It wasn’t the first time Red had been chased through the narrow, mazelike streets of Paradise Circle at night by gun-toting gangsters out for blood. Or even the fifth time. But it was by far his favorite time. Mostly because of the view.
Hope ran in front of him, her legs and ass flexing beneath tight black leather in a way that made him want to believe in God just so he could thank him for making such a perfect molly.
A shot rang out behind him, and he heard a bullet whiz past his head. It struck the brick of a nearby building.
“Left!” he called to Hope. She pivoted with the grace of a dancer, not even losing momentum as she turned down the side street.
As Red made that same turn, he chanced a look back at their pursuers. Six men now? Drem really wanted them dead. They were being smart about it, too. Keeping their distance so they didn’t end up with a yard of Hope’s Vinchen steel in their bilge. With the guns they were packing, they didn’t need to get close anyway.
Red toyed with the idea of stopping and fighting. Between the two of them, they could probably manage it. But while that would temporarily solve the problem, in the long run it would only make things worse. If they killed six of Drem’s men, he’d just send twice as many next time. Drem had no problem throwing away men to get what he wanted or to make a point. They would need a more slippery solution to get out of this.
“Right!” he yelled and they turned down another street.
“Are we running somewhere specific or are you making it up as we go?” she asked over her shoulder, her pale cheek flushed.
“Most people won’t hide us from Drem’s men. He’s too powerful around here. But I do know a person who’d shelter me from the emperor himself if it came to it.”
“That’s a loyal friend,” she said.
“Well, I don’t know if I’d call her a friend exactly…” He pointed at an unmarked door painted a dull pink. “In there!”
Hope turned the knob, but it was locked.
“Right. Business hours.” Red knocked three times slow, then three times fast. As soon as the door opened, Red hustled Hope inside and quickly shut the door behind them.
“Is this…” Hope’s eyes were wide as she took in the dingy velvet couches and chairs, the faded and torn drapes, and the women and men lounging around in their undergarments. “Is this a brothel?”
“No. Yes. Depends on who you are,” said Red. “They’ll be here in a minute. We don’t have time to discuss it now.”
“Red?” asked Tosh, the curly-haired woman stretched out on a moth-eaten green love seat. She sat up and looked at him curiously. “What’s going on? Who’s that?”
“No time,” said Red. “Is Nettles here?”
“First door on the right, cleaning up,” said Tosh.
“Thanks,” he said. “We were never here.”
Tosh nodded, her forehead creased with concern.
Red didn’t know how long Tosh and the others would be able to stall Drem’s men. But he only needed a few more minutes. Unless Nettie was in a mood.
“Come on.” He climbed the wooden staircase. Hope looked like she had about a hundred questions on her mind as she followed, but for now she kept them to herself. He appreciated that.
When he opened the door to one of the bedrooms, he found Nettles on the floor, wiping up a pool of vomit. Next to the pool of vomit lay an unconscious sailor. Nearby, a naked man sat cross-legged on a bed, smoking a pipe.
“I don’t see why I have to clean it up, is all,” said Nettles as she scooped up colorful chunks of what might once have been bread. “You’re perfectly capable.”
“I told you he’d been drinking too much. You shouldn’t have kicked him in the stomach,” said the naked man, idly watching smoke from his pipe curl up toward the ceiling. He had long auburn hair, lightly curled, and a bit of powder on his long, finely pointed face. “Besides, I won’t get any clients if I smell all vomity.”
“Nettie,” said Red. “I need you to drop us down the chute.”
Nettles turned and glared at him. “Why? What have you done now? I swear, if you brought the imps here, I will personally—”
“It’s not the imps,” said Red. “Drem sent some men after us.”
“Drem? You pissing salthead, if it’s not one thing, it’s another.” She gestured to Hope. “And who is this slice?”
“Can we not do this right now?” asked Red. “Drem’s got boots after us. They’re only—”
The sound of the front door slamming open echoed up the stairs, followed by angry shouts.
Nettles scowled. “You owe me. Keen?”
“Completely,” said Red as he closed and locked the door behind them.
Nettles moved over to the far wall and slid the battered old dresser to one side. Red hurried over to help her.
“Are you a prostitute?” asked Hope, looking very confused.
Red winced and waited to see how Nettles would respond. The naked man on the bed chuckled.
Nettles turned to Hope, her scowl deepening. She gestured to her thick gray wool jacket, grimy leather breaches, and knee-high riding boots. “Do I pissing look like a whore? Just for that, you’re going first, angel slice.” She gave the dresser one last hard shove, revealing a large hole in the wall.
“I’m the whore, blondie,” said the naked man. “Nettie is security.”
Footsteps stomped up the stairs.
“Time to go,” said Red. “Hope, slide down the chute. I’ll be right behind you.”
Hope frowned, looking at the hole in the wall suspiciously.
He couldn’t imagine what she made of all this. “Look, you’ve trusted me this far. Just a little further to go.”
A fist pounded on the door.
“In a minute!” the naked man called, sounding petulant.
“Hope,” Red whispered. “Please.”
“Don’t make me regret this,” she said, then dove headfirst into the hole.
Red turned to Nettles.
“Nettie, I—”
“Save it. Go,” she whispered.
There was another knock on the door, louder this time.
“I said in a minute!” yelled the naked man.
As Red slipped down the chute, he heard a voice yell, “Let us in or we’ll break it down!” Then Nettles shoved the dresser back in place and there was nothing but darkness and the hiss of his leather coat as he slid down the metal chute, twisting and turning until he popped out into the night air and landed on top of Hope.
There was a moment when their bodies pressed together. Their faces were only an inch apart. Hope’s lips were open and he could feel her breath on his lips. Her dark blue eyes seemed to tunnel directly into his head.
“Hi,” he said, smiling.
She grunted and pushed him off.
The two of them climbed to their feet. Hope looked around, her forehead furrowed. “We’re on the docks?”
It was the largest pier in New Laven, holding twenty merchant ships. It was late enough in the evening that most of the ships were dark. That was good. On the off chance Drem’s men figured out how he and Hope had slipped away and came looking for them here, there’d be no one to say which direction they’d gone.
“What just happened?” asked Hope.
“Come on,” said Red. “I’ll tell you on the way. But go slow now so we don’t draw attention to ourselves.” He glanced at her black Vinchen leather. “Well, any more than we have to.”
“Where are we going now? Another brothel?” asked Hope as the two walked from the docks back into the muddy, cobblestone streets. After a moment, she said, “That was a brothel, wasn’t it?”
“Part of the income is from that. It’s also a crimp house.”
“A what?”
“You don’t have those in the South? Well, no of course you don’t. You’re already there. See, a crimp house is a place where they drug or knock out sailors, steal their money, then sell them to a ship as a conscript.”
“Forced labor?” asked Hope.
“It’s called southending, since mostly it’s the ships bound for the Southern Isles that are desperate for sailors. Not a popular place to go.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, well, I mean, it’s a little uncivilized down there, isn’t it?”
Hope raised an eyebrow. “If by uncivilized you mean there’s rarely gunfire in the streets, or brothels that sell their clients as indentured servants, then yes, I suppose it is.”
“Sounds dull.” Red gave her a sly grin. That usually worked on the mollies, but she didn’t seem to find it charming. Since his breakup with Nettles, he’d spent a lot of time making the rounds with the mollies and had a pretty good idea of his effect on them and how to get what he wanted. But none of his usual tricks seemed to be working on Hope. He decided to shut up for a bit as they walked through the dark streets until he’d figured out a new strategy.
“So, that slide we just went down,” said Hope. “Normally they drop unconscious sailors down that?”
“And then the captains that need crew come and scoop them up,” said Red. “Pretty efficient system.”
“What’s to stop the captains from running off with their sailors without paying the brothel?”
Red gave a short laugh. “Nettles, that’s what. It happens now and then. But sooner or later, every ship has to make port here again. And when they do, Nettie is here to explain to them how things work in the Circle.”
“That was your friend? Or not-friend? She didn’t seem overly fond of you.”
“Well, we used to be a couple.”
“Oh,” said Hope.
They continued to wind through narrow streets. Red purposely took the longest route possible. Partly to throw any would-be trackers off their trail, partly to get more time alone with Hope. He still wasn’t sure what to make of her. She was a bit uptight and seemed to be pretty much innocent of the seedier side of life. But she was clever, which made her more fun to talk to than most of the wags he was around. And of course, she was very nice to look at. The great thing about a warrior woman, he decided, was that she could kill some gafs, crawl through tunnels, sprint halfway across the neighborhood, get tossed down a chute, and still come up looking fine as peaches. It was an unpretentious, practical sort of beauty.
“What happened?” asked Hope.
“Huh?” said Red.
“Why aren’t you and Nettles a couple any longer? Didn’t you love her?”
“Oh, uh…” Red wondered why he’d even said anything about that to begin with. It wasn’t like him to bring up old history when he was in the middle of trying to convince a molly that he was the best wag she’d ever met. “Well, I was young and stupid. You know how it is. Maybe they’re not the person you convinced yourself they are.” He shrugged. “We’re better off as wags, that’s all. And we still do love each other, I think. But it’s different. More like brother-sister. You know how it can be.”
“No,” said Hope. “I don’t.”
“You never been in a couple?”
She blushed and shook her head.
“What?” he said, trying a gentler version of the grin. “Too busy slicing off limbs to give a tom a chance to know you better?”
“Yes,” she said. “A Vinchen warrior is dedicated to the order in body, mind, and heart. There cannot be room for anything or anyone else.”
“Ah,” said Red. “Well, that’s that, then. Isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Hope, giving him a strange glance. “It is.”
He nodded and kept walking, playing it as pat as you like. But underneath, his plans for conquest crumbled. The first girl who’d really captured his attention since Nettles, one he might actually give a cup of piss about, and he had to pick the girl sworn to celibacy.
“It’s for the best,” he said. “Most toms talk nothing but balls and pricks anyway.”
“Do you?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Come on. This way.”
“Where are we going?”
“Gunpowder Hall. Safest place in Paradise Circle. In a manner of speaking.”
* * *
Hope’s eyes grew wide when they entered Gunpowder Hall. Red could see her struggling to keep her comments to herself, but finally she burst out. “Those people are having sex over there! Right in front of everyone!”
“Not all whores are pretty enough to get accepted by a brothel,” said Red. “Some have to just take a client where they can get them. Unfortunately, it’s not so safe if you don’t have someone like Nettles watching out for you. Never know when a client might turn mean.”
“You talk as if you know a lot about it. Are you a frequent client?”
“Nah. My dad was in the trade.”
“Oh.” Her whole face turned bright pink, her expression a mixture of embarrassment and confusion. It was so awkward and honest, he couldn’t help but laugh.
Her eyes narrowed. “Were you joking about that?”
“No, my dad really was a whore,” he said.
Her face got even redder and her expression even more embarrassed, which made him laugh again, even harder.
“You find my discomfort amusing,” she said.
“Yes. I do.” And he laughed again.
“I’m glad you’re amused. Now, it’s probably time I—”
“Hey, looks like Nettie’s off work,” said Red, cutting off what was likely an attempt for her to leave him. God help him, doomed though it was, he wasn’t ready to say good-bye to his angel in black leather quite yet. “We better go fill her in before she comes looking for us. That always makes her grumpy.”
Maybe Hope wasn’t quite ready to say good-bye either, or maybe she’d just gotten used to him dragging her around. Either way, she let him pull her over to the table where Nettles was sitting, cleaning blood from her chainblade.
“Saw some action tonight?” He nodded to the weapon in her hands.
“Less than you, I’ll wager,” said Nettles. “You only just getting here now?”
“Oh, uh…,” said Red. “I wanted to make sure we weren’t being followed.”
Nettles glanced at Hope, then smirked as she coiled up her chain. “Sure, that’s it.”
“An interesting weapon,” said Hope. “May I see it?”
Nettles looked skeptically at her, then at Red. He shrugged.
“Sure, okay.” She tossed the coiled chain to her.
Hope caught it easily and held it up for inspection. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Part throwing knife, part chain mace. I hope I get the chance to see you use it.”
“You do, huh?” asked Nettles, squinting at her like she wasn’t sure how to take that.
Hope handed it back to her. “You take good care of it. As a warrior should.”
“Yeah, well,” said Nettles, looking a little uncomfortable now. “It’s important to me. I take care of the important things. And anyway, you think this is strange, you should see what Red uses.”
“Yes,” said Hope, turning to Red. “I saw one for a moment in the tavern. It looked like a throwing knife, except I couldn’t see the handle.”
“That’s because there is no handle.” Red pulled open his coat to show the line of blades that went down the inside lining. He pulled one out. “Thought it up myself.”
“With help,” said Nettles.
“I think best in a dialogue,” said Red. “Anyway, it didn’t make much sense having a throwing weapon that was only truly effective if it landed on one side. I like odds that are better than half. So I replaced the handle with another blade.”
“How do you throw them, then?” Hope was riveted by the throwing blade. Apparently all he’d had to do was start talking weapons to get her interested.
He pointed to the ring in the center. “I just hook a finger in here. Watch.” He nodded to where a gray-haired wrink was sitting at the other end of the table, gnawing on a hunk of hard crust bread. Red snapped his hand, and the blade took the bread right out of the old man’s grasp and nailed it to the table.
“Piss’ell!” The old man looked angry for a moment, then saw it was Red and eased back into mild irritation. “Come on, Red. Like to give a wrink like me a heart attack.”
“Sorry, Nipper.” Red walked over, pulled the blade out, and handed the bread back to him. Quietly he added, “Just trying to impress the mollies, you understand.”
Nipper chuckled and shook his head. “That I do, boy. Many’s a wag gone stupid for a bit of slice.”
Red winked at him, then walked back to Hope and Nettles.
“Shame on you for startling poor old Nipper,” said Nettles.
“He’ll be alright,” said Red. “Even a wrink needs some excitement now and then.”
Hope took the blade from Red and examined it more closely. “How do you not cut your palm?”
Red held up his hands, still encased in the thick leather fingerless gloves. “That’s what these are for.”
“Also my idea,” said Nettles. “He doesn’t really need ’em anymore, though. Now he just wears ’em because he thinks they look pat.”
“They do look pat,” said Red.
“About as pat as your mole rat jacket.”
“Deerskin.”
“Anyway,” said Nettles, turning back to Hope. “I’ve never met a wag with better aim than Rixie here. It’s uncanny.”
Hope was still staring intently at the blades, but her eyebrow shot up. “Rixie?”
“Oh, didn’t he tell you?” An evil smirk grew on Nettles’s face. “Red ain’t his real name. It’s—”
“Nettie, I know where you sleep,” said Red.
Nettles laughed. She’d given Red many opportunities over the past couple of years to regret telling her his birth name. Hope didn’t seem to be paying much attention, though. Her pale brow was furrowed as she held the throwing blade up to Red. “Have you…thought about putting another blade on it?”
“Eh?” said Red, taking it from her.
“Following your reasoning that the more blades, the better your chance at a perfect hit.”
“Well…,” said Red doubtfully as he touched one of the empty sides of the ring. “If I put another blade on, it wouldn’t be balanced. And I don’t think it’d fit four.”
“It would balance if you made it into a triangle shape.”
Red held it up and squinted, imagining three blades evenly space around the ring. “Okay, that’s brilliant.”
Hope’s face flushed as she smiled shyly. “I’m only building off your idea.”
“Still, I’m going to have to talk to Filler about this next chance I get.”
“Filler?”
“He’s my best wag. We grew up on the streets together.”
“Sort of,” said Nettles.
Red gave her a sharp look. First the name, now this. What was Nettles playing at?
“Filler,” he continued, “is a smithy. I come up with the idea, he makes it real. Did Nettles’s, too.”
“You mean you actually have a friend with an honest profession?” asked Hope.
“Oh, well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘honest’…”
“Filler’s got a bit of a problem with the imps,” said Nettles. “He’s a great big sugar lump of a wag most of the time. But he don’t like the imps. If one even looks at him wrong, he’s like to punch him in the bilge, or worse. Makes it hard to hold down a respectable smithy job.”
“So he works for the people now,” said Red.
“Meaning, he makes illegal weapons for all the wags and gangsters in the Circle,” said Nettles. “That is, when he’s not helping Red here with his latest bad idea.” She turned to Red and scowled. “And speaking of which…”
“Here we go,” said Red.
“Henny’s right. You must have a death wish. Getting on the hit list for Deadface Drem?” Nettles shook her head. “That’s crazy, even for you. Only one thing I can think of that would make you be such a salthead.” She looked meaningfully at Hope.
“Oh, now…” Red forced a little laugh. He needed a new subject, quick. His eyes scanned around and saw Backus picking his way through the hall, looking worried about something. “Backus! You alright?”
Backus hurried over faster than usual.
“Red, you got the new batch of medicine? Sadie’s…not doing so good.”
“What?” Red’s gut suddenly went cold and tight.
“She’s coughing real bad. Can’t seem to catch her breath. I think…this might be it.”