Whitechapel Gods (27 page)

Oliver watched the tiny twitches of Missy’s lips and eyelids.

Hews leaned down over his shoulder. “Lass, our boy, here, struck first.”

“The German struck first,” Missy said. She looked at Oliver. “Didn’t he? Didn’t he really?”

After a moment, Oliver nodded. “That’s the truth of it.”

“Codswallop,” Hews said. “Your bloody temper’s the truth of it. That was disgraceful.”

“I’ve enough of a lashing for that already, Hewey,” Oliver snapped. “And you’ve no right to speak to me like a child.”

Hews flushed. “I’ve all the right in the world, boy. I raised you—”

“You let me sleep under your smelting pots, Hewey,” Oliver said. “You let me carry coal and ore and paid me a pittance to do it. And sometimes,
sometimes,
you told the other coves not to kick me for the fun of it and then walked around puffing yourself that you were helping some charity orphan boy and what a good soul you were.”

Hews trembled for a moment, cheeks puffing, eyes bulging. The words came out with slaver through the teeth: “We fed you, boy. We clothed you and kept the Chimney gangs—”

Oliver cut him off. “I
stole
most of what I ate, Hewey. You weren’t about to share any of your wife’s cakes, either, as I recall.”

Hews looked fit to explode. The next words came out barely a whisper: “Ungrateful child.”

Oliver returned the man’s glare until Hews turned away. Then Oliver dropped his head and chewed the insides of his cheeks. Missy stood back, scowled, said nothing.

The maw of the Dunbridge station, edged in random growths of iron like crooked teeth, sucked the cable car inside. The omnipresent haze of Whitechapel vanished, to be replaced by glaring electrics and blasts of hot steam from a dozen unfathomable engines. Half-human crows scuttled to and fro, tinkering, tightening, massaging, and placating. The Boiler Men that had watched every station for the past twenty-four hours were conspicuously absent.

As the gates slid apart, Oliver and Hews each took up a wagon handle. Oliver felt every muscle popping as he strained to move the wagon that first few feet. The wheels screamed terribly and caught on their own axle every couple of inches.

The exertion pushed blood into his face, which made the pain worse. He must have a jolly bruise by now.

If that was the least damage you’d caused today, it would be a blessing.

Hews marched beside him, puffing and sweating, unused to such work, but no one was about to ask Bergen to join them again. Oliver stole a look over. Hews, weighted with exertion, walked with dragging heels—crestfallen, tired, and old. Fifty-seven years of life scraped together on Hews’ face in divots, wrinkles, scars, and jowls, and Oliver felt a powerful sense of wrongness.

Hews should be sitting by his fireplace in a country estate by now, sipping port and talking about the upcoming birth of his first grandchild to any ill-fated cove he could con into listening to him. Instead he had set up shop in Whitechapel, spied for the queen, lost a wife to cancer of the lungs, employed a whole gaggle of men, and kept one little boy from falling into his own grave.

The sudden rage, wherever it had come from, boiled away, and Oliver’s guts sank into his shoes.

The wheels of the wagon clattered and bounced as they tipped off the ramp and into the station. Missy’s silence and Tom’s fevered moans trumpeted their arrival in Dunbridge.

Oliver should have known better than this.

Missy mopped her forehead with a lace-lined white handkerchief. It came away yellowed and soiled.

It was Gisella’s cardinal rule: don’t ever be a mess. A lady should never sweat, never smell otherwise than with perfume, never have her clothing or her hair out of sorts. She’d discouraged it even at the height of…moments.

Gisella isn’t here, bird.

That didn’t matter. Missy still felt vile, soiled.

You were born in filth, little girl.
That had been the repeating refrain of her inner voice the entire climb.

It had taken considerable coaching and cold water to rouse Thomas enough to get him on his feet. Even then, he wobbled terribly with each step, flopping his tremendous weight to and fro without pattern. It had taken all three men to keep him upright, and Missy had added her shoulder as well, knowing they needed her but would never ask. Missy had never really been to Dunbridge. She had stopped through it on her flight from the bordello, those eternal months ago, but she had merely stopped over at the station, never experiencing the through-the-looking-glass maze quality of its platforms and walkways, its staircases and ladders and dead ends.

She found her eyes leaping with fright to the shadows slinking out of the smog. Always, they resolved themselves into Chinese women carrying baskets, men backing slips of metal, and stunted, bleary-eyed children tromping after. They watched her with tiny eyes.

And no wonder: Thomas lurched like Shelley’s monster, falling every twenty steps to dent or crack a stair or rail. Hews directed them with a few terse words at every crossing as they marched on. Bergen had returned, but the men spoke to each other only in the sparest, most necessary exchanges.

She’d caught the German looking at her several times. She couldn’t read the look. It wasn’t lust, not as she understood it, but neither was it suspicion nor anger. It was a rapt and undisturbed attention, detached and frigid.

When will Oliver listen to me and turf him?

Well, it seems you have two men here that cannot be controlled.

At long last, Hews announced that they had arrived, and they proceeded to wrestle Thomas through a door far too small for even a normal man, and more or less dump him onto a thin mattress and a few blankets in the corner. Each of the men threw the supply packs they carried against the wall. Then they collectively stood back for a rest.

Missy glanced around. All about the place lay filthy blankets draped over filthier men. The air stank like a sick house: sweat and piss, and some other acrid smell Missy didn’t recognise. The occupants could have passed for corpses, for how still they lay.

Missy tugged on Oliver’s sleeve. He turned, still panting. Her nose wrinkled at the rough smell of him.

“Why did you bring us to such an awful place?” Missy whispered.

Oliver smiled. “It’s not so bad, compared to some. Besides, it’s friendly territory.”

“I would hardly call it that.”

“We find our friends where we can.”

A squat, plump Chinese lady waddled from behind a red curtain at the back of the room. She wore a decorative Oriental dress of the most garish green with dulled gold detailing. Hews removed his hat and stepped up to greet her.

“Mrs. Flower, I’m afraid we must once again impose on your hospitality,” he said.

The lady inclined her head slightly, then turned and vanished into the back.

“We’ll take a few minutes’ rest,” Oliver said. “Then Bergen and I will go visit this mechanic of his.”

A twinge picked at Bergen’s lower eyelid and he glowered darkly. Much to her horror, she realised she understood that expression.

Yes, it’s the murderous one, isn’t it, child? Never forget that you are a killer now, too. Born a dog, trained a whore, now you are in full blossom. Isn’t that just proper?

“Shut up,” she hissed. She slapped her hand over her mouth.

Only Oliver noticed. His eye flicked momentarily her way. Hews interrupted before anything could be said.

“I’ll go,” he said, hitching pants and fixing vest as he spoke.

Oliver knitted his eyebrows. “Hewey, I’m not…”

“I won’t hear it, boy. When was the last time you slept?”

Oliver blinked back his surprise. “I don’t…”

“If the answer isn’t ‘this morning,’ then you’re staying here. In any case, I’m the only one who knows the ins and outs of this tower.”

Oliver stood a moment, considering.

Missy’s eyes flicked to Bergen. She recognised that look: studying a man to see how he could be controlled.

It is your duty to control your client, to bring him to his pleasure by whatever means are most agreeable to him. For each man, a unique set of actions, phrases, and gestures will be his reins. You will learn to pick these out through observation and intuition. Now, please, drink your tea, lay on your cots, and the training will begin.

Oliver could be controlled by treating him like a child.

I won’t do it.

Of course you will, my dear. It is what you were trained for. The German lacks the flexibility to conquer him, but you, my child—you are as fluid as rain. You can be whatever he needs you to be.

It was a new voice, rougher than she was used to. Chills ran up her spine.

At last, Oliver sighed.

“Fine. Just be back quick as you can.”

Hews screwed his bowler hat onto his head. The Chinese woman reemerged from the back, carrying a tray with a brass kettle and four porcelain cups. Hews took his hat off again and bowed towards her. He jabbed Oliver with an elbow and Oliver removed his hat as well, spilling unkempt brown hair to his shoulders.

“Regrettably, we must go, Mrs. Flower,” Hews said. “By God’s graces, we shall be back before the pot is cooled.”

Mrs. Flower did not appear to acknowledge the sentiment. She merely placed the tray on the floor by Hews’ feet and retreated through the room, checking on her various semiconscious patrons.

Hews replaced his hat. Bergen dropped his steam cannon into the corner and stood it against the wall. He’d climbed the whole way with it lashed to his back and barely looked out of breath.

He’s going to murder Hews and then he’s going to come back and murder you. But you’ll stop him long before that, will you not? You and your little handbag.

Missy found herself piqued.

He would deserve it.

There’s my little dog.

Bergen ducked out into the dark of midafternoon. Hews made to follow. Oliver stopped him with an arm on the shoulder.

Hews shook his head. “No time now, Oliver.”

Oliver let him go. The door shut. Missy had never seen a man so alone in a room full of people.

Now would be the moment to do it: just step outside the door and put a bullet through the German’s back.

“Come on, then,” she heard her mouth saying. “Let’s have a sit.”

Oliver wandered in her direction, then swerved and flopped to the floor beside Thomas. He used his hands to draw his knees up to a cross-legged position, then shrugged out of his coat. Missy gathered the tray and sat beside him.

She poured the tea and tried not to let her hands shake when it came out red. Gisella’s tea was always red—that awful soporific that conjured up the hobgoblin man.

Heh. I see you remember me.

The teapot rang as it bounced off the tray and regurgitated its contents onto the floor.

“Oh, God…” Missy breathed.

Oliver reached across and righted the teapot. “No one will notice.”

That wasn’t what she meant.

The hobgoblin man is real. He came to visit me.

She felt the phantom sensation of his ghastly fingers against her face, and she forgot.

She returned to herself to see the profile of Oliver’s scruffy face. He stared at Thomas, who gurgled as he breathed, and simultaneously stared at nothing. Tea soaked into the leg of his trousers. His skin had turned several shades towards yellow. The lamplight reflected flickering flames into his eyes.

Something wasn’t right. Oliver’s mussed hair fell forward over his brow, shadowing his eyes, so that it could not possibly be reflected light.

She shivered. He reacted to the motion, and turned those subtly burning eyes on her own.

“What so you see?” he asked.

She told him.

His eyes drifted closed. “It’s getting worse,” he said. “It feels like a hot iron up under my skull.”

She felt a chill rake through the moist air, and dared not ask what he meant.

He continued anyway. “It gets hotter the closer we get to the Stack. Mama Engine has taken up residence in my head. It seems she fancies me as a consort.”

Missy sat very still, her skin crawling.

“The other one is in my guts. I’m not entirely sure what he wants from me.” He grabbed and gripped Tommy’s flesh-and-bone hand. “This can’t be for nothing.”

There’s the opening. Take him in your lap, coddle him, sing to him, tell him everything will be all right and make him yours.

Missy began reaching for Oliver’s hand.

I don’t want to.

Yes, you do.

She stopped, stripped off her filthy red glove, and took his fingers, skin to skin, in hers.

“You never asked me,” Missy said, “where I came from, Oliver.”

His fingers were calloused and scarred, and rough against her skin. They lay immobile in her hand, but a slight flush crept up Oliver’s neck.

“Who you were isn’t my business,” he said.

Missy swallowed. “Oliver, I won’t…I can’t…tell you, but just…” She breathed. “Just understand that the place I came from was a terrible place. She made us…I was dying there all the time.”

He was staring at her, and the dancing fire did not seem so threatening now.

“Never think that it was for nothing, Oliver.”

God, the
look
he gave her. She felt a heat in her chest, a lightness of limbs. He was beautiful, his lips in a small smile potent with such warmth that she…

She shot to her feet.

“Well, I’d best let you rest, I’d imagine,” said her mouth. “Weighty mission tonight, if all goes well.”

Still staring at her with that smile—that damnable alluring smile—he said, “I suppose that would be best.”

“Indeed. Well, I quite think I’ll step out for a moment, perhaps buy us some biscuits or whatever they sell here.”

“That would be delightful, Miss Plantaget.”

“And you needn’t worry for my safety. I’m quite capable of caring for myself.”

“That is something I would never doubt.”

“Good. Well…I shall be back soon.”

She fled to the door.