The Emperor of All Things by Paul Witcover Read Free Book Online Page B

rooftop?’
    Quare swallowed, his mouth gone dry. ‘I fear you will not believe me.’
    ‘I will believe the truth, when I hear it.’
    ‘Will you hold it in confidence?’
    ‘Why, damn your impudence!’ Master Magnus slammed one of his sticks hard against the floor, putting a passel of cats to flight. ‘I will not parley with you! If you would remain a regulator, then speak. But understand this – one way or another, I will learn the truth. I have other devices at my disposal, devices every bit as ingenious as the stair-master … though much less pleasant to ride upon, I assure you.’
    At this, Quare realized that the servant had been following Master Magnus’s orders in conveying him here so roughly. The master had foreseen this moment from the first and had planned accordingly; truly, he had a better chance of trouncing the great Philidor across a chessboard than of winning a battle of wits with Master Theophilus Magnus, who had built the Most Secret and Exalted Order of Regulators into a secret service said to rival that of Pitt himself. Yet the knowledge that he was almost certainly overmatched served only to stiffen his spine. ‘I do not take kindly to threats,’ he said, glowering.
    ‘Think of it rather as a reminder,’ Master Magnus answered.
    ‘A reminder of what?’
    ‘Of the oath you swore upon becoming a journeyman of this company. Why, one would think you were trying to protect Grimalkin!’
    ‘It’s not that. It’s … Well, it’s …’
    ‘Out with it, sir!’
    Quare sighed. There was no help for it. ‘He … Grimalkin, that is … is a woman.’
    For a moment, the only sound was the purring of the cats. Quare had always found a cat’s purr soothing, but there was a peculiar quality about a roomful of purring cats that was, he decided, not very soothing at all. Master Magnus, meanwhile, studied him from behind those dark lenses filled with flickering flames. That wasn’t too soothing, either. Despite his twisted legs, or rather because of them, the master possessed unusual upper-body strength – Quare had seen him lift, with minimal effort, gear assemblies for tower clocks that two men would have struggled to raise – and to watch him now, propped upon his sticks, ominously silent, was to see not a crippled man but a coiled spring. ‘A woman,’ he said at last. ‘Grimalkin a woman, you say?’
    ‘There can be no doubt of it.’
    ‘Grimalkin, who has outfought the deadliest swordsmen in Europe and outthought their masters, not once but again and again, that Grimalkin, the spy supreme, the paragon of thieves, is a female.’
    ‘It’s hard to believe, I know. But it’s true. I saw her with my own eyes. That’s why I couldn’t— You said the moon was the only witness, master. But God was watching, too. How could I slay a woman in cold blood?’
    Master Magnus grunted as if he might be prepared to offer some practical suggestions. But instead he said, ‘Tell me everything that happened from the moment you first saw Grimalkin. Leave nothing out, Mr Quare, no matter how insignificant it may seem.’
    Quare related how he had seen Grimalkin emerge, wreathed in smoke, from the attic skylight of Lord Wichcote’s house, then shadowed the grey-clad figure from rooftop to rooftop under the gibbous moon, crept close enough to deliver a knockout blow, more by luck than skill, and at the cost of a painful gash to his leg, and then lifted the grey mask only to find himself gazing at a face unmistakably female. Apart from the lifting of the mask, and what he had found beneath it, it was all as he had related to Master Magnus the previous night, while his leg was being tended to.
    ‘Describe this woman,’ Master Magnus instructed with sceptical interest.
    ‘It was not a face I had seen before,’ Quare replied. ‘Youngish, I would say.’
    ‘Attractive?’
    ‘I was too taken aback to notice.’
    ‘Were you? In my experience, regardless of the circumstances, the attractiveness of a