Page 47 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
Chapter Nine
The tavern was darker than last time, the weather dull and ominous. He’d brought his knife with him tucked into his right boot just in case. The sling he’d discarded because it didn’t pay to show the slightest bit of vulnerability in places like this one.
He knew that to the core of his being.
The ringmaster did not appear to be present yet, but that did not faze Nicholas. Ordering a drink as he came in the door, he strode over to sit at the same table as last time, making sure to leave the seat against the wall free.
His ale arrived, the barkeeper who had given him the bruised cheek last time looking belligerent.
‘He’ll be here soon.’
Nick did not answer.
Over in one corner a group of four men were playing cards. In the other a single occupant appeared to be almost asleep over his glass.
Such careful acts of staging were not new to him. For a while in the Americas before he perfected his methods at cards he’d used his other skill: his fists. It had been many a man he had thrown drunk from the tavern where he worked when they failed to see his role in the keeping of order by noticing all the small signs of discontent.
After ten or so moments the little door to the left opened.
‘Do you have the payment?’ The glass eye of the ringmaster glittered from the small light at the door.
‘It depends what you’ve brought to show me.’
As the man sat he placed a card on the table.
‘Vitium et Virtus.’
‘What is this?’
‘It’s the name he paid with, a well-spoken lord who set the mark on Viscount Bromley over the seas. A goodly sum, too, it was, by the accounts of my source, and all in gold. I keep every bit of paper clients give me, just to be safe, you understand. Toffs believe people like me to be reckless and illiterate, but I was never that. I make careful notes of people and keep tight records. They come in handy sometimes.’
‘Like now?’
The silence between them settled until the other broke it.
‘I imagine that you have many enemies, to do a job that brings you out to places such as these ones.’
When Nick nodded, he continued on. ‘Perhaps you believed in something once. Believed enough for others to want you hurt for it and now vengeance drives you?’
Such a warning from a street philosopher was all the more surprising because it was true. He had believed in Vitium et Virtus because it was like the home he had never had, a place away from his uncle and with as few rules as he wanted. A place where he could lose himself in fine wine, good women and high-stakes gambling, and be happy for a fleeting moment. Should he begin there in his search?
The well-spoken lord who set the mark on you. The sum was paid in gold.More clues. Someone of his own social standing, then? The ringmaster would not know of his own title for Nick had disguised his voice each time they met and worn clothes that fitted exactly into the setting of the docks. Here he was believed to be a thief-taker operating in the shadowy world between criminals and the law and caught in its complicated web.
With care he extracted his coins and placed them on the table.
‘We will not meet again, I think,’ the other said, ‘but I wish you luck.’
The money was gone in the blink of an eye and as the barman crossed the floor to collect the empty glass Nick’s fingers settled on the shaft of his knife.
Glancing down, the man cocked his head.
‘We don’t kill our own,’ he said, leaving Nicholas to wonder just who he had become in the eyes of these thieves.
He wandered the river on the way home, mindful of those who watched him, but not afraid. This sort of place had been his home, too, once and the dirt and the smell of it was almost comfortable. Before the Americas the man he was would have been fearful to venture anywhere near such poverty.
He would call a meeting between Jacob, Frederick and Oliver and between them they could try to think just who the perpetrator could be. It was time he was honest with them and time to ask for their help.
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