“Well, there you are,” he called irritably. “Did you not get my summons?”
She wiped her mucky hands on her shirtfront, palms and knuckles, and glared down at him. She should’ve hated him, the pleasure he’d taken in giving Marlowe over to that detective; hell, she should maybe strip him out of his lovely little tweed and dunk his bare white ass in mule shit. But she didn’t. What was the matter with her that she didn’t?
“Never mind it, I shan’t belabor the point,” he was saying with distaste. “We’re not a charity outfit. Your wagon is assigned for two performers. There’s only just you in there now, yes?”
Brynt flinched, nodded.
“Nice and roomy now, is it?”
“No,” she said.
He looked her up and down. “Ah. Nevertheless—”
“You’re belaboring the point, Mr. Beecher,” she said softly.
Beecher flushed. “The point is, I’m assigning Mrs. Chaswick to join you in your wagon. She’ll be bringing her things over in the morning.”
“Mrs. Chaswick.”
“Is that a problem, Miss Brynt?”
“She’s the one talks to the ghosts? What’s wrong with where she sleeps now?”
“Not that it’s your concern. But she sleeps at present in the mess wagon with old Mr. Jakes. Hardly appropriate. And they’re spirits, not ghosts.” He started to go, paused. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “One more thing. Don’t come to me, complaining about how she smells. I know all about it; I don’t care.”
Brynt reached out a big hand to stop the paymaster from going. “Mr. Beecher,” she said. “Wait.”
He peered up at her, irritated. “It’s not a negotiation, woman.”
“That detective, the one Marlowe left with. Did she give an address for where she was going? Somewhere in Scotland, wasn’t it?”
Mr. Beecher drifted distractedly over to the rails of a stall, scraped the sole of his boot against it. The horse within shifted, restless. The muleteer was muttering on the far side of the tent, swearing away. Goddamnbitchfucker. Fuckfuckfuckfuck. Beecher took no mind.
“Sir?” she said.
“Alice Quicke,” he said. “That was her name. What, are you thinking of leaving us too? Are you thinking of going after the boy?”
He said it with a mean little smile on his face, his little mustache twitching, and Brynt for a long moment said nothing.
Then she said, “Maybe I am.”
“You don’t finish out your contract, you don’t get paid,” he said sharply.
“I’d just like to write him a letter, Mr. Beecher.”
He sniffed. “Well, I can’t help you. Perhaps Felix would know. Though God only knows how much of what she said was true. I can smell a lie like you just stepped in it, Miss Brynt. There wasn’t half a dollar’s worth of truth coming out of that woman’s mouth.”
Brynt lifted her face. She met his gaze directly. She could feel her face growing hot.
“And you let him go?” she whispered. “You didn’t say a word?”
Beecher grinned.
“Aw, look at you,” he said. He winked. “I’m kidding, woman. Lighten up.”
After he was gone, Brynt stood a long while, brooding. Then she ducked out of the tent, clutching the shovel at her side, needing air. Her silver braid fell long and heavy over one shoulder. Her eyes drifted over the patched and sagging tents, the big top looming over everything, casting it all into a dull cool shadow against the evening sky. Marlowe, she thought.
And that was when she saw it. A figure.
Weaving between the guylines like a flicker of darkness.
Brynt started to shake. She dropped the shovel in the mud with a slap, her head swimming. It was him. The shadow man. The man from the Dream, with the long white fingers and the coat as black as tar, a muffler pulled up over his face, dusker’s hat drawn low.
He did not look her way. He was striding through the puddles in the dusk and slipping between the tents and moving quickly, but there was some wrongness to him, a blurring, as if a dark smoke were seeping out of his clothes as he went. He was tall, maybe as tall as she was, though nowhere near as strong. She was filled with an awful, sickening feeling.
She knew what it was he wanted.
Marlowe.
She picked the shovel up out of the muck, turning its blade in front of her like a hatchet, wiping the mud on her sleeve. Then she started after him. She was huge, silver-haired, filling with a fury that she hadn’t known before. No one seemed to be about; somehow the tents were quiet; she splashed through the slick, past cooling cookfires, following.