The Black Hawk by Joanna Bourne Read Free Book Online

set his elbows on the ledge to keep the view steady, and followed where she was pointing. Swung past. Came back again and found it. Adjusted the glasses. And he had it.
    That was another exercise Doyle kept setting him—using glasses just like these and finding his target fast as blazes. “A house. Green shutters on the windows. Iron bars. It is just a pleasure to see somebody take provident care of their possessions.”
    “Go back toward that gate.”
    The double doors in the long wall had gouged pale half-circles into the stone of the street, opening and closing a thousand times. The gates were closed at the moment.
    “In the courtyard behind that.” She brought out another pair of glasses and stood at his shoulder, mirroring his concentration. Since he was a noticing kind of fellow, he observed she had a little white-handled gun left in the basket.
    She shaded the lenses with the flat of her hand. “Good. They are all there.”
    Shade the glasses from the sun and they won’t glint and give away your position. Doyle taught him that. And wasn’t it disconcerting that Owl, who probably worked for the French Secret Police, knew the same trick.
    “What do you see?” she said.
    The courtyard was mottled brown and gray. Cobblestone with dirt. Dark boxes and crates were stacked up everywhere. One small wagon. Two handcarts. There was a big, light-yellow pile of hay. No horses. There were fourteen . . . fifteen people.
    Two men attacked a boy about half their size, whacking at him with sticks, while everybody else stood around and watched. The boy dodged and twisted like an alley dog, keeping out of reach. Just barely.
    Hawker feathered at the optics, fixing on the boy, trying to bring his face in. It was tempting to lean forward, trying to see better. Doyle had cured him of that particular bad habit by clouting him on the head every time he did it.
    And that was not a boy running every which way between the crates. That was a girl. She wore trousers and a loose shirt and she didn’t have any tits on her, but when she flipped around, dodging a kick, long braids fell from their mooring and swung on her back, pale as wheat. She was twelve maybe. Younger than he was.
    One of the men managed to hit her a good one across the back. Then the other man moved in. She got away, scrambling up over a pile of boxes. They chased her. Once, she tripped longwise and didn’t roll away fast enough and got herself kicked in the belly.
    Around the edge of the yard, a dozen boys did nothing . . . Hawker squinted into the eyepiece. No. That was probably girls and boys. Hard to tell from here.
    Five minutes. Ten. Eventually it stopped. The men backed away. The girl struggled back to her feet and leaned over, arms braced on her thighs, braids falling straight down to brush the backs of her hands.
    The two men motioned another kid over and began the creative process of beating the hell out of him in a purely instructive way. The girl limped to join the group lined up along the wall. It made him hurt, just looking at her.
    He glanced across at Owl. “Some men take their pleasure in strange ways. Is that what you brought me here to see?”
    “Yes.” She held her hand out for the field glasses, wrapped them up carefully in a checked cloth, and gave some attention to settling both pairs, and the gun, neatly in the basket. “What do you think?”
    I think there’s men better dead . “She’s a nimble little thing.”
    “She has been in training for a few years, I would think. She is good at fighting. Today, they are being taught that one may be hurt and hurt and hurt again and still continue. It is a valuable lesson. Those men, the Tuteurs who rule that house, repeat it frequently. Let us go. Someone might possibly look up and see us in this tower where we have no business being.”
    “Who are they?” He stepped in front of Owl, blocking her way. Not touching. A man risked whatever part of his body he laid on Owl, careless-like.
    She looked