Page 4 of The Crimson Throne (Spy and Guardian #1)

Samson

Southwark, London

The Clink Prison smells like piss and hopelessness.

Which makes it rather indistinguishable from the whole of London, actually, but there’s an added thickness to it all here, the stone walls trapping centuries of stench so the very air gets in on the torture, choking prisoners right from the gate.

Who needs a noose when a few inhales will clonk you out?

An exaggeration, that. Unfortunately. Especially when the Thames floods its banks like after the recent rain we had, and that living vein of excrement that keeps London functioning fills the lower floors of the Clink, forcing all the prisoners to steep in a pond of feral drowning rats and stagnant God-knows-what.

Only according to the bishop who runs this place, God does know what, and God rejoices in prisoners being met with just ends like this.

Unease prickles up my spine.

Just ends.

I hold hard to thoughts of the bishop of Winchester perched at his high and mighty pulpit while a tidal wave of putrid Thames water gushes over him as I wait in the Clink’s narrow entryway. If I let my mind stray to where I am, to why I’m here—

I set my jaw, face forward, and tug my brown wool doublet straight.

Bet the bishop of Winchester can’t swim.

A door creaks open and a man shuffles out, hacking wetly into a soiled rag.

He’s got a worn leather book open in one hand, and he sniffs, hacks, and spits on the grimy stones before glaring up at me.

He may be a guard on the right side of this prison, but he still looks like he’s been in the Clink too long, his gray hair stringy, his face pockmarked and carved with deep wrinkles.

“What prisoner ya here for again?”

I repeat it on a slow exhale. “Prisoners. Two. Hal and Oskar Swann.”

The guard grunts, making a great show of looking through the log.

He spits a second time and pops his eyes up to me. “Not seein’ anyone by those names here, m’afraid.”

“They were just brought in.” I let my desperation leak through.

Let that quake of fear enter my voice, and I bow my shoulders forward.

“Please, sir. Please. Our mother, she’s right losing her mind with worry.

She’d just sent Hal and Oskar out for peas is all.

Peas for supper. She’s near on with her time on the next baby, and the worry’s not doing nuffin’ for her, sir.

The surgeon come ’round and said we could lose ’em both if we don’t calm her down, and Hal, Hal’s the only one who can soothe her. He’s her angel, he is.”

I’m shaking now. Full-body vibrations, eyes wide and bloodshot, close to tears. I throw in a hard sniffle and a choked sob for good measure.

Some of the shaking is real.

I can hear a scream below me, muffled by the stones. Groaning, constant, from floors higher up. But the noises under our feet are what grab my focus the most. Have the lower floors flooded? Are Hal and Oskar down there?

Because of me?

I force the thought away. Hard. Not now.

The guard looks more disgusted at the thought of a man sobbing in his prison than he does moved to empathy. “As I said. I’m not seein’ no Hal or Oskar here, aye?”

Shit.

I’d really hoped to avoid having to do this. But part of me knew it’d come regardless.

This is how things work at institutions like the Clink, run by the illustrious, fair, honorable church. Is it Catholic now or Protestant? Can hardly keep track.

I reach into my doublet and pull out a small bag of coins.

One more pathetic sniffle. I’ve found most folks get mighty uncomfortable when a grown man of eighteen blubbers. Add on my height and bulk, and few people know how to take it when someone who should be all scowling and brooding is weeping.

The guard’s nostrils curl, but he snatches the bag from me, counts the coins, and nods before shuffling back through the door again.

I’m left in the narrow entryway, staring at the mildew-covered stones, listening to water burble far beneath my boots and the occasional persistent scream.

My shoulders pull back, and I keep my mind blank, blank .

No thoughts means no emotion.

No emotion means I stay in control.

After far too long, the door opens again, and the guard comes back out—this time with Hal and Oskar in tow.

Oskar’s got his arm wrapped around Hal’s narrow shoulders, and I can see every one of Hal’s eleven years in his shaking countenance.

I purse my lips and throw a quick, low whistle. It sounds like idle noise to anyone else, but it’s one of the partridge calls, signaling all clear.

Everything’s fine. I promise.

For a moment, a light flickers in Hal’s eyes.

For a moment, I think maybe I can salvage this. Maybe he won’t hate me too.

But Hal gawps at me, then looks away quick, like meeting my gaze is a death sentence.

My stomach swoops, and I nearly lose the war I’ve been waging against dry heaving.

He didn’t look at me that way before. And now terror’s lodged in his eyes. Like Oskar, one year on my eighteen; he’s kept me at arm’s length for a while, and his suspicion is proved right after yesterday.

A scowl is carved into Oskar’s face. He glares at me with all the fear and mixed hatred he usually packages up for the sake of survival. You can’t be picky about who your allies are in Southwark.

Arguing with Oskar’s a concern for later. For this moment, both of ’em look dry , and I manage a full breath.

Of nasty prison air.

A cough lodges in my throat, but I’m not done.

“Thank you, sir.” I turn to the guard and fall back into my fumbling, frantic persona, so desperate and relieved that I hurl my body at him, catching him in a grasping hug. “Oh, thank you kindly, sir. Our mama will be so happy. She’ll—”

The guard shoves me away with a disgusted sneer. “Back off. Get gone, the lot of you.”

Oskar usually catches on. We play on people; it’s what we do.

But he doesn’t pick up my act, glaring at me hard, and Hal, his face half buried in Oskar’s shirt, looks out with big blue eyes that are watery, worried—scared.

And that’s what guts me most, that Hal’s fixed to be someone else who avoids me back home.

If Oskar lets me go back home.

“Out.” The guard throws another hacking cough into his soiled rag and disappears back into the prison.

We shuffle toward the main door and dive quickly to freedom.

The bright blue sky and potent sunlight outside the Clink hit us like daggers, but all three of us have the good sense to stay quiet as we walk calmly through Winchester Palace.

We weave around the various buildings cluttered up next to the Clink, and finally, finally, we topple into the street outside the palace grounds.

I want to keep going. Keep on walking and walking until I can’t smell London at all anymore, until I can get the stench of rot and agony and death out of my nose.

I want to breathe, but I can’t so long as the buildings around us are just the same, the Southwark neighborhood crowded with whorehouses and seedy pubs, the streets gone to mud.

We’re out of the Clink, out of the palace grounds, but I’ll never be out, will I?

Oskar and Hal start walking down the road, back toward the little room we share with half a dozen others. But the moment I turn to follow, Oskar whips on me.

Before he can speak, I gotta try.

“We got attacked,” I say. “You can’t expect me to just stand by while—”

Oskar’s glare is on fire. “We run. You know that. We don’t stick around to pummel our marks.

” His voice is a hiss, so close to the Clink still, with people walking past us on the road.

“You nearly killed a baron, Samson,” Oskar continues, upper lip curling over his teeth.

“With Hal there too. You knew it was his first time out. You knew, and you still went off half-cocked and screwed us all.”

Hal fully shoves his face against Oskar’s side. With that turn away, the last of my resolve vanishes.

The baron’d been a patron of the brothel we live next to. None of the girls there liked him; he was cruel, the sort who left bruises.

The sort we took pleasure in tricking, then robbing blind.

Only this baron fought back. And alerted others nearby, his friends. The putrid little room had filled quickly with bodies and fury.

Those men could’ve killed Hal. Could’ve killed Oskar too; one man landed a good blow to his stomach, I know he did. I know Oskar’s gotta be smarting from it, but he pulls Hal closer to him, his scowl unwavering on me.

“I had to get us out,” I defend. “I had to—”

“You had to do nothing,” Oskar barks. “You said you’d get it under control. You promised it wouldn’t happen again.”

My hands ball into fists, knuckles pulling, aching. There are cuts all along them. The bones themselves feel bruised.

I don’t remember beating the men unconscious.

Don’t remember anything until coming to, and Hal’s there sobbing, and Oskar’s shouting at me to stop, but there were already guards coming—

I was the only one of us to make it out the window. Thought I could reach back up and help Hal down. But they ended up in the Clink, and I didn’t.

A shiver rolls across my back, makes my arms twitch.

The move is too sudden.

Oskar yanks Hal behind him. His anger deepens, wraps up tight around his fear, until he’s got his arm out in defense. Hal makes a strangled sob against Oskar’s back, and my heart shatters into a hundred blades that cut up the inside of my body.

I’m sorry , I want to say. It’s the curse. I won’t hurt you.

But I can’t promise that.

My chin drops to my chest, tangles of red hair coming down in sheets that hide me for an unsatisfying pause. I’ve apologized before. The last time, when someone jumped us while we were walking home, and I came to over a groaning man.

Samson’s had one of his fits again. That curse, he says. All but killed a man.