Whitechapel Gods (33 page)

Tom pounded his fist into an open palm. “Right and ready, Chief.”

“Hewey?”

The old man let off a sigh that rattled with all of his fifty-seven years. “There won’t be another time to say this, Oliver.”

Oliver had the impulse to stop him, to tell him there would be plenty of time, though he knew there wouldn’t. His guts felt sick for reasons unrelated to infection.

Hews breathed once and removed his bowler. “You were always bigger than me, lad.”

“Hewey, don’t…”

Hews pressed on. “I couldn’t supply you a life that you would accept. I used to lay awake and wonder what I was doing wrong that forced you back out the door every few weeks.”

Oliver squeezed the man’s shoulder. This was too much. “Hewey, you don’t need to—”

“I do, lad!” Hews snapped. “You would have been a dullard backer if you’d listened to me! Oliver, I never meant to—”

“Stop it.” Oliver stared Hews straight in the eyes, heedless of the stinging light that caused Hews to wince back. “Whatever happened, it doesn’t matter. All right?
It doesn’t matter.
”

“But—”

“No,” Oliver said. “I won’t have it. Anything you think you’ve done, anything I’ve said you’ve done, it’s all passed now. I need you
here
. I need you with me. Now.”

Hews sniffed back something, swallowed whatever he was going to say.

“Right,” he said.

“Right,” said Oliver.

And Hews chuckled, grief and weight lifting from his shoulders as if they’d been a joke the whole time. “For queen and country, eh? Bloody patriotism—kill us all.”

Oliver let out a held breath.

“Not on my watch.”

They shook hands and Hews nodded with satisfaction. He replaced his hat and led them in a quiet, genuine prayer.

Oliver reached into the door and turned a key that could not have been found with a dozen hours of visual inspection. Steam hissed out from the rim, gears ground and reversed course. The brass wheel rolled aside into the interior of the wall.

And Oliver felt sick again.

Beyond stood the upper end of the Chimney, ringed around and around by a curtain of human beings strapped to chairs, twitching, rotting, unable to die. Hundreds were visible with thousands more held where the structure extended below the floor. The chapel was a concourse around the Chimney, bare and plated in gold. Clocks covered every inch of wall, locked together at their rims and rotating in one coordinated motion.

A sea of gold cloaks rose from prayer and turned to face them. There were hundreds—hundreds—of glowing eyes, hundreds of metal hands, hundreds of heart-clocks ticking in rhythm with the room.

Thomas bellowed like a bear and charged. Hews and Oliver ran in after him, drawing their weapons. The cloaks closed from all sides.

Tommy hit the first line and sent three into the air with a sweep of his arm. Another he knocked in the face with his good hand. Flesh sheared off it to reveal the same iron bones beneath. Oliver and Hews held the sides, Hews cracking finely placed shots into every face he saw, Oliver holding them back through only the threat of his weapon and the Mother’s fire-glow in his eyes. They reeled back under that gaze, unable to approach.

Tommy grabbed two cloaks in his hands and flung then twenty feet in the air. He put his shoulder into the next line and knocked them sprawling. Oliver jumped his gaze from cloak to cloak. It was a few seconds before the fire drove them back, and when he released one another would run in from the side. He used his two shots and fell back to lashing out with the pistol’s handle.

Hews dropped into Thomas’ wake to reload; Oliver did the same. They shuffled backwards, as fast as they could manage, while Tom cleared them a path.

There were so many; so many flashes of cloth of gold, so many brass limbs and blue lapis eyes and all of them surging together at the same instant. Oliver took to sweeping his gaze across the crowd, causing them to hesitate, but it did not slow them long.

How much father. A dozen yards? A hundred?

Thomas roared in pain and stumbled back into them. Hews ducked close to Tommy’s back as the cloaks reached for him. Oliver stepped in front of those hands and drove them back with his gaze.

A creature of brass strips and wire landed against Tommy’s chest, sinking long, savage fingers into his shoulders. Cloaks leapt onto Tommy’s arms, holding them down with sheer weight as the inhuman creature tensed its limbs, closed its claws and leaned back.

A sound like a cable snapping and Tom’s iron bones burst out of his skin. The creature dragged ribs and collarbone clear of Tommy’s body. Skin and flesh fell loose, oil and blood cascaded over the crowd.

Oliver cried out his friend’s name as powerful hands closed over his arms and his face.

Tommy screamed. The cloaks dragged him down and tore him apart.

Oliver’s eyes burned with rage and tears. He wrenched his head down and unleashed Mama Engine’s fire on his closest assailant. The man fell back screaming, but it wasn’t enough. Every passing second more hands closed on him, binding him, crushing his muscles and tearing his skin and clothing. A steel-hard arm closed around his neck and hauled his head back. The wound on his neck split with an audible tear.

The cloaks yanked one arm out of its socket and crushed his hip bone on the left side, and he knew it was over. He wished only that the gods would let him go when the cloaks were done.

A hand crushed his windpipe. His vision began to swim, portions vanishing in swirls of black and red. Somewhere in the press of bodies, Hews cried out.

And abruptly, the pressure released and Oliver fell hard to the floor, splattering blood and pus. The sea of arms and faces and feet retreated, and he heard the approach of light, crisp footfalls. Dull, brass eyes found his, and stared into him with mute emptiness.

Then a voice like the last judgement: “I know who you are.”

But it is not only the Lord and the Lady who will craft the chaff of humanity to their whims. I, too, am fated to do this thing, and my Chosen will be as lost as I, and as immune to human sentiment.

—XI. v

“Seven more,” Phineas reported.

“Makes…” Heckler tried and failed to seem that he wasn’t counting on his fingers. “Forty-eight?”

Bergen nodded. The clock was large enough to hide that many and more. By the old sailor’s count, that left some fifty in reserve in the streets above.

If they are smart, they will come at us all at once, sending their most indestructible first, to absorb our bullets.

But gold cloaks were known for their efficiency, not their wits. Being children of the Machine, they would likely not stray far from their original tactics.

Bergen peeked over the wagon’s edge, making a quick sweep of the field. The distance between the barricade and the lift’s boarding platform measured a scant forty yards. It was an ideal killing field: well lit by electrics above the platform, free of obstacles and cover. It would be something of a shame when it was gone.

“Nine more,” Phineas said. He crouched like a gargoyle in the wagon’s shadow. “Wait…ten.”

Bergen could hear the faint sounds of the cloaks climbing down to their roost behind the clock.

Heckler held his Winchester in a calm and steady grip, looking up and listening. The man was confident with a firearm, if with nothing else.

Bergen ducked back down and checked the steam rifle for the fourth time.

It is Ellingsly who checks his weapons,
he remembered.
Bergen never has need to. He simply trusts.

With deliberation, he set the weapon aside.

Then the air changed. Bergen knew it immediately: that anticipation, the silence and stillness that boomed louder than any noise. He knocked thrice on the wagon’s interior, and all the urchins-turned-militia readied their guns.

Heckler peeked up at the clock again. “Are they climbing, Phin?”

The sailor hunched farther in concentration, eyes shut tight. “I can’t tell, boy.”

Bergen slipped his Gasser free. “Try harder, Macrae.”

“Drown and rot, Kraut. I’m doing what I can here.”

“Do more.”

Bergen felt it even as the sailor said it: “They’re loading!”

“In cover,” Bergen ordered, and the men at the barricades stepped close into the wagons, gaining the protection of the wheels and side paneling.

The shots began, distant and empty pops of sound, and bullets began striking the wagons. It was like a light, intermittent rain. Perhaps five or six shooting, which meant the rest were climbing down, right into the sights of the men in the buildings.

Bergen felt his heart begin to pump harder. It was Ellingsly’s heart, the heart of a man who, despite all pretences, was in truth ruled by fear. Bergen felt vulnerable, felt sick, but he stilled himself with the German’s long-practiced calm and waited for the battle to begin.

It began with a crash that shook the road beneath their feet.

“Phineas!” Bergen said.

The old sailor shook his head slowly, mouth hanging open.

Bergen risked a peek over the wagon. A dozen cloaks all shot at him the instant they saw his head. Sparks flashed as he plunged back down.

“They’re down.”

Heckler’s eyes went wide. “How?”

Bergen ignored the question. He yelled a command to the front lines, and all two dozen men unhesitatingly stood and opened fire.

The first line of cloaks reeled under the barrage, but did not fall. The next volley drove them back into a second line of cloaks. Behind these, more filled the field that instants before had been empty.

Bergen loosed the Gasser’s thunder until it clicked empty and then ducked back.

In the corner of his vision, one of his men dropped to the ground with a shattered face. He shoved more bullets into the chambers and glanced up at the clock in time to see eight more cloaks clamber onto its top.

He clicked his weapon closed, and waited.

The cloaks spread their arms. Not a hint of hesitation or fear showed in any face as they leapt from the clock’s edge.

He shot three before they hit the ground. One crisp thump and three disorganised crunches sounded from behind the wagons seconds later. By then more were mounting the clock and preparing themselves.

He stood and emptied his weapon into a bearded face with a brass cheek and lapis eyes.

The next wave landed, two of them shattering their own legs upon impacting the pavement. The ones already on the ground had divided into a firing line perched on the boarding platform and an assault party braving the withering fire of the men of the Underbelly. They had indeed selected the most indestructible on their first wave; Grandfather Clock’s children had crossed half the field already.

On the right of the line, another of his men fell. He ducked to reload, fighting a shivering in his limbs that he had not experienced in a long time. Ellingsly’s personal sickness: all-consuming cowardice.

Damn that man and damn the day he was born.

He needed Bergen. He needed the German’s confidence. He needed to shoot and act without thinking, without fearing the consequences—just knowing where to aim, how to shoot, when to retreat.

He closed his eyes and did not move. For three long seconds he turned inward, away from the crack of gunfire, and beat that shade of Ellingsly that made to rise in him. He beat it until it cowed and cried and fled back where he had banished it.

He was Bergen Keuper once more, and he knew what to do.

“Heckler,” he yelled over the din. The American emptied his Winchester before dropping closer. Bergen said nothing further; he gestured to the dark corner of the wagon. Heckler nodded, slung his rifle on his shoulder, and pulled a matchbox from his pocket. Bergen holstered his revolver and lifted the steam rifle.

“Retreat!”

The men broke immediately and fled. The men in the buildings turned their attention exclusively on the shooters hiding in and behind the clock.

Bergen ran low, the weight of his weapon straining at his back. With Heckler on his heels, he fled twenty yards back to where a lone steel wagon lay on its side. The men fled along the sidewalks, taking station in alcoves, doors, and alleys. Bergen rounded the wagon’s edge and stopped.

Heckler darted in behind him just as the explosives went off.

It was not a large enough explosion to hurt their enemies. Even with the best of luck it would slow them down only a few seconds.

Which is all I will need.

Bergen lifted the steam rifle and sighted along it. Its boiler rumbled. Its wires buzzed. His finger hauled back on the trigger and he felt the rush of steam filling the chamber while magnets powerful enough to distort steel held the bullet in place.

A perfect shot. The bullet sliced through the chain holding up the clock’s right side. A second shot parted the chain on the left. Bergen lowered his rifle and watched the clock groan and bow.

I have brought down larger monsters than you, devil.

The clock wailed and screamed as its moorings tore free. Gears and springs burst from its back as the face cracked across and the whole edifice began to fold. Men in gold vests, gold jackets, gold hats tumbled out like leaves off a shaken tree.

The clock broke free with a tear that sent vibrations through all the beams of Shadwell. Then it pitched forward in silence, the motion of so massive an object seeming to dull all other events, and plunged down.

Bergen waited.

The crash came an instant later. Behind the curtain of smoke, cloaks died by the score. The Beggar’s Parade, cracked and weakened by Heckler’s explosives, gave in and crumbled. The clock passed through it, dragging the children of the Machine down into darkness, and into the embrace of the creatures who waited there.

The booms continued for long minutes: echoes of bodies, wagons, and concrete striking beams on their way down. A gap of thirty yards now separated the Underbelly from the lift platform.

The cheer that went up from the men poured through Bergen like sparkling wine. He exulted and cheered with them. He clasped shoulders and shook hands and felt more alive than he had since that deep night near Ulundi eight years ago. Men gathered around him with congratulations and Bergen did not hear their words for their overwhelming gratitude.

Bergen wished it could have lasted. He spotted Heckler making his way up the street with his weapon in his hand and fright in his eye.

“Excuse me,” Bergen told the circle that had gathered around him. He pushed out and met Heckler a good distance from them.

“What is it, boy?”

“A runner just came from Valley Lane,” he said. “Five men there, guarding your rope. They’re all dead.”

“How?”

“Throats cut, suh.”

Bergen swallowed back what he felt, what he thought.
I should have made sure. I should have tracked him like a gazelle and shredded his heart with a bullet.

“Gather everyone who is still alive and bring them here,” he said. “Take two men. No one is to go off alone.”

“Yes, sir,” said Heckler. He grabbed two of the celebrating gentlemen and ran down the Parade into town.

Bergen turned to the men. Some had gathered around the lone wagon left in the street, others at the edge of the hole, spitting over or yelling down.

“All of you!” he yelled. “This does not mean the danger is over. Gather the wounded and move them here”—he indicated the two buildings closest to the hole—“and here.”

The men, grumbling, moved to obey. He drew breath to whip them into it, when Phineas materialised before him. The sailor had shrunk even farther into his clothing, now nothing but a set of hands and a scarred nose compressed under a hat.

“What is it, Macrae?”

“There are more of them,” he said.

“I have not forgotten.”

“Well, neither have I, Kraut.” He poked a finger at the Concourse above. “Because I can hear them.”

“I never intended to get them all,” Bergen said. “How many?”

“Two dozen.”

“An annoyance, nothing more.”

“Boiler Men. Two dozen Boiler Men.”

Bergen stopped and listened outside the local pocket of warmth in a cold world.

Above: heavy marching; perfect unison.

One cannot fight the Boiler Men.

Aaron Bolden had said it. Bailey Howe had believed it. Every servant of Scared had lived by it. Every man and child in Whitechapel whispered it in private places, like the transmission of some dangerous truth.

We shall see how truthful it is.

He retrieved the steam rifle and ordered his preparations.

Missy curtsied automatically when the door opened.

“Matron.”

Gisella did not spend a second moment looking at her, but turned and strode back into the hall. “I shall punish you for your impudence, young lady,” she said. “Come along and shut the door behind you. The air is dreadfully thick tonight.”

Missy did as she was told, obeisance taking a quick hold of her.

She followed Gisella’s lace-trimmed skirts down the long entry hall, past paintings of country scenes and royalty. She walked with her head bowed, her feet clicking softly on the tile, her skirts whispering, the handbag clutched tight in her fingers, and a smile upon her lips.

The matron had her hair tied in a tight bun, held in place by a net two hundred years out of fashion. She walked with steps that, for all their rapidity, planted into the floor with enough force to echo in the hall. The expected sounds came down from the upper floor.

Gisella led her into the ladies’ parlour, furnished with lavish drapes in red and purple, soft couches, and a grand piano shining like the day it was made. Half the girls were there as well as some new ones, all dressed in their evening finery. This is where they always sat to practice their polite conversation while awaiting the suitors of the evening.

This ritual had been a part of Missy’s life for nearly seven years, since Gisella had deemed her old enough and when her training was well along. Sometimes the gentlemen picked her, sometimes they did not, but they all had hungry eyes for her. Always, she was the first that they inspected upon entry.

Her eyes had floated to a young girl she did not recognise, a pale-faced child with too much rouge and a green dress that did not yet fit her. She was only a year or two into womanhood, younger than Gisella used to allow.

“Ladies, your errant sister has returned,” Gisella said, addressing the room. “Emily, please help her out of those rags she is wearing and into something appealing.”

“Yes, Matron,” one of the youngest girls murmured. She rose from her seat and scuttled to Missy’s side, then took her hand and began to lead her to a small door at the back of the parlour.

Yes, I must freshen up,
Missy thought.
I’m frightful. I haven’t changed my skirts or blouse since this morning. I must be ready for the clients when they show; not hair nor hem out of place. Granted it is a terrible night, but one may yet find the mood upon him and I must be prepared.

She stopped so suddenly, the girl’s hand slipped out of hers.

Conversation had resumed, lighthearted chatting about current events and society pages—some real and some fabricated for the right tone. The girls beamed with pleasant smiles and polite nods and kept their hands folded in their laps. The room vibrated with tension, but no one spared a glance at the prodigal daughter.

“Come along,” said the girl—Emily?—at her side. “You need to get presentable.”

Missy looked down at this creature not yet even a young woman. The girl’s eyes stared wide and placid up at her without a hint of nervousness or haste. Her modest smile was fixed on her face and did not flutter even with the act of speech.

“Come along,” she said again. “We don’t want to keep the men waiting.”

She had the twiddling pixie brogue of an underclass child, but the words were Gisella’s own. The girl could not have been there longer than three months. Could Gisella truly do this to them so quickly?

“No,” she said, gently as she could manage, though her voice was shaking. She moved Emily aside and turned to face the hard, indifferent eyes of the woman who had raised her.

Gisella held her face in a familiar expression of disdain, features chiseled as if from stone, skin stretched tight over thin bones. Missy had never before looked the matron in the eyes for more than an instant—none of the girls had. The moment that disinterested, superior gaze hit her, Missy felt her resolve wither and flake away. Her throat and neck tightened, and her breath came short.