winning an unexpectedly warm smile from the manipulative child. “But they’ll stand no nonsense in the kitchen, mind. No stealing or cheek, and you’ll get a warm bed and good food.”
“Deal,” the boy said promptly as the hackney pulled up outside Kelburn House.
As they alighted, he stared open-mouthed up at the houses with their clean windows and gleaming front doors.
“Are you sure about this?” Dragan murmured.
“Nick? Yes. But you are coming in with us, aren’t you? We need to talk.”
He hesitated, almost as if there was nothing he wanted less, and then he shrugged and delved in his pocket to pay off the driver.
Nick’s eyes showed a tendency to pop out of his head as Griz led him toward the biggest house on the corner. She even wondered if he would have bolted had Dragan not been on his other side.
Since it was a Sunday, and fewer servants were on duty, she opened the front door with her key and led the way across the broad hallway to the small salon where she had entertained Dragan before. It still seemed the best place to remain undisturbed by whoever else was in the house.
Stripping off her dirty hat and cloak, she rang the bell.
“Do you really live here, Missus?” Nick asked, awed. He stood in the middle of the room as though afraid to move.
“Yes, I do, but if you are to stay here, Nick, you should call me Lady Grizelda. And this is Mr. Tizsa.”
His eyes widened. “What a real Lady lady? Damn!”
“It’s not polite to swear,” she warned him.
Janet stuck her head into the room.
“Ah. Ask Mrs. MacKenna to step in here, please, Janet. Mrs. MacKenna is our housekeeper,” she explained to Nick. “You must be respectful to her and do as she says.”
Nick mumbled, and Griz wondered uneasily how this was going to work out.
Mrs. MacKenna, entering the room a minute later, eyed Nick somewhat dubiously. But she only said, “Come, then, young man. Cook will give you some dinner, and then we can see about a bath and clothes.”
“Remember what we said,” Griz reminded him.
Nick only grinned over his shoulder and followed Mrs. MacKenna.
Griz sighed. “I hope he doesn’t steal all the silver and bolt.”
“It is a possibility,” Dragan admitted. He had been moving restlessly about the room, gazing out of the window, picking up and laying down the not-very-interesting knickknacks scattered around. He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Your housekeeper didn’t seem very surprised. Are you in the habit of bringing home waifs and strays from the gutter?”
“Not usually the gutter,” Griz replied vaguely. “But sometimes people have nowhere to go… Why was he afraid of you, suddenly? Because he thought you might still be angry about him leading us to our deaths?”
He stopped pacing and glanced at her. “Partly, perhaps. A child alone faces many dangers from unscrupulous and perverse adults. It isn’t just girls who are sold to pimps and brothels.”
Griz sat down abruptly on the sofa. Anger, pity, and revulsion struggled for dominance. “He is used to defending himself,” she managed at last. “That’s what he meant. Art protected him from that and all the other dangers.”
“And turned on him in the end, just to stop us asking questions.”
She shivered, feeling the child’s betrayal as well as the horror of their near-death.
“Look on the bright side,” Dragan said lightly. “We must have been close to something they wanted to hide.”
Remembering the leaflet, Griz quickly extracted it from the pocket of her cloak and spread it open on her lap. Dragan threw himself down beside her.
This was no mere urging for political change. This was a call to arms, a denunciation of everyone in power, from the queen to the city corporations and everyone in between.
“Armed rebellion,” Griz said, stunned, staring from it to Dragan. “Is this what you sought?”
“No. Though we weren’t above using the threat of it, using their fear of it, to win what we wanted. Our revolution was bloodless. Until the emperor recovered his nerve.” He flicked one scornful finger against the paper. “This is half-baked, illogical nonsense. No political thinker, no social reformer would come out with such pointless, ill-focused anger. There is no goal here, nothing to achieve. Just destruction and violence, as though they were ends in themselves.”
“Would it convince people to overthrow their government?”
“To riot and loot and threaten their better-off neighbors, perhaps. Perhaps the aim was just chaos so that the rookery—if this is the leaflet that was found in the raided rookery—could thrive?”