The Great Ellini (Book One of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Four: The Deepest, Darkest, Dearest Memory

Day by day, Jack became accepted at Pandemonium. Robin took to calling him 'golden boy' because everybody seemed to like him. No one was interested in his past, except to shake their heads and decry the misfortune of his being raised among humans.

And it wasn't until his second month at Pandemonium that anyone stumbled close to his deepest, darkest, dearest memory.

It was one of those calm-but-tense evenings after a training session, when Robin's face was still flushed with exertion, and his eyes hadn't quite lost their bloodthirsty gleam.

He tended to take out his long-handled knife at moments like these, turning it this way and that to watch the play of light on the blade. Some of the men in the barracks said it talked to him.

Tonight, he had taken Jack to the armoury to show him the weapons they'd be training with next week. It was just a long corridor really, lined with sword racks and suits of armour every few yards. Torches burned in iron brackets on the walls, filling the space with shadowy movement, giving the weapons a burnished, treasure-trove gleam.

Robin sat down on a bench beneath a rack of sabres, but Jack didn't follow him. His muscles were screaming with fatigue, but Robin seemed a touch too quiet—too casual—to be trusted. Maybe the lesson wasn't quite over yet.

"By the way," said Robin, taking out his knife with a practised flourish. "You think I don't remember you. I do."

He was angling his knife so the reflected light from the torches glinted off his teeth. He had to be doing that on purpose. It was more showmanship, just like the genealogist sweeping into his low, bone-creaking bow. Still, it was effective. Jack had to work hard to keep his voice even, his shoulders low and level.

"I should hope so," he said, hovering next to the sabres in case he needed to pull one out at short notice. "We were only introduced a month ago."

"But being introduced isn't the same as meeting someone," Robin muttered. "Is it?"

Jack didn't say anything. He thought he knew what was coming, but he couldn't decide how bad it would be. In theory, he didn't mind Robin knowing that they'd met before. The story didn't cast either of them in a good light, but it wasn't a tragedy. Far from it.

He just wasn't sure what Robin was going to make of it. He could picture him misunderstanding everything, in that brilliant but demented way of his.

"Where did you say you grew up?" Robin asked casually. "Camden?"

"Cheapside."

"But it's close, isn't it?"

Robin picked up a whetstone and dragged it across the blade of his knife. It made a thirsty ringing sound that set Jack's teeth on edge.

"I met Ellini about ten years ago," he said. "You've probably heard the story by now. But there's a bit at the end that people don't talk about so often. After I killed her family, she took shelter in the convent attached to St. Michael's Church in Camden. Do you know it?"

Jack tried to heave his shoulders into a shrug. "Slightly."

"I was at the end of my rope, golden boy, I don't mind telling you. I'd been—" He stopped, as if he was searching for the right word. "—fascinated with her for six months by that point, and the sight of her in a nun's habit was more than I could handle."

Jack said nothing. He wanted to say, 'No, she wasn't wearing a nun's habit—or anyway, not the headgear. Her hair was loose and flowing down her back. How could you forget a detail like that?'