“Our hosts have rejoined the party.” St. Silas dropped Rami unceremoniously on the ground before steadying his revolver. “Stay behind me.”
Not daring to breathe, Leena held the dagger tightly in shaky hands.
St. Silas reached into his pocket and threw Rami his spare pistol, and her brother took it in a firm hand.
Stepping into the clearing were two figures. One was a large man whose rough skin told of years of fast living, his fingers sparkling with jeweled rings. The other was a reedy boy whose growth looked to have been stunted by hunger. They both wore coats of the darkest fabric. Mackenzie and Burr, presumably. The boy was already holding a revolver pointed directly at St. Silas, and Rami’s sword was buckled about his waist.
“Ah, what a welcome,” the older one, Mackenzie, said. When he smiled, his mouth was crammed with gold teeth, terribly done, the canines crooked, the central incisors slightly too long. Leena suddenly remembered what Rami had once told her about Mackenzie, that he pried the gold fillings from the people he’d been hired to intimidate. “ ’Pon my soul, has the Saint of Silence come to visit us?”
“Whatsoul?” Leena snapped from behind St. Silas.
Burr unlocked the pistol, the noise deafening in the still forest.
“Put it down,” St. Silas ordered, his lazy command spearing through the frosty night air.
Burr didn’t respond, but his pointed face had paled.
“Keep steady,” Mackenzie warned Burr, his tone somehow managing to be both oily and inflamed. “No honor among thieves, eh, Saint?”
St. Silas cocked his own pistol. “Oh, there is certainly honor among thieves. I, however, am not one, so I do not need to trouble myself with such trivial things.”
Rami spat blood on the grass. His own weapon shook. “Shoot ’em and let’s end this, Saint.”
Burr jerked his head at Rami, his pointed face twisting into abitter snarl in the moonlight. “If we don’t deliver him beaten and bloody to the tradesman, we don’t get paid, and neither does Mr. Orley.”
“And a growing boy needs to eat,” Mackenzie added, placing a hand on Burr’s shoulder.
“This has all begun to bore me,” St. Silas said, his posture unwavering. “Tell us who the tradesman is, and perhaps I’ll consider avoiding all necessary organs when I shoot.”
“How generous,” Mackenzie drawled. Then his eyes fell on Leena and his smile widened once more to reveal his stolen teeth.
She didn’t understand the reason behind that smile, didn’t hear the silent figure creeping up behind her until she felt the hands wrap around her throat.
A gasping scream tore from her.
Leena clawed at the hands holding her in a stone-cold vise. Distantly, she heard her brother shouting. Black dots clouded her vision. Her lungs ached.
She couldn’t breathe she couldn’t breathe she couldn’t breathe—
She was going to die.
Tortured animal panic took hold of her, and she jammed the dagger into the soft flesh of the intruder’s abdomen. She heard a grunt, but her captor’s fingers didn’t loosen. She was sinking…deeper…until a voice cut through the waves threatening to drown her.
“Tilt your head to the left,” St. Silas’s voice ordered calmly. “There’s a girl.”
As she obeyed, a shot whizzed by her ear. If she’d turned her cheek a fraction of an inch at the wrong moment, the bullet would have sliced her flesh into ribbons. The clasping hands released her, then the dull thud of a body hitting the floor could be heard across the clearing.
She gasped for oxygen. Yet again, blood was everywhere. On her hands. In her hair. On her shoes.
“Very close shot, Saint,” Rami yelled furiously, gun still pointing toward his captors. “You could’ve easily killed her!”
“Yet I didn’t,” St. Silas responded curtly. “Do not lose your focus, Al-Sayer.” The barrel of his own revolver instantly returned to the two Black Coats. “Are you hurt, Leena?” he called back, keeping his eyes locked on the two bruisers.
Her voice came out raspy from her raw throat. “No.”
There was a split-second silence, as if St. Silas wanted to turn around and check for himself, but he refrained. “Did you not know of a third?”
Leena wasn’t sure whom he was speaking to until Rami responded. “I didn’t see him.”
