“What’re ya lookin’ at…”
“…boyo?”
The two brothers slid off the coach. They stood a few feet distant from each other, one to Matthew’s left and one to the right. They had lost their grins. Their faces were impassive, and brutal in their lack of expression.
“The woman in the coach—” Matthew began.
“Never ya mind her,” said the gray-streaker.
“Go ’bout your business,” said the other. It was no doubt a warning.
“Nathan?” Aria’s voice held a hard edge. “To our coach, please.” Gentry was staggering toward them, whether by nature or by naturalist potion difficult to tell. Behind him came the sailors bearing their luggage.
The two brothers were silent. They were waiting, it seemed, for Nathan Spade’s next move in this small but potentially deadly game. Matthew realized the stocky pair were about as tall as the point of his nose. He said, “Good to meet you gentlemen,” and turned toward Aria. He had taken two strides when one of the Thackers let out the sound of a wet and nasty fart and the other gave a quick grating laugh that made the flesh on the back of Matthew’s neck crawl.
“Let’s keep moving,” said Aria in a hushed voice, her face frozen in a smile but her dark blue eyes glittering with either repressed rage or something akin to fear, if she knew what that was. It was clear that the Thacker twins were no devotees of good manners, and Matthew figured his masquerade—and usefulness—might have ended here at the head of this wharf if those two had been incited to explosive riot. And it seemed the Indian girl might be their powderkeg.
There it was, Matthew thought as he opened the berline’s door. The beautiful woman in the other coach was most decidedly an Indian…not of Sirki’s nationality, but of the tribe of Walker In Two Worlds.
He slid along the leather bench seat and found himself sitting across from the blonde-haired woman dressed in the male finery.
She aimed at him a pair of eyes the color of golden ale. “You’re dripping on my boots,” she said, her voice low and controlled and not lacking in menace.
“Pardon me.” Instantly he shifted his position, which he figured was not what Nathan Spade would have done, but he was still Matthew Corbett at heart and in manners. Something to work on, he decided. He looked at the third occupant of their berline, a rotund bald-headed man with three chins. This individual, dressed in a beige suit and a dark green blouse with lavender ruffles, was taking a pinch of snuff from a gold box. He wore round spectacles that magnified his watery blue eyes and made the small red veins in them jump out. Adorning the edge of his right ear were seven small gold ornaments of varying geometric shapes. His lips were as thin as a pauper’s wallet, his bulbous nose as large as Lord Cornbury’s ambitions. Matthew guessed his age at around fifty. “Good morning,” the man said when the two huge nostrils had taken their drink of whuffie-dust. “I am Augustus Pons. You are Nathan Spade.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I am.” No hand was offered from either man.
“Ah,” said Pons, with a slight nod. The eyelids blinked drowsily. When he spoke, his jowls danced. “We have been awaiting your arrival. I have been on this island for nearly one month. Why is it, may I ask, that it took so long for you to join us?”
“Complications,” said Aria as she entered the coach and sat beside Matthew. She offered nothing else, but stared at Augustus Pons in a way that told him to ask no more questions. Pons smiled wanly, showing small nuggets of brown teeth, and visibly retreated as if going down a hole and pulling it in after himself.
Evidently the luggage had been loaded in the berline’s cargo compartment at the rear and Jonathan Gentry had found a seat in the other coach, as there was only room for four here. Aria rapped on the wall behind her as a signal to the driver. A whip cracked and the team set off.
“Nathan Spade,” said the blonde woman. She was staring intently at him, her head cocked slightly to one side as if trying to make up her mind about something. “Where did you sail from?”
“New York,” Matthew said before Aria could speak. He’d decided it was time for him to chart his own course. “I had business there.”
“Don’t we all?” she asked, with a half-smile and a lift of a thick blonde brow. Then she said, “I’m Minx Cutter. Pleased to meet you.” She offered a hand, which Matthew took. “Welcome to Pendulum,” she offered, with a squeeze before releasing him.
“Thank you. I believe those other two don’t welcome me quite as graciously.”
“Jack and Mack Thacker,” she said. “They go everywhere together. I understand Jack is the elder by a few minutes. He has the streak of gray.”
“Ah.” Matthew paused for a few seconds before asking the question that followed: “And who is the young Indian woman?” Minx Cutter shrugged. “They call her Fancy.” The coach was climbing the cliffside road. Matthew glanced to the right, out the window past Aria, and saw their height increasing over the sunlit blue cove. His drenched clothes were a nuisance, but he’d suffered worse. He made a show of examining his fingernails, which were perfectly clean, while he gathered impressions of Minx Cutter.
She had a hard quality of beauty. There was nothing soft about her except possibly the curly ringlets of her hair. Even those might have been thorny to the touch. She had a firm jawline and a square chin, a tight-lipped mouth and a nose that appeared to have been broken and improperly repaired, for it bore a small bump in the middle and crooked slightly to the left. She was slimly-built, but far from being frail. Matthew thought she was built for speed and agility. She held herself with calm composure and obvious high regard. Her intelligent eyes, light brown with a golden element in their hue, feigned disinterest, but Matthew had the sense that she was also sizing him up. She might have been anywhere from twenty to twenty-five, as her peach-toned flesh was unlined; she appeared to Matthew to not have much practice in smiling. So young to be so deeply in the professor’s pocket, he thought. Therefore he had to wonder exactly what Minx Cutter did for the emperor of crime and the owner of Pendulum Island.
He was mulling over the possibilities when he heard a man’s scream. Looking out his own window to the left, he was uncomfortably aware that the four horses of the second berline were thundering up nearly wheel-to-wheel of their own coach and that this precarious path was suited only for one set of wheels at a time. He saw that the coachman had been removed by force, and sitting with reins in hand was Mack Thacker, while Jack swung the whip with mad abandon over the rumps of their team.
“Oh my!” croaked Augustus Pons. His eyes were gigantic. “I fear those two are up to—”
The whip cracked against the side of their coach, causing Pons to jump and spill most of the snuff from his open box. As the brown dust swirled around, Matthew saw Jack Thacker grit his teeth and swing the whip to connect with their own driver, who must have been stung by the blow because there was a strident cry of pain. The next whipstrike did something particularly nasty, for both brothers grinned and jostled each other with their elbows.
Matthew sensed uneasily that their speed was becoming dangerous on this already-dangerous road. There were no walls nor railings; if two wheels on the cliffside went off, so would follow the berline.
And then Jack Thacker in a red-cheeked frenzy began to whip the team of Matthew’s coach to more reckless speed. Matthew realized with a start of fear that their whipstruck driver must have abandoned his seat and reins. They were sitting in a runaway coach only a few inches from disaster. Minx Cutter realized it at nearly the same time because she cried out a most unladylike “Shit!” and Matthew reckoned that under the circumstances it could be a command.