They were quiet a moment, grinning in the steady rain.
“He wouldn’t know what we ate for lunch,” said Oskar.
When Oskar had put his shoe back on and stood in it gingerly and looked at Ribs in relief they crossed the now busier street, slipping among the creaking axles and the splashing hooves, and started their search for directions to the Grassmarket. There were young clerks under umbrellas and older shopkeepers with coats and hats greasy with rain but there were no women at that hour. They walked slowly, three small figures in identical cloaks. It was agreed, given Oskar’s Polish accent and youth, and Komako’s features, that Ribs would do the talking, and she looked pleased at the prospect and fiddled with her unruly red hair and licked a finger and smoothed out her eyebrows as if that would make a difference. She adopted a refined accent. Or what she supposed might pass as one.
“Pardon me, but would you be so grand as to share with me the general direction of a fine chandler’s establishment in the Grassmarket?” she tried out, looking at Komako for approval.
“That’s terrible,” said Komako.
“Yes,” said Oskar.
But Ribs just smiled and winked. “It would behoove you to speak more respectfully, my dearies.”
“No one says dearies. That’s not a thing.”
“No one,” echoed Oskar.
They were standing under the dripping eaves of a public house on a crowded corner by then. Ribs wouldn’t be dissuaded. “Aw, you ain’t like to know manners if they bit your bloomin nose off.” She grinned. “I sound like a bloody queen.”
And she pushed inside the smoky pub and the door swung to and she was gone. Komako rubbed at her chilled hands. Over Oskar’s head she glimpsed a constable, in a gleaming dark slicker, drifting slowly past. His eyes under heavy brows flicked over her and Oskar, hovered a moment, then continued on. She was surprised at how fast her heart was beating.
Oskar had other worries. “Shouldn’t we have left Miss Davenshaw a—a note, or the like? So she doesn’t worry?” he asked.
“She can’t see to read, Oskar,” she said.
Oskar nodded glumly. “I know. I—I just mean a message of—of—of some kind.… I just don’t like to think of her worrying, is all.”
Komako didn’t like it either. Miss Davenshaw was strict but fair, and there was a kindness in her like steel cable. She put a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder. “Charlie and Marlowe’ll figure it out,” she said. “They’ll tell her we’ve gone off somewhere. But all our things are there. It’ll be clear enough we’re coming back.”
“But what if Charlie and Marlowe aren’t at her class either?”
“Where else would they be?”
He shrugged unhappily in the rain.
A voice at her back snorted. “Thinks they’re still with old Berghast, he does. Taking breakfast, like.”
Komako turned. Ribs had come out while they were talking and was lifting the hood of her cloak up over her red hair.
“I don’t think that,” said Oskar.
Komako gestured at the pub. “So? What did they say?”
“Well, first,” said Ribs expansively, “you’ll be pleased to know they was impressed with my accent. Oh! Charming, it were! Why hello, young lady, they says. An what’s your like doin about on a day like this, unaccompanied as such? An I tells them, Oh, my governess is just outside, taking the air an the like, and they says—”
“Ribs,” said Komako. “What did they say about the chandler’s?”
She shrugged. “They never heard of it.”
“But the Grassmarket? They must know how to get to it?”
“We-e-ell,” she began. “I never quite got the chance to—”
But just then Komako saw the police constable coming back their way. A hulking figure in his black rain slicker and with thick tawny side whiskers that made him look feline and ferocious in the gloom. He seemed to have an eye fixed on Ribs and Oskar and she quickly took the two by the elbows and steered them off.
“It’s time we were going,” she hissed.
And they shouldered their way through the thickening crowds of clerks, stepping down into the ankle-deep water below the bollards, trying to get around and get space. Vagrancy was just an excuse for a constable to do with you what he wanted and the last thing they needed, she knew, was trouble with the law. They weren’t running but nearly so, going so fast as to draw reproving looks from passersby.