Agent: Kingdom of Maidenhead Book Two, page 10
I instinctively yank my hand out of the drawer and grab my hurting knuckles. I look up in shock at the boy, and I see that he is holding another pair of daggers in his hands.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he clucks at me.
He sets one of his daggers on his side of the desk. He stands and leans over the desk.
“Please hold the drawer open,” he politely asks.
I do so, and he then drops six shells out of his hand into the drawer, so I know my revolver is empty. He then pulls his two daggers out of my drawer. He sits down again, and the daggers all disappear so fast that I have no idea where they are sheathed.
“Just so you don’t feel the need to report me,” he says, as he holds out a heavy piece of card paper.
It is a license to carry concealed weapons. I look at it very closely and I can tell that it is real.
“Bit?” I say, reading the name on it.
“Yep,” he replies.
I can see conversing with him can quickly become infuriating, if he doesn’t want to give out any information.
“No last name,” I state.
Just so he can’t get away with some neutral answer that says little or nothing, I purposely don’t say it as a direct question. Of course, this time, he chooses to be forthcoming.
“I grew up as a beggar in the South Docklands,” he says. “I had no name that I know of. A kindly tinker with a speech impediment would drop a silver bit in my cup two or three times a week. He would try to say, ‘Here’s your bit,’ but he could rarely get it all out. He would usually say, ‘Here bit’ or just ‘Bit.’ Folks just started calling me Bit, so I started to answer to it. I never gave myself a last name as a boy.”
“As a boy?” I ask. “Are you implying you can disguise yourself as a girl?”
“I’ve been known to, from a pre-pubescent girl of eleven up to a young woman in my early twenties who is heir to at least a county.”
“Can you carry them off?”
“Flawlessly. The only disguise I’m starting to have trouble with is as a ten-year-old boy. I’m likely going to have to stop my age regression at eleven from now on.”
“Are you sure you can carry it off, or are you just boasting?”
“You seemed convinced the day before yesterday.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m no thief, sir,” the boy says in perfect imitation of the delivery boy from two days ago. “If you keep shaking me, I’ll drop my delivery and won’t get paid.”
“Impossible.”
“Thank you for the deeds to all of those properties. That was an exceptionally honorable thing to do. I’ll make sure that they are put to proper legal use. A use that helps people as honorably as the gesture you made to the delivery boy.”
“Still impossible.”
“You could have stepped in and stopped Hedry the Jerk sooner,” the boy says. “I almost did drop my delivery.”
“Really? You were worried about making the delivery? I thought it was just a disguise.”
“The disguise only works if you live it. In that guise, if I take on a delivery, it is my highest priority until it is complete. Just as if I lived my entire life as that delivery boy. That is why the buildings will be used as the delivery boy would have if he could afford to.”
“As for Hedry, he is good at what he does,” I defensively say. “Dealing with people other than suspects is difficult for him.”
“You can tell him for me that if I ever witness him mistreating Murmur again, he and I are going to have a meeting that he is not going to enjoy,” Bit says very darkly.
I quickly realize that he is neither joking nor exaggerating. I fear for Hedry’s health, well-being, and very life at this point. Bit is literally deadly serious.
“I’ll speak to him,” I say.
“Thank you,” Bit replies.
Just as he says this, the door opens, and Murmur walks in. Bit’s eyes light up, as do hers when she sees him. They quickly come together. Bit slides his hands onto her cheeks under her hair, and he leans in to kiss her. Her hands are on the backs of his shoulders, holding him in the kiss.
They have obviously been doing this to each other for quite some time. As they separate, his fingers somehow put her hair perfectly back where it started from. They look longingly into each other’s eyes for a moment, one that I refuse to interrupt. After a moment, Murmur seems to become confused.
“Why are you here, Bit?” she asks.
“To give your boss a chance to offer me a job that I will mostly turn down,” he replies.
“Why would he do that?”
“Let’s just say, for now, that your orders are about to change.”
I can see that she is confused.
“Murmur, you can stop looking for our enigma,” I say.
She stares at me for a moment, then her eyes get huge. At least, I think they do. She turns to Bit.
“You?” she exclaims.
He nods with a soft smile. She seems to smile back for a moment, then she seems concerned.
“Have you…” she starts.
He places his fingertip on her lips.
“I’ve never, and I would never use your knowledge or abilities for my personal advantage or gain,” He assures her. “The farthest I’ve gone is to use an offhand comment you once made to catch Stott in a fib. I’m only interested in you because of who you are. Not because of what you could do for me.”
I can see her smile grow under her mop, and I see her pull him in for another kiss. After a short while, she moves back and turns to me. She pulls a folder out of her bag, and hands it to me. I quickly scan through it, and I see seven sheets of good intel, about a standard weeks’ worth of work for her.
“Thank you, Murmur,” I say. “Looks like another good report. The SIS will be happy as well.”
“Yes, sir,” Murmur replies.
“I don’t have anything else for you. You can stay or go as you wish.”
“I could walk you home if you stay,” Bit says.
“The trolleys are safe enough,” she says. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Lunch tomorrow?”
“Okay.”
“I can bring the fixins to your place, say at noon?”
“It’s a date” she says, as she leaves, looking back at Bit with a smile, as she steps out the door.
I’m still not sure how I know she is smiling, but I do. After she leaves, Bit looks at me with a smug smile.
“Murmur?” I can’t help asking. “Really Bit?”
“Oh, yes,” Bit immediately replies with assurance. “She is quite beautiful when she shows her entire face. When she finally believes that, she is going to take the city by storm.”
“Somehow, I believe that. Back to business, though. What did you mean by saying you were mostly going to turn me down?”
“You’re going to offer me a job to work for you,” Bit says. “I’m going to say that I will work with you, but not for you. I have too many other things going on to be tied down to answering to a boss.”
“Even if I offer you ten golds per month?”
“Ten? Murmur says she only makes around nine.”
“Nine? I only pay her six and change,” I ruefully say. “She must be keeping up with her private commissions.”
“I’ll tell you what. If you pay me five per month as a retainer, I’ll make myself available when I can.”
“I’ll need to evaluate your abilities over the next few weeks.”
“I still have some projects I’ll need to attend to from time to time, but I don’t think there will be too much in the immediate future.”
“I guess I’ll have to live with that. For my first evaluation, tell me the path you used to enter my window.”
“I didn’t come in through the window,” Bit fully answers my question with his annoying habit of not giving out information for free.
“So, you didn’t come in through the window.”
Of course, Bit becomes verbose at my non-questioning statement.
“Nope, I picked the lock on your door when you all went to dinner,” Bit says. “Then, knowing how rarely you open your window’s curtain, I sat on the window ledge behind the curtain until you were alone and started reviewing your report.”
“We went to dinner three hours ago,” I state. “Wait, you said until I started reviewing my report.”
“Yeah, I wanted to see what you were writing up. So, I waited until you started, and then I was reading over your shoulder until you were about done.”
“Impossible.”
“You wrote that you found out about the spy ring house on Marion on the twenty-third. It was on Madison on the twenty-eighth. Later, I dropped the reports into Muns’ bag in the North Docklands Market. Not the Northlands Market. Also, he sat down in the Terrace Café to review the reports before he brought them to you.”
I review my notes, and sure enough, Bit is right. Working with him is going to be, by turns, frustrating and fascinating. There is one unclear point.
“You said that Muns sat down in the Terrace Café,” I ask. “How did that come about?”
He surprises me by actually directly answering my question.
“My bodyguard Charlie and I were headed down to the North Docklands to start giving back the extortion money that Alfred Maines had taken from the local businesses,” he tells me. “I was going to try and pass off the reports later, but I saw Muns in the market and decided to take care of it right then.
“I followed him for quite a while until I got a good chance to drop them in his bag. Then, I used very poor stealth techniques by loudly bargaining with a vendor two stalls down for a sweater for Charlie. Once I bought the sweater, I headed for the café where I had parked Charlie.
“I saw Muns sitting two tables away. I decided to make a spectacle of myself again by waving and calling out to Charlie. I sat down and gave him the sweater which he gushed over, well at least gushed for him. Muns had ordered tea, but he took off at a full run before it was delivered. I had to pay for him.”
Shifting to a different subject, I say, “When I looked out the window after I thought you had left, I thought you had jumped from the ledge, grabbed the parapet, and pulled yourself up onto the roof.”
Bit walks over to the window and goes behind the curtain.
“Are you crazy?” he asks. “There is like a ten percent chance that I wouldn’t make it. I’d never do anything with odds that poor.”
The drapes billow out and then go flat against the wall. I’d been watching and Bit didn’t go out either side of them, so he had to go out the window. I get up and look out the window again. Of course, I see nothing. The little scamp is gone. I wonder when I will actually see him again.
Chapter ten
Making an Impression
Stott looks quite surprised when I stroll into his office a good quarter hour before the rest of his team this morning. I’m certain it isn’t because his door is locked when I get here. I deliberately sit in the chair the jerk usually sits in, at the far end of the conference table from Stott’s normal seat.
A short while later we are only missing two of the team when the jerk himself walks in. He comes up behind me and puts both hands on my shoulders like he did the other day before shaking me. I spin out from under his hands, grab one of his wrists, and use my momentum to twist his arm behind him and up toward his neck.
I use both of my knees against his calves to bend his knees forward. I apply pressure to his arm and push him forward after he lands on his knees. As soon as his chest is on the floor, I have the point of a dagger against the side of his neck.
“Don’t assume your size and strength will win every battle you enter,” I tell him. “If you can’t stop yourself from getting into battles, always leave yourself a line of retreat, just in case you come up against someone stronger or more capable than you are. Those two things are not always the same thing.”
With that, I sheathe my dagger, and I let him go. I move away from him, knowing exactly what is going to happen next. I turn my back to him so I can return to the table. He lunges off of the floor. Thinking to wrap his arms around me. As soon as I feel him nearing, I duck and spin. He flails past me, and once he stops, I make a hard, knuckle-extended punch to his kidneys. He screams in pain and drops to his knees. I put him in a choke hold without cutting off his air.
“You were both predictable and over-extended,” I tell him. “I knew what you were going to do before I let you go and already had multiple counters worked out. Now, please tell me why you have been accosting me?”
“You were in my chair,” he says.
“Your chair? I assumed that I would be sitting in the lowest-rank chair. I guess I can see why Stott would put you there with your level of incompetence. I expect he wants to make it easier to keep both eyes on you. So, I guess it makes sense that that is your seat.”
With that, I let him go again. I sit in the only open seat at the table. I know it is Murmur’s, but I want to see how the jerk will react. He, of course, doesn’t disappoint, or I guess he does. He moves up behind me and grabs my shoulders again.
“That’s…” he starts until his words are cut off by another scream of pain.
Instead of twisting out from under his grasp this time, I slam my head back into his boystick. I spin around, take his free hand, and dislocate his thumb. He screeches in pain this time.
“I’ve lived on the streets and thrived in doing so since before I can remember,” I inform him. “I’m almost always the smallest person in the room, or the alley, as the case may be. I go up against people who are bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, meaner, and more experienced than you are nearly every day. I know almost every trick in the book, and I have invented some of my own.”
Finally, the jerk stops looking at me with arrogant fury, and he now does so in fear.
“Give me your hand,” I order.
Hedry just stares at me.
“Give me your hand,” I demand again.
He finally realizes that I’m not going to give up, and he winces in anticipation when he extends his hand.
“Your injured hand, you dolt.”
Hedry quickly swaps hands. I reset his thumb for him. He sighs in relief.
“That’s going to be sore for a few weeks, but it should mostly heal,” I inform him. “Now sit down.”
He complies. I’m sure he will rage later, but for now, I have him completely cowed.
Once I take Murmur’s chair again, I look at Hedry and say, “As far as my sitting in Murmur’s chair goes, if you were even half the intelligence agent you think you are, you’d know she would have no problems sitting in her boyfriend’s lap.”
I can see the corners of his mouth start to twitch into a smirk. Then his face quickly fades into an ashen skin tone as he figures out that I’ve likely been watching how he treats my girlfriend. I hold his eyes with a cold stare for an extended time. I imagine that he, even being as obtuse as he is, has gotten the point. I finally turn to Stott. The smirk on his face tells me he is well aware of how I played Hedry like a fiddle.
“How have you made a living on the streets?” Dellin asks me.
“You all saw me three days ago in Dawn’s Cross neighborhood on Rose Street,” I answer him.
“Wait, were you the delivery boy?”
“I was.”
“So, you earn your living by making deliveries?”
“I could, but that is mostly a smokescreen. I make my living as a thief.”
If there was any lack of attention up til now, that evaporates. They somehow know that the espionage and conspiracy information they have been receiving was tied in with someone with excellent stealth. Some of the information could not have been gathered by licit means. So, most likely, it has been obtained by a thief.
“Yes, I am the one who fed you the intel about the spy ring on Madison,” I inform them. “I also took care of running the thief master out of the city, okay, executing him. I also stymied the noble’s conspiracy. I believe that I’ve got the nobles tied up tight for you, and I made a massive profit for myself.”
“Executing him?” Hedry asks. “Are you trying to claim actions you didn’t complete now? Maines died of a heart attack.”
“So can you, in a way that no one will question it being anything but natural causes. That can be accomplished easily enough.”
Hedry shows uncharacteristic tact and shuts up.
“Thank you for taking care of the noble’s conspiracy for us,” Stott says. “And for the thief master.”
“Actually, the thief master and the noble’s conspiracy were two parts of the same conspiracy, so you only need to thank me once. But, there is a third part of the conspiracy that I haven’t figured out yet”.
“Will you get on it soon?” Stott asks.
“I’ll start looking into it more today.”
“Do you want help?”
“Not at this time.”
“Will you tell me why not?”
“There are parts of my life that I still want to keep private. This search starts in one of those places.”
“Why can’t we go to that place?” Arem asks.
“Because it would be reckless on my part to let any of you see what is in there,” I admit.
“I thought you said trying to jump to the roof would be reckless,” Stott says, shifting subjects.
“I did, sir. Any act with only a ninety percent chance of success is reckless.”
“Then why did you leave my office that way last night?”
“I didn’t, sir,” I answer him. “I know you have trouble turning your head to the left, so I walked the ledge over to the next window casement to the left of yours and ducked into it. After you looked out your window for the second time, I walked over and opened up the window in the stairwell. I unlatched that window just before I broke into your office. Not to be rude, but the lock on your office door is really crappy. I can fix that for you.”
“Why do I need a better lock on my door?”
“In the last few months, I, myself, have found and mostly thwarted two espionage rings,” I remind him. “There are no doubt more. What would happen if any of them were to break in here?”
