— an archive excerpt —
Alice and the Spear
A transformation measured in the space between heartbeats.
Sarah’s cries tore through the air.
Alice didn’t wait. As she passed a merchant’s stand, her hand closed around the shaft of a hunting spear without breaking stride — the way a cavalry trooper draws a saber from its scabbard, without thought, without hesitation, a motion burned into the muscle and bone by years of drill in the Bristol mud and worse.
The weight of it was different from her Pattern 1853 — lighter, the balance forward of the grip — but her body adjusted in the space between heartbeats. She was no longer Alice Clover, household manager. She was the girl who had fired a twelve-pounder into a charging line and met the survivors with cold steel. The transformation was instantaneous and absolute, as if the domestic woman had been a costume she could shrug off like a shawl.
She saw the kidnappers ahead, two men dragging Katherine’s limp form toward a darkened alley. She calculated distance, angle, the wobble of the unfamiliar shaft in her grip. Her breath steadied. The screaming market fell silent in her ears — the old, familiar tunnel vision of combat.
Just before the kidnappers reached the safety of the dark alley, Alice hurled the weapon with terrifying precision.
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