Page 3 of Once a Villain
“They won’t,” Aaron said. “We’re going to keep our heads down and move with the crowd. The guards up there will be too busy directing traffic to bother with pedestrians.”
“Might have been a little optimistic,” Aaron added when they reached the top.
“Might have been?” Nick said evenly, his hair and clothes whipping in the wind.
The bridge crawled with guards, pacing up and down, checking pedestrians and cars. Unlike the ones on the walkway, these were in uniform: red coats and charcoal trousers. Winged lions of the Court were embroidered in gold on their sleeves.
Farther ahead, past the guardhouse castle with its severed heads, the scene became surreal: charming shops and houses lined the road in clustered terraces, interrupted by buildings that had been plonked in the middle of the street, their lowest levels cut out to allow traffic to pass.
“It’s like the Very Hungry Caterpillar made a tunnel,” Nick said.
“The what?” Aaron said absently.
Joan opened her mouth to explain it, but then just shook her head. Aaron didn’t have many cultural touchstones after the Victorian era. “We can’t cross here,” she said. “There are too many guards.”
“We can’t climb back down!” Ruth argued. “Someone will see us. They’d findthatsuspicious.”
“There’s no guarantee of a safer way across,” Jamie said. “Look.” He nodded toward the water. “Southwark Bridge is gone. The Millennium Bridge is gone. At least this route is busy.”
“Eleanor’s controlling the crossings,” Joan realized. She’d gotten rid of Tower Bridge too.
“We can’t hang about here,” Ruth said impatiently. “We can’t look suspicious. Comeon.” She grabbed Joan’s arm, pulling her into the stream of people heading north, and the others fell into step behind them.
As they walked, the sounds of the crowd merged with the roaring water and squawks from seagulls and pigeons. The atmosphere was strange.Bad vibes, Ruth had said. Joan could feel it. Londoners were generally alert to their surroundings, but the people of this timeline seemed different. They watched each other with hard eyes as if anyone around them might be dangerous.
Joan rolled her shoulders, trying to loosen her tension. Fat drops of rain were beginning to fall. She took a deep breath of wet wood and stone, and glanced back at Jamie. “Okay?” she whispered to him. He hated the wet.
Jamie blinked as if he hadn’t even noticed the weather. If anything, that worried Joan more. Jamie had hardly spoken since they’d arrived here without his husband, Tom. Right at theend, Joan had used her power to protect them all from Eleanor’s changes to the timeline. But Tom had still been charging at Eleanor, trying to stop her. When the changes had hit, he’d been outside Joan’s protection.
Joan slowed a little so that she was alongside Jamie. “We’re going to find him,” she whispered.
Jamie dropped his gaze for a moment, his long lashes fanning down. To Joan’s relief, he focused on her when he lifted his eyes again. “He’s a survivor,” he agreed. “He has to be out there somewhere.”
“On the river or the canals,” Joan said. The Lius would know where to find him—the Lius and Hathaways were allies. They’d have to know where he was.
Jamie lifted the flap of his jacket slightly to check on his toy bulldog, Frankie—as if reassuring himself that she, at least, was still here. He’d tucked her warmly in, her flat nose snuffling into his shirt.
Jamie opened his mouth to speak again, but then frowned as something caught his attention.
Joan followed his line of sight. The crowd had thinned up ahead, making space around a strange sculpture on the pavement, about fifty paces away. It was a bronze cage about the size of a beer barrel, and a royal seal had been soldered to its side: a lion’s head, crowned and snarling, against a backdrop of fanned peacock feathers and roses. The cage was in a set of three.Wasit public art? Maybe they were intended to be seats.
Except... a strange shadow moved inside the first cage.Joan peered closer, trying to make sense of it. And then she drew a sharp breath.
There was apersonin that cage; he’d been forced into a curled-over position, knees clutched to his chest, back bent painfully. And now Joan realized that the other cages held people too. She opened her mouth and closed it. She could almost hear Aaron’s voice in her head:It’s not safe to stare.But it was like her brain couldn’t process it. There were men in cages on a London street. A wave of horror washed over her, worse than when she’d seen the heads on the spikes.
Ahead of them, a woman paused at the first cage, her basket of red roses tipping precariously. For a second, Joan thought she was going to whisper something reassuring to the man within, but instead she spat at him, hitting the side of his face. He flinched, and Joan winced involuntarily too. Her heart was suddenly thundering.
Nick’s breath caught. He’d seen it.
“Keep walking,” Aaron ground out.
“Are those men human?” Nick growled, and Joan’s stomach churned at the thought.
“Are you going to lose it if they are?” Aaron said to him.
“Arethey?” Nick said.
“I’m not close enough to see.”
