‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good boy.’
See? Easy.
Joe went straight back to Kite’s rooms, where Lawrence’s men left him and where he could hear voices arguing through the door. When he opened it, Kite and the two marines looked around.
The towers of Robespierre Bridge were mostly taken up with the space required by the pivot of the bascules. When the bridge came up, counterweights swung down inside the towers in arcs, in twin chambers the size of concert halls. He’d been there once, on maintenance work. The bridge staff had forgotten about him and a tall ship came unexpectedly downriver. The bridge had begun to lift, and the bascules silent, had reached halfway down the room before Joe saw. They had already covered the door. There was a space of about four feet wide at the very far end of the chamber that was safe. Despite knowing that, he hadn’t trusted it and flattened himself to the wall, expecting to be crushed. He hadn’t been able to move for a while afterward.
This felt like that.
‘I lost you two,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for you for an hour, where did you go?’
‘You disappeared down through someone’s garden – sir, he was trying to—’
‘It was a girl selling apples. I went to get some and when I looked back out you two had buggered off.’
The older marine had turned red. ‘You didn’t come back out. We looked for you.’
‘I thought you were right behind me. If you’d walked with me instead of prowling around behind me like a pair of bloody hyenas—’
‘Sir!’
Kite let the silence go on for much longer than he might have. Watching him consider was worse than hearing him speak.
‘Sir,’ the marine said, much more softly.
‘Call off the others.’
They went, fast.
‘I was looking for them,’ Joe said, copying the man’s urgency. ‘I was – it was ten seconds and then they were gone.’
Kite studied him for a long time and Joe looked back, though the air was fizzing.
‘All right. Have you eaten yet?’ Kite said.
Joe nearly collapsed. ‘No.’
‘Come on then.’
Joe picked up his coat again and struggled to grip, because his hands were shaking. ‘Don’t do anything to my kneecaps, please. Or to theirs.’
‘I’m not going to. What did you do?’ Kite said, starting to smile.
‘Nothing. What I said.’
‘Mm,’ he said.
Joe faltered, because he’d expected him to ask more and argue more, and be angrier. Uncomfortably, he realised that Kite sounded a lot like he knew exactly where Joe had been and who he’d spoken to. On the chance that it was only the lethargy of grief and tiredness, he locked his teeth together and followed him downstairs. The house felt too hot now. Sweat slid down his spine. By the time it reached his waistband it was unpleasantly cold.
A distant boom sounded from the harbour. It wasn’t their own guns; the French were doing drills, just on the horizon. Joe looked towards the castle and wondered greyly what Lawrence would do now, if there would at least be time to eat first. Downstairs they were serving something whose name Joe didn’t know, but it smelled rich and good.
When Kite tried to pay, the bartender waved the money away. He was the man from yesterday, and Joe wondered if he was the owner, to be working such long hours. It was brave in daylight in front of all the marines, too, dressing like that, but no one seemed minded to arrest him.
‘On the house.’
‘Thank you. Why?’ It was only the simple way he talked, but over small things Kite could sound like a child.
‘That ship whose mast you got on your way into port? Sank this morning.’
‘Good,’ Kite murmured. Some men whistled and clapped. He lifted his glass to them. He didn’t mind the attention, but he didn’t like it either. He wasn’t Captain Kite now, just Missouri – he’d switched over as soon as he’d let the marines go. Joe wished, fierce, that the captain side of him would reappear soon. He didn’t want to see Missouri taken away.
‘There’s a free booth,’ the barman said to Joe. ‘Better hide him before he breaks in half.’
‘Thanks. Ah …’
‘Hetty.’ It was a bit sharp, defensive.
‘Joe,’ said Joe, pleased. He caught himself smiling his charm smile, and the mechanical voice saying how useful it would be to know someone who lived downstairs, with all the keys, and who had enough money to wear pearls, with perhaps some spare goodwill. He glanced at the front windows. No one coming yet.
‘Any chance you mean to run the blockade?’ Hetty said hopefully to Kite.
‘I’d love to. But no orders.’ Very occasionally, he let a Spanish accent slip through into his English. Joe had thought it was random at first, but he was starting to see that it happened when Kite wanted you to know he was telling the absolute truth.
‘Damn orders, the Admiralty’s just the bunch of cowards who wasn’t good enough to go to sea.’
That got a round of applause from the people near enough to overhear.
‘Yeah, de accuerdo,’ Kite said, but he was already walking away to the booth.
‘How about King’s fucking English?’ someone said to him, then yelled when Kite smacked him face down into the table. The man’s friends looked at him like he’d walked out in front of an omnibus.
Joe winced and went after Kite. In the booth, Kite sat back against the cushioned wall, into the watercolour light. Faint freckles traced the bones around his eyes, and there were purple marks under them, so dark they could have been bruises.
Outside, a flash of red passed through all the rainy greys and browns in the street. A small party of marines was coming down the hill, with an officer in a black uniform Joe didn’t recognise. He watched them come on, past all the boarding houses they might have been aiming for.
‘Did you go and see Lord Lawrence earlier?’ Kite said, from nowhere. It wasn’t accusatory. He only sounded interested.
‘What? No!’
‘That was silly of you, wasn’t it,’ Kite said into his glass. ‘Thought I’d be being shot around now.’
‘Don’t be dramatic. He wouldn’t shoot you, he just wants to lock you up and give you a scare.’ Joe could feel himself going red. Acting was much harder around Kite than anyone else.
Kite looked at him as if he’d started howling at the moon.
‘Why would you sit here and wait, if you thought Lawrence was coming for you?’ Joe demanded, angry again, but this time it was a hollow, worried anger that came of the suspicion he’d done something truly stupid.
‘Mainly I’m too tired to get up.’ Kite sounded like he was joking, but his focus had gone far away. He was holding the tattoo under his sleeve. ‘That bed is murder.’
Joe turned the glass around on the table between his fingertips. He could feel the seconds dying. The kitchen girl came out to give them some bread and Kite smiled at her, polite rather than flirting. She smiled back, flirting rather than polite. Kite looked away.
The door smacked open. Joe pushed his fingernails into the spaces between the knuckles of his other hand when he heard a hard voice ask for Captain Kite. Kite glanced that way, not surprised. He was relieved.