The Great Ellini (Book One of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Two: The Little Match Girl

"You wouldn't believe it," said Jack as he stumbled into the kitchens, dripping blood and rain onto the soot-caked floor. "You just wouldn't believe it! If you said you believed it, I wouldn't believe you! There were at least fifty of them, all on horseback, all equipped with the kind of sabres that could have sliced your head off with a single stroke! And we were—what—twelve unarmed men? And yet we had them running and screaming and gargling blood inside of ten minutes! Robin's a genius!"

The little match girl, to whom he was babbling all this, didn't answer him. Her eyes flew accusingly to Robin.

"Is all of that blood his?"

"Most of it," Robin grumbled. "What he lacks in skill, he makes up for in enthusiasm."

Jack didn't let this derail him. In another time and place, he might have considered being offended, but that was impossible now after what he'd seen. He had all the humility of an apprentice who'd been permitted to learn at the feet of the greatest master of his craft, and could only feel a kind of fierce, incoherent joy that the master had noticed his enthusiasm.

The match girl was offended on his behalf, though, and protested—as vigorously as the little match girl could—that he'd only been there five bloody minutes.

Robin didn't say anything. Despite the fact that she lived in the grime of the fireplace, and always had a smudge of ash across one cheek or another, he seemed to listen to her.

The kitchen in which she spent most of her time was a cavernous stone hall—always hot, always steamy, with the occasional, merciful breeze which fluttered through from God-knew-where, making the bunches of herbs hanging from the rafters rustle like silk-clad ladies, whispering to each other behind their fans.

And though everything at ground-level made you feel as though you were in the stomach of some huge beast, with plumes of steam, and nameless fumes, and soot crunching and slipping beneath your feet, you could still look up to the rafters, where the fragrant herbs rustled, and a grating opened up to the Edinburgh streets. He had a feeling the little match girl did this a lot.

"He had us up on the rooftops overlooking St. Andrew's Square," said Jack breathlessly, seating himself on one of the long wooden tables which lined the kitchen and propping his feet up on the bench beneath it. "We tied ropes to the clock tower on one side of the square and stretched them all the way over to the rooftops on the other side, so when General Keller's regiment rode in, we could swing down and knock them off their horses. Robin kicked the captain off his horse, and actually managed to land with both feet on the man's chest! You should have seen his eyes bulge when two hundred pounds of new-breed landed on his lungs! It was amazing!"

"Hmm," said the little match girl, giving Robin a look of such concentrated venom that he muttered something about seeing to the horses and sidled out of the room.

Undeterred, Jack went on. "And another man was knocked off his horse straight on to the railings. He got impaled by the force of the fall. And then Macenroe started hanging all the other men he'd killed on the railings, to sap the spirits of the reinforcements when they came in. I'm telling you, these men think of everything!"

The little match girl didn't say anything. Her shoulders had sagged as soon as Robin left the room, as though defiance had been the only thing keeping her upright. And the motion of her sagging shoulders was exquisitely noticeable, because she was wearing her plain but magical blue dress: a long cotton thing which, from her shoulders to just past her hips, clung to her every curve like a coat of paint.

It stood out to Jack, even with the joy of violence still thundering through his veins. Every detail had intensified for him in the past couple of days—even the dull, boring, insistent details, like the pain from his cuts and bruises. He'd never tasted pain as refined as this. It was as though he'd become a gourmet overnight. He felt as though he'd been remade. As though all his senses were shiny and new and ringing with clarity.