Whitechapel Gods (24 page)

‘You’ meaning ‘Jeremy’?

Aaron nodded.

I have a way.

Aaron’s fingers began fidgeting again. “Be careful how you use me, Oliver. The third god is part of me. I can always feel him in my mind. I…might have sold him my soul.”

Oliver had no hands to clasp the man with, no smile to reassure him.

I need you to stay fast, man. You took the same oath I did when Bailey recruited you, I’m guessing. You hold to that.

It did cheer him a bit. “Till St. Peter’s gates, I suppose. Queen and country, and all.”

Good man. I’m happy to have you on my crew, Aaron.

Aaron laughed. “Demoted! I ran my own crew up until three days ago.”

The crew! Oliver looked about.
Ah…chum…how do I get back?

“Think up,” he said.

Before Oliver could ask the meaning of that advice, he had followed it. The city dropped away below him at a fantastic rate, dispersing like wind-blown leaves. Only Mama Engine’s tower of arms remained and for only an instant.

He breached the red sky and awoke behind the bakery to find a heel of bread sitting on the concrete beside his right hand, buttered.

He awoke again, into a jarring shake.

Phineas bellowing: “Don’t—bloody—that don’t fuckin’ work, Yank.”

Heckler’s thin face and moustache coated in sweat: “Suh!”

Oliver tried to shove him off, but his strength faded and the arm flopped down. He tried to speak, and the words came out slurred and useless.

“Get him the tea, woman!”

Phin hauled Heckler back. Missy appeared at Oliver’s side, tilted his head, and poured warm, bitter tea between his lips.

“What?” he managed, spitting tea onto his chin.

Heckler clenched and unclenched his fists.

“They’re here, suh,” he said. His eyes quavered in their sockets. “The cloaks, suh. Dozens of them. And the neighbourhood folk all on their tails.”

Phin spat onto the floor. “Cap’n, 1812 about to break out.”

“Oh, not again” escaped Oliver’s lips. Images of the Uprising flooded his brain: fire reaching to the upper concourse, bodies left in gutters and streets, gunfire, and the hot, close confines of those tunnels they’d built, where for endless hours Oliver and his men had sat and listened to friends and families and neighbours scream and weep and finally fall silent.
Not again. Not because of me.

He met the eyes of the others, anxious, expectant eyes, waiting for him to give the word.

Missy’s finger wiped a drop of tea that clung to his lips.

“They need you,” she said.

He extended her an arm. “Help me up”

Westerton was not above taking pleasure in his work. Those well-to-do ninnies at headquarters seemed to frown on anything but grim-faced, joyless discipline. They said it was Grandfather Clock’s way, efficiency over emotion. Westerton disagreed. Grandfather Clock’s way was for all parts to work together according to a single Purpose. Each part had a Function, and no part—certainly not those stiff-nosed codgers at the Stack—could impose its Function on another.

When I’m in charge I’ll drum them out and make them into fucking Catholics.

They’d told him his understanding would grow as his brass bones and copper nerves did. He’d told them that he was the way he was because the Lord wanted him that way. At least they’d had the intelligence to let him lead the attack—there was no better man for the job of vengeance than Marcus Westerton.

“There’s no place to go, you scoundrels!” he cried. “I’ve denied you every exit. I’ve a man covering every window. Come out now or I’ll have my men blast that door apart and execute every last one of you.”

His voice rang satisfactorily in the cavern beneath the Shadwell Concourse. Now if only he’d had something spectacular to wear to the occasion. His two best suits had been ruined by these foul Britons, leaving him with an old tweed frock coat, moth-eaten at the cuffs, and slacks without a crease or proper hemming. They’d also soiled his hat with so much of his own blood it might never come clean.

Ah, there was the anger again. Good.

The man beside him—Westerton hadn’t bothered to learn his name; he was a foul-aspected churl—gestured with his rifle to the upper floor.

“Som’un in the window.”

Westerton followed his gaze.

“Well, bloody shoot him, then,” Westerton ordered. “Show him we’re in earnest.”

The man locked his rifle to his shoulder and let fly an expert shot that caved the glass and tore aside the curtains.

“Ha-ha!” Westerton bellowed. “There’s a dishing of the Lord’s Justice!”

“Din’ get ’im,” the man said, lowering his rifle.

Westerton wheeled on him. “Simpleton! I’ll do it next time.” He drew his weapon. Those few hours in the noxious and corrosive air of the downstreets had marred its perfect finish.

By the Lord’s name, what a horror.
The downstreets were much worse than anything he’d ever heard of them: the air, the stench, the dark, and those loathsome mutant wretches that wandered the place. It had ruined his suit, pocket watch, and much of his skin during the fall. Only faith had kept him alive, and his prayer that the Lord would bring him back to Harmony. And so He had. Rage and devotion had fueled Westerton’s rapid and tireless climb back to the Lord’s realm.

Now revenge was only ten paces away.

“Come out, you bastards!” He discharged his weapon into the tenement’s front door, punching a hole in it and nearly splitting it down the centre. “I’ll crush your heads with my bare hands.”

Was that not a rallying cry? Was that not a marvellous cue for his assemblage of brutes to cheer?

He turned to the churl at his side. “What is wrong with your men? Don’t they enjoy working the Lord’s will?”

The man ground his bestial jaw. “The folk, gots a queer look on ’em.”

Westerton turned around and surveyed the vast crowd of Shadwell’s wretches that had gathered to watch.

“What, these beggars?” Westerton said. “Pay them no mind.”

“Sir, they’s angry wit us. Some’s armed theyselves.”

Westerton squinted at them.
(Damn this infernal dark!)
There
was
something shifty about them, some gleam in their eyes like hungry dogs. Some indeed carried weapons—butcher’s knives, crowbars, pipes. Not a one of them carried so much as a pistol.

“Pay them no mind, I said,” Westerton ordered. “They think they can best us with little bits of steel. Let them try.”

Westerton pivoted back to the tenement. “You have a ten count, rebels! Then we make sieves out of the lot of you.”

“He’s got a set of pipes, that one,” Phineas grumbled.

Oliver leaned heavily on Missy’s shoulder for support. The potion had drained nearly all strength from his muscles.

“Bergen, what do you see?” he called.

The German called down from the mezzanine. “Three dozen. All armed. Rough men. We won’t be able to bargain.”

“Not with that fop,” Hews said. “Loud-mouthed braggart. How many times have we killed that man, now?”

Bergen’s window exploded. The German flattened himself against the wall.

“Are you hit?” Hews called.

“Nein,”
Bergen said. “A magnificent shot, though.”

“Bergen, are you well enough to fire that cannon of yours?”

A savage gleam came into the man’s eye. He ran to fetch it.

“Heckler, take his post. Hews, the other window. And don’t be seen.”

The two men ran to their positions without question.

Phineas shrunk to the floor, quaking, his hands clamped over his ears.

And it will certainly get louder.

Oliver turned to find Missy staring at him with a fire in her gaze, her jaw set. Her eyes were a pearly, almost opalescent blue, and completely unafraid.

“Michelle,” he said. “Get Phineas and the doctor down into the tunnels.”

“Oh? So I’m to run off and leave the killing and the dying to the men, is that it?”

“For the love of God, woman, not now! I need
shooters,
Missy. No amount of smiles or sashaying will help us right now.”

“You ungrateful swine!”

“This is not a debate,” Oliver said. “Move your feet or we’ll have words.”

Missy snorted. “I quite think we’re having words now.”

The door exploded. An instant later, a piece of the staircase followed suit. One or both of them yelped and together they dove towards the side hall, landing in a heap of tangled limbs.

Oliver coughed as dust and wood chips cascaded through the air. “You’re all right?” he asked.

“The picture of health,” Missy snapped.

Tom and Dr. Chestle appeared in the hallway arch.

“Ho, ho!” Tom said, clutching his gut with one hand. “Hardly the place, now, birds.”

Missy shoved herself away and stood.

“What’s going on?” the doctor asked.

Without another word, Missy grabbed Phin’s sleeve and then the doctor’s and more or less dragged them into the hall.

Thomas, now dressed in his soiled shirt and oversized jacket and sporting a boy’s cap on his head, bent down and hoisted Oliver to his feet with a one-handed jerk.

“How now, Chief?” he said. “You seem out of sorts.”

Oliver tried unsuccessfully to stand under his own power, and fell back on Tommy’s arm. “Hewey! What’s the word?”

“Westerton’s rallying the troops, I think. First line’s coming up to fire.”

“What about the crowd?”

A pause. “They’re keeping back.”

Good.
But how long would that last? This had to end quickly, before the anger of those poor coves overwhelmed their good sense.

“Find some brick or steel for cover,” Oliver ordered. “Don’t return fire.”

Heckler froze in the middle of cocking his Winchester. His expression spoke his opinion of that order.

Hews saw it as well. “Swallow it, lad,” Hews told him. “Find cover.”

“Us too, Tommy.”

Tom pulled them both up against the thick arch of brick around the door.

The cloaks’ first volley burst like firecrackers and pieces of plaster and glass rained down on the foyer and the stairs. Two more volleys rang out, the cloaks firing with precision timing.

In the silence following, Westerton boomed again.

“Inside, my Brothers! Glory to the Harmony! Glory to the Great Machine! Bring them to me, my Brothers.”

Footsteps approached the front door.

“Tommy!” Oliver hissed.

The big man looked at him in confusion.

“The traps, Tom!”

Tom swallowed Oliver in a hug and dove into the corner.

The first cloak kicked in the front door. The bolt disconnected from the doorjamb, causing a copper latch to fall into its vacant place. The latch touched a copper plate, freeing electricity to run from a hidden chemical battery into the four sticks of dynamite embedded in the brick.

The ensuing thunder ate the four or five cloaks closest to the door. The whole of Sherwood shook with the blast. Portraits crashed to the floor upstairs; more plaster and glass toppled from above. Oliver felt heavy impacts on Thomas’ back, but the big man, braced shoulder to the wall, held fast.

Oliver choked on a lungful of dust and Tommy’s oily odour. He heard and felt the grinding in his friend’s abdomen. He swallowed to moisten his throat.

“Ready!” he called.

Tom released him, stood, and turned. Oliver slumped against the wall, finding some strength in his legs, and fished out his derringer. He checked above: Hews had his Bulldog out, Heckler, his Winchester.

And Bergen stood atop the stairs like a Greek god.

Three cloaked ruffians streamed through the door. Hews and Heckler set upon them instantly, raining fire down from above on both sides. One cloak fell dead; the others simply reeled aside as more came through. Oliver added his derringer to the barrage; Tommy hurled a brick. Together they subdued this next group, but as the third one came through Oliver realised both he and Hews were out of ammunition, and Heckler would be soon.

Oliver scrambled to reload.

“I send you to your places in hell,” Bergen growled. Oliver grabbed Tom by the suspenders and dragged him back.

The noise alone shattered all the windows at the front of the building. The round burst one cloak into strips of red and brass. A steam cloud streaked after the bullet, cracking with white electricity, which lanced through the whole crowd of canaries. As one, they spasmed and dropped, smoking and twitching, to the floor.

“Mother of Jesus!”

Oliver didn’t know who’d said that.

In the blink of an eye twelve Brothers died. Just outside the door, steam rose from a hole large enough to fall through.

If the functionality still existed in his organs, Westerton might have pissed himself.

“What was that?” he cried. He snatched the churl’s sleeve. “What was it?”

“I dunno,” the other man muttered.

“Egads! What on the Lady’s black Earth could do such a thing? How would rebels get ahold of it?”

Lord Grandfather, protect me.

The Brothers’ eyes fixed on him, their faces all identical looks of astonishment.

“What? Do you need me to tell you what to do? Kill them, you simpletons!”

When the Brothers hesitated, the crowd on their fringe shifted uneasily. Some raised their weapons.

“Do you want a fight?” Westerton yelled at them. “Then come and get one. We’ll butcher you all!”

At that instant shots rang out from the tenement and the crowd surged forward.

The Brothers, distracted by the shots of the rebels, did not gun down the crowd as Westerton had imagined. The outer line of Brothers fell beneath iron pots and crowbars, screaming and panicking.

More shots rang out from the tenement, felling two more Brothers close at hand.

“I refuse to let you win again, you villain,” Westerton bellowed. He raised his revolver and blew one of the crowd to mist. Then he charged the headquarters of his nemesis. Bullets hammered through his vest and coat, lodging in the mechanisms of his body. His next two shots destroyed large stretches of wall.

“I will avenge you, Brothers!” Westerton screamed as he barrelled through the shattered arch. “In the Lord’s name and the pursuit of Harmony!”