Red Seas Under Red Skies: The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book Two (Gentleman Bastards 2)

‘Will you at least tell me why?’ he said.

‘Later.’ Jean didn’t lower his own weapon. ‘Give me the crossbow. Slowly. Slowly!’

Locke’s arm was shaking; the nervous reaction had lent an unwanted jerkiness to his movements. Concentrating, trying to keep his emotions under control, Locke passed the bow over to Jean.

‘Good,’ said Jean. ‘Keep you hands up. You two brought rope, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’ve got him under my bolt. Tie him up. Get his hands and his feet, and make the knots tight.’

One of their ambushers pointed his own crossbow into the air and fumbled for rope in a jacket pocket. The other lowered his bow and produced a knife. His eyes had just moved from Locke to his associate when Jean made his next move.

With his own bow in one hand and Locke’s in the other, he calmly pivoted and put a bolt into the head of each of their attackers.

Locke heard the sharp twak-twak of the double release, but it took several seconds for full comprehension of its meaning to travel from his eyes to the back of his skull. He stood there shaking, jaw hanging open, while the two strangers spurted blood, twitched and died. One of them reflexively curled a finger around the trigger of his weapon. With a final twak that made Locke jump, a bolt whizzed into the darkness.

‘Jean, you—’

‘How difficult was it to give me the damn weapon?’

‘But you . . . you said—’

‘I said . . .’ Jean dropped the alley-pieces, grabbed him by his lapels and shook him. ‘What do you mean, “I said,” Locke? Why were you paying attention to what I was saying?’

‘You didn’t—’

‘Gods, you’re shaking. You believed me? How could you believe me?’ Jean released him and stared at him, aghast. ‘I thought you were just playing along too intently!’

‘You didn’t give me a hand signal, Jean! What the hell was I supposed to think?’

‘Didn’t give you a hand signal? I flashed you the “lying” sign, plain as that bloody burning ship! When I raised my palm to those idiots!’

‘You did not—’

‘I did! As if I could forget! I can’t believe this! How could you ever think ... where did you think I’d found the time to broker a deal with anyone else? We’ve been on the same damn ship for two months!’

‘Jean, without the signal—’

‘I did give it to you, you twit! I gave it when I did the whole cold, reluctant betrayer bit! “Actually, I know who sent them.” Remember?’

‘Yeah—’

‘And then the hand signal! The “Oh, look, Jean Tannen is lying about betraying his best friend in the whole fucking world to a couple of Verrari cut-throats” signal! Shall we practise that one more often? Do we really need to?’

‘I didn’t see a signal, Jean. Honest to all the gods.’

‘You missed it.’

‘Missed it? I—Yeah, look, fine. I missed it. It was dark, crossbows everywhere, I should’ve known. I should’ve known we didn’t even need it. I’m sorry.’

He sighed and looked over at the two bodies, feathered shafts sticking grotesquely out of their motionless heads.

‘We really, really needed to interrogate one of those bastards, didn’t we?’

‘Yes,’ said Jean.

‘It was ... bloody good shooting, regardless.’

‘Yes.’

‘Jean?’

‘Mm?’

‘We should really be running like hell right now.’

‘Oh. Yes. Let’s.’