Page 64 of Company of Thieves
I stood outside the church, looking to the east. Night had fallen while we were inside, but the sky over Marseilles was glowing red, smoke filling the air.
“Come with us,” Mr. Ho yelled from where she and Mr. Llama had commandeered a dray driver.
“You go,” I said, waving them on. “Alan knows I’m here.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, but Mr. Llama was already turning the crank on the steam boiler, sending the dray roaring forward down the road.
I waved and looked around for the likeliest spot, running down toward the water a couple of blocks until the buildings dropped away to the docks. I turned and looked to the west, and waited, hoping I had guessed correctly.
“He’s not going to just run off and leave me,” I told myself, covering my ears when the three imperial airships to the east of town unloaded another volley of cannon fire. “Jack may not have any faith in him, but I do.”
FOURTEEN
Fifteen minutes later, I was starting to wonder if I knew Alan’s mind as well as I thought, but just as I was about to go in search of someone to take me out to the farm, a black shape blotted out the smoke, the dull hum of the propellers reaching my ears as theNightwingglided over my head.
I waved the white cloth of my lay, and watched with relief as the ship slowed, then stopped.
A rope and wood ladder was tossed over the side of the observation deck. I didn’t wait for Alan to come down to fetch me—I was a third of the way up it before he had started down.
“OK, I really need to take up some sort of cardio work,” I panted when I reached the top, grateful for Alan’s strong hands pulling me up the last few rungs. “Because I am seriously out of shape. Hello, new husband.”
“I was coming down to get you,” he said in a disgruntled voice.
I kissed the tip of his nose. “I know, but we don’t have any time if we want to see Etienne blown to smithereens, and I very much want to see that.”
“Have I mentioned how much I admire the fact that you are more bloodthirsty than I was ever reputed to be?” he said, gently pushing me back into the gondola while one of the men pulled up the rope ladder and rolled it up.
“Where are the others?”
“To the north.” He grinned at me. “I had a feeling you’d wait in the open for me.”
“I was starting to wonder if I’d mistaken thewait herecommand. Why is the emperor blowing up Marseilles?”
“He’s not.” Alan pulled me along the gangway to a small forward deck. “Can you see?”
I looked where he was pointing, the smoke in the air making it hard to see. Fires glowed in a five-block radius around one of the low, wide warehouses. The three imperial ships were clustered in a formation best suited to blowing the hell out of an airship that was hiding inside a warehouse. “Someone told him where Etienne was. Wow. I’d like to kiss whoever did that.”
