Shepherds & Wolves
Facing an uncertain night, Josephine asks for back-up as she girds for battle --- Maer.
Friday, February 14th 1868
Savoy-Trieste Hotel
Trieste, Austria-Hungary
Mid-afternoon
Josephine put foot on dry land the moment Odyssey returned to Trieste. Not from loathing but rather from a need to prepare herself for the coming engagement. Kalashnikov was a sensate medium and if her intentions were false, he would know it the instant he touched her.
So, she would convince herself of her intentions in the hours she had remaining. Josephine had lost count the number of times she’d been handed a part by William and ordered to master it the same afternoon before an evening performance. She was a quick study but this time there was no script to read, no stage to tread. She had only her impressions of the man and the response of her own body to go by. She could still remember how warm he’d felt under her hands, how his touch had started an attraction burning within her when she had only meant to open a dialogue that would lead to …
To what, Jo? Soon or late, this had to come. You already knew it when you woke this morning, before you ever sent that telegram or received its reply. Acknowledge it and move on.
She made it to the room Bertie had arranged for her and Evie and stepped inside relieved to see her trunk had been delivered ahead of her. She hadn’t a room number to give the station porters that morning, only an address. Locking the door behind her, Josephine spied the en suite bath and she made a beeline for it, shedding her clothes as she went. The hotel had provided everything from towels to toiletries and ten minutes later, she was up to her neck in hot water and suds. Draping her arms on the rolled lip of the tub, Josephine closed her eyes and emptied her mind and slowly started to fill it, point by point.
The sun glinting off Alexi’s red hair … the sheen of sweat on his fair skin … the bright sky dazzling his steel blue eyes … the musky male scent of him … the calluses on his hands … the feather-light weight of his touch … the way those things made her feel …
She shoved her doubts down and walled them away, brick by brick, cementing her resolve with each impression she’d gleaned from her afternoon with him.
Pride ... Longing ... Isolation ... Pain. His need for friendship balanced against the suspicion of being used. The hope of sincerity from others even as he dreaded their betrayal. His willingness to spend lavishly to gain a mere evening’s company … How had he put it? ‘You have friends and I can only rent playmates’.
To those bricks she added more, the slights and insults she’d suffered as an outcast. Circus folk. Not fit to shine a beggar’s boots. Dirty … filthy … thieving … whoring …
Oh yes. She had plenty of brick and mortar to wall away the secrets she dared not expose to Kalashnikov, pain enough to make him shy away from that corner of her heart where she kept her father’s memory alive. That corner was sacrosanct. No one would enter it, save her. God as her witness, she would keep it so, no matter what happened.
So Josephine reclined in the tub as the light outside faded and the bathwater cooled, and she studied her memories, reinforcing what she must to make the seduction real.
Evie came into their room, not sure whether she expected to see Miss Josephine or not. Earlier in the day, Evie had been put in charge of luncheon at Alexi's villa. It was everything she had imagined her mother's dream house to be - elegant, beautiful and away from the grime and ugliness of the city. She should've been gobsmacked. But she hadn't been, not even a little. Some of it was knowing she wasn't really in charge. Evie spun a tangle with the best and her ordering the servants around was a spin. A high up spin, but a spin all the same. But that wasn't it.
All through luncheon and afterwards, Evie had felt that little black ball of upset grow in her stomach as nothing seemed right about the whole thing. She kept arguing with herself even as she ate the food, most of it just chewed and swallowed unnoticed.
Maybe it's just not the right size. Or maybe it should be something more English. Or maybe it was because it really wasn't hers.
But all the time, that inner voice of warning kept speaking up, saying the same thing every time. "It's all cake, Evie. The fund, the house, the dream. All cake and you should've puzzled that out a long time ago."
Evie had wanted to talk to Josephine about it, maybe, or at least get her thoughts on the house. But she hadn't shown up for the luncheon and now when Evie needed her, would she be here or would she be sharing sheets with Alexi?
It was quiet in the rooms. Nothing but the murmur of the harbor and the sibilant whisper of water in the tub broke the silence. Josephine had progressed to adding her memories of David to the mental legend when an errant sound tugged at her ear, a sound that did not belong. Footsteps. Not a maid. Josephine regretted the position of the tub—it put her back to the door and the mirror over the vanity did not let her see into the next room. She put her hand on her throwing knife beneath the water and lowered her eyelids to a slit to feign sleep. Every muscle in her body taut, she sharpened her ears to track the progress of the sound.
"Miss Josephine?" Evie called out lightly into the room. If Miss Josephine was paying attention, she should've heard Evie coming in - she hadn't made any real effort to be quiet. But the two of them had more than a few things in common, and one of them was a healthy alertness all the time, everywhere. Evie didn't want to get a knife in the skull because she got careless and Miss Josephine didn't. The knife throwing training hadn't been that long ago and Miss Josephine's talents were still fresh in her mind.
"I'm in here, Evie." Josephine sagged against the tub, relieved. Thank God she's safe.
Josephine sat up and carefully flicked the water free of her blade. Made of a single piece of metal and well honed and oiled, only a few beads of moisture clung to it as she balanced it delicately on the lip of the tub.
"How was luncheon?"
"People ate. Ain't that different from home." Evie noticed the knife and a small smile crossed her face. Had that one right at least. "I saw you didn't make it. You busy elsewhere?" She kept her tone curious rather than accusatory.
“Yes.”
Water splashed and ran as Josephine rose naked from the tub and reached for a towel. Backstage costume changes and the close quarters of the wagons had stamped out body prudery years ago. She automatically swept the bath and the room beyond with a look, comparing what she saw against her memory, a habit as automatic as breathing, before toweling off her knife. Evie stood three steps into the room on the marble tile, her bare cat feet silent where a human’s would not. Other than that, everything else seemed as she left it.
“People eat.” Josephine spared the girl a glance and a smile before calmly drying off, her dark hair shedding water down her back. “Everywhere. It’s one of the universals that ties us together, whether you are a native of darkest Africa or a banker from Stockholm. It’s practically a guaranteed demilitarized zone, though not always. I think I read somewhere that one of the Khans of Mongolia killed all his rivals by having them to dinner.”
Evie didn't spare any real thought for Josephine's nudity, other than a brief burst of irrational jealousy at Josephine's more rounded figure. Nudity aside, the short one word answer pretty much confirmed what Evie thought. When you got close to someone, that's when a man would sweep in and change it all.
Just went to show, Evie thought. World kept moving and twisting, but people would never change. Different faces but always the same in the end.
She turned to walk out. "I'll give you your space, miss." If Josephine didn't want to talk, it weren't no fur off her back.
Josephine’s ear caught the tone even as her eye caught the offended line of Evie’s ears and whiskers and internally she felt her balance shifting from the mission-mind to the everyday. Dammit. That’s torn it. Well, get in there and mend that fence, Jo. You need her on your side tonight. Josephine wrapped the bath towel under her arms and strode into the bedroom. She called out, he voice soft. “Evie, wait. Please. Don’t leave.”
"Why? Don't want to get in your way, miss. You got dinner to go to and all." Evie was just guessing, but she was pretty sure Miss Josephine had plans with the Russian prince tonight. "Unless you need help getting dressed, miss? Do you already have your things picked out?" Evie moved over to Josephine's trunk and made to start removing clothes. Her voice had slipped into what she called her Sally Servant, good for appeasing high ups who were concerned about people stepping out of their place.
"Stop." Josephine went to Evie and gently turned the girl away from the trunk. "I don't need a servant. Not tonight. And never you. You’re my partner."
She didn't have to look far to meet Evie's eyes. The girl was only sixteen but already they were of a height. Josephine took a deep breath and confessed.
"I have to do something tonight. Something potentially dangerous and I need to know you're on my side. I …." Don’t say it. She can’t tell what she doesn’t know. Already Josephine could feel her mission-mind slipping back into place, putting everything not necessary for its completion at one remove, insidiously weakening her ties to Evie when she needed them the most. “I’m seeing Kalashnikov, yes, and I … might not be able to come back. If that happens, I’ll need your help. Will you give it? Have my back?”
"Not coming back tonight? Not coming back forever? Which is it, miss?" Evie stood there glaring at her. It wasn't right making her care and then threatening not to come back.
“I’m hoping to come back tonight. But …,” Josephine paused, wondering how much to tell her. She’s no innocent, Jo. She knows the score, said the practical side of her. Josephine caught the expression in the girl’s eyes and gauged the line of her shoulders. Memories of a grey horse galloping away in the morning mist rose unbidden and Josephine knew what she had to say next. “I’m not leaving you, Evie. Partners don’t give the slip or turn stag. Through thick and thin, right? Til the road ends. But tonight I’m hunting a tiger and I’m the bait. It could get ugly. I need to know that I have an out. That’s where you come in.”
"I ain't stupid, Miss Josephine. I pay attention enough to know that he's got dark that you want and you might have to spread your legs to get it." What was up for grabs, it seemed to Evie, would be whether Miss Josephine enjoyed it or not. "And you ain't empty in the brain box either. You know he's using you when you're using him." Evie held Josephine's eye as she continued on. "I ain't going to run off on you. But I ain't a tool to be hid away in the bottom of your trunk until you need me."
Touche, Evie. My condescension warranted that. Josephine closed her eyes and took it on the chin. A breath. A beat. Her mission-mind slipped back into place. She opened her eyes and let some of that coldness show through.
“Objectivity. Good. Take this.” Josephine pulled her gun from its compartment in her trunk. “Not to shoot someone, unless you think you must, but to create a distraction. Watch the boat. If anyone comes aboard after I get there, anyone you think might mean trouble, fire off a shot in the air. It will bring people running and frighten the intruder off and it will warn me that trouble’s coming. I need that shot, Evie. I might miss your whistle but I won’t miss a gun.”
She cracked the cylinder and loaded it. Closed the revolver up again. Checked the sights.
“Follow at a distance. You don’t have to watch me while we’re engaged but use your best judgment. I promise you, I will do everything I can to come back but I will be vulnerable. My opponent is taller and stronger and I will be on his turf. I have a few gambits prepped but if it goes bad for me, I trust you to know what to do.” Josephine faced Evie again, her gaze and her expression frank. “You’re my partner, not a child. Will you do this?”
"When you ask me to be your twixt and tween like that, Miss Josephine, then I will." Evie reached out and took the gun. She didn't like guns, generally. They were noisy and usually the last thing she wanted most of the time was noise to mark her. But she wasn't breaking in to someone's house now. She was making sure Miss Josephine came back. No way in hell's fiery reaches was she going to let someone take her new friend from her.
She quirked a tiny smile. "And don't worry none about your privacy, I got no interest in watching you make the beast with two backs with him." Evie had plenty of opportunities for that on the job in London and had always looked away. She wasn't no peeper.
Josephine hugged Evie hard, relishing the girl’s soft fur on her cheek. She whispered delicately into Evie’s ear. “Thank you.”
She straightened, pulled her clothes from her trunk, and let the towel drop. Shaking out her knickers, she stepped into them and drew the tapes tight. “When we’re done, we’ll meet back here and debrief. Having another set of eyes on the business would be valuable. You will catch things I miss.” Josephine paused, one leg in her jodhpurs as she looked at Evie. “You are not a tool to me, Evie. You are much more than that. You are a kindred spirit. With you I don’t have to hide what I am or soften what I must say or do on the job. You understand at a level that no one else in the party can. Even with Ezekiel and Katherine, I have to hold back or justify it.”
She yanked her jodhpurs on with some force and buttoned them. Her camisole and sweater went on next. She pulled her hair free, then picked up her harness and slid home a knife.
“Ezekiel was angry at me the other day in London, positively livid. And you know what?” Josephine slid another knife into its sheath. “I resented him for it. I took his anger to mean he thought I couldn’t be trusted to hold to my end, to make my decisions, and do the job. Dammit, Evie, he should have known without my having explain why I had to detain that airship. That it turned out for naught wasn’t the point.” A third knife and a fourth slid into place. “The point was eliminating the parties aboard as conspirators against the Crown. I had reasonable doubt as to their innocence and I had to verify it. For all I knew, they’d rigged it to explode over the Palace or the Houses of Parliament.” A fifth knife and a sixth. “Had it, it would have been on my head alone, because I had the power to stop it from happening and didn’t follow through.”
She buckled the harness into place and swung her arms to check how it lay. A pat for a knife. Right where it should be. Good. She sat on the bed and pulled on a boot.
“I regretted not having you there, Evie. Lupin gave us the slip. You might have caught him. You’ve got something that no one else that day had—you’ve got the dark of it, the way people think, the twisty paths they tread. Polite society is polite in part because they refrain from that knowledge. They keep themselves from thinking it, understanding it, using it. It keeps most of us safe, most of the time.”
She pulled on her other boot, gave both a stamp to settle them. Two knives went into them, one boot each. Back to her trunk she went, pulling open another drawer. She paused and withdrew her father’s watch, its chain slithering through her fingers. She held it between her palms as if in prayer and raised it to her lips.
“But there’s sheep. And there’s wolves. And I ….” She kissed the watch and slipped it in her pocket and gave Evie a feral grin. “I’m the shepherd with the rifle.”
Evie thought it was more likely she was one of the wolves that the sheep feared than someone they'd look to for protection, but she kept her bone box shut on that one. She also decided it wouldn't be appropriate to mention that she had no interest in catching Lupin. From everything she'd heard about him, he was an ass with an ego the size of Parliament. And his methods were better suited to those of a magician than a proper thief. But even given that, he worked the cross-trade, just like she did. You don't turn stag on one of your own.
"I appreciate you trusting me. Those what trust me get my best." Those that didn't got what they deserved.
“And I’ll give you my best, so that I may deserve your trust. That’s a promise.” Josephine slid her leather coat and filled its pockets, then donned a matching leather hat. She ran her hands from her shoulders to her boot tops, verifying everything was in place, then cut a look at Evie from under the wide brim of her hat.
“Let’s go.”
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