There. Stairs. I mounted them lightly and ducked into an open-air hallway, startling a plump cat and passing right through the building, onto a bridge over the next street.
I swept the street with a glance before skittering across and onto a section of preserved stone wall. I followed the ramparts until they ended at a large, locked gate.
“Miss Fleet.”
I spun. Harden stood behind me, head cocked to one side in the moonlight. The tips of his silver threads flashed, just above his collar. “You’ve no sense, have you?”
“Why are you following me?” I cocked the revolver in my pocket. The sound was impossibly quiet, damped by wind and wool, but Harden still noticed.
“A little sense, then,” he amended. He paused, and after a moment seemed to come to a decision. “I’m not. Following you, that is. Well, I wasn’t, until I saw you wandering in the night like a fool.”
I stiffened. “This is hardly Dockside and you are not responsible for my wellbeing.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” He shrugged and started to leave. He tossed over his shoulder, “But you should stay on the main streets. I’m heading that way, if you happen to have gotten yourself lost.”
I took a reflexive step after him before catching myself. “I am not lost, but if I was, it would only be because of you.”
He kept walking.
“Is there another way off this wall?” I called.
He gave me a flat look and, with the air of someone aiding a particularly inebriated friend, gestured to one side.
I flushed. There, shadowed but obvious from this angle, was a staircase leading down. I had walked right past it.
Reining in my pride, I trailed after him through a warren of alleyways, side streets, and courtyards until we reached a main road again. A man and a woman passed beneath the low light of an ill-tended gaslamp, ignoring the jeers of a drunken man sitting in the center of the street in a toddler’s straight-legged pose.
I let out a long breath. “Thank you, Mr. Harden.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and regarded me with an expression that was considerably more forgiving than before. It was during that look, likely the most unguarded I had seen upon him, that my mind and body elected to inform me that he was, objectively, an attractive man. There was a stateliness in the hard lines of his face, an echo of the statuesI had perused at the museum hours before. There was stolidness to his posture that spoke of self-assurance and competence—even if he applied that competence to throwing bombs in public squares.
I looked away.
“Mayfair!” the drunk in the street called, waving broadly. “My dear, dear friend!”
“Mayfair?” I repeated.
Harden gave a long-suffering sigh and strode towards the drunk. They spoke, too low for me to hear, as he helped the other man to his feet and guided him to the sidewalk. There he deposited the drunkard in a doorway.
“Don’t sit in the street, Stewart,” Harden commanded.
Stewart gave an overly serious salute. “Aye, sir!”
“Mayfair?” I repeated a second time.
“He thought I was someone else. Let me walk you the rest of the way home. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I am weighing the dangers of escorting a bomb-lobbing Separatist to my door with those of walking home alone,” I said frankly.
“We did not set those bombs or throw the grenades,” he said firmly. “We only fired the flares. Credit for the bombs must go entirely to Incarnadine and her Zealots.”
I hesitated as he started walking. The Zealots were a human organization devoted to the eradication of the Entwined, and they were not picky about how they went about it—slander, framing, murder.
Hangings.
“What are you saying?” I hurried to catch up. “The Zealots framed you?”
“Yes. We do not bomb innocents. And I was not following you.”
