Free Jackdaw by Kj Charles Page A

occasions before this. That accusation was dropped, leaving the gross indecency charge, based on his discovery in the carriage. Ben pleaded guilty to that. He lacked the strength to fight any more, and he could not afford a lawyer, and it was true, all true.
    Ben served ten weeks with hard labour for Jonah’s last Judas kiss. He did the kind of time that could be expected for a bent copper and a mary-ann. The other prisoners despised him, and showed it; the guards would not protect him. Sometimes they watched and laughed, or made bets. Ben fought when he could, at first out of terror of what might be done to him if he didn’t resist, later because hitting out at other men, without restraint or rules, brought him some kind of satisfaction. It came to a head when a red-faced fellow, maddened by forced abstinence from gin, went for Ben with a broken bottle. He broke the man’s jaw, though not before the jagged glass ripped his temple. At least the relentlessness of the harassment dropped off afterwards.
    On his release, he was dishonourably discharged from the police force, to the open contempt of men who had been friends. And when he returned, aching and soul-weary, to his parents’ home, they did not open the door. His father hissed his rejection and disgust from a part-opened window, while in the room behind, his mother wept.
    He had no career, no reputation, no friends, no family. All of it gone. Jonah had burned through his life and left it waste to save himself.
    Now
    Some few minutes after the distant chime of three o’clock, Day and Janossi came for him in the cell, along with a young woman. She was slender, sharp-featured, with a measuring look in her silver-blue eyes, and she was wearing boy’s clothes: trousers, a sack jacket and a cap, with long blonde hair falling from beneath it.
    “This is Miss Saint, our windwalker,” Day said. “She has a few questions to ask you.”
    “Yeah, I do.” Saint planted her hands on her slim hips. “The peelers said you windwalked, with Pastern. They saw you. But you ain’t a windwalker. So what was that? How’d that work?”
    “I don’t know. Jonah did it. He said he’d walk me.”
    “What did he say to do?” Saint demanded.
    “Just run. He told me I had to run or I’d fall.”
    Saint chewed viciously at her thumbnail. She wore a rather large diamond ring on a rather grubby ring finger. It looked peculiarly unfitting for the scruffy boy’s garb. “Was he touching you? What did it feel like?”
    “No, he wasn’t. And, uh, I could feel I was treading on something. It went away if I stopped moving.” Ben winced at the sudden, vivid memory of the foothold disappearing from under him. “He said we couldn’t do it together. He went first and I ran to him. That’s all I know.”
    Saint wore the kind of expression that would have made Ben’s mother warn her about the wind changing. “Fuckin’ell,” she muttered. “Prancing git.”
    “Jenny.” Day spoke with weary rebuke.
    “Yeah, but how the f— How the hell? I never knew anyone could do that. I can’t do that. I want to know, Mr. D, that ain’t normal.”
    “Ask him when we catch him,” Day told her. “Although you’ll have to talk quickly. We’ve received what I can only call an ultimatum from the Met, and giving them Pastern now will save us from making about fifty very unwelcome concessions. We’re out of time. Spenser, you’ll come with us.”
    They took a carriage to Regent’s Park. Ben was to wait for Jonah in the gardens, and to lead him towards a certain path, where Day waited. Janossi would be in the gardens; Saint would be somewhere overhead.
    “It will all be over after this,” Day said, as Ben stared at his clasped hands. “You are doing the right thing. You know it. There’s no choice.”
    They walked him into the gardens, then the justiciars disappeared. Ben went forward alone, to the bench he’d sat on before, and seated himself. It was still a few minutes to four.
    The