Trust, then, is perhaps an inadequate word. I still had questions, questions that required answers. But the bonds between us had reasserted themselves, and I was helpless in their grasp.
Lewis clambered onto the top of the wall and reached back down, his boot providing a foothold and his hands grasping my upper arms. When I straddled the top of the fence he dropped down the other side, landing firmly on the stone ledge, and took me by the waist.
This ostensibly romantic gesture was ruined by the fact that I lost my balance. I dropped straight into him, knocking the pair of us off the wall and onto the hard cobblestones on the other side. The rifle clattered and swung, discharging with a deafening crack.
I was cushioned by Lewis’s chest. Lewis was not so fortunate.
He made a breathless wheeze and lay there for a stunned breath. I scrambled to my feet and put an arm under his shoulders, helping him upright.
“Sorry!” I hissed.
“Fine—I’m fine,” he wheezed, still doubled over.
“Ho, there!” a voice shouted up the street.
We turned. Despite his breathlessness Lewis stepped partially in front of me, drawing his pistol again. I swung my rifle back up. The chamber was empty, but even after the audible shot, the newcomers wouldn’t necessarily know which weapon had fired.
“Guild rat,” the voice said, speaking as if to a third party. Several more figures peeled from the night. Then even more. Eight men, four women, armed with clubs and bearing a look that chilled me to the bone. Their expressions were something between hunters and drunkards, giddy and arrogant in their joint purpose. Several had coils of rope over their shoulders.
Zealots.
The speaker leaned out, peering around Lewis towards me. “Aw, and his chit. Better run, love, I’ve got my eye on you.”
The tension in Lewis’s posture changed to something elsethen. Something more dangerous, more at ease. Something… resigned.
He shot the man in the knee. Before the Zealot could so much as stagger, Lewis fired again and again, each at a different target, each on the heels of one another.
The Zealots did not charge. Instead they scattered with shouts and curses, dragging wounded comrades to safety.
I grabbed Lewis’s arm and pulled. For a second he resisted, a pillar of stone, then together we ran.
Shots chased us—the Zealots had more than clubs. One pinged off the stone just behind us before new voices entered the streets, the shouts and whistles of police.
Whether they would have proved friend or foe became irrelevant as we sprinted off, round the university wall and down an alleyway. I did not have Harden’s intimate knowledge of the back ways of Harrow, but I knew enough to lead us away from the university and towards the west river. Towards the museum.
My lungs burned and my mind raced. Pretoria and Perry would either head there, as previously intended, or back to the hotel.
I did not consider any alternatives—that they had been captured or killed. No, thoughts of that nature would do no good.
I glanced at Lewis, rifle still cradled to my chest. The streets around us had quietened, eerie and windblown, and the only sounds of life were distant. He was alert, stoic, but with an intensity under the skin that left me uneasy.
I took Lewis by the arm and pulled him into a shadow. He regarded me calmly, as if he had expected this, and put a little space between us.
“I have been in Harrow for ten days,” he said. “Madge insisted on keeping me close, believing you would surface. And you did, at the opera. I saw you leave with that man. I did not know to intervene, and I hardly wanted to turn you into the Guild. So I let you go.”
Startled as I was, I sensed he had more to confess. I held my tongue.
“Guild spies learned that Baffin had captured an Adept and intended to hand her over to Incarnadine. We intervened, as you saw, and I let you go, again.”
“That much I know,” I murmured.
“Madge sent me after you tonight,” he revealed. “She told me to take you somewhere safe, and keep you away from Mr. Moran.” Something else entered his eyes then, something probing. “She did not say why.”
I recalled Madge sending me away, so unexpectedly. I remembered Moran’s interest, his fixed gaze.
Madge was protecting me. Then, and now. It was more painful than consoling. But precisely what was she protecting me from? What did she fear her husband would do?
It did not bear thinking about, just then. I had to settle matters with Lewis and get to the museum before Baffin.
