wait out the frozen night, either. If all the fuss with Alice and Père Philippe had taught him anything, it was not to be precious.
He was just starting to get up when his entire soul cramped. His heart locked and he couldn’t breathe, never mind move, and everything in him was shrieking, as if he’d thrust his hand into a fire.
The second he stopped trying to leave, it eased. He stared at Kite, wondering what the hell they’d spoken about at the lighthouse that would have given him a reaction like that to trying to abandon the man.
‘Can you get up?’ Joe asked, stunned. His heart hurt, the strings inside the muscle structure all too tight still.
Kite hesitated, but then the two marines appeared from another building. They hurried across when they saw Kite and Joe. For the first time since Joe had met him, the slab-faced Drake looked genuinely worried. Maybe, Joe thought hopelessly, it was hard to leave Kite because Kite was just one of those magical people who made everyone love him.
Whatever the reason, the chance had come and gone.
Once Kite was standing, Joe eased his coat around his shoulders. Even the weight of the fabric made him hunch forward. Joe thought he was going to collapse, but Kite only waited and held his breath, then nodded. Joe glanced back at the marines, who looked anxious too, but not surprised. This must have been pretty standard practice for Lord Lawrence.
The cobbles on the sloping road were slick with frost now and, after Joe slipped, they all stepped up on to the high kerb that made a kind of platform for the heavy guns.
‘What’s Lawrence’s problem with you?’ Joe asked eventually.
‘He’s Agatha’s uncle. He considers it a personal affront that his brother’s widow married a carpenter from Cadiz.’ They were passing under the portcullis again. The road they had come up was too steeply downhill now to try and they went a different way, past inns and pubs and shut-up shops. Kite’s next breath rattled; between the bruises and the razor air, his lungs were struggling. ‘After my parents were killed at sea, Agatha wanted to come to England, but Lawrence wouldn’t take her in unless she left me behind. But she wouldn’t. We lived in Spain for about ten years before she was old enough to inherit her father’s money. We served in the navy there. When she did inherit, she moved us to London.’
Joe was quiet at first, because that was by far the most Kite had ever said to him in one go. He had a feeling it was the most Kite had ever said to anyone in one go. ‘If your dad’s from Cadiz,’ he asked at last, ‘how are you called Kite?’
‘It’s translated. Stupid to try and take an officer’s commission in England with a name like Milano. And nobody wants to alliterate.’
‘Oh.’ Joe turned that around in his mind for a while. ‘Where are we going? Not back to the ship.’
‘Yes back to the ship. I can’t leave them—’
‘Kite! Everything’s shot to hell, I’m not taking you back there.’ He looked at the marines for support. They shifted, uncomfortable, but he could see they thought going back was a bad idea too.
‘Everyone else is just as beaten up as us, Tournier—’
‘Everyone else doesn’t also have to be in charge, you moron,’ Joe snapped. Those strings in his heart were screwing tight again. ‘You won’t sit down, you’ll wander around being nice to people and then you’ll collapse and die, look at the state of you.’
‘This is normal—’
‘What you think is normal is right on the edge of dying.’ Joe sat down on a wall. ‘I’m not going back to the ship. Try and make me.’
‘I’ve got a gun and two marines,’ Kite pointed out, frowning. The two marines were hanging back, though, doing amazing work of looking like two random passers-by who had nothing to do with the argument. Even Drake didn’t seem willing to drag Joe anywhere this time.
‘Nope, I’ve got your gun, I took it off you at the chapel.’ Joe showed him, then lobbed it behind his own shoulder, where it clattered down steps and cobbles in the steep darkness. ‘Next?’
Kite’s expression opened out into real confusion. ‘That was loaded. Why didn’t you shoot me?’
‘Tried!’ Joe shouted at him. ‘Couldn’t, nearly gave myself a heart attack. Turns out I’m a good person.’
‘Oh,’ Kite said. He looked back at the marines, who didn’t seem like they had any more idea