Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles Read Online Free PDF Page B

meeting your friend?’
    ‘Friend?’
    ‘The one you said was coming. The captain. Strider, was it? Strifer?’
    Lisette tensed at the name. She gritted her teeth. ‘Stryker. No, he has not come.’
    Quigg’s insect eyes widened further. ‘But I thought he was coming to help us. To rescue the girl.’
    Lisette felt her cheeks flush, and hated herself for it. ‘Well, he is not.’
    Quigg looked at his boots again. ‘A shame.’
    ‘Indeed. Forget Stryker. I have.’
    ‘Then why no contact? I thought you might be dead. Caught out by some enemy patrol.’
    ‘An ague,’ Lisette said simply, though in truth the sickness had laid her very low. There had been moments as she sweated on her palliasse in the Surrey safe house, digging desperate fingernails into her griping guts, when she had expected to expire with her very next breath.
    ‘You are recovered?’ Quigg asked.
    ‘ Oui .’ She grasped Quigg’s sleeve suddenly. ‘Where did they take the girl?’
    ‘Some old monastic building up beyond Moor Fields.’
    ‘Certain?’
    Quigg nodded firmly. ‘I watched ’em leave. Followed the lot of them up through Cripplegate with me own eyes.’
    And what eyes, thought Lisette. ‘The lot of them? How many?’
    ‘The girl, obviously,’ Quigg replied, gnawing the inside of his mouth as he spoke. ‘That pasty-faced colonel . . .’
    ‘He’s a general,’ Lisette corrected.
    ‘And a score o’ soldiers in black coats. Seems a lot of steel for one lass.’
    Lisette ignored him. Quigg did not need to know the identity of the girl. ‘But why? Why move her now?’
    Quigg shrugged. ‘Getting twitchy, I reckon.’
    Lisette frowned at the unfamiliar word. ‘ Twitchy ?’
    Quigg reached back into the cart, plucking a plum from the heap and sending others tumbling in a purple avalanche. He bit into it, wincing as the tart juices hit his tongue. Before taking a second bite, he looked down at Lisette. ‘There’s been a lot o’ bad news for Parliament coming out of the West Country. Heavy defeats, ’specially at the hands of the Cornish, who they seem to fear beyond all logic. And William the Conqueror’s army smashed over at Devizes. Now Bristol’s fallen, by all accounts.’
    ‘I heard as much,’ Lisette said. She kept her expression blank, but her heart was racing. Bristol. That was where he had last been. She and Stryker had not spoken directly for weeks, but her contacts within the Royalist intelligence network provided reasonably accurate information as to his whereabouts whenever she made the request. He had been with Hopton’s army in the west since April, chasing the rebels from Cornwall and Devon into Somerset, Wiltshire and beyond. The battles of Stratton, Lansdown and Roundway had, by all accounts, been bloody affairs, and she had thanked the Holy Mother for Stryker’s continued survival. But Bristol was different. Rumours had reached the capital. Rumours that whispered of fire and carnage on a new scale. Even now, it was said, the tattered and humiliated Parliamentarian garrison were on their way back to London, hounded and mocked by the country folk along the way, losing men by the hour to the twin enemies of gangrene and camp fever. A sudden pang stabbed at her guts. Maybe Stryker had been one of those to fall in Bristol’s narrow streets, stripped naked and stacked with the rest of the corpses to turn black in the summer sun. The image brought cold dread to her mind, and she shuddered involuntarily. She forced the feeling away. God damn Stryker. He had abandoned her, left her here to face this cursed city. He had broken his word.
    She blew out her cheeks, clearing her thoughts. ‘What are you saying, Quigg?’
    ‘The people fear for their very lives, madame,’ he replied in hushed tones, ‘for they see the King’s gaze turning back to London. The war is lost, they say. The rebellion will be smote once and for all, Parliament dissolved again, but this time for good. The people are terrified, and