The Hunter
Authors: Kerrigan Byrne
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To Janet Snell
I couldn’t do it without you.
A writer’s life, anyone’s life really, is full of unexpected pitfalls and terrifying unknowns. I wouldn’t be able to survive it without the tireless support and love of my incredible friends, fellow writers, and critique partners, Cynthia St. Aubin and Tiffinie Helmer. You both are a constant source of encouragement and inspiration.
I’ll always have an incredible amount of gratitude to Christine Witthohn for her inexhaustible hard work. She is not just an exceptional agent, but a cherished friend.
I want to express my eternal and fathomless appreciation to the brilliant and extraordinary team at St. Martin’s Press, specifically Monique Patterson, Alexandra Sehulster, Erin Cox, Angela Craft, Heather Waters, Danielle Christopher, Amy Goppert, and the myriad of people who I haven’t had the pleasure to meet, who have expended their time and effort to allow me the chance to build a life doing what I absolutely love. I can’t thank you all enough.
Of course, a special thank you to my husband and family for their patience and pride. It means the world.
And always to
you
, the reader, who gives me a reason to bring the characters in my head to life.
I kiss’d thee ere I kill’d thee. No way but this,
Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.
—William Shakespeare,
Othello
Newgate Prison, London 1855
This was nothing short of torture.
Christopher Argent’s muscles shook with uncontrollable strain. Sweat mingled with the freezing rain and made infuriating trails of moisture, mirroring the sensation of small vermin crawling down his twitching flesh. He’d have given his soul to scratch them away. Teeth clenched until his jaw ached, Christopher dared not show anything but relaxed features, for fear of the consequences.
Sliding his gaze to the man next to him, he mimicked his Sifu’s actions accurately, in a desperate attempt to keep up. Or, rather, to match the impossibly slow pace of the flowing movements Master Wu Ping guided him through with unnatural precision.
“You understand why we drilling the
siu lim tao
in the rain, boy?” Master Ping inquired in his thickly accented English, never once breaking form or pace. They were the first words he’d spoken to Christopher since they’d begun their lessons for the day.
It was more difficult for Christopher to speak and move correctly at the same time, such utter focus did the forms require, but he made a valiant effort.
“I am being punished,” he ventured. “For beating John and Harry…”
“And?”
Christopher heaved a breath, hoping to unburden himself from the yoke of shame, but it interrupted his actions so that he had to recover and concentrate to get back in rhythm with his
sifu.
“And Hugh,” he mumbled.
Master Ping was silent for the breaths it took to move his bladed hand from an extension in front of his chest back into the protection of his body. “I am your Sifu, boy. What does that word mean in your language?”
Christopher knew this. “It means
teacher
.”
Wu Ping gave a short jerk of his chin in acknowledgment. “Then, it not my place to punish. It my responsibility to teach.”
Silence stretched on for what seemed like an eternity as they performed the physical drills of precision and line work Christopher had been learning for the better part of two years. Now, at eleven, he was almost as tall as the teacher who had taken him under his wing.
“Today, I teach you, boy, to be like the water.” Master Ping had always called him “boy.”
Staring ahead at the gray, wet stone of the courtyard of Newgate Prison, he listened intently. The old man had lectured on water before, but Christopher had to admit, he hadn’t listened. He would certainly listen now. Drenched as he was in the aforementioned substance, shivering, suffering, and exhaustion made a more distinctive impression.
“Water is adaptable and fluid,” Ping began. “It soft; conforming to the shape of whatever contains it, finding the lowest places and the path of least resistance. It sustains life. It easily redirected for the benefit of others. You understand?”
“Yes, Sifu.” He didn’t really, but knew he would once Master Ping made his point.
“But water also most deadly,” Master Ping continued. “It crashes with a force that not even stone can withstand. It floods. It drowns. It destroys everything in chosen path without thought. Without mercy. Without
remorse
.”
The old man ceased his movement, turning to face Christopher, who also dropped his trembling arms in relief. He stood looking at the small Chinaman, remembering that he once thought Master Ping looked like a sausage, round and bent and encased in tough skin. The small, gentle foreigner was simply the most dangerous, lethal man housed at Newgate Prison.
“What are the five responses to conflict?” Ping asked.
Christopher listed them from memory. “Avoidance, accommodation, collaboration, compromise, and aggression.”
Ping gave another of his short nods. “Notice that fists and force are needed only once in five times. Do you know why that is?”
Christopher looked down at the filthy stones of the yard, following a dark ribbon of grime with his eyes as it oozed toward the sewage drain. “Because I shouldn’t fight,” he mumbled.
“Wrong,”
Ping snapped, but his hand was gentle as it lifted Christopher’s chin so they were eye to eye. “Because the kung fu I practice not for fighting. It for killing. And you shouldn’t use it, except to take a life, defend yourself, or protect another.”
Christopher’s teeth clenched for a reason other than cold and exertion, a familiar heat compressing his organs against his rib cage. He couldn’t keep the defiance from his eyes. “You didn’t hear the disgusting things those others said about my mother.”
“Was it true what they say?” Ping asked.
“No.”
“Then why it matter?” The Sifu shrugged.
It mattered for so many reasons, but Christopher couldn’t identify them by name, and so he kept silent and fumed.
Ping’s black eyes softened and crinkled a bit at the corners, the closest he ever came to smiling. “You already much like water, but your emotion run too deep. Too strong. Like ocean. You must learn to quiet feelings like anger, hatred, fear…” Ping put his hand on Christopher’s shoulder, an unprecedented gesture of affection.
“Love.”
“How?” Christopher breathed.
“You redirect them, like a farmer would redirect a river to feed crops. Turn them into patience, logic, ruthlessness, and power. Only then can death flow from your hands with all the destructive force of raging flood.” Master Ping turned from him, set his hips, grounding his feet to the stones, and slapped the walls of Newgate Prison with an open palm. The stone crumbled beneath the blow and cracks branched from his hand in the mortar.
Christopher gaped, rain pouring into his open mouth. “How—how did you do that?”
Ping winked. “I show you tomorrow. If you don’t hit the mark, but punch through it, then power is transferred, and it must fall before you.”
“Can you show me now?” Christopher asked hopefully.
Ping shook his head. “Your mother will want you back in your cell. It is almost time for meal.”
“How do you—”
A clock chimed the lateness of the hour, and Christopher’s head whipped around toward the guard tower, flinging droplets of water into the shadowy storm. It seemed that even on days such as these, when the sun couldn’t be seen, the mysterious old man was always aware of the time.
When Christopher turned back to Master Ping, he found himself alone in the yard.
Vibrating more from excitement than from the cold, Christopher scrambled through the rain to the hallway beneath a rusted grate the prisoners at Newgate had come to know as Dead Man’s Walk. Veering through the various catacombs of the prison, he hailed a few familiar faces before knocking on the iron door that separated the male prisoners from the female.
“Who’s that, then?” A thick Scottish brogue reached through the bars above his head before the youthful round face of Ewan McTavish peeked down at him. “Well, little lad, ye’re certainly lucky ye’re back before the changing of the guard here. If Treadwell were to find ye on the wrong side of the door, he’d likely leave ye there to the nighttime mercies of the damned, ye ken?”
Christopher had been born inside these walls. He understood better even than McTavish the hellmouth Newgate Prison became at nightfall. His lullabies had been the echoes of chains, the screams and whimpers of the weak, and the dragging footfalls of the condemned who walked the long, grated hallway and never returned. His mother cried sometimes for those who marched to the gallows, but Christopher never did. A dead prisoner often meant new shoes or a belt.
The rusted iron door scraped along the stone floor with an earsplitting sound as McTavish pulled it open wide enough for his thin hide to shimmy through before pushing it shut and throwing the bolt.
“Mum always sends me to wander on easement day.” Christopher hopped from one bare foot to the next, trying to keep warm. He liked McTavish, and followed the stout, dark-haired guard around some days when he’d nothing else to do.
McTavish’s liquid eyes matched the smart dark blue of his uniform. They were touched with pity as he nodded. “Aye, lad. I know.”
“The guards don’t like me around when they bring wood for the fire or fresh tins of food. Mum says I’m in the way.”
The guard’s attention slid down the dank hall lined with iron bars. “They’re finished now,” he mumbled, not quite returning his gaze back to Christopher. “Why don’t ye find yer ma in time for supper?”
Looking forward to a fire with distinct relish, Christopher skipped up one hall and down another, flattening himself against the wall as two guards sauntered past, one adjusting his belt. Here in Newgate, it was just as important to know which guards to avoid as which prisoners.
McTavish had been right about Treadwell. The big, golden-haired oaf had cuffed him, shoved him, and caned him more times than he could count over the years.
