in company with Rogan, though soon after their arrival the harper had disappeared into the back with a woman of soft curves and hard eyes.
“I’d appreciate it if you keep Lyddy to yourself. Helena’s got high-minded ideas and she doesn’t take to my women,” Rogan had said with a sheepish smile.
Brendan raised his cup to the man’s success, and the couple ducked beneath a curtain stretched over a doorway at the back of the room with much giggling and pinching.
Reaching for his watch, he suddenly remembered its present location at a pawnbroker’s near Arran Quay. Ah, well, he’d take it on faith that at least a half hour had passed. Where the hell was the lover boy?
As he waited, a man entered. Of medium build with shaggy black hair threaded with silver, he took a seat in the corner. His shabby clothes looked as if he’d stolen them from a beggar. An old threadbare jacket, breeches that barely covered his knees, and a pair of shoes with cracked soles bound with twine.
Brendan tensed in sudden anticipation of approaching trouble. He dropped a careful hand to his dagger. The plan might be to draw Máelodor’s assassins to him, but it wasn’t easy to put aside years of discipline. And he refused to go without a fight.
The shop door opened again, this time on a group of laughing, shouting men, their faces bearing signs of more than a passing familiarity with the crippling effects of cheap whiskey. Red-veined noses, jaundiced eyes, skin lying slack on brittle bones.
One of the newcomers pulled aside the curtain, shouting for Lyddy, his friends egging him on. Apparently this had not been the first stop on their tavern-crawl.
Immediately, Rogan was there, his long, thin body seeming to fill the doorway, his normally placid face dark with an emotion Brendan had never seen in his eyes. He’d yet to put on his jacket, his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows to reveal the dark curved edge of a tattoo.
“You speak like that again and I’ll have your tongue from your head,” he threatened.
The drunk looked cowed for a moment, but his boldness returned as his friends joined him. “I pay good money. I expect good service,” he brazened.
Rogan’s gaze flicked down to the man’s groin back up to his eyes, contempt twisting his features. “Why don’t you and your friends stick to goats?”
The men surged forward as one, Rogan disappearing beneath the crush of bodies.
Devil take it. Did the man have to play knight errant for a damned doxy?
Brendan shoved up from his chair, sliding his dagger free. Drew to a halt before he’d gone two steps.
One rascal had fallen to his knees, a second came away with a bloody nose. But the last two fell back as if they’d been stunned by a hammer blow between the eyes.
Rogan laughed, throwing his arm around the bully who’d first called for the woman. “Arrah, now, you don’t want to be bothering my girl Lyddy. She’s a good lass. She doesn’t do that sort of thing anymore.”
Mage energy shivered the air, flickering against Brendan’s skin before sinking into his bones, running with his blood.
“No?” the man said, still with a look of dazed amazement. His companion following after with a glassy acquiescence.
“You want to take yourselves off and find another shop,” Rogan offered. “The one in Braithwaite Street, or try Martha above the skinners in Marrowbone Lane.”
“I’ve been there. Martha’s a ripe one,” the man said, nodding stupidly.
“Of course she is,” Rogan purred. “She’ll be just the thing. Go on and take your friends with you. And we’ll forget about our little brangle.”
Rogan’s gaze concentrated upon each man in turn, the persuasive power of the leveryas settling over the turbulence of the dram shop. It pulsed along Brendan’s muscles like a drug, the calm easing the tension banding his back. He released the dagger and dropped his arm to his side as the men filtered out, subdued under the influence of Rogan’s subtle yet unbending mental pressure.
“Come, Douglas.” Rogan motioned toward the door. “We’ll follow to be sure they’re headed toward Marrowbone Lane.”
Anything to get the hell out of here.
