Jak stood, confronting Sharpe. “Emma doesn’t care speak you. Nor me. Not Doc. Let us go or be chilling. Ryan be around soon as knows you holding us. Bad move, Baron.”
“Cheeky whelp. Good flogging for the white-hair, Joaquin. Next time he speaks without being spoken to. Strip the pallid flesh from his white ribs. Set the white blood flowing.”
“Leave him alone.” Emma was standing, still holding Jak’s hand in hers.
Sharpe’s milky blue eyes locked with her golden stare. “Ah, yes, well. A true doomie and seer. I have seen men and women and puling children who claimed to be doomies. They saw through a glass darkly. You are pure, Emma.”
“Let Doc and Jak go and I’ll do what you want. Stay with you and tell you what you want to know.”
“What do I want to know, little lady?”
“Same thing everyone wants to know.”
“And that is.”
“The manner of your death, Baron.”
“Don’t talk to him, child,” Doc warned. “Your gift is from the Almighty and shouldn’t be brought into town and peddled cheap off the back of a wagon.”
Sharpe stood and pointed an accusing finger at the old man. “Your life rests on a steel blade, Dr. Tanner. The only way to save yourself is to close your mouth and keep it closed.” He turned to Emma. “If I release these two, then you’ll be content to stay with me?”
“It is for such a short time.” Her voice had gone flat and toneless, and her eyes seemed to be looking within herself. “Such a short time.”
“But you’ll tell me anything I want to know? Anything at all? Will you?”
“No,” Jak whispered.
But Emma smiled at the baron, a smile of empty menace. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I will.”
Chapter Thirty
By the time the uncomfortable supper had dragged its way to an ending, the torches were burning and the water-powered generator was thumping rhythmically, bringing electric light to the corridors of the large mansion.
Beyond the reflecting windows, Jak could see that it was already full dark. His guess was that Ryan and the others, assuming that they had survived the murderous twister, would probably make their play during the hours of night.
He had briefly entertained the small hope that he might see a sliver of a chance to try to escape, taking Doc and Emma along with him, at least getting away into the farther rooms of the house to try to draw some of the guards away and make it easier for Ryan to break in.
But Joaquin and his men were too well trained, too alert. And there was only Doc’s rapier and his own hidden knives against the array of firearms.
After the meal, Sharpe had walked to the main door from the dining room without a backward glance, paused and looked across at Joaquin.
“Time has come to show them the rest of my collection. Don’t you think? Well?”
“Sure, Baron. All three of them?”
“Why not? Why should be knotted? Cut the knot is best. All of them. Yes, all. Jak for his hair. In place of my son and heir. Doc for his mutie way of talk. And the prize in my collection. Ace on line. The diamond in my crown. Emma, the finest doomie in all of Deathlands.”
Oddly, after his intense interest in the question of his own death, Sharpe had totally dropped the subject. He had sat down, head to one side, as though he were listening to a small voice talking into his ear.
As they walked out after him, Joaquin bringing up the rear with three sec guards, it occurred to Jak that they were soon going to run out of time.
“COULD EASY RUN out of time real double quick,” J.B. whispered.
They were crouched close together, flattened against the back wall of the ville. The darkness had covered them so far, but there was still the pacing sentry and the locked door.
Ryan had drawn the panga from its soft leather sheath and gripped it in his right hand. If there was silent chilling, then he would do it. J.B. had the Smith & Wesson scattergun unslung and cocked. If there was any close-contact noisy chilling to do, then it was an ideal weapon with its twenty-inch-long Remington flechettes in each of the eight rounds.