Page 96 of Who Cries for the Lost

The two men circled each other warily, blood dripping from Tiptoff’s nose and lips, Sebastian with the knife in his hand but limping badly, both men streaming with sweat and sucking air hard.

“How did you figure it out?” said Tiptoff, his bloody nostrils flaring with each labored breath. “Did Jarvis tell you?”

“That you kill for the Bourbons?” Sebastian shook his head, trying to shake the sweat out of his eyes. “No.”

“Is that what you think? That I only kill for the Bourbons?” Tiptoff gave a ragged, breathless laugh. “You haven’t realized yet that I kill for Jarvis, too?”

“I don’t believe you.”

The man’s lip curled in derision. “Believe it.”

“So why not give him Fouché’s list?”

“Because I know him. Jarvis would have had some killed, but he’d insist others be left alive so he could use them.”

“And you want them all dead?”

Tiptoff swiped a crooked elbow across his bloody face. “They aided the regime that killed my mother and father.”

“Did it never occur to you that at the same time you’ve been murdering those you hold responsible for your brother’s death on Cabrera, you’ve also been killing the men and women whose activities here in London might once have helped protect him?”

Tiptoff’s eyes narrowed. “How the hell did you know my brother died on Cabrera?”

When Sebastian simply shook his head again, Tiptoff sucked in a harsh breath that shuddered his chest. “He starved to death. Did you know that? Starved to death.”

“It was horrible, what was done to those men. No one with any conscience could deny that. But why kill Hamilton Evans? Cabrera was his father’s sin, not his.”

“And now his father has paid for it, hasn’t he?”

“Is that why you didn’t mutilate André Ternant the way you did the others? Because he had nothing to do with Cabrera?”

Tiptoff nodded. “Those who spied for Napoléon were misguided, not evil.”

“You don’t see yourself as evil?”

Something flared in the other man’s eyes. “I only kill those who deserve to die.”

“The wherryman you killed didn’t deserve to die any more than Hamilton Evans. You killed the wherryman to protect yourself, and Evans to hurt someone you hated but couldn’t reach. Is that not the height of selfishness—your very definition of evil?” Sebastian paused, then said, “And you call Palmer a hypocrite.”

Eyes glittering with rage even as an icy smile curled his bleeding lips, Tiptoff lunged. Sebastian pivoted, blocking the charge, his knife slashing only air as Tiptoff danced nimbly away again. But in the darkness the assassin had miscalculated, unable to see just how near Sebastian was to the end of the wharf. Tiptoff feinted to one side, ready to launch his next attack... and stepped back into nothing.

For a moment he teetered at the edge, arms windmilling as he sought to regain his balance. Sebastian stayed where he was and watched as the man pitched backward into the dark void. There was a moment’s eerie silence filled only with the damp, briny wind rising off the water and the slap of the inrushing tide. Then came the thumping crunch of bone and sinew as the assassin’s body slammed into the stones of the ancient foundations lurking far below. Tiptoff convulsed once, then went still, his eyes wide and staring.

“You bastard,” said Sebastian hoarsely, and turned away.

He could hear a growing roar of distant voices as he pushed his way through the crowds in Charing Cross to Pall Mall and then to St. James’s Square. At the corner, an old woman was selling hot potatoes from a barrel filled with glowing coals to the crowd that had collected outside the home of Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Boehm, where the Prince Regent and the cream of London society were known to have gathered that night for an exclusive dinner and dance.

The windows of the house had been thrown open, for the night was warm and the rooms within heated by hundreds of blazing beeswax candles; Sebastian could hear the lilting strains of Haydn as he paused beside the old woman and handed her a penny. But rather than take one of her potatoes, he drew a folded paper from his pocket and held it over the glowing embers in her barrow. “May I?” he asked.

She nodded, and without looking at it again, he touched one corner of the paper to the coals.

It caught quickly, the yellow and orange flame flaring up hot and bright, Fouché’s deadly list of names disappearing as the blackening paper curled back on itself. At last Sebastian was forced to drop the burning remnant to the pavement at his feet. He watched as the fire consumed the rest, until only a curl of white ash remained. Then he crushed it beneath his boot heel, nodded his thanks to the old woman, and turned to run up the stairs of the gaily lit town house of Mr. and Mrs. Boehm.

Chapter 55

Charles, Lord Jarvis, stood near the entrance to Mrs. Boehm’s ballroom, a glass of fine brandy in one hand, a smile touching his lips as he watched the first quadrille forming. It had been a pleasant evening. The Prince Regent, now sprawled at his ease in the wide seat their hostess had provided for him on a dais at one end of the room, was in his cups, of course. Several of the buttons of Prinny’s waistcoat had been undone to ease the pressure on his ample belly, but he had a smile on his ruddy, sweat-sheened face. Tonight, surely, they would hear good news from Waterloo. Others such as Liverpool and Hendon might fret, but Jarvis’s confidence in their ultimate triumph had never deserted him. Soon Bonaparte would be on his way to St. Helena—or in his grave—and order would be restored to the world.

What had begun as a faint stirring behind him was becoming more intense. Turning, Jarvis recognized his own disreputable son-in-law pushing his way through the elegant throng of silk-and-satin-clad ladies and their gentlemen. He was dressed in muddy high boots, blood-splattered buckskin breeches, and a torn coat. His hat was gone, his hair disheveled, and he had what was probably a knife cut across one cheek.

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