In the thick smoke and loud noise of Serpent & Wren that evening I sat with my cloak about me, my rapier and broad-brimmed hat on the table. I had arrived early enough that I could order similar courses to those Chand and I had taken together last time, substituting a decent soup for the sauerkraut. By the time he walked in, the wine was already on the table’s oil cloth and the pheasant being prepared. 

He continued to lean on his cane slightly, but otherwise his entrance was the same as always, him glad-handing lowlifes who recognized him, which is to say most of the pub’s denizens. He even tipped his hat to the barkeep who betrayed us both to the Red Hooks, receiving a queasy smile in return.

I waited for him at my corner table, fingering the hammer of my repeater in its holster. Eventually, his eyes lit upon me and he smiled as if spotting an old friend. I tried not to let the joy this brought me show on my face, afraid that it might cause him to disappear.

He made a greeting yards from the table that I couldn’t hear over the cacophony of conversation. This gladdened me, as I had prepared a topic unfit for others’ ears.

“How kind of you,” he said, sliding the cup closest to him and reaching for the bottle. “But why meet here instead of your fabulous chateau?”

“Porridge is one of the few dishes I can make myself,” I answered, holding my own cup for him to fill after his own. “I thought you might appreciate a better selection.”

“Family coffers coming up empty? Nothing to pay the servants with?” he questioned with a grin.

“The household servants left with my uncle,” I responded with something like the truth.

“Well, at least the larder cellar hasn’t – ” Chand stopped pouring the wine, bottle still raised. “You’re baiting the Red Hooks?”

I felt the corner of my mouth tick up at the perverse pleasure that Chand’s detection of my falsehood brought me. “Indeed. If there’re any remaining that are foolish enough to come for us, I’d prefer to know about it.”

Chand harrumphed. “Well, until one of these ginhounds says he saw me, the Red Hooks most likely think me dead.”

I raised my cup in a toast. “Then let us hope they’ve learned their lesson.”

I expected a mocking rejoinder, but Chand only finished filling our cups and raised his to mine. We had barely clinked our mugs when the waitress arrived with our first course. She smiled and tousled Chand’s curly dark hair as he grinned at her. If she knew of his travails, it made no distinction in her greeting or in his flirtations.

We spooned into the soup, soaking up it with bread, munching in silence for a time. Instead of hiding my perversity in the candle’s paltry light, whenever Chand looked up from his soup I gave him a wolfish grin. He only puzzled at this, both of us saying nothing until more wine was consumed and the oysters were served.

It wasn’t until the pheasant arrived that my grin or the gin eventually moved Chand to ask, “So aside from eating and drinking together, what’s the next step in this great plan of yours?”

I pushed the pheasant around my plate with my fork and knife, then around in my mouth with my tongue. I couldn’t keep the grin from my face as I answered, “I’d say we rob your parents.”

Chand looked up from his fowl. Even through the tavern’s smoke his eyes blazed with an uncustomary anger, so much so our intuitive waitress veered away from her approach to our table.

“I assumed you were jesting. My mother was an ayah.” He gestured to his brown skin. While his color might forever put him on the outside of Dunhill society, his Hindustan ancestry also gave him his greater height, burnished skin, and charming smile. I imagined his mother must have been quite beautiful.

I raised my hand in a conciliatory fashion. “Quite right. I mean your father and his wife.”

“Robbing the Red Hooks and tweaking the Blackcoats’ noses by continuing to inhabit this fabulous establishment,” Chand waved at the old stones of its walls and the knotted wood of its roof. “That’s not enough? Now you want to anger Dunhill’s nobility?”

“Yes.” I interwove my tapered fingers around my cup to stare at him over its rim. Waiting for him to arrive I had been sitting with contempt toward my uncle and any father that would throw a son such as Chand out.

Chand leaned back in his chair, watching my reaction. In a tone one would use to call a bluff in a card game, he said, “My father is Lord Guillemin Pawlett, Duke of Glevum. He has several estates. Which one would you have us rob?”

“Oh, I think the one in the city would be easiest. Don’t you?”

“So I came here to discover your mad.” Chand clucked his tongue. “A and E will be so disappointed.”

I laughed at his disapproval, making Chand uncomfortable in a way that brought me a perverse pleasure. “You knew I was mad when I came for you in the Red Hook’s lair. That’s why you disappeared afterward, wasn’t it?”

“Apparently so,” he brought his dark eyes back to me and I held my smile even as his gaze made me blush so that it felt like hot iron. Unable to hold his gaze for long, I commanded, “So tell your madman why we shouldn’t do it.”

“Don’t you already have the Blackcoats eyeing you?” Chand responded with a caution I hadn’t seen in him yet.

“Certainly. But this won’t change that.”

“You realize I haven’t been inside Guillemin Hall in over a decade? I don’t know where the treasure chests are kept.” His sarcasm was unmistakeable, painting a portrait of some dungeon within his father’s home where they stacked lockboxes filled with gold crowns. 

“I suspect, like most of the other nobles, your father has much of his actual wealth in The Exchange.” I settled back in my chair, showing that I had some knowledge of how the wealthy in Dunhill operated.

“Then how would we rob them?”

“Surely there are things of value, possibly, yes, even gold, within the Hall?

“Guillemin Hall isn’t some mews. It’s huge. We could spend weeks searching such a place.”

“I’m sure that’s true. That’s why I thought the Pershings might come in.”

“Who?”

“Aaron and Erin?”

For the first time, Chand looked at me as if I might truly be bad instead of just mad. “You want to send children in?”

Insulted that Chand might actually think I would, I replied, “Don’t be daft. Other than getting them boiled alive in the Requiter’s Square, what would that accomplish?”

“Then what are you suggesting?”

“That they spy,” I leaned into the last verb. “A manor as large as your father’s must have an army of servants. The men and women who serve them food, wash their clothes, and clean their rooms certainly must have some idea of the family’s strongboxes.”

Chand watched me carefully. Washing down some of his questions with wine, he ventured, “The nobles of Dunhill, I’ve heard,” he stretched the last two words as far as he felt from from his erstwhile guardians, “keep crowns in their halls in case of sudden need.”

“Such as ransom?” I offered, considering an entirely new and ill-advised plan.

“Or bribery,” Chand countered, bringing up the specter that perhaps, like my uncle, many of Dunhill’s upper class were not virtuous and temperate dedicates to the Church. “But also for everyday expenses.”

“Well, then, A and E will simply have to watch the Guillemin Hall until a servant leaves for the shopping. Lifting the purse from them will surely loosen their tongue. Get them to discuss where the Lord and Lady of the house keep their gold.”

“Then why involve the scampers at all? I can do that,” Chand replied.

I raised my glass. “An excellent point. I wrongly thought you wouldn’t want to be near the manor for fear of being recognized.”

Chand let out a laugh that practically blew back my dark hair. “My father threw me out over a decade ago. I doubt anyone would know me from Adam.” Settling back into his chair, he added, “Robbing a servant for blackmail will require putting the fear of God into them, though. Threatening their place in the house, their residence, their livelihood. Are you sure you’re ready to threaten some innocent hardworking mug who’s just unlucky enough to be the one who does the shopping?” When this question clearly produced consternation on my face, Chand added, “It’s most likely to be a woman.”

Thinking of Gildred’s bright white smile as she consumed human flesh in league with my uncle, I swatted the concern of gender aside. However, my life in McDowell Hall had also been populated with any number of tutors and governesses that had only sought to do their best by me, having no knowledge of my uncle’s plans.

With this floating to the top of my mind, my lips pulled into a frown. “I do not think I would enjoy that.”

“Neither would I,” Chand replied.

“Then what do you suggest?”

I watched Chand’s long fingers run along the rim of his cup. “On occasion, the Lady of Guillemin goes out shopping with her own purse.”

“I don’t see how lifting her purse would give us the information we seek.”

“No, stealing her gold would yield nothing. But kidnapping her might.” I could see the revenge Chand would like to extract from the Duchess, a woman who had demanded his own mother and self be ejected from the noble home once his true father had been revealed. 

I puzzled at Chand, thinking perhaps whatever madness possessed me was catching. “That would make all of this very public. Surely, the Duke would alert the Blackcoats. Perhaps even the Redcrosse Knights.”

“Only if we tried to ransom her. That,” Chand gestured with his cup across the table as if were the Empire itself, “would be as disastrous as the blood pudding.” Unable to hide my agreement with Chand’s estimation of the dish, I snorted laughter. He rightly took this as permission to continue. “But if we were merely to hold her,” he paused carefully searching for a word, which was not something I had seen him do. “We could extract the information from her.”

“Which would require threatening her life.”

“Or her chastity,” Chand countered. The expression this caused my face to assume must have been striking, as he quickly added, “Neither threat of which I would follow through on. The noble ladies of Dunhill are not renowned for their steadfast courage. Sufficiently believable threats will do.” I wondered at that, allowing him to continue, “If we make no demands, but she goes missing, the household will be thrown into chaos while they search for her Ladyship.”

“Providing us the perfect opportunity to go in and rob the strongboxes.” I warmed to the idea of terrorizing the nobles of Dunhill without the dangers of actually ransoming one.

“Exactly. And we would have even more time if Lord Guillemin was seeing to his actually holdings at the western port of Glevum.”

“If his holdings are so far from Dunhill, why does he maintain an estate here?”

Chand shrugged. “Because Queen Gloriana’s intelligencer insists every noble family do. The better to keep an eye on them. Plus, the extra expense makes it difficult to amass the wealth necessary for a revolt.”

The idea that there might be unrest among Dunhill’s nobility had not been a part of my historical education. “Why would her Majesty need to concern herself with a revolt?”

Even the dim of Serpent & Wren couldn’t hide Chand’s expression on my naivete. “There are those among the nobility that still side with the Papists in that they believe that magic, any magic, including Gloriana’s, is heresy. There are others that resent Her Majesty’s monopoly of it.”

I stared at Chand, suddenly aware that he clearly knew much more about the machinations of Imperial society than I did. I did not wonder long on this, though, as what I had seen of Dunhill’s alchemist and sorcerers, I tended to agree.

Instead I reached for a different conclusion. “So when he’s in Glevum…”

“Much of his yeoman-at-arms accompany him,” Chand concluded for me. “Guillemin Hall here in Dunhill is at its least defended. The Ladyship doesn’t often attend him. I don’t think they get on.”

We fell silent into our thoughts. While Lady Pawlett would certainly be with an entourage while her husband was away, outside of the Hall would be the best time to secure her for a discussion away from listening ears.

Chand’s uncustomary silence marked him with similar thoughts. This continued as we finished the meal, then he donned his cape and cane.

Escorting him to the exit, I offered, “If walking still pains you, you’re welcome to return with me to McDowell Hall.” I would, of course, offer him his own bedroom, while my desire conjured us in one room. Beyond that was a black wall of loneliness that allowed nothing more to be seen. 

Clearly distracted by other ponderings, Chand offered a, “Huh?” Then making my gesture to his cane he said, “Oh, the cane isn’t for aid in walking.” Gripping its straight handle, he pulled a long, hidden blade from its wooden scabbard. “Dunhill law forbids me from carrying a weapon, but this allows for a good surreptition.”

Admiring his ingenuity, but regretting having no excuse for him to come with me, we departed. At McDowell hall thoughts of Chand kept me awake. Was I only perverted by my uncle’s touch, or perhaps by merely sharing blood with him? I lie rigid deep into the night, tortured by these questions as thoughts of holding Chand would not be banished from my head. As dawn began to color the sky, I could only take solace in that thinking of Chand brought none of the fear or shame of my uncle’s nightly visitations. I had tried to rid myself of these in the past with the service of prostitutes, but these only granted temporary reprieve. Simply looking at Chand, though, banished thoughts of the sins that I had committed and had been committed against me.

See the author’s published work here.

To read the next chapter, go here.

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