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Beneath the Church of San Sebastiano, outskirts of Ferrara – February 1911
Curtis panted raggedly, blowing like a racehorse at the end of a long, arduous race. His body did not feel like his own, quite. Strewn about him were unmoving bodies, while more bodies, dead for hundreds of years now, gazed emptily from arched niches set high in the walls of the catacomb. He sweated in the damp coolness. The air was heavy with the metallic tang of blood.
He had a man pinned against a crumbling rock column, his right forearm applying a nicely judged amount of pressure against his windpipe. His left hand held a knife directly beneath the man’s sternum. The man’s arms dangled uselessly; he wept, silent tears rolling down in fat streaks that glistened in the wavering light of the torches.
Let him weep. As long as it didn’t interfere with his ability to speak, Curtis didn’t care.
“Da Silva,” Curtis said gently. It did not feel like his voice. “Where is he? Dov’è da Silva? This is the last time I’m asking.”
The man started laughing, a high-pitched titter edged with hysteria. “Vafanculo,” he said, and spat weakly at Curtis’s face.
Curtis sighed, then pushed the knife in and up. The man gave a quiet gurgle, his eyelids flying wide open before immediately drooping to half-mast; with a final choking sigh, he slumped forward. Curtis pulled the knife out and let the dead weight fall.
Curtis knelt and wiped the knife clean on the man’s jacket, cocking his head in thought. The catacombs were not that large. Daniel was somewhere in here.
What if you don’t find him in time? a voice whispered in his head. What if you’re too late? Something dark and ugly swelled inside him, a towering black wave that threatened to smash through his detachment. Curtis breathed slowly and pushed it down as he rifled the bodies for pistols and ammunition. Later. He would allow himself the luxury of feeling later. For now, there was only the need to find Daniel.
It was easy enough to find the corridor he had not explored yet: it lacked fresh corpses and blood. Curtis stalked down it, a lion with the scent of his prey in his nostrils. The sanctified dead in their niches marked his progress with their arms crossed over chests, hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked.
###
Curtis found Daniel in a central chamber, gagged, naked, and tied spreadeagle to a stone altar, covered in sweat and bruises and blood. A robed man stood by Daniel’s head, holding a knife to his throat.
A buzz of strong emotion threatened to break Curtis’s calm. He refused to let it. Daniel’s eyes gleamed with a hectic light; his eyelashes fluttered at the sight of Curtis framed in the entryway. A fat purple bruise distorted his left cheek.
“Too late, Curtis,” the robed man called out, his cultivated Oxford drawl incongruous, almost comic in the setting. Curtis kept his pistol trained on him.
“Too late for what, Barnhart?” asked Curtis.
“Everything! The plans are on their way to Germany as we speak, and Massucci is out of your grasp. Lower your gun. Lower it!”
Curtis dropped his arm slowly, carefully.
“Now put the gun down, or I will slit da Silva’s dag—”
Curtis aimed and squeezed the trigger from his hip in one fluid motion. The gunshot rang through the air. A red spot bloomed in Barnhart’s right eye like a small, lethal flower. Barnhart let out a soft exhale and fell to the floor with a thump.
Eight strides, and Curtis was at Daniel’s side, pulling the gag out and cutting him free with the knife he pulled from his boot. He swept his eyes over Daniel as he pulled the ropes off; all his hurts seemed superficial, the purple weal on his face the worst by far, but the sight of the cuts and bruises was still enough to spark the beginnings of a blind tide of rage. Curtis refused to succumb. They weren’t safe yet. Daniel winced and shook his hands and feet, his mouth and jaw working.
“Report?” asked Curtis. Words were difficult in his state; he did not trust himself to say more.
“I’m well enough,” Daniel grated out hoarsely as Curtis helped him sit up. “That was a near thing. Barnhart was lying, by the—fuck, look out—”
Curtis caught the flicker of movement from the entryway with the corner of his eye, and without thinking threw his body between Daniel and danger. He flung the knife at the shadowy figure without bothering to aim, driven by pure instinct; the knife left his hand just as the bullet smashed into his right shoulder, the report of the gun barely registering on his consciousness. He heard a shout, then another shot, and a second bullet grazed his left arm, a hot stripe of sensation that he barely paid attention to because he was charging at the man.
Luck had smiled on him: the knife had buried itself deep in the meat of the shooter’s pectoral, which proved to be enough of a distraction that Curtis was able to bowl him over. The man’s head hit the floor with a sound like a dropped melon; his eyes rolled up into his head, but Curtis refused to take chances: he grabbed a handful of the man’s hair, set his other hand on the man’s chin, and with a sharp, practiced movement, snapped his neck.
Curtis sat back. Pain had not yet fully arrived, but he knew by the dull, sick throb on his shoulder that it was waiting in the wings. Blood, hot and slick, saturated his shirt and waistcoat. A thick, clammy sweat clung to his brow.
He stood and walked to the entryway to check the passage. All seemed clear, at least by the light of the guttering torches. If anyone remained who had any fight left in them, Curtis and Daniel would simply have to take them as they came.
Curtis turned around, fighting a wave of dizziness, and made his way back to Daniel on feet that did not feel entirely connected to his body. Daniel had stripped Barnhart and appropriated his clothing, so baggy on his slender frame that it verged on comical, but it was better than nothing.
“Your shoulder,” Daniel said. “Off with your shirt, now.” His expression tightened further when he saw Curtis’s face. The battle rage was beginning to recede, and in its wake, the awareness of all his body had gone through began to assert itself. The pain of the bullet wound, in particular, was beginning to clamor through his body unpleasantly.
Curtis leaned against the altar while Daniel helped him with his waistcoat and shirt. Daniel hissed out a breath.
“Bad?” asked Curtis, not bothering to look down.
There was a weighted pause.
“I’ve seen worse.” The sound of ripping cloth filled the air. “But not on you.” More ripping. “I’m no field surgeon, but I’m quite sure we need to stanch that bleeding. Hold still.”
Having Daniel, not exactly a tender nurse, apply the makeshift bandage wasn’t the most pleasant experience, but there was no better solution given their circumstances. Curtis ground his teeth and clutched the edge of the altar with enough force to cramp his fingers, a discomfort that helped distract from whatever hellish thing Daniel was doing.
“Right,” said Daniel after several moments of silence broken only by Curtis’s increasingly labored breathing and the rustle of cloth. “I’ve done the best I can. Let us away.”
###
They had just reached the secret exit for the catacombs when Archie came over queer. He had been feeling dizzy and strange for some time as they picked their way through the labyrinthine passages, stepping over the occasional corpse. Archie had doggedly ignored the signals his body was shrieking at him, because it wasn’t safe, and Daniel needed him. Failure meant putting Daniel’s safety at risk, so he did not allow himself to fail. Despite his compromised state he was still a better fighter than Daniel, so he took point, checked each intersection, and braced himself to move quickly if he had to, dizziness and pain be damned.
And then the late afternoon sun struck his eyes. He hadn’t even realized he’d opened the door, but there his hand was on the handle. The glare hit him strangely: it was too bright, an overwhelming white that washed out everything within view, a disproportionate reaction even accounting for their time in the flickering subterranean dimness of the catacombs. Archie could barely make out the shapes of the trees before him, or even that of Daniel, within arm’s reach.
Daniel. His mouth was moving. Archie thought he had perhaps been talking for some time, but the droning roar in Archie’s ears drowned out all other noise. He tried to open his mouth to tell Daniel as much, but found his lips stiff and recalcitrant. A shiver overtook him. He was cold. So horribly cold. When did he become this cold?
Daniel, Daniel. He looked so worried, but he need not fear; Archie would never let anything happen to him, never, and he was trying to tell Daniel as much when white light shaded into black at the edges and darkness overcame his sight.
###
Fire, fire, everywhere. He had to run, the flames were almost upon him, the furnace blast of heat a blow upon his skin, but his limbs were useless slabs of lead that he had to overcome, so he kicked, and pushed, and screamed—
“Shh,” said a voice. “Shh.”
Archie forced open his eyes, and promptly wished he hadn’t. Pain struck his head and arced through the rest of his body. A moan, bestial in its suffering, filled the air. That was his voice, he realized dimly. Daniel wobbled into view next to him.
“My dear,” said Daniel. His voice sounded far away, murky. As if he were submerged in that fish-pond from his poetry. Murky water, unclean, broken glass, Christ Archie hurt, why did everything hurt….
“Drink,” said Daniel. A glass pressed against his lips, the sensation cold and startling; he flinched and batted it away. Liquid slopped onto his neck and chest. He heard a curse, rough words a contrast to the gentle hands that wiped him off. His eyes drooped shut.
A blink. A moment of blankness.
“Drink,” said Daniel, and Archie’s eyes flew open, the note of command piercing his haze. Right. Orders. He was a soldier; he knew about following orders. This time, when the glass pressed against his lips he opened them obediently, and choked down the foul, bitter stuff.
His head swam. He opened his mouth, then realized he had forgotten what he had wanted to say, but he knew it was important. Vital. He looked at Daniel beseechingly. Daniel was a clever fellow. Cleverest fellow he knew. Surely if anyone could divine the hot, agonizing thoughts squirming around in his brain, it would be him.
Daniel looked odd. Tense. Afraid? Archie tried to fumble out reassuring words.
“M’fine,” he finally managed, after several attempts. “Fine.”
“Yes, absolutely. Right as rain. Nothing a bit of sleep won’t fix,” said Daniel, the hard glitter in his eyes evident even through the fog that clouded Archie’s sight. His voice had cracked on “fix.”
Don’t worry, Archie wanted to say. I’m never sick. Just need to rest, that’s all. He couldn’t muster the energy. The words died before they had a chance to leave his chest.
A hand in his hand. Cool, slim fingers against his forehead. He gave a gasp of relief.
Don’t leave. Did he say that out loud? Impossible to tell.
“Go to sleep,” said Daniel, his voice slipping back into the depths of the fish-pond. “I’m not going anywhere.”
###
Hooded figures surrounded Daniel as he lay, naked and splayed, on the altar. Anonymous hands held him down at wrist and ankle, pale against the warm olive of his skin. The waver of torchlight threw uncanny shadows on the tableau, shadows that danced and capered.
A robed figure bent down and grabbed a handful of Daniel’s hair, yanking his head back. A knife swam out of the dark and descended towards Daniel’s neck.
Archie roared and tried to charge, but found he couldn’t move. He looked down. Webbing, warm and sticky and white, encased him and held him to the wall. He looked back at the altar just in time to see the knife cut across Daniel’s neck, the movement slow, leisurely, as if the blade proceeded through syrup.
The slash gaped open with similar languidness; blood fountained out in a long, elegant arc. Daniel’s death grimace and the luxuriant spray broke something in Archie; fire and fury flowed through the breach. He lunged again and again against his restraints, screaming Daniel’s name….
He awoke with a jerk, Daniel’s name still on his lips. His mouth felt dry, awful.
All of him felt awful.
“I’m here, shh,” came a voice next to him. “I’m here.”
Archie turned his head, the motion spearing him with pain, and yes, there was Daniel. Whole, alive, his throat unmarred by that terrible crimson gape. Upright and holding Archie’s hand. What a miracle that was.
“Drink,” said Daniel. Archie made a face, but drank. It tasted terrible—he thought he would be accustomed to it by now, but each time he was struck anew by its foulness. At least it was wet. He drank and drank until Daniel took the glass away, and then he closed his eyes.
The sound of something being swirled in water, then of water being wrung out. A cold, wet cloth on his forehead. The relief tore a moan out of him. Another damp cloth, run along his neck and down his chest. Archie shuddered and breathed.
All of him burned with pain, but his shoulder was unspeakable. Bits and pieces of memory floated to the surface, muddled and colored by dreams. The bullet punching into him. Daniel, naked and tied to the altar. The knife against his throat.
An echo of dream-grief panged through him. He licked his lips and opened his eyes again. He tried to raise his hand to take ahold of Daniel’s, but he found it shockingly difficult—outright impossible, in fact.
“Alive,” he managed to rasp out. His heart squeezed within him. Daniel was still here. His worst fear had not come true after all.
“You do appear to be, yes, despite your best efforts to the contrary,” said Daniel, voice tart.
Archie frowned. But he had never been the one in danger. “No, you,” he said. “You’re. Alive. S’what matters.”
Daniel stopped running the cloth over him, and stared, an unreadable look on his face. He sat down on the edge of the bed and took Archie’s hand, which was what Archie had wanted all along. He smiled. It was good to achieve one’s goals.
Daniel did not smile back. “You impossible man,” he hissed, and frowned ferociously.
Archie was unfazed. Daniel had called him much worse, and sometimes he even deserved it. “Your man,” he whispered. “Through’n through.”
Daniel’s jaw clenched so hard that a muscle fluttered. “Impossible,” he said again, a note Archie didn’t recognize creeping through his voice. “Stop talking and go to sleep. You need your rest.”
Archie wanted to argue—he had demonstrably been doing nothing but rest for…for ages, now, Christ. How long had it been? But he was too tired to argue, which perhaps proved Daniel’s point.
He closed his eyes and plummeted into a restless, pain-wracked sleep.
###
Hours and days slipped past in a muddled, hazy rush. The pain ebbed and grew, but never fully left. His sleeps grew longer yet somehow less satisfying. Changing the dressings on his shoulder and arm was an excruciating ordeal, but with time, the urge to struggle subsided; struggling took effort, and he had none to spare. Swallowing became difficult, which made the foul decoctions Daniel insisted on pouring down his throat unbearably unpleasant. He did it anyway, because Daniel needed him to, and he had yet to find it in him to deny Daniel something he needed.
His one constant, aside from the pain, was Daniel, who, true to his word, was there every time Archie clawed his way back into consciousness, the fading bruise on his cheek Archie’s one way of telling time. One night, Archie woke up to find Daniel slumped face-down on the covers, his head pillowed on his forearms. Archie stared at the unruly black curls with streaks of silver threading through them, and despite the pain and heat that ravaged him, wanted nothing more than to feel their springy softness against his fingertips. He tried, but couldn’t summon the energy or strength to move his hand those few inches.
He supposed he should find that worrying, but he was unable to summon enough energy to do that, either.
###
When Archie woke up this time, somebody was crying—softly, discreetly, but the wet, hitching noises were unmistakable. Archie sighed and turned his head. It took everything he had.
Daniel sat next to him, face buried in his hands, shoulders shaking.
“M’dear,” Archie said. His voice was shocking, a shattered croak that he barely recognized as his own. He tried to remember the last time he tried to speak, and found that he could not. “Daniel.”
Daniel looked up, his face a wet crumple that he promptly tried to smooth. He swiped a shirtsleeve across his eyes. “Archie. You’re awake. I was—we were afraid you wouldn’t—” His mouth snapped shut.
Afraid he wouldn’t what, Archie wanted to ask, but the thought puffed away like so many dandelion seeds at the sight of a tear trickling its way down Daniel’s cheek.
“Don’t cry.” He breathed for some moments before he could summon the strength to say the next words. “Can’t bear it.”
“You are the stupidest man,” snapped Daniel, the effect ruined by a hitched sob. “Stop talking and save your energy, for God’s sake.”
Archie smiled, a poor, pained ghost of a smile. His body sang with pure agony, but he finally remembered what he had wanted to say—Christ, ages ago now, it felt like. He mustered up everything he had.
“I love you,” he whispered.
Daniel’s face collapsed. “Seven years together, and you tell me this now?” He belied his waspish tone by taking Archie’s hand in his own and pressing it to his mouth.
“Ridiculous man,” he whispered into Archie’s palm. And then softer, so softly that Archie did not know if he was meant to hear it at all, voice pure East End now: “Don’t you die on me. Don’t you fucking well dare.”
Archie sighed. “Not planning to,” he said, or tried to, but he didn’t have the strength. He drifted off to sleep with Daniel saying something into his hand, the same thing, mumbled over and over. Something Archie couldn’t quite make out.
###
Archie’s eyes drifted open. His mind felt quiet, wiped empty. The overwhelming sense he had was one of deep relief. He no longer burned. His shoulder hurt like blazes, but the pain felt contained—a caged lion, instead of one intent on consuming him alive. And he was tired. So very tired. Flattened in a way he could not recall ever feeling, not even while recovering from losing his fingers in Jacobsdal…good God, almost eight years ago now.
His mouth felt appalling. Foul and parched, his teeth encased in fuzz. He desperately needed some water, but stirring himself to call for some felt utterly out of his reach, much less looking about the room and acquiring it for himself.
He had just taken in a deep breath and steeled himself to roll over when he heard the door open, followed by a rapid light tread that sounded nothing like Daniel’s. A wizened woman’s face popped into view, grey hair caught in a tight bun. She gave a sharp cluck and rattled off a short phrase in Italian.
“Water,” he croaked. His brain, thick as porridge and half as useful, scrambled for the Italian. “Acqua. Per favore.”
She chattered some more and poured him a glass from a pitcher he had neglected to notice on a bedside table. She helped him sit up, then helped him drink. Archie loathed his incapacity, the old, familiar burn of embarrassment and bruised pride flaring back to life after many years of dormancy.
The water tasted delicious. She took the glass away from him before he was fully done, talking volubly while gesturing emphatically with her hands. Archie sighed. He was familiar with this dance—he’d make himself sick if he drank too fast, yes, he knew, everyone who had ever said so was undoubtedly correct, but it was difficult to believe when thirst had sunk its sharp teeth into him.
“Da Silva,” he said. “Where is he? Ah.” Christ, it was hard enough to speak in English as it was. Why couldn’t he have gotten himself shot in jolly old England? “Signor da Silva. Portare…qui?”
The woman nodded and said something to him. He didn’t understand a word beyond “sì.” She must have taken pity on his cloddish English soul, because she said, haltingly, “Signor da Silva. I bring.”
“Grazie,” he said, too tired to even nod.
He closed his eyes, just to rest them. When he started awake, Daniel, who was next to him, jumped too.
“Archie,” Daniel said, voice broken and incredulous. “Archie. I—” His mouth snapped shut.
Archie was not sure he had ever seen Daniel in such a state. Eyes red-rimmed, hair a fright, unshaven, face gaunt and haggard. It was a disorienting preview of the future: Daniel as an old man.
“Daniel,” he rasped, and somehow marshalled enough strength to fumble for his hand.
Daniel’s fingers immediately tightened around Archie’s, but he said nothing more, merely stared at their linked fingers with a carefully fixed expression on his face, his agitation betrayed only by his quick, harsh breaths.
“Sorry if I worried you,” said Archie, his words dropping like stones in the brittle silence.
Daniel’s eyes flew to Archie’s. “You’re sorry?” His breathing grew harsher.
“If I could have managed it differently, I would’ve.”
“If you could’ve— You—” Daniel’s mouth trembled for a moment; he clamped his lips into a thin line, but it was no use: the shaking radiated to other parts of him until all of him was shivering, the only thing steady his grip on Archie’s hand. His dark eyes glittered, welled up—then spilled.
He did not sob. He did not keen. He buried his face in one hand and wept silently, his body wracked by shivers. Archie could do nothing but hold his hand and watch, a useless lump, as the man who held his entire heart in his hands dissolved by slow, painful degrees.
With a final shaky exhale, Daniel pulled his hand away. His face was a wet shambles. Archie had never wanted to kiss it more. Daniel pulled his hand away to fumble for a handkerchief.
Archie stayed silent and gave Daniel all the time he needed to pull himself together. He knew precisely how much Daniel loathed having his steely, glittering façade crack under strain—and this was not a crack so much as wholesale destruction.
Daniel stared at the twisted scrap of cambric in his hands as his breathing gradually steadied. When he looked back up at Archie, his eyes were raw pits of feeling.
“Archie,” he began, then stopped as he gathered himself again. “The good signora—well, it was hardly her fault, my Italian is not flawless. But I thought she had brought me to you because— You were so still, and the doctor finally said not to hold out hope, and after weeks of this, I thought— I thought….”
Words failed him then, his quicksilver Daniel with his clever tongue that always had a sharp riposte ready to deploy. He reached out for Archie’s hand silently and caught it in a crushing grip.
“Can’t get rid of me that easily,” said Archie. “Made of sterner stuff.”
Daniel moaned out a half-laugh. “I’m not. Archie, I thought I’d lost you. I thought—”
“Haven’t, though. Still stuck with me, poor blighter.”
Daniel’s laughter took on a tinge of hysteria. “I love you,” he said. “You great blockhead.”
“’Course you do,” said Archie. “Why put up with me otherwise?”
Daniel hiccupped. “Trampling your gigantic feet over everything.”
“Exactly.” Archie sighed. Fatigue washed over him. “Love you. My Daniel.”
Daniel took in a long, shuddering breath. “Never leave me. I couldn’t bear it.”
###
Recovery proceeded at a slow, hideous grind. Archie could hardly credit how thoroughly the fever had incapacitated him. He could barely walk for the first week, condemned instead to being wheeled about in a rolling chair. The first time Archie caught sight of his face, pale and cadaverous and hollow-eyed, he recoiled. No wonder Daniel thought he was at death’s door. Archie learned he had fought the fever for almost a month; his recovery, he gathered, was viewed as a minor miracle by the local medical authorities.
“Not a miracle,” said Daniel, “if they were acquainted with the Curtis capacity for sheer bloody-mindedness.”
“That’s hardly fair,” protested Archie. “It wasn’t bloody-mindedness. I wasn’t ready to leave you, that’s all.”
Daniel glared in response. Archie braced himself for Daniel to tell him to stop talking rot, but instead he leaned over and kissed Archie full on the mouth, leaving him light-headed.
Archie learned he had apparently been exceptionally lucky—well, aside from being shot in the first place, of course. The backup Archie had requested before he had gone hunting for Daniel had arrived shortly after he collapsed. Barnhart and Massucci had not been nearly as clever as they thought; Massucci had been apprehended at the border, and the plans recovered. There was some grumbling about the cleanup, but Archie could not find it in him to feel sorry. He asked Daniel what had transpired after he had been taken, and Daniel refused to provide details on the grounds that Archie would upset himself to no purpose, since there was nothing more to be done about it, and the perpetrators were all dead, besides.
Archie read between the lines and wished, sometimes, that they were alive, just so he could have the pleasure of killing them all over again.
Not that he was in any sort of state to exact vengeance. He was barely fit to walk unassisted. Taking a turn around the garden in the balmy March sun, filled with the unfamiliar sights and scents of spring in Ferrara, was all he was good for most days. When he was feeling spry, he’d take two turns, sometimes in a row.
Sir Maurice’s appearance was an inevitability, between the dramatic kidnapping of his top agent and the even more dramatic rescue that had resulted in the serious injury of his nephew. The only surprise was that he had not visited earlier. There had been a rapid exchange of telegrams after Archie’s fever broke, and a less-rapid but much more voluminous exchange of letters.
As Sir Maurice’s arrival approached, Daniel grew more and more visibly on edge. Archie waited for Daniel to come to him with what weighed on his mind. He always did eventually.
It finally happened one day while Archie sat on the back garden bench and watched bees drunk on the first warm day of the year buzz around pale cup-shaped flowers. Daniel approached soundlessly, as usual, and unceremoniously dropped himself onto the bench on Archie’s left.
Archie reached out a hand. Daniel took it absently, his dark brown eyes staring ferociously into the middle distance. Archie waited.
“What do you think,” said Daniel abruptly, “of retiring.”
Archie’s eyebrows shot up. Whatever he’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this.
“Retiring,” he said cautiously.
Daniel gave a sharp exhale; his fingers seized up in Archie’s grip, then loosened again. “I am willing to do much to thwart our adversaries, but I am absolutely, categorically not willing to put you at risk again. We have courted luck far too many times, and I feel no desire to push it any further. Also, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but neither of us is getting any younger.”
Archie made a soft huff of sound, a not-quite laugh. “Recent events have made this painfully clear, yes. Never had a blasted fever lay me so low in my life.”
Daniel made a guttural noise of exasperation. “That was no ordinary fever—which is precisely my point.” He turned his brilliant dark gaze to Archie’s face. “Ours is a young man’s game, my dear. I think it is past time that we got out of their way and left it to them.”
Archie digested this for some moments. “Don’t you think,” he eventually said, slowly and with great caution, “that you would become…well, bored?”
“Bored.” The silky tone of Daniel’s voice made the back of Archie’s neck prickle. “I propose that we leave a job that has done its utmost to maim and murder you in increasingly perverse ways as time has goes on, and your first concern is that I might get bored?”
“I know you,” Archie went on doggedly, knowing full well the danger he was courting, but counting on the fact that Daniel would not kick an invalid—not too hard, anyway. “I would wager that one week into our retirement, you will be tearing your hair out and pumping Merton for information so you can—”
“Tread carefully, Curtis.”
“—assist in whatever limited capacity you are able,” finished Archie. “And wherever you go, there goeth I, too. That’s the way it’s been since—well, the very beginning, really. I’m not opposed to retirement, my dear, but I should like to know what we would be doing if we were not doing—” He waved expansively with his right hand.
Daniel scowled and opened his mouth, but before he could say something, the housekeeper opened the back door and said something in Italian. Archie understood nothing except one crucial phrase: Signore Vaizey, recognizable even spoken with the broad, unfamiliar Italian vowels.
“What the devil— He isn’t fucking due till three days from now,” said Daniel, letting go of Archie’s hand and springing up.
“Well,” said Archie, “May as well beard the lion early as late.”
Daniel flashed him a look. “May as well,” he said, and turned around to offer a hand to help Archie up.
###
Sir Maurice awaited them in the study. He had always been an imposing presence, but this time, perhaps because of Archie’s own brush with mortality, he looked at his uncle—truly looked at him—for the first time in what felt like a very long while, and realized that the years were beginning to tell. Thinning hair had faded till only silvery wisps remained; liver-spotted skin hung loose on his imperious, fleshy face. His eyes, while still sharp, were buried in deep, crepey folds.
Sir Maurice was an old man. Frail, even. The fact hit Archie with a small, unpleasant shock.
Daniel and Archie made their greetings, then sat down in chairs across the desk from Sir Maurice. The familiarity felt dizzying; it could almost have been a normal debrief, except for Archie’s debility and the slant of butter-yellow Italian sunshine, the quality of the light like nothing in England.
Sir Maurice did not bother with niceties. He fixed a gimlet eye upon Archie and said, “Got your fool self shot, I see.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sir Maurice’s gaze did not soften. “Heard we almost lost you for good.”
“It was a near thing, or so I had been led to believe.”
Sir Maurice blinked, the motion slow and reptilian. “Bold of you to go haring off after a team of men armed to the teeth.”
“They took Daniel, sir,” said Archie. He almost added more—more details, more excuses, more explanations—but that was truly all it had boiled down to: Daniel had been taken, and Archie had no choice but to follow.
A caustic snort greeted his answer. “Headstrong fool. Should have known better—you’re no longer a young hound to go baying after prey with no thought for consequences. Still, no lasting harm done, I suppose.” He looked back and forth between Daniel and Archie. Archie wondered what he saw there—whether he fathomed the full extent of the bond that had first been forged years ago in the crucible of Peakholme, and that had weathered untold shocks since then.
“It will no doubt surprise you to hear,” continued Sir Maurice, “that you are not the only ones suffering from the travails of time.”
Daniel raised a sardonic brow. Archie frowned. “Sir?” asked Archie.
“What I’m trying to get at is that you two are not the only ones aging out of your useful life in service—at least in your current capacity.”
At that, Daniel sat forward. “Our current capacity?” he asked.
“I have been giving a great deal of thought to your situation ever since I’ve received news of Archie’s injury, and I have a proposition,” said Sir Maurice. “One that may be of particular interest to da Silva.” He smiled at them with a smile that was no less unnerving for all its avuncularity. Under his still-unsteady feet, Archie could feel the path of a new adventure opening.