Whitechapel Gods (16 page)

“For our great and noble queen,” he said to himself, then shook his head. “We’ll do the strangest things for a lady.”

He flung his feet off the edge and dropped himself over.

“Peculiar, that,” Mulls whispered.

Bergen did not bother to look. Mulls had been repeating those same words over and over for the past hour. It was a jungle fear—the fear of silence. Those few rich men and journalists he’d taken through Africa in earlier days had shown similar reactions, talking gaily and commenting on every damn thing as if noise alone would keep the snakes at bay. When he told them to keep quiet, they curled up like chastised little boys.

But he needed Mulls sharp, and so tolerated the outbursts.

By now they were well below Aldgate Tower, and it was past two in the morning. Another hound attack had left Bergen’s shoulder burned by the heat and chafed by the steam rifle’s straps. Penny had come through, doing much better with his flasher than with a rifle. He now held the flasher’s copper-tipped striking rod in front of him like a knife at all times, and his other hand effected a constant slow rotation of the charging wheel at his belt.

The boy didn’t seem to tire. He stood watch during their rest stops, took lead on climbs through rubble and old buildings, and even ranged a bit when Bergen stopped to get their bearings. His stance never wavered from its catlike grace, and he did not relax for even an instant.

He is an animal, that boy,
Bergen thought.
A predator born by accident in a human womb.

Aldgate had an underbelly, though its residents preferred to call it a “subconcourse.” In an effort, perhaps, to raise their status, they had installed a dazzling array of electric lights all across their ceiling and in their streets, and it leaked through the haze into the downstreets with enough power to illuminate their route as by moonlight.

That light allowed Bergen to keep better tabs on Pennyedge. Bergen’s senses had been alert for some time to the boy’s attempts to circle and approach him from behind.

Bergen led them beneath Aldgate to the side closest to Commercial Street Tower, where their quarry was reputed to have fallen. The two towers were so close as to be nearly leaning on each other, with the outward-sloping base of the Stack mingling into their support beams.

The stench was vile. Aldgate residents, with their rich variety of imported foods, produced some of the most pungent shit Bergen had ever had to endure. Its odour cut through even the omnipresent stench of ash and smoke. They had passed earlier one of many vast septic pools, centred seven storeys below the primary sewer drains, and they had all nearly choked on the air.

“Peculiar,” Mulls muttered.

Bergen forgot himself and snapped: “Can you make any
other
comment?”

“But that’s someone moving, that is.”

Mulls nudged his rifle to the left. Bergen’s eyes shot to the location indicated.

Someone moving. Not a hound, or a clickrat, but a man, crawling.

“Penny, flank.”

The boy vanished to the right without a second glance.

“Mulls, cover him.”

Mulls nodded, then ran off to a suitably high outcropping of rubble, where he nestled his bulk between two rotten beams and set his rifle’s barrel atop the remains of a plaster wall.

Bergen carefully set the steam rifle down, then reached for his Gasser. His right hand shook under its weight as he lifted it, so he decided to leave it holstered. He was a fast enough draw with his left.

He approached from an oblique angle, through ruined buildings rather than along the old street. If his quarry noticed any of them, he gave no sign.

Bergen examined the man through the rotted holes of his hiding place: definitely human, crippled, struggling to pull himself along on his forearms, dragging unmoving legs behind like a grotesque train. Bergen spotted a flat, circular case wedged in the crook of his left arm.

And there’s our prise.

He stood. The quarry noticed him immediately, staring dumbstruck for a long moment as Bergen approached. Then the man erupted with laughter.

“You find something funny?” Bergen growled.

The man gagged, coughed up brown oil, then resumed laughing.

Bergen squatted down. The man’s fit choked itself out, and between ragged breaths he tilted his face upwards. Only one red eye blinked up at Bergen, the other having been destroyed by the fall along with the entire right side of the man’s face.

“Yer not one of Bailey’s men, are yeh?”

Bergen shook his head.

“I should have known better than to hope. For a moment I thought the lad might have devised some flying machine after all. Yeh here for the tape?”

Bergen nodded, and held out his hand.

“Bugger all.” The man hung his head for a moment. “Not much to be done about it, looks like: won’t be no running, nor fighting. Just answer one question of a dying man and answer true.”

“Fine.”

“Are ye gonna use it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there’s a due turn o’ luck.” The man grabbed at the case with his left hand. The broken fingers scraped over its surface, unable to close together. “Mind?”

Bergen retrieved it for him. He wiped some of the slime and blood from it on his trouser leg. The broken man, relieved of his burden, collapsed to the concrete.

“Now,” he said, his voice muffled by the wet ground, “will it be a mite of conversation, or should we get on with the shooting?”

Bergen slipped the sidearm out of its holster with his left hand. “I am curious how you managed to survive the fall,” he said. “I expected to find a corpse.”

“Oddest thing,” the man said. “I’ve no heart, apparently. Rest o’ me broke like twigs, but this thing in me chest kept pumping away. The lad knew, somehow. He pushed me over, murdering, brilliant, young man. He knew I’d survive.” He chuckled. Oil burbled up from his mouth.

Aaron Bolden. He was an extraordinary man, my friend.

Bergen felt a powerful yearning to comfort the dying man, to tell him that his sacrifice would make the difference in the rebellion. Bergen made a quick check of the surrounding street: empty, with twenty feet to the nearest obstacle. If he was there, Penny would hear, and so Bergen said nothing.

“I have a daughter,” the man said. “Beautiful girl, big-boned like her mother. She was going to move to Edinburrough with a tramp of an Englishman—a coal-backer, of all people! Loves the chap, though.”

Bergen nodded, already agreeing to the next request.

“Ellie McWhyte,” he said, “though she might be Ellie Pearson by now. Just give her me love.”

“I will.”

“Yer awfully polite for a German fellow. You have a name, so’s I can put in a good word with St. Peter?”

He should shoot the man now—end this conversation, this dying attempt at camaraderie, before sentiment put him in danger, but Bergen had been living amongst thieves and villains so long that a few words of an honest man glittered like honey in his ears. It was stupid, but the man deserved to know he was dying beside a friend.

Bergen leaned close to the man’s ear, so that his lips almost touched it as he spoke. He dropped the German accent and let his native Dartmoor shine through.

“Nicholas Ellingsly,” he whispered. “Rest in peace, friend.”

Bergen stood and shot the man through the forehead.

The sight of the twitching body sewed shut any hint of sentiment. When Penny appeared out of the dark at his side, Bergen’s expression had become as cold as before.

And now you know I shoot left-handed. Well, who are you going to tell?

“Five minutes for food and rest. Then we head back.”

He walked back to the steam rifle. Penny’s eyes narrowed to razor slits and followed him step for step. Bergen stripped aside his mask and took a pull of water from his canteen, trying to quell the nagging fear creeping up through his stomach.

For the first time, Penny had come right up behind him, and Bergen hadn’t noticed.

The second principle of the forge is Method, or perhaps Technique. The artisan must be skilful in all aspects of Her craft. Such perfection comes only from long practice, which inevitably litters the floor with the misshapen remains of Her failures.

—V. iii

Missy had not been truly introduced to drink until she met Thomas Moore. Matron Gisella had laid down strict rules concerning imbibing by her girls: they were not to have any at all, except if the client bid it. Even then, they were to touch scant a tenth of what the client consumed. Missy had rarely had occasion to even smell brandy or scotch, as the majority of the customers were upstanding, proper gentlemen who came into the Matron Gisella’s house to vent their carnal lusts and then flee into the night like robbers.

Sit up straight; fold your hands across your lap. Hold your head upright, your knees together. You are a shy, naive gentlewoman.

Missy drained her glass and poured another. The brandy seared its way down her throat.

No, she had been introduced to drink truly on the third night that she had been invited to Sherwood Forest. She’d walked in on them unannounced, unobtrusive as she had been trained. Thomas had been caught mid-swallow, choked on his mouthful, and then scrambled to hide the glass by slipping it half full into his pocket. Thinking back, perhaps she’d wanted to spare him the embarrassment.

She’d stepped over to him, relieved him of his drink, and tossed the whole of it down her throat without so much as a sip to gauge it.

Your sleeves shall be crimped and even. Your hem shall be free of stray threads. Every hint of lace shall be sparkling white.

That vile liquid had been the strongest of Tom’s collection. It had taken all Missy’s aplomb to remain upright and charming as the fire surged into all her limbs, then her brain and her lips, and then lit her cheeks like twin suns rising on a winter morning.

But she’d held her composure and had reigned in her laughter at their gapes. And for one glorious, memorable evening, the matron’s voice had been silent.

You shall move to reveal not ankle nor wrist nor neck lest the client bid you or take the initiative himself. Should your client wish you to surrender to his advances, then do so. Should he wish you to resist, do so.

The glass was full again. She started in on it without delay.

Sherwood stood empty. Heckler had taken watch at the lift with a pair of street urchins Oliver held sometimes in his employ. The rest of the crew were likely rotting in the downstreets by now, and Oliver with them.

She swallowed, and examined the amber liquid as it caught and mutated the light of the single oil lamp.

Always remember that your client has paid for you. I expect that he should come away satisfied and that he should return to my house when the mood next strikes him. I expect to be spoken of highly in the circles. A lady has only her reputation, after all.

More brandy scalded her throat. Since that third night at Sherwood, she had made alcohol her daily tonic, to keep the Matron Gisella silent.

She poured the brandy onto the floor, for tonight it had lost its power.

A good lady doesn’t cry. Only if the client wants you to cry shall you permit yourself. Oh, don’t worry yourselves; he will make it amply clear.

Gisella was lecturing from some long-ago memory. Missy had heard the speech dozens of times and remembered it perfectly: always the same wording, the same sharp gestures, and the same piercing glare.

She stomped one foot into the puddle of liquor. Droplets splattered her dress and shoes.

You wouldn’t approve of this at all, would you, Witch?

My, my, isn’t someone testy? Have you a reason for throwing a tantrum like a child of six?

Missy refilled the glass. She sipped it, realising suddenly how light-headed she was.

What if they didn’t come back? What if Bailey’s mad crusade left them all corpses and Sherwood stayed this empty forever?

Then you will come back to me, my little one. When you were brought to me, you were coated in dirt and crawled on your hands and knees. You were born a dog, little girl, by God’s hand. That kind of filth never truly comes clean.

She felt oily inside and out with perspiration. It was too cruel to contemplate, that her new life should be wrested from her after three short months. Oliver had not even asked where she came from or what she had done before. Nor would he, or any of them. Here she had found men who did not judge her, and a place to rest her feet.

Her throat cringed as the brandy scorched it again and she refused to think on such things any further.

A rap sounded at the door.

Oliver had told her never to answer that door. One of the men should always do it and even they should always be armed. The caller was to be checked by peeking from the second-storey windows, and the door traps released only if it proved to be one of the neighbourhood folk.

Well, Oliver wasn’t there, and she had a gun. Even if things became dangerous, she could defend herself. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t done so before.

Gisella had been silent that night as well.

She drained her glass and tottered to her feet. The world spun. She snatched the lamp from the card table and her handbag from the chair. She politely forced the doorjamb aside and staggered into the hall.

The rap came again.

“Hold on,” she cried, though it may not have emerged so eloquently.

Each stair smacked heavily against her feet as she descended. The railing pressed inappropriately into her side.

The rap sounded again, suddenly pounding against her ears like thunder.

“You, sir,” she said accusingly to the door, “have no manner of patience at all.”

Her fingers found the right switches, pulled the right chords. The deafening clicks told her Heckler’s traps had been withdrawn. She grasped the handle and yanked the door wide.

A face stepped out of her nightmares and into the foyer.

“Oh, mother of mercy!” The handbag fell from her fingers. The lamp tipped and burned her hand with its hot glass.

“Heh. I see you remember me.”

Her knees buckled like so much wet cloth and she crashed to the ground on her tailbone. The lamp bounced on the floor and rolled away.
It can’t be real,
she screamed.
He can’t be here.

The intruder righted the lamp with a deft flick of his cane.

“Gisella was distraught when you left, Michelle. Even my considerable powers of persuasion were barely enough to keep her from murdering you.”

The man closed the door.

“Imagine my surprise to find you here, of all places, in the lair of my recent rival. The Lord does indeed move in mysterious ways. Don’t you agree?”

A hobgoblin face beneath a fur top hat. Gnarled bone-white clawed fingers reaching from a black coat as large as the night sky. All the girls knew him, all had felt his nails tearing at them, heard his voice commanding them. Gisella rendered them helpless with her potions and then
he
came in fevered dreams, a visage of terror half remembered upon waking.

Sweat slicked her hands. The floor tilted and rolled as she scrambled for the bag, and for the cool, comforting lump of steel inside. Suddenly he was in front of her, squatting. He jammed a handkerchief over her face and a jolting ozone stench blasted up her nose.

“The yellow man calls this
beng lie,
my dear. It is Gisella’s favourite, as I recall.”

Her nails raked over the handbag’s edges, spinning it towards her. Her legs and fingers began to twitch, then to numb.

“Gisella needed my help to train her little whores, you see,” said the man. “You were one of my earlier attempts, as I recall. Probably, there is no one to blame but myself for your present waywardness, but I was new to this then. One learns, doesn’t one, child?”

The clasp of the handbag fell apart beneath her fingernails and the bag yawned wide. Her fingers snaked inside, the motion in them dying one by one. The muscles in her back jerked and she collapsed, knocking her head on the floor.

You didn’t think he would find you, you stupid girl? You came into the world dirty and vile and pretend at decency. It is God’s will that you be found.

The edges of her vision swam with tears. The room swung like a pendulum. The man crouched like a gargoyle next to her, reaching skeleton hands for her face.

“Gisella will give me a tongue-lashing, it’s true, but I’m afraid I shan’t be returning you to her just yet.”

His fingers pressed into the skin of her forehead and scalp. The contact burned and sent shoots of pain deep into her head and neck.

“I had to look to the East for this process, you know,” he said. “It requires a certain exercise of the mind and the energies, but it makes Mesmer and Braid into simpletons by comparison.”

His words blurred, one into the other, until they hissed and crackled together. Missy slipped deep down into a warm pool of thick liquid. His voice came to her in flickers of dream thought, as flashes of hot and cold and terror.

“Listen, now, little one. Follow carefully my every instruction. You will not remember any of this until I command you. When I do so, you will answer all of my questions truthfully and without evasion. You are to remain with Oliver Sumner. Do as he asks, and act as you always have. Remember all you see and hear.”

A pause. Mind distant across expanse. No movement.

Scared cleared his throat.

“My dear, I want you to discover why the Great Mother finds Oliver Sumner so attractive.”

Missy vomited on herself. She choked, spat, sat up.

The foyer was empty. A single lamp lit the dark from its place on the floor some three feet away.

Oh, goodness. The mess! My lord, the smell!

She scrambled to her feet, gasping in horror at the hideous stain on her blouse. She snatched the lamp and fled to the bathroom. She filled the washbasin with water from the room’s iron bathtub, then stripped off her shirt and submerged it.

If you put your coat on and run straight home, they’ll never know. Just bundle the shirt and take it in a basket—surely they keep a basket somewhere.

Filth follows you like a hungry dog, dirty girl.

Shut up, you shrew.

Missy held the lamp up and surveyed herself in the mirror. Her hair had fallen out of its tight bun; her lip-stain had run down the length of her chin.

“Not right at all,” she murmured.

She screamed and jumped back, nearly dropping the lamp. She’d seen…No, it couldn’t have…But it had been there…an ogre’s face grinning at her from the mirror.

It wasn’t him. He wasn’t here.

His voice whispered to her, from far away or from inside her own ears, she could not tell.

“Tick, tick, tick.”

At the first sound Oliver unhitched the express rifle and lugged it into his arms. At the second he had it butt to shoulder ready to fire.

Damn it, this was not just a product of his imagination. Something had been stalking him for the past hour.

He didn’t even know where he was. He thought he was heading northeast, though after the long, confusing slide down to street level, he might have gone any which way. His hip-mounted lantern provided only enough illumination to see three strides around him. He probably stood out like a lighthouse down here, though he’d rather that than be in complete dark.

The sound came again: a heavy crunch, a shifting of debris out in the ruined buildings of Old Whitechapel. His bandaged hand twitched on the stock and the single unwrapped finger on the trigger.

When the streak of white blasted into the light he’d let the shot off before he even had time to register it. The heavy slug escaped into parts unknown, kicking Oliver nearly off his feet with the recoil. He stumbled and brought his rifle to bear on the object approaching him.

It was a clickrat. Moving slower now, it tottered forward on its six legs, maw opening and closing in random rhythm. The noise had been far too loud and slow to be from a clickrat, and that left one plausible alternative.

He’d hoped to catch up with Bailey’s crew before the hounds found him. It should not have been difficult to spot seven lamplights in absolute dark. Most of the buildings of Old Whitechapel had long since decayed into lumps of sodden debris, so the terrain was mostly clear, but multiple trips to the tops of said mounds had garnered him nothing but more black all around.

And probably brought me to the attention of every whelp creature down here. Damned foolish.

The clickrat ticked a few steps closer. It sat back on its stubby tail and wailed a low buzzing sound, then tilted its head and regarded him in a pose resembling curiosity.

“Jeremy Longshore!” Oliver said. The clickrat bounced back to its legs and scuttled up next to his shoe.

Oliver smiled down at him. “You clever little bastard. You must mean Phin and Tom aren’t too far.
Tom!
”

His voice echoed away into the dark. A growl like glass being ground down reverberated back to him.

Stupid.
Oliver swung the express rifle back into position and began scanning the shadows as much as his fogged goggles would permit.

Jeremy Longshore hopped a foot forward and bobbed his nose in a direction to Oliver’s left. Oliver swiveled to face the rifle that way, just as a black and silver shape broke the perimeter of the lamplight.

He put a bullet into its shoulder. The hound twitched, but did not back off.

Jeremy Longshore leapt forth and confronted the creature, balancing on tail and two rear legs and clicking into its face. Oliver shot the hound again, this time in the flank as it reared back to take stock of its second opponent. The impact jerked it to the side, but it barely seemed to notice, its attention fixed on Jeremy Longshore.

Oliver swept away the gun smoke with his left hand, keeping unsteady aim on the hound as it circled right, its sleek muzzle poking into the clickrat’s striking range. Jeremy Longshore stood his ground, emitting an unceasing string of clicks in patternless rhythm. Oliver orbited the clickrat as well, keeping it between him and the hound.

The thing would eventually figure out that Jeremy was bluffing and crush him. Could Jeremy keep its attention if he bolted? Oliver had no delusions about outrunning it if it chased him.