Whitechapel Gods (26 page)

The concussion broke windows halfway down the street. A gout of fire threw the back of the shop’s roof and its supports into the air and lit the Underbelly with more light than it had seen in twenty years.

The roof of the bookshop rained down in fragments for blocks around. Some of it had probably struck the underside of the upper Concourse. Bits of plaster and twisted steel clattered on the street around him as Oliver lay curled on the ground.

“Gott in Himmel,”
Bergen cursed beside him. “How much did you use?”

The last pieces of the bookshop crashed to the street all around, and Oliver slowly uncurled.

“Twenty-seven,” he said. “A full third of Heckler’s supply.”

“Why so much?” the German asked.

They both got to their feet. Oliver removed his hat and shook it off, then ran a hand through greasy, knotted hair. “I had to be sure that abomination of his never gets loose in the Underbelly.”

“I wouldn’t lay odds on it now, English,” Bergen said.

“I won’t be satisfied until I see it in pieces, Keuper,” Oliver shot back. “Now keep me covered.”

Obediently, the German raised his pistol and aimed it into the ruin of the shop. Oliver caught the rare flicker of an actual expression on his face—amusement?
Bugger him.

Amazingly, the door and much of the building’s façade had stayed intact. Dying fire flickered through the shattered windows. Greater fires than these had already claimed the atmosphere of Whitechapel.

The door cracked off its hinges as Oliver swung it open. The bookshelves had toppled forward like dominoes, spilling their wares all about the floor. Some were burning; most were simply blasted into pieces and lay snapped and mangled in piles against the remaining walls.

Beneath one shelf lay a twisted heap of iron and steel. It twitched ceaselessly, respiring puffs of dry, dusty smoke. It had too many arms, too many legs, and not nearly enough skin left on it, but it lived.

One of the old man’s arms grasped feebly at Oliver’s shoe.

“I’ll tell you why I hate her, Crow,” Oliver said. “I hate her because all the women and children that slave in her factories or twitch and rot on her husband’s Chimney aren’t alive enough to hate her. I hate her for the air, and the dark, and for the disease that’s eating my friend alive from the inside.”

The shape screeched like a heavy door on unoiled hinges.

Oliver watched Fickin trying to crawl and had to blink back tears. “I hate her because she doesn’t let her people die.”

He raised his eyes and stared into the empty space were Mama Engine had once come for him.

“Please,” he asked, “let this one go.”

The twisted shape continued to squeal, continued to grasp at unseen things with steel fingers.

Oliver sighed, and stepped over the body. He walked over the downed shelves to the back of the shop. The dynamite had broken a hole clean through the Underbelly. No sign remained of Fickin’s monster or the four furnaces used to craft it.

Bergen, from behind: “Are we finished here?”

“Yes, Keuper, we’re finished,” Oliver said. “Get Tom ready to be moved. We’ll be going shortly.”

The German retreated.

Oliver stood amongst the ruins of the shop and let his sadness have expression. After the Uprising, with the Underbelly burning, he’d sworn it in a silent pact with God: no more children shot in the streets for getting in someone’s way, no more families broiled alive by steam guns for hiding in their cellars, no more homes or lives burned and torn down.

And here I am, destroyer of my own city.

But this was the hideout of an enemy. This was the stronghold of an invader who would have brought only more misery. That made a difference, didn’t it?

And what of those who might have been hit by stray debris? What of those who will suffer at the hands of the cloaks when they come down on you for this?

Strange. That had sounded like the German.

The echo of Bergen’s momentary smile flashed in his mind. The German had never laughed; Oliver imagined him laughing over this.

He dug the crushed body of Jeremy Longshore out of the rubble before departing.

I have not asked Them whether I am fated to die when Their work is done. I am too frightened that They may answer me.

—II. xxix

Windows shattered and cables broke in the world of dreams.

Ten thousand arms grasped at yellow-brown ichor. Towers swayed; brass and copper and glass puddled in the air before raining into the rising sea of bile. The searing heat of the fire and the sticky cool of the swamp clashed and annihilated each other. Steam burst upwards and tore the red sky, opening rents into horrid other spaces, which screamed above the incessant booming of the clock.

Aaron fled for his life.

The diseased child-god had used him. Whatever the Lord and Lady had done to keep their malformed spawn from invading the city, Aaron had undone.

At first he had seen her clearly, as Mama Engine emerged into man’s realm at the beckoning of her priest. The layers of her essence unfolded in sequence, revealing progressively deeper levels of her mind, from the simplest surface thoughts, to capricious desires and whims, to deep convictions of love and pain, to an exacting point of fire, hungry to consume and smelt and mould.

At one instant he had been safe, buoyed inside his silver body and anchored firmly on Adam’s earth. The next, he felt a tug at his mind, then dull claws slashed into it and a howl of pain ripped through him. In that instant he became a thousand individuals writhing in pain on a thousand beds, cots, and street corners, every sliver of his body ground apart from within by teeth and gears, black oil spilling from every orifice. He’d looked up and seen the faces of friends and family, tormentors and cloaks, sometimes no face at all.

The diseased child-god burst from Aaron’s soul like water through a breached dike. In moments, the thing’s pus-body had attached itself to the towers and walkways of the dream world, and then began to oxidise them.

As the tower of hands bent and closed in, Aaron had torn himself free. Something of him was left behind, to singe and curl and turn to ash.

The void. Where is the void?
He ran through the copper-plated streets, through glass arches and across chain bridges. Every turn brought him to a new corridor, identical to the last, or to a new chain bridge over choppy, black seas.

It must be somewhere. He reached into it to get me, so there must be an entrance.

He reached a ledge and halted. From there, he scanned the sky ahead. A chain ran from the ledge some two hundred yards to the prismatic saw creation that stood in for the Docks Tower. Beyond, black skies and London’s army of ghosts waited and watched.

Words came to him from that echo of his mind that knew the unknowable:
They guard the ancient dreams of London from all invaders, even yourself.

He spun and looked back. Cracks spiderwebbed across the sky. Long trails of smoke flew in all directions as the tower of arms lurched and bent and smashed against its foe. The air filled with the wailing of souls on both sides as the gods threw those captured wretches into the fray.

Grandfather Clock ticked in steady rhythm, and did nothing to help or hinder.

He’d run as far as he could. The tower and the chains shook, and he wondered what good any amount of distance would do him.

There is always a way out.

He closed his eyes and reached up with his mind. The rock-and-dirt world shunned him as he touched it. A brief impression of pressure, damage, and deformity flashed over him: his second body had been lost, and with it, his link to the city above.

The heat and the noise swelled. Aaron began to hear the screams of men and women echo in from the real world, and longed for the peace of the void, which hid from his reach.

There really was no way out.

Was he to be a mute witness to this, then? Was he to sit and watch and do nothing?

What else could he hope for? His body was gone, and escape into the void unlikely. He dared not place himself between the two entities clashing before him.

So there was no other course. Seeing was what he had always been best at: seeing, thinking, planning, advising, but never acting. He had acted once, and he had been killed.

So he seated himself upon the hot air, and watched.

On a crowded cable car, halfway between Cambridge-Heath and Dunbridge, Thomas started screaming.

The cries flew out into the vast spaces around, vanishing without echo. White eyes in black faces turned. Oliver’s company froze as one for an instant, uncertain. The stunned silence dragged on, each passenger waiting to see if the sound was repeated.

“Ah, bugger the dog! Jesus!”

Oliver leapt up into the wagon and tore the concealing burlap blanket from Tom’s face. A visage of agony greeted him. Oil and pus squirted from Tom’s burned eye.

“Sorry, Ollie,” Tom managed.

Oliver knocked him on the head. “You should be. I’ve told you a thousand and one times you make too much noise, chum.”

Tom chuckled through his grimace. “Like a banshee. Awooooo.” The mirth dissolved into a fit of horrid coughing that produced brown bile.

Oliver skipped his gaze over his crew. Bergen was already reaching for his pistol with his left hand. Hews was likewise reaching for his. Oliver shook his head at them and they stayed their hands.

“I’m terribly sorry.” It was Missy’s voice. “Our friend is very sick with the clacks. We didn’t mean to be a bother. We’re taking him to see a doctor.”

Half the crowd nodded and turned away. Conversations began all about the car, passing quickly from mouth to mouth; everyone knew someone with the clacks, and everyone had a story to tell. The men of Oliver’s troupe communally exhaled a held breath. Missy slid smoothly into conversation with a woman close by. Thomas coughed and spat up, but by then the crowd’s attention had been redirected.

“Got a good tongue,” Hews said, from his position at the right front handle of the wagon. “I couldn’t have made that half as convincing.”

“It’s why I hired her,” Oliver said. He pulled a rag out of his pocket and started blotting the fluids spilling out of his friend.

Tom chuckled. “Certain there weren’t other factors, eh, Chief?”

“You’re supposed to be sick.”

“Wouldn’t you know it,” Tom said. “A dozen knives to the heart and two shots to the belly and it’s a bloody fist in my gut that gets me.”

Oliver jostled his shoulder. “You’re going out pounding cloaks, remember?”

Tommy coughed again. “Ah. Right-oh. Where would I be without you, Chief?”

Packing coal in Aldgate, healthy and in one piece, that’s where.
“I’m sure you’d be neck-deep in trouble by now even without my help.”

“Ah! Stung! God’s own truth, if I ever heard it. Where is the king?”

Oliver started. “Jeremy?”

“Yeah. The little bugger didn’t run off on me, did he?”

“I…er…sent him on a mission.”

Tom’s one remaining eyebrow perked up. “Truly?”

Oliver tried very hard for a casual shrug. “I said I’d make him a member of the crew, right? Little guy has to pull his weight. Besides, he’s shown he’s capable.”

Tom squinted through his good eye. After a moment, his expression changed and his face fell.

“Knew he was a good pick,” he mumbled.

Oliver gestured to Hews. “Take over, would you?”

The older man ended his conversation with a fellow passenger and obediently mounted the wagon as Oliver climbed out. The wagon was of native Whitechapel variety, made of iron rods, tin, and aluminium. They’d loaded it with a pack of supplies, Bergen’s steam rifle, Lawrence’s manual, and the translation of Scared’s tape—and then Tom’s body, for when he’d come to, he’d been unable to walk and was far too heavy to carry.

Oliver walked round into Hews’ place at the right handle and faced Bergen, who stood at the left. Phineas, Heckler, and the doctor, they’d left in the Underbelly: Oliver expected a strike on Shadwell to come within the hour. Phineas could give fair warning and had been through the last Uprising; Heckler was a capable lad, and a prodigy shooter; and Chestle…well, he’d be needed soon enough.

It would have been nice to leave Bergen and his cannon there as well, but…

“Where is this mechanic of yours?” Oliver asked.

Bergen regarded him coolly, as if evaluating whether he was trustworthy enough for such information. “John Scared has a hide at the top levels of the Dunbridge slope, and the mechanic keeps his workshop in it.”

Oliver crossed his arms and leaned on the wagon. “So you’ll be leading us right into Scared’s headquarters.”

The German glowered. “I dislike your tone, English. Had I wished your death, I could have effected it any number of times.”

That much was true. The man had certainly made an effort, and yet something about him tickled at Oliver’s attention and set his mind to doubting every time the two ended up in the same room:
Why would Bailey, with his God-save-the-queen bravado, go out and hire a German? Why not a fellow Briton, born and bred?

“Will Scared be there?”

Bergen snorted. “Doubtful. He’s likely evacuated to a different hide, as I know the site intimately. He has another in Aldgate, and he has told me there are several more. I suspect one in Shoreditch, though I could not say where.”

Oliver noticed Missy glance their way. After a second she turned back to her conversations with the other passengers.

“Why would he evacuate, I wonder?”

“Barring any other report, he has to assume I’ve been captured, either by the cloaks or the English,” Bergen said. “Although his spies have probably noted me with you. Scared is a prudent man.”

“Why did he hire you?”

Bergen crossed his own arms, arms much thicker than Oliver’s. “I am growing weary of your distrust, Sumner. Do you interrogate all of your men like this?”

Oliver felt his hackles rising again.

“Keuper, I have a rule that I never question after the history of my people. I don’t believe a man has to carry his past with him like Marley’s chains, and so I will not ask you about your past. I will, however, ask you about the work you’ve done for Bailey, and for Scared, because
that
could be necessary.”

The cable car bumped as it passed over one of its junctions, where the cables hooked through the bent, wobbling beams of an infant tower, still too young to hold inhabitants. The wagon car clanked and rolled, and for a moment Bergen and Oliver halted to steady it with the handles.

“So, tell me,” Bergen said, when the car had stabilised again, “how do you choose your men, without knowing anything about them? A man’s past is his definition.”

“I don’t believe that,” Oliver said. “I trust my sense of people is all. I consider myself a good judge of character.”

Bergen barked a laugh. “Character? Your American is a criminal, Sumner. Your woman is a whore.”

Oliver’s fist flew out before he even felt the anger rising. His knuckles cracked the German across the jaw, forcing him back and down against the wagon’s handle.

Good Lord, chap, what were you—

Bergen’s fist hammered into his cheekbone and drove through to the back side of his head. His neck snapped in a wrong way and his whole body gave out.

He felt the German take a heavy footstep in his direction. Then Hews rang out like a bell: “That’s enough!”

Oliver groaned and tried to right himself. In his blurred vision, he caught Bergen, hand on his weapon, and Hews, hand on his.

Missy appeared behind Bergen’s shoulder, eyes dark. She slipped one hand into her handbag and drew an object halfway out. Even through tumbling perceptions Oliver recognised what it was. Missy’s lips moved, muttering something for only Bergen’s ears.

“You came out the top on that one,” Hews said, still covering Keuper with his pistol. “Let it go.”

The German straightened, retreating into the general blur.

“I will not tolerate that again,” he said.

“Then don’t…insult…my crew!” Oliver slammed his hands down onto the grate floor and shoved himself up.

“They bring it on themselves, Sumner,” Bergen said. “You have no discipline; you keep no controls on your men. Africa would swallow you alive.”

“This isn’t Africa,” Oliver said. He grabbed on to the wagon handle to steady himself, then rose to his feet. Feeling began to seep back into his cheek: an acute, throbbing pain. “But tell me: if it were, could you kill every lion and tiger and snake and whatever else all by your lonesome? Could your one gun kill all of them before they got you?” He jabbed his finger out. “It seems you’re so stupid as to think you can fight this all on your own, and while I’d be happy to be rid of you, I frown on people getting themselves needlessly killed.”

Bergen harrumphed. “Then you are a weak and stupid man.”

Hews stuck his gun in Bergen’s face, then in Oliver’s. “Enough,” he said. “I won’t stand for any more of this lunacy. The next one to say anything gets a lump in the face.”

Bergen and Oliver exchanged glares. They stood that way for a long time. On their right, the slope of Dunbridge faded into view through the smog. Their audience stared at them raptly, caught in their moment.

Bergen broke the gaze and spat on the floor between them. Then he turned and strode away. The other passengers parted around him, and watched as he walked to the far corner of the car and took a post staring pointedly out at nothing.

Oliver sighed, righted himself, and turned to face the crowd.

“Don’t.” Missy pressed him back against the wagon with a firm palm. “Right now it’s gossip and that’s all. There’s no sense turning it into something bigger.”

“You all right, lad?” Hews asked.

Oliver checked his jaw, his neck; nothing seemed permanently damaged. He nodded.

Only then did Hews stow his pistol. He swung his legs over the edge of the wagon and sat. For a moment he wrung his hands. “That was far from prudent, Oliver.”

Oliver rubbed his cheek and said nothing.

Hews frowned. “The man’s been trying to get your goat since he met you and you just up and handed it to him.”

Missy’s face suddenly compressed and she snapped at Hews through bared teeth. “Hogwash, Hewey. If this is the only way to put that man in his place then let’s have more of it.”

“Lass?” Hews said.

“That’s a vile man we’ve hooked up with. I’ve said it before that he can’t be controlled. Do you need more proof than
that
?” She indicated Oliver’s face.