Daniel's face hid in shadows that had nothing to do with the swinging lanterns, and everything to do with a certain lady he'd had the fortune of seeing earlier that evening. The overnight coach bounced along, causing Five to grab the lip of the windowsill for purchase. He kept an eye on his friend sitting across the coach from him, bracing against the frame before the next bump shot his head through the roof.
A dagger could slice through the tension running between them. Normally, he never sat at odds with Daniel Knapp, but right now, he would almost welcome a band of thieves, or any opponent a blade could actually penetrate, instead of facing the tiny compartment's intangible gloom.
"Our preparations will be cut severely if we're to get to the job on time," Daniel said, using his aristocratic tone to drive the point home. Five bowed his head, knowing he was right. They had never conducted business in Marlborough, and the time they had to find the right pub, and then the right sort of people, had significantly shrunk because of their earlier activities.
Earlier activities Five had no intention of regretting.
In defense of Daniel's foul mood, the late coaches were more about speed than comfort, easily making any man cranky. And honestly, even though mere hours had passed, Five missed the comfort of Saira already. An inexplicable restlessness plagued him as soon as he boarded the coach, as if every cell in his body wanted to turn around and go right back to Bath. Right back to her. As if things needed to be finished. As if words needed to be said.
Daniel cleared his throat roughly. "I don't mean to be short with you, Five. Leaving "Tilda again nearly tore my heart through my throat. It kills me she won't be there when we get back. There, I had to say it. Enough about women," he said tightly. "Women is why we're behind schedule."
"You weren't complaining earlier," Five pointed out.
"I called out to you for a full minute. Remember the stone I chucked at your head?"
Daniel said it like he'd done Five a favor, interrupting the single most significant moment he could ever remember. He might have had some sloppy distractions in between assignments at the Commission, but that kiss had turned his world view inside out. And the one after had twisted his well-laid plans into an unrecognizable Mandelbrot fractal. He hadn't wanted to leave, not even for a job. Which, having once prided himself on being called Efficiency Incarnate, rubbed against every work ethic he ever upheld.
"You're right," Five said. "It's my fault we almost missed the last coach."
"Chased it down the road for a quarter mile. Was it worth it?"
"Yes." The word shot out of his mouth without thought. Daniel's stony glare caused Five to slow down and re-evaluate his priorities.
"No, wait."
His inquiries had rained down on Market Street like a meteor shower. Several prominent shopkeepers could now connect his face to his chosen name. The tea shop had his calling card tucked in the spine of its appointment book for safekeeping. He wanted to admit to the gross deviations from his five-year plan of anonymously amassing funds for a hermit-like existence, if only to appease his scowling friend. But he just couldn't bring himself to care.
Saira's rocky road towards independence had become one of his personal goals. If at all possible, Five would see that it continued uninterrupted. His mind already raced ahead, beyond this job, calculating how he would manage his business ventures on returning to Bath, while pursuing the tenuous connection building between them. He didn't know how or when it could happen, or if it fit into either of their plans for the future. But maybe after he relived that moment under the bridge a few more times, he could admit to himself that he just wanted Saira, everything else be damned.
"Completely worth it."
Five let the beats of silence mercilessly jostle about the rocking coach. One lantern snuffed out as the carriage lurched alarmingly to one side. He wouldn't be surprised if the shocks had fallen off around the last bend.
"I'm not angry," Daniel said, directing his irritability at the loosening cargo ties above their heads. "I've just never seen you unfocused." He leaned forward, examining Five in the dim light. "Refocused, perhaps. I thought that people who fell from the sky were immune to matters of the heart, and here you are, acting like a mere mortal."
"I'm not… stop teasing, Danny."
Even in Five's universe, mortality was an unyielding constant. He hadn't known if he would survive the time-jump, hadn't realized that once again, he'd juxtaposed two digits of his calculations (a recurring error that he would one day need to re-examine) or that the thirty-seven level highrise on 10 George Street didn't exist at the when he ended up plummeting to.
If the brambles hadn't broken his fall, he'd have careened to his death next to Daniel's rubbish wagon.
In direct opposition to his hard-earned cynicism, Daniel had an optimistic view of the world that simply wouldn't quit. Unaware of the cryptic note Five had left for his siblings with the coordinates for his trip, Daniel had no idea that Five had broken into his father's penthouse to access the time machine. He didn't have enough knowledge to wonder why Five had pumped himself full of sub-quantum particles and jumped through the buzzing ring with no hope of a return ticket home. Daniel couldn't have guessed that Five's siblings immediately chose to separate after losing their powers, leaving Five in an underaged body to fend for himself in a world where he couldn't even buy his own liquor, or that Five had spent decades trying to reunite his family, only to be abandoned by them in the end.
No, Daniel knew nothing about the 'how' of Five's sudden appearance. He'd taken one look at the boy in the brambles, called it a 'sign from God' that Five was placed in his care, hoisted him up to the driver's bench, and went on with his work of carting the brambles away for kindling, as if it was all meant to be.
One day, Five would break out a bottle of brandy, gloss over the pseudo-science, and dispel Daniel's foolish assumption that Five was anything but human. He estimated another year before they could have that conversation, after his body gained enough mass to drink his friend under the table and bury the details of his past under a hazy hangover.
The main events of Five's long (and mostly solitary) life were all captured in his locked journal, now safely under his bed in the rented room at Sir Newman's estate. He'd stopped journaling when he got to the part about falling out of the sky, because that was the now of here, and he wasn't soon to forget it. However, things had happened since then, and he was reconsidering filling in a few more pages of his story, if only to be a completist.
What would he say about first meeting Daniel? Since they were both running from societal expectations, they easily came to understand each other. Daniel was right to withhold the information about his unwavering devotion to the Baroness's daughter, because Five wouldn't have understood.
He got it now. There was no use in denying that if he called his friend out for being a lovesick sap, Daniel would show no mercy and throw it back in his face. His friend had picked up on Five's interest like a magnet collecting shrapnel. After that meeting under the bridge, it was stupid to deny anything. Five had broadcast his feelings as clearly as if he had penned a new chapter in his journal and delivered it to his friend on a silver platter.
"I know what you really are." Daniel sat across from him with a damned smug look on his face.
Worse than smug. Five preferred the sulk to the grin his friend had replaced it with.
"You're a damned fool, just like the rest of us."
***At noon, the Malted Mule teemed with strewn bottles, scattered cards, and raucous men angling for a third round of Commerce and Croft. Five had little faith in finding a trustworthy hire in a place where coins exchanged hands under the tables, but this was their fourth pub in Marlborough. At least they hadn't tripped over anyone passed out on the floor, and the smell of piss was confined to the space behind the closed door of the water closet. He looked sideways at Daniel, who shrugged with a 'might as well get on with it' stare.
Within minutes, Five declined a host of offers, categorizing them by the unique impressions they made on him, ranging from a beard that smelled of cheese, a senior with a nasty limp, to three urchins eager to grab at conspicuous bulges under their coats to shank him and search his body for the promised payment before the job even began.
Ordinarily, a zeal for blades would have signaled competence. But after a quick round in the empty paddock out back, he dismissed the jokers who wielded blades even worse than Garfield. Back inside, word had spread about travelers hiring for out-of-town work, and a line had formed along the back wall. Five doubted many of those men were better than their predecessors.
"Just give me skills and a straight head," he groaned after another man left the table, this time unable to count past his fingers.
"You need a fighter?" the next man asked, sitting down. He was older than the rest, with a bushy fan of a beard, and short-cropped, graying hair. Five already didn't like the twitch to his lip. But his beady eyes were clear of liquor, and his hands spread steadily against the wood grain of the table, knuckles scarred, brute fingers at the ready. His barrel-shaped torso pressed against the table, straining the resolve of his coat buttons to stay their course. "I've won a few scraps in my day. Some might even bet on me."
Five watched Daniel waver between shaking his head and considering their new prospect. This turnpike lay on a busy thoroughfare with multiple avenues for avoiding the gate, the reason for the extra men. If Five proved his methods here, he and Daniel could branch out into multiple jobs with multiple crews. Residuals would shoot through the roof, and within half a decade, he could close up shop a well-padded man before the entire transportation system got its historic overhaul.
None of that would matter if they didn't arrive on site within the contracted schedule.
"Why not? Let's see how you handle a blade." Out in the empty paddock, Five tossed beady-eyes a knife.
The man snatched it out of the air with a surprising quickness and grinned. "Sure you want to go up against me, little man?"
Five bared his teeth in a fake smile. Oh yes, he wanted it now.
On the man's first pass, Five twisted, narrowly dodging a ruthless jab to the ribs, immediately thrusting his arm forward to fend off a stab at his neck. The man's eyes became slits as Five shoved him away.
If he hadn't blocked, would the man have pulled the thrust? Or had he straight up gone for Five's throat?
That was a questionable way to treat one's future employer.
Or anyone.
He held out his hand, and after a second of quick thinking, the other man placed Five's knife in it, hilt first. "You've got the skills we need," he said. "What do we call you?"
"I'm Blade. My partner Bones also needs a job," the man said, angling for his partner, who had come out back to watch.
Daniel ran the other man through a brawling sequence and found his moves to be less cutthroat, but still effective.
"I assume you have horses," Five said, to which they nodded with questionable enthusiasm.
The recruits looked too… he couldn't say 'green' because the one called Blade had mad skills. Despite that, something about the way they wordlessly communicated with each other bothered him.
"I have misgivings about the character of our new hires," Five said to Daniel with their backs turned to the two men.
"Reasonably, I'd agree, but if we don't leave now, we won't have a job at all."
"Right." Five looked at the two men, ignoring the loud voice inside his head that Blade and Bones were as untrustworthy as they were crude. "Load up and meet us by the bridge in fifteen. I'll explain the job on the way."
