Want to try a cigarette?’ he added. ‘Nice blend, from Jamaica. It smells of warm weather even if it doesn’t do much for you.’
The boy laughed, delighted with him. Kite waited while Jem showed him how to roll a cigarette, and then, stiffly, sat down beside them on the gun.
‘Aha,’ said Jem softly. ‘Here he is.’
Kite couldn’t say anything at first. All he could do was slump against Jem and try to reassure himself that he was real, not a battle-fatigue hallucination. Jem gripped his hand. ‘What are we doing?’ Kite managed at last.
‘Waveforms,’ Jem said, sunny as ever. ‘And this young man is going to remember them now because they will be inextricably linked to the far more memorable memory of his first decent cigarette. I’m clever that way.’
‘You’re ridiculous,’ Kite told him. ‘Don’t let children smoke.’
‘I like it,’ the little boy protested. Then, brightly, ‘Are you Captain Kite? Did you really sail into battle with fifty dead people hanging off the yards?’
‘I – what? No,’ said Kite. ‘Who said that?’
‘Everyone,’ the boy said happily.
Fantastic.
‘Better run away,’ Jem said in a stage whisper. Once the boy was gone, Jem put his head against Kite’s. He talked quietly; he’d been here two days, one of the first to arrive. Orion had brought the King, which was why it had been so far ahead. Shore was chaos; there were message boards right along the docks, full of notes so relatives could find each other; the army had opened an office just to deal with getting people back together with their families. And people, brilliant ordinary people, had set up more message boards detailing spare rooms and attics where refugees from London could stay. Kite didn’t hear half of what he said, because he was deaf on one side and had been for days, but it was still good to watch him talk.
Kite had forgotten that that little boy on the gun with Jem had been Fred Hathaway. It had stayed forgotten right until that moment he had seen Joe give Fred a cigarette.
Usually, Joe was different enough that Kite didn’t struggle too much to see him as someone new. Every so often, though, he was still Jem.
Only he wasn’t Jem any more. He was a desperate man with a child to get home to, and if Fred had told him who he was, he would have seen straight through all of Kite’s stupid threats and walked away in broad daylight without giving them an atom of help, knowing that Kite was incapable of hurting him.
*
Newgate Gaol, 1807
Kite waited by the window of the warden’s office with two of Agamemnon’s men in French uniforms, feeling exposed all the same. Wellesley had insisted on hanging onto him until the warden arrived to sign the docket that would allow her to collect the reward money, and then – well, then she’d have to leave him there, he’d vanish into the prison and that would be that. She had turned very quiet after he told her about Fred, and he did not doubt that she would be happy to leave him now.
There were plenty of other considerations he ought to have been giving his time to, but his overriding thought was that he wasn’t used to land any more. Even at Edinburgh, he usually slept on the ship. He didn’t like how solid ground was. Normally, if everything was perfectly still, you were becalmed on the Pacific and you were looking seriously at the prospect of starving to death. It gave him a knee-jerk anxiety.
Sergeant Drake, from the marines, was one of the disguised men. He seemed to see that Kite was teetering, and put one hand on the small of his back. He was usually a granite man, but he offered him an awkward little smile now. Kite winked. Drake looked reassured.
When the warden did arrive, he was a dandy with a streety Parisian accent, which he exaggerated in the way of someone extremely pleased with himself for not being an aristocrat.
‘Madame!’ he exclaimed at Wellesley rather than to her, and then did a funny skipping retreat when she stood up and turned out to be so much taller than him. Kite could have laughed. He loved watching people meet Wellesley for the first time. ‘I hear you brought in Missouri Kite on behalf of your husband, the captain of the … dah-dah-dah, where is it – Angleterre?’
‘I did.’
‘Amazing,’ he said happily. He skittered over to look at Kite, who couldn’t help thinking of