“Do it, Will. Please.”
Will knelt. Cheveley said, “Right. Any funny business and I shoot him. Understand that, Secretan?”
“If you kill him in front of this crowd you’ll swing. Do you understand that?”
“Give Secretan the keys, Bubby,” Cheveley repeated. “Throw them to him.”
“Yes, but, I say—”
“Do it now. Now, or I shoot! Where are you going, you moron?”
“To get the keys! They’re in the jolly old car!” Fanshawe protested.
Cheveley said, “Jesus Christ.” Will might have felt a moment’s sympathy, except that he could imagine the sound of a shot on an isolated road, Kim’s body left unmoving in the moonlight, Cheveley driving away alone.
Kim would not be getting in that motor-car, and that was all there was to it. His muscles tightened.
“Just try it, you jumped-up shopkeeper,” Cheveley said softly. “I’ll blow your head into red mist. All right, Secretan—”
The lights went off.
No expense had been spared in Etchil’s electrification. The hall had a chandelier hanging from the ceiling and lights on the landing and more on the walls. They’d been beaming out this whole time and the darkness now was absolute. Several people screamed. Will hurled himself sideways as the revolver boomed out, and found himself sent rolling by a hard, painless impact on his left arm.
He knew that one. It was always painless at first.
The lights blazed on again, blinding. Will put his right hand to his left biceps, took it away, and stared at the wet red on his hand as pain began to sear through his arm. He looked up, at Cheveley’s face, and the muzzle of the revolver swinging to him, and the Bright Young Idiots shrieking, and then Adela Moran screamed in real earnest, and Will turned and saw Kim.
He was running across the hall, with a cavalry sabre in his hand. Will stared, Cheveley simply gaped, and Kim swept the sword up like he’d done it all his life. The blade bit cleanly, deeply, and all but right through Cheveley’s outstretched arm.
He dropped the gun. Well, he would.
Everyone was screaming now. Kim dropped the sabre, eyes wide, as Cheveley folded at the knees and hit the floor. Blood sprayed.
“Get a tourniquet on him,” Will snapped. “Quick!”
“Shit.” Kim bent over Cheveley. “Hell. Are you all right, Will?”
“No. He fucking shot me.”
“I saw,” Kim said through his teeth. “But if one of you is going to bleed to death I’d rather it was him, so talk to me.”
Will was bleeding a fair bit himself, now he looked, and starting to feel rather rough as the initial shock was replaced by the throbbing heat of a bullet wound. “Uh.”
“Will!” That was Maisie, arriving in a flurry. “Oh God. We need cords, ties. Now!”
She got something from somewhere; Will wasn’t paying attention. He heard her whispering unladylike language under her breath as she pulled a cord round his upper arm, painfully tight. “Ow.”
“Is that too much?”
“Ignore him,” Kim said. “He always complains when he’s shot.”
“Arsehole,” Will managed. “Excuse my French, Maisie.”
“Don’t mind me,” she said. “Hold on, I’m going to—”
Will knew what she was going to do—she had got a pencil in the loop, and she turned it now to tighten the tourniquet. He breathed out hard. “All right, that’s slowed the bleeding,” she said. “He needs a doctor quick.”
“He’s not the only one,” Kim said. “Bubby, you useless sack of meat, get in the car and find a telephone. Doctors. Police. Now!”
Maisie brought a chair for Will to lean against. His arm was an unpleasant combination of the jabbing pain of the gunshot wound, the nauseous dull pain of his broken knuckle, and the outrage of nerves cut off by a ligature. He’d had significantly better evenings than this in the trenches.
“Cheveley?” he asked.
“Not so good,” Kim said. He had stuffed his jacket over the man’s wound, for what use that might be. Will let out a long breath, and waited in silence for the bleeding to stop.
Chapter Nineteen
Things got a bit fuzzy after that. A doctor arrived eventually; Will tried to explain that he was probably the least in need of the various casualties but nobody listened, and then he got a needleful of something and went out like a light.
He woke up somewhere that, eventually, he identified as the room he’d been allocated. His entire left arm felt hot and resentful, his head was muggy, and he was painfully thirsty. There was a jug of water by his bedside, but it had been placed on the table to his left, which felt like a bigger