and lifted his glass of whiskey in salute. Rime tugged the leather drawstring. Inside, loose pinpoint rubies glittered on a bed of black velvet.
“You earned it. Though we are…concerned.”
“Concerned?” Rime took the pouch and made it vanish beneath his greatcoat.
“When you said you had nothing to do with the fire, we believed you—”
“How generous. I cherish your trust.”
“But you—and her now—aren’t the only special assets in our employ. We’ve noticed the shifts.”
“Shifts?”
The company man gestured to the window at his back. A cold rain was coming down, drizzling against the dirty glass.
“She’s doing something, Mr. Rime. Please don’t pretend you aren’t aware.”
“Oh.” Rime put a finger to his lips. “Those shifts. The changes in the fabric of history. Yes. It’s apparently a very difficult process. Not surgical, not without the wisdom and power of the Fates, so she has to…feel her way around it. A lot of trial and error. She’ll get there eventually. Possibly.”
“Get where, exactly? We didn’t authorize this.”
“You know what I had to do in order to win her over to the British cause. Well, she’s dead set on undoing it. She’s going to rewrite history, with a needle and thread that she stole from the Fates. See, she wants a world where she reached the mainland on time, got to Patience Foster before I—excuse me, before the Americans murdered her, and sprinted her off to a life filled with happiness and delight.”
The company man stared at him. “But…then she’s not helping us, and we’re back to the beginning. You have to stop her.”
“Do I, though?” Rime pursed his lips, thinking it over. “Let’s consider the possibilities. One, she succeeds, everything done is undone, and the revolution goes on as originally scheduled. I objected to your plan to begin with, if you’ll recall, so it’s a wash for me. And I’m already being paid to hunt down the Sisterhood on my own, so that doesn’t change either.”
“If you don’t think we can have your contract canceled—”
“Please don’t interrupt while I’m assessing strategy. Two, she fails, but in her efforts manages to tear the fabric of human history to pieces.” Rime flashed a yellowed smile. “This is a far more likely outcome. But I am very old. The odds are, no matter what she destroys, or what she burns down, I predate the damage. So I still exist, I survive, and I might even prosper. I certainly won’t be bored. That’s the worst thing about immortality, you know. The boredom.”
He held up three fingers.
“Three, she fails, because General Washington’s spies steal the relics out from under her nose.”
The company man scoffed over his glass. He tossed back a swig of whiskey.
“And how would they accomplish that?”
“Because I’m going to tell them exactly where to look,” Rime said, “and ensure she’s distracted when they come for the prize. I’ll give them a generous head start before I hunt them down. This should be a nice, long secret war. Longer than the revolution itself, if I play my cards right. Oh! Did I mention Arachne placed me on her personal payroll? I’m her guardian, her trusted associate, and her red right hand. And she pays me far more than you ever did. A man could get used to this lifestyle.”
Recognition dawned in the company man’s eyes. “You want both sides to keep fighting. For your own profit.”
“I am a mercenary. Chaos is good for business. You see? It’s a win all around for me. The only way I could lose in this matter, the only way, is if a certain man from John Company tried to blackmail me. After all, he’s the only man still alive who knows what I did to spark all of this delightful bloodshed.”
Rime pushed his chair back. He shook out the folds of his greatcoat as he rose.
“By the way? I poisoned your drink.”
The glass twitched in the company man’s frozen hand. He tried to speak, his eyes bulging, but his throat was paralyzed. So were his lungs.
The glass fell and shattered on the floor. His body was right behind it. Rime casually shut the door behind him and strolled away, whistling a jaunty tune.
68.
Seelie’s eyes opened to the morning light.
She was down on the concrete at the end of an alley, sprawled at the foot of a dumpster. Neck bent, one cheek pressed against dirty steel, her arms and legs contorted like a doll someone had tossed in the trash.
An old, grizzled man in army fatigues puttered by. He pushed a shopping cart with