Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [19]
The coach slowed over the bridge across the first canal, crowded with laborers passing from the third rings to the docks. Three ladies wearing narrow lace ruffs around their necks and dresses of embroidered linen over corsets and crinolines stood at the other end, as if waiting for the bridge to clear of rabble before they crossed it. Yasmeen watched them, amused. Five years ago, the residents of the second circle had tried building bridges that were only for their use. That arrangement hadn’t lasted beyond the first week.
By the time the bridge was out of Yasmeen’s sight, the ladies still hadn’t crossed it. She looked forward again. Kessler’s home lay around the next corner.
“Do you want me to go in with you?” Barker asked.
“Just wait in the cab. I doubt I’ll be long.”
“What do you plan to do?”
The same that she’d done to Mattson. “Make certain he won’t talk again.”
The cab rounded the corner and slowed. Yasmeen frowned, rising from the bench for a better look. Wagons and carts blocked the street ahead, each one loaded with furniture and clothes. Men and women worked in pairs and small teams, hauling items from Kessler’s house.
Barker whistled between his teeth. “I don’t think he’s talking now.”
Barker was right, damn it. The households in Port Fallow operated in the same way as a pirate ship. When the head of the business household died, the household’s members voted in a new leader who took over the family. But Kessler’s business was in knowing people, and keeping those names to himself. No one could carry on in his profession, and his blood family had no claim—and so everyone who worked for him, from his clerk to his scullery maid, would split his possessions and sell them for what they could.
Seething, Yasmeen leaned out of the coach and snagged the first person who passed by. “What happened to Kessler?”
The woman, staggering under the weight of a ceramic vase, kept it short. “Maid found him in bed. Throat slit. No one knows who.”
He’d probably flapped his lips about someone else’s business. Yasmeen let the woman go.
“So we turn around, then?” the driver called back.
If he could. Carts, wagons, and people were in motion all around them, crowding the narrow street. Several more had already parked at their rear. A steamcart in front of them honked, and earned a shouted curse in response. Beside them, a wagon piled high with mattresses lurched ahead, giving them more visibility but nowhere to move.
The cart that took its place didn’t block Yasmeen’s view. Her gaze swept the walkway across the street—and froze on one figure. Oh, hell. Her muscles tensed, ready to fight . . . or flee.
Dressed in a simple black robe, the woman stood facing Kessler’s house. Unlike everyone else, she wasn’t in hurried motion. She watched the activity with her hands demurely folded at her stomach and her head slightly bowed. Gray threaded her long brown hair. She’d plaited two sections in the front, drawing them back . . . hiding the tips of her ears.
As if sensing Yasmeen’s gaze, she looked away from Kessler’s home. Her stillness didn’t change; only her eyes moved.
Yasmeen had been taught to stand like that—to hold herself silent and watchful, her weight perfectly balanced, her hands clasped. She’d been taught duty and honor. She’d been taught to fight . . . but not like this woman did. Yasmeen knew that under the woman’s robes was a body more metal than flesh. Designed to protect. Designed to kill.
It was difficult not to appreciate the deadly beauty of it—and hard not to pity her. Yasmeen couldn’t see the chains of honor, loyalty, and duty that bound the woman, but she knew they were there.
And she knew with a single look that the woman pitied her in return. That she saw Yasmeen as a woman adrift and without purpose—a victim of those who’d failed to properly train and care for her.
Yasmeen lowered her gaze first; not out of cowardice, but a message that she wouldn’t interfere with the woman’s business here—and she certainly wasn’t stupid enough to challenge her.