“Get out of the way!”
Matthew looked over his shoulder. Minx Cutter was on her feet atop the coach, daring Jack Thacker to strike at her. “Get out of the way!” she repeated in a shout, her curly hair flying in the wind and her face a firm-jawed, rather frightening visage of raw determination.
He drew himself aside so she could get past him. A glance at Jack Thacker showed the elder brother with his teeth clenched, and rearing his arm back to swing the lash again upon either Matthew or the young woman.
But Minx Cutter was faster.
In a blur, her hand went into her waistcoat. It reappeared with an extra finger of sharp silver. She turned the knife in her hand to seize the grip. She hardly seemed to take aim. Her throw of the knife across the distance between the coaches, taking into account the speed, the whirling dust and the shuddering of the damaged berline, was nothing short of awesome. The blade flashed with sunlight on its arrow-straight path to the hand that held the whip, and when it pierced the flesh between forefinger and thumb Jack Thacker’s fingers opened and he howled like a dog.
Then Minx Cutter leaped past Matthew and landed upon the back of the first horse on the right. She grabbed hold of the flying mane and leaned down so far Matthew thought surely her legs would lose their grip and she would be lost beneath hooves and wheels. But then she came up with dust on her face and the reins in her hand. She put her shoulders and back into slowing the team, all the time shouting, “Whoa! Whoa!” in a voice that made Matthew think her lungs must be made of leather.
Within ten seconds of her handling the reins and shouting for order in this scene of chaos, Minx Cutter was obeyed. The horses began to slow. The offending coach sped on past with a final scraping of wheels, as Mack slapped the reins and Jack held his bleeding hand to his chest like a wounded dove.
Minx stayed aboard her horse until the berline had rolled to a creaking and clattering stop. It sounded to Matthew as if the entire framework was about to fall to pieces, yet miraculously it held together. The horses nickered and jostled each other, still nervous from their run, but Minx held them with a steady hand. When she was satisfied, she slid off her mount to the ground and walked around to look at the battered right-side wheels, her own boots about three inches from the precipice.
“My God!” Matthew had to say. He was nearly sputtering with admiration. “How did you do that?”
She gave him a narrow-eyed glance that said she didn’t suffer fools, and that she ranked him highly on that low list.
“Get out! Get out!” Aria Chillany shouted. In response, Augustus Pons made it out of the coach before tossing his breakfast in long streams over the cliff. His face had taken on a green cast to match his blouse. Minx Cutter aimed her most reproachful gaze at him, hard enough to slap his jowls without lifting a finger, and then she called for the coachman, who peered over the berline’s side like a terrified child.
“Come down here and look at these wheels!” she commanded. “Can we keep going or not?”
The coachman, a sweating bundle of raw nerves, obeyed in spite of his obvious desire to cling to safety as long as possible. Matthew eased himself off the driver’s seat to the ground, where his knees begged to give way. Yet he thought that one stumble and fall today was already one too many, and to show weakness before the formidable presence of Minx Cutter would not do honor to the dirty reputation of Nathan Spade.
“I’ll have them killed!” seethed Madam Chillany as she staggered from the coach. She stared along the dusty road in the direction the Thackers had gone. “No matter who they think they are, they are dead!”
“I believe…we can go on,” said the coachman, which might have been the most difficult six words he had ever spoken. He followed this statement with a more cautious, “If we go slow.”
“Just get us to the castle as quick as you can!” Aria blotted her face with a frilly handkerchief. Her eyes were ablaze. “Pons, stop that! Wipe your mouth and get back inside!”
The fat man, whose legs were almost freakishly short, crawled into the berline as if he were closing about himself the spiky confines of an Iron Maiden. He sat with his head tilted back, his eyes squeezed shut and both hands clasped to his mouth.
“Nathan!” Aria snapped, to coax Matthew from his reverie. “Get in!”
Matthew’s knees were still trembly. “When I’m ready!” he snapped back, only half-acting. He had a hand on the whip’s sting to his neck; the pain had eased a little, but the welt was going to be worthy of some soothing ointment. He planted himself in front of Minx, aware that one step to his left would send him to find out how his old employer, Magistrate Isaac Woodward, fared in the Great Courthouse Beyond. “I asked you how you did that,” he said.
“I jumped,” she replied cooly. “How else?”
“Not that. Anyone could’ve done that,” he lied. “I was about to do the same thing.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he answered, feeling his oats. “I mean with the knife. How did you throw the knife like that?”
She got up close to him and stared him in the eyes. Her golden-hued gaze was both solemn and yet touched with a shade of humor, though the expression on her face remained absolutely impassive. She let a few seconds expire, during which Matthew began to feel extremely uncomfortable. Then she said, nearly in a whisper, “It’s all in the wrist.” She strode past him and swung herself up into the coach.
Matthew had the thought he was still in the water, and maybe in far too great a depth for either comfort or safety. He had the feeling of being a small fish at the mercy of any number of predators. But where was there to go from here, except deeper still? He waited until the coachman had secured the reins, positioned himself back in his seat and the horses were ready, as much as they could be after that wild frenzy of whipping and the pounding of hooves. Then Matthew got into the coach and after a bemused and careful glance at Minx Cutter closed his eyes to think more clearly. But just before his eyes shut he saw her turn her head to take him in, and he had the distinct feeling that she would be examining him as he sat drowsing, and—a dangerous feeling—she might be thinking she knew him from somewhere yet could not decide where the meeting had taken place.
In any event, he could feel her watching him. Taking him apart, as it were.
And suddenly he thought he was becoming more Nathan Spadish by the moment, for he reckoned he wouldn’t be averse to being taken apart by a woman like her.
No, not in the least.
“Giddup!” said the coachman, almost apologetically, and the injured berline rolled on up the road like a Saturday-night drunk determined to get home before cock’s crow.
In a few moments Matthew gave up his pretense of rest to mark their progress. The road turned away from the cliffs. It went inland through a thick forest where moss hung from trees like banners of emerald-colored lace and flowers of intense purples, reds and yellows burned the eyes. The smells of strange fruit both sweetened and soured the air. Occasionally a black person or two in bright clothing and straw hats could be seen picking such fruit and putting them in a basket. Matthew noted that the citizens of color here were not the true deep ebony of Zed, but rather the shade of milk in strong tea. It was obvious that, at least from these few examples, interbreeding between the races had gone on here for many years. He wondered if such might be the result of long-forgotten shipwrecks that had thrown slaves and Englishmen together on what probably was an unhospitable chunk of rock. The questions were, then: how old was the settlement on Pendulum Island and of course how long had Professor Fell been its…what would be the correct term? Benefactor?