Stroud, Jonathan - The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne 01 - The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne by Stroud Jonathan

Author:Stroud, Jonathan [Stroud, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2021-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

Some nights last forever; others run past like water through the fingers. In no time at all, this one was gone.

Lying where he was on the moving deck, Albert could hear the swirl of the river and Scarlett’s occasional ragged snores close by. Otherwise there was a deep, wet silence. His eyes were open, but he saw nothing. The dawn had arrived cloaked in granular, gray fog, which enfolded him like a shroud.

His head felt raw and empty, as it always did after the Fear had been at work. A residue of it was still pressing inward on his chest. Staring into whiteness, he thought of the pale-haired woman in the long black coat. She was striding toward him surrounded by pillars of fire. To Albert, she almost seemed of the fire, darting this way and that with inhuman speed, growing in size, getting ever closer….

He shut his eyes tight. She was going to catch him. All his life, she had known everything he had done, everything he wanted to do. He had never been able to escape her, and he wasn’t going to manage it now.

What a punishment she would have waiting for him back at Stonemoor!

A swell of agitation made him move. He levered himself into a sitting position, breathing hard, staring all about him. The fog was growing brighter. No longer solid, it was a thing of weaving threads and layers, which presently retreated enough for him to notice a large box or crate on the deck beside him. He sat his back against it and waited.

By and by, another dark mass resolved itself into Scarlett’s sleeping form.

She was huddled on one side, her head resting on an outstretched arm. Her mouth was open. Long strands of hair straggled across her face like riverweed. Her body and clothes were gray with ash. The bandage on her wounded hand was black. She was cupping the bag with the bank money tight against her chest.

The vision of Dr. Calloway faded from his mind. He sat and looked at Scarlett instead.

Over the past few days, Albert had seen his companion in a succession of different guises. She had been a sternly practical traveler, leading him through the forest. She had been a grumpy ascetic, meditating on her mat. In the forests above the river, she had been a cold-eyed sharpshooter, mowing down Dr. Calloway’s men without a second thought. In Lechlade, she had been first a merchant trader, selling holy artifacts of dubious provenance, then a bank robber of boundless grace and daring. And at the wharf side—what? She had steered him to safety yet again. She hadn’t needed to. She might have turned and fled.

So many Scarletts in such a short time! It was only now she lay unconscious that these changes finally stopped; it was only now Albert realized how young she truly was. Scarcely any older than him.

Around her head flitted a faint nimbus, a coronet of images; random, flickering, moving at bewildering speed. Albert didn’t try to sieve them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.