Pair of Knaves



  Pair of Knaves

  by Alex Brightsmith

  Copyright 2013 Alex Brightsmith

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  Table of Contents

  Scorpion Dance

  A Hook in the Heart

  A word from the author

  Find the Lady

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  Scorpion Dance

  It is easy to dismiss John Marchant as the stolid support act to his flamboyant partner, not least because it is a view that he encourages. But Marchant, a company man to the bone, is a dangerous man in his own right, with as much claim as his cousin to be the brains of the partnership.

  I ordered another drink, as much to kill time as to occupy my hands and keep me from catching the eye of the man at the other end of the long, curved bar. I found myself thinking about a fencing class I went along to a few years ago – it’s always interesting to see what techniques you can pick up from another discipline – in particular about the first session. It always stuck in my mind, that session, mainly because they never let us near a weapon. After an hour of drills and basic positions, they lined us up in two ranks, paired off along a wide space with one coalscuttle fencing mask in the centre. It was a foolishly simple game. Call a number, and a student emerges tentatively from each rank. The winner is the first to carry the mask back to the safety of his own line . . . or to tap the shoulder of the man trying to make the run. The first few pairs were snatch and run affairs, short and fast, but it quickly became apparent that the advantage lay with the second man. That was when the dancing began.

  It flashed through my mind in a moment, without distracting me from the man at the far end of the bar. He fitted in perfectly, conspicuous only because I knew him. Pavel Yakovych Tomeckova, a good man in his own service, from everything I’d heard, but sadly right now nothing more than an unwanted complication. I never caught him studying me, but I was certain that he was. I was the only good reason for him not to have done yet what he had clearly come to this rat-hole bar to do. I was almost certain that he knew my face as well as I knew his, but not quite certain enough to act on it, so I kept my survey circumspect.

  It told me nothing I hadn’t known. He was slight at a glance, but dangerously lean on closer inspection. I had an uncomfortable feeling that with him my weight advantage wouldn’t be enough. There aren’t many people who can call me slow, or take points off me, but from what I’d heard he could do both, and that would be the least of my problems.

  I toyed with my drink, and kept my eyes on the tacky surface of the bar. There was nothing else to see, and no point wasting time looking for his partner. I wondered if he was wasting time looking for mine; if he was, he was too good for it to show. But he was that good. He was too good even to be showing his interest in Emanuel, but it was inconceivable that he had chosen to drink in this rotten back street bar for any other reason.

  And the second man has the advantage, the easier game. And I knew that Tomeckova was too good not to know it too. Well, one of us had to make the first move, before Emanuel got bored. I finished my drink decisively, and slipped off my stool. I had a feeling that this was going to be painful, and not just to my pride.

  So I made contact with our friend Emanuel. We dickered a little. He asked me why he should trade with me, and not hold out for a better offer from Tomeckova. I smiled mirthlessly; I hadn’t been sure, up to that moment, whether Tomeckova’s presence was a coincidence or evidence that we were leaking somewhere. I told Emanuel he was too smart for his own good, pointed out that Tomeckova wouldn’t trust him any more now that we’d been seen talking together. I couldn’t be certain, when I said it. If he was leaving the reason would be subtly different. But I saw from Emanuel’s eyes that it was true, and after that the negotiations were easy.

  Then all I had to do was to get home. The only possible route had made me almost willing to throw up my hands over the whole affair from the start. Now it was the only reason my germ of an idea might work.

  Tomeckova stopped me in the long dark alley that was the only exit, and tried to talk. I didn’t listen, not because he’s a plausible bastard and I didn’t trust myself not to fall for his line, though with his reputation I had a right to be cautious, but because I was listening for someone else – for the partner I hadn’t wasted time looking for in the bar, because I knew he’d be out here – because Tomeckova was too smart not to have wanted cover out here. I had a fractional warning from his footstep, and it gave me the chance to ride down the worst of the blow, but I couldn’t avoid the shattering jab from Tomeckova, and as they turned me over I was every bit as helpless as I seemed.

  I listened until they were out of earshot, and wished I’d been able to think of a better idea. I told myself to get up and go home. And I lay in the mud a bit longer, and thought about scorpions dancing, and honour, and rules. And told myself to get up and go home, again.

  After a while a shadow detached itself from the wall, and told me the same thing, slightly more sympathetically. As she helped me up I asked

  “It worked?”

  “They got out into the crowds as a soon as they could, where they felt safe.”

  In the crowds, where my slight, light-fingered partner is at her most dangerous.

  “Give you any trouble?”

  “A rough moment after I got it off them – nothing I couldn’t outrun.”

  Because when scorpions dance, they do it in the desert, with no-where to hide. But when my partner runs through a crowd, no one ever taps her on the shoulder.

  *** * ***

  A Hook in the Heart

  If you can find Pavel Yakovych Tomeckova and he accepts you as one of his kind, and if you can get him drunk but dissuade him from singing maudlin folk songs, you may be able to persuade him to tell you how he first came to be drawn into the game.

  There is nothing to it, it is only the old story. I joined the army at seventeen and let myself get noticed by a training sergeant who had been something more in his time. The Service offered me an education in return for another ten years, and it seemed a good bargain – but they have me for life, of course. It is a hook through the heart, this work, and they are careful not to make the offer to men who could walk away from it at the end of their term.

  I had already turned down an education once. I could not do so twice. I have told you that I joined the army at seventeen. My mother was against the idea, but I was her only son and her only support. I could not watch her drudge for us any longer. I think you know enough about my home to understand that the army was the only real option for a boy with no leaving certificate and no family to find him a place. My mother said that if it was only the money I should stay at school, that I would be able to give her more in five years than I would ever earn in the army. I did not think that any amount of money would help her five years later, and I was right.

  I must have made myself conspicuous a dozen ways, but it was the girl who clinched it.

  The girl? I had her blood on my hands.

  It happened this way. It was my first home leave. I suspect I thought that I was God’s gift to the world, but I had no one to share that gift with. My friends were still in school, or working, or both. My mother was pleased to see me, but she did not want me under her feet all day. The only old friend I could rake up was a girl I had known slightly in school, and paid less attention to than I ought to have done. I had to go away and come home to see what her ste
pfather had been teaching her to think of herself all the time we were in school.

  I called when her stepfather happened to be out, and I refused to take no for an answer. I wanted to catch up, because that first stretch in the army is an aching long time when you have never been away from home before, and I wanted to treat her, because even in a short conversation I had begun to see that something was not right with her.

  I took her out to lunch. It was the best place I could afford, but you should not let that lead you astray. Our recruits are not paid so much to start with, and after barrack stoppages and home remittances there was very little left to burn a hole in my pocket. Think of one of those down at heal diners that turn up so often in American movies and you will not be far wrong.

  I kept her talking about mutual friends, just to see a little animation in her features, and tried to work round to asking what was wrong. I never did ask, but I found out what was wrong beyond any chance of misunderstanding.

  Her stepfather had come home and found a cold lunch on the table and no girl to serve it to him. An obliging neighbour had pointed him in our direction, and he came straight round to collect her. I would like to say that there was a scene, I would like to say he dragged her off, despite my protests. But she went with him as meekly as a lamb, and I did not interfere. I heard him tell her that she was giving herself airs, and even then I did not react. I had learnt a lot more from my basic than you will find in the training manual. I sat there looking at the sad remains of the meal that was too good for her, watching the bubbles rise in her drink, and thinking about the way she moved, and the bruises I did not need to see to know were there.

  The rest is hearsay, you understand. I only had a forty-eight hour pass, and as my sergeant told the civilian police, I was back in barracks with the customary three minutes to spare.

  The girl’s stepfather went out drinking that night, and he must have had more than his usual skinful, because he fell down on his way home – fell down several times. There were no witnesses, and he tried to make a case against me – to save face, I suppose. The police went through the motions, as I have said, but it was clearly nonsense. I could not have been in two places at once, and you only have to look at me now to imagine the skinny runt I was at seventeen. It was absurd to suggest that I could have taken down that bear of a man, even drunk.

  I have had no reason to go home for a long time, but I have heard he lives there still, and that he almost died of pneumonia last winter. It was no great surprise, because he has become a hopeless drunk, but he was well looked after by his neighbours. You’re surprised? Well, people forget, and he has their sympathy, since he has no children to look after him.

  But did I not say that it was her blood I have on my hands? I was young and I was stupid, and I thought that he had learned his lesson. Less than a month after my leave she broke her neck. She fell down stairs during a power cut, and it was not only her neck that was broken.

  Of course there were no witnesses. You must be careful when you play games with justice. It has a tendency to cut both ways.

  It was not long after that that my own mother died, and all I had in the world was a reputation in the wrong circles, and a debt to my sergeant.

  And perhaps one other thing. They call me ruthless, now . . . if I am then it is a lesson I learnt hard. I should have broken his damn neck when I had the chance.

  *** * ***

  A word from the author

  Hello, reader.

  Thank you for taking the time to read these stories. I hope that you’ve enjoyed them, and that they have piqued your interest. If you want to find out more about my writing, and about other writing that interests me, you can follow me on Twitter where I’m @findingthelady, or visit my Facebook page, Brightsmith-Gamp. I’d also be delighted to make you acquaintance on Goodreads, where I am simply Alex Brightsmith.

  For now, adieu, and thank you for coming along for the ride.

  Alex

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  Find the Lady

  Kathryn Blake, John’s almost invisible partner, returns to centre stage in Find the Lady, available in estores from early 2014. In this extract, Morgane Quiniou awaits their first meeting.

  It was a beautiful plan, and from the moment I saw it I’d been looking forward to working with the officer who drafted it – well, how was I to know? That was how it was presented. Our plan. Our people. And it was a beautiful plan.

  When the day came I arrived early and staked my claim on the specified corner table of the specified cafe, comfortably aware of my new colleagues fanned out through the mall around me. I had a notepad and a textbook on Seurat. I had enough coffee to last me all morning. I had a pile of pastries I was too tense to eat. The only element missing from the scenario was Amabella Warde.

  Well, Amabella Warde and a packet of cigarettes.

  Not that I knew I was waiting for Amabella Warde. The only name I had for her – the only name she had given to our contact, and the only name our Parisian colleagues had been able to attach to her – was Bella, and the unnecessary aura of mystery was doing nothing to endear her to me. On top of that, they had told me she had not committed to an exact time. They had not told me why, and I had accepted the uncertainty reluctantly, trying not to let it prejudice me against her from the start. They hadn’t had to spell it out to me that this was a contact to be handled with kid gloves, and I was determined not to let the relationship get off on the wrong foot on my account. It grew harder, though, as the time passed.

  She had said eleven, at the latest. I held on to the rags of my patience until twelve, giving her every chance I could, but she never showed.

  All that planning gone to waste. It made me furious to think of it, and of course I blamed Amabella. She’d been playing us for fools all along. She’d lost her nerve. She’d made some amateur error and got herself killed.

  I’d like to say at least that I regretted the last possibility, but I found it almost consoled me as I swilled down one last cup of coffee. Her body might turn up. We might learn something from that. It wasn’t the start I’d hoped for in my new job, but it was something.

  I put my cup down and took my phone from my pocket bringing it to life with an angry jab. I’d been completely cut off, unwired. They had told me that Amabella had insisted, and was likely to be in a position to check. They’d made a slur of what should have been a tribute to her caution, and I hadn’t known enough to see their error. I like to think that I’m a fast study. I started learning just then, when the phone rang in my hand almost as soon as the welcome screen had given way to wallpaper. The number it flashed was one I didn’t know, but I hadn’t programmed everyone in. I took it for a coincidence and answered automatically.

  “How d’you expect me to trust you if you piss me around?”

  There was cold fury in her voice, and no shadow of a doubt who I was speaking to. In a heartbeat I was converted to every rumour I’d ever heard about the girl they called Kimine’s witch queen. In a heartbeat, but for a heartbeat only. I remembered the brief, likely to be in a position to check, and understood that I was only dealing with technology, not magic. She went on without giving me time to answer, and it wasn’t fury, I realized, in her voice, but only a bitter cold that gave me even less cause for hope.

  “I don’t know how Dupois described me, but I hope it weren’t as no kind of fool.”

  I made a hasty denial as soothingly as I could manage, but she wasn’t a fraction mollified by my words. She said only that we had wasted the day, but must hope our luck held for the next, and that I had better stick, this time, to the plan.

  The phone cut off before I could agree to the backup or argue that I had stuck particularly to the plans that I had seen. I hadn’t seen anything about a backup plan for the next day. I was already starting to wonder what else I didn’t know. I looked at the dead phone for a moment, then dialled the number I’d originally intended.

  After a while, my colleagues drifted away.

 
Next time the waitress passed, I asked for a fresh cafetiere.

  Eventually I went home.