Whitechapel Gods (38 page)

Missy placed her cold fingers on the iron doorknob.

“One, if it rids me of you,” she said. “Two if it doesn’t.”

She turned as the boy told her and drew the doors wide. The air blew out down the hall, carrying the stench of human sweat and urine, overtones of acrid and fruit smells, and an invigorating chemical tang. A single lamp lit the room, placed on a side table beside a beaten, ancient armchair.

On the left sat a bed, heavy velvet curtains scorched and torn. On the bed lay an unmoving figure who could not have been taller than three feet. On the right, a closet gaped wide, showing rows of tubes and bottles, a collection to put Gisella’s to shame.

In the chair lay the hobgoblin man. His skin was flushed a deep red, his fingers curled into palsied knots. Drool ran down from his mouth, and an empty glass bottle lay on his lap. His menace had fled, leaving him a shrunken old man.

She’d wanted to find him like this, so he could not turn those black eyes on her.

This will not end it, bird.

“It will.”

She raised the gun.

Ah, my love. Look to your husband! Watch him shrivel and die, and do nothing to win you back.

Scared’s spectral grin spread wider as he watched the infinite copper lattice of the Great Machine collapsing from within. Black tendrils raced over it, strand by strand, stifling the sparks of calculation, corroding the wires, and tarnishing the brass. He’d known it would work, of course, but to actually see the fruits of his lover’s inspiration and his own intellect…it staggered him. He had brought down a god.

I never thought it would be so beautiful, my love. Won’t you watch?

Mama Engine lashed with molten fury against the claws Scared had driven through her. The child struggled as well, though its toils were weak and barely noticeable.

Mama Engine cried out, loosing streaks of fire across the city that burned and scorched the towers.

He was your protection from the wicked world, I know,
Scared said to her.
And protection from yourself, as well, wasn’t he?

He leaned closer to her, dripping a thousand tongues of obedience from his skull-jaws, lashing them to the wounds in her psyche and ensnaring the desires that ruled her.

Well, you will soon be a queen of that wicked world, beloved. And I will keep you in the cage you so long for.

The Great Machine came apart. The enormous sheets of glass fell from the towers around. Sparks leapt into the air and burned away. The golden metals in the Stack and the towers rusted, flaked, and broke apart in an unfelt phantom wind. Scared laughed to see them flutter away.

Does it not excite you, my love? You and I in eternal…

A shadow fell over Mama Engine’s fires.

You and I…

Her fires went cold. Her furnaces closed and dimmed. Scared gasped and drew back.

What is happening?

The tower of arms arched back and fell still. The sun-heat of his bride’s womb faded.

No!
He clutched his bride to him, drawing her close as she slipped through his claws like ashes.
How did this happen? We were careful. We were in control.

Mama Engine whined for him, as her chains cooled and her glass parasites solidified. She cried as her mechanisms jammed, and she slid out of his reach.

The
mei kuan
burned in him. He lashed out with his hundred fingers, raking the sludge and shattering the towers, tearing holes in Whitechapel’s dream and filling them with his tears.

It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t fair.

If he could not rule it, it would die. All of it. This accursed city would crumble to rust. Then he would eat the dreams of the world, of all these frail humans that had failed him and the Englishmen who had fought against him.

He ripped down a tower, shattering its lifeless beams and supports and scattering them into the putrid sea below. He pushed over another. In the other world, rivets snapped and beams bent, and the real towers began to fall. The souls of the dying burst into the dream with screams on their lips. Scared ground them between his teeth.

He would have them all. He would—

Missy pulled the trigger three times.

—What was that?

The
mei kuan
evaporated into nothing and his equations splintered. Scared swung his skull-eyes inward to see the last wisps of power leave him, sucked into a black point that had appeared at his roots. Even without the calculations to aid him, Scared recognised it and shuddered with a primal fear. He had anticipated at least a few days to consolidate himself as a god, and to bind himself to his bride. This was too soon, far too soon.

The city rumbled, and he glanced up to see thousands of spectral forms crossing the Wall, free now from whatever force had kept them at bay. They were the ghosts of old London, angry at the affront to their pride and their city. Scared looked at his skeletal fingers, his thousand tongues, and realized he could not face them without the Chinese drug. Then he shrieked as his nightmares broke through from beneath his skin and leapt for his face.

He made to flee, slashing his own body. His mortal death eagerly consumed his roots and tendrils while he turned his upper body towards the cusp of the red sky. He could escape into the dark rents, ride them anywhere in the world, find a safe place, and there, heal and plot. He snagged his fingers on the edge of one, when sparkling blue eyes filled his vision. Tendrils of the
mei kuan
’s influence curled around them.

What is this? Get out of my way.

“I’ve come to know you, John,” said the other, “and I’m sorry.”

The blue eyes beheld him sadly, and their force stayed his motion. The ghosts swarmed up his flanks, tiny creatures dressed in the fineries of all the city’s lost eras, right back to knights and legionnaires. His nightmares tore open his carefully disciplined mental defences, and led the ghosts within.

They’ll kill me.

“You are already dead, John. Perhaps you were never really alive.”

The ghosts dove into him and ran amok, shattering his carefully constructed ice caverns and freeing the nightmares he had so long kept hidden. They closed on him from all sides, faces of forgotten children and memories of hurt.

He screamed. The ghosts grabbed him as one and hauled him down into the black well of his death. He and his nightmares fell into the void and vanished.

Oliver’s eyes flew open. His vision blurred. His body jerked.

Brass claws entered him through the chest. A rush of pus greeted them and a flash of fever brought Oliver’s eyes into focus, to watch the creature of brass tearing at him. It ripped Scared’s weapon out and crushed it.

Oliver broke into a grin and a cackle. His neck tendons tightened to steel cords, and his back bent inward.
You’re too late.

Images in his mind: prophecies, whispers.
An end,
they promised.
Preserve us. Build us a home-body-kingdom. Give birth to us and we will make all your pain end.

The poison coiled in his vision, whirling, spreading.

The brass creature staggered, rusting and weakening as the poison fed on his patron god.

Blackness, circling lights, devouring, lessening, shrinking.

The brass creature with hands around his throat, crushing down. Fluid rushing into his neck, then into his joints and limbs, hardening them, filling gaps and repairing damage.

Oliver ripped his hands free of the chair, grabbed the creature’s arms, pulled them away.

Fluid in veins, pulsing like blood. Hands oozing pus, fingernails bursting with it.

Gods screaming. Lights flickering and fading. Sparks showering from above.

Porcelain eyes cracking. Brass limbs breaking.

The world jolted. The Stack shook.

His assailant came apart and clattered to the ground in pieces.

Oliver rested his head against the high back of his chair and let air trickle out of his lungs.

The gods cried out to him in their alien tongue, and he understood every word and inflection. Mama Engine and her child screamed their terror as the darkness took them. Grandfather Clock faded away without a sound.

The last spark of electricity fizzled out. The omnipresent churn of machinery turned to grinding, then scrapes, then clatters and clangs, finally halting altogether.

The light of his eyes faded, until the chamber was a glimmer of afterimages in pitch darkness. Oliver removed his hat and set it on the arm of his chair. He smoothed his hair back and folded his hands in his lap.

He stayed awake a long time, listening to a silence more perfect and profound than any he had ever experienced. Then he closed his eyes, and gave himself to dreams.

He who dies a thousand deaths meets the final hour with the calmness of one who approaches a well remembered door.

—Heywood Brown

Missy closed her eyes and tilted her head back, listening to the play of the wind on the fields. Her hair fluttered across her face and she pushed it back. Her skin was already red from the sun today, and her nose was peeling from an earlier sunburn, but she couldn’t resist it.

She set her heavy basket of clothing down beside her and sat in the soft grasses. Some bowed and moved under her, others cut her with their edges, but her hands had grown callous working in the laundry, and she barely felt it.

She rolled down her back until she came to rest on the ground. The movement was still fresh for her, as she had spent so much time wearing corset and cage and had since forsaken both. The grasses cushioned her, and immediately made her sleepy. She smiled and blinked herself back to wakefulness. The head housekeeper would be cross if she lingered much longer. Too much time spent getting lost, she would say.

Missy wished the moment would last, knowing it wouldn’t, knowing it would come again. Eventually, she forced herself to her feet, gathered her basket, and turned to return to the mansion. It was a summer home for the lord and lady who owned it, with grounds as large as a whole level of Shoreditch Tower and acres of fields besides. The servants lived and worked in the lower levels. They were officially not allowed out onto the grounds, but Missy had found that if her tasks were attended to and she didn’t disturb the guests, the owners paid it no mind. Missy found her small, sparse room comforting, and the work forgetful.

She walked back a ways and spotted a man standing in the shade of the tall willow that stood alone at the edge of the lawn, just past the low brick wall encircling the grounds. He was tall and dressed in a smart blue vest and black coat, sporting a top hat and leaning on a cane.

One of the guests. Well, I hope he doesn’t tattle on me.

She strode purposefully towards him, with a mind to pass him by with a polite greeting and then through the gate and into the laundry by the side door. He watched her as she approached, holding a small wicker basket over his right arm, obviously laden as he seemed to have difficulty holding it up.

“How do you do, sir?” she said.

“As well as can be expected, Miss Plantaget.”

She hesitated. “Do you know me, sir?”

“Try as one might, you’re not an easy one to forget,” said the man. He held out his basket. “If you’d be so kind.”

Missy wedged her own basket against her hip and freed a hand to take his. It was indeed full. The smell of fresh bread drifted up from it.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ve developed some kind of damned weakness from the whole affair and it’s taking ages to go away.” He reached up and removed his hat, revealing long and shaggy hair, and his face, his eyes.

The laundry scattered over the grasses and its basket rolled down the hill into the fields. Missy shrank back against the wall.

Hat tucked under his arm, he smiled at her, so understanding and aware. Her legs shook. Her hands trembled on the handle of the picnic basket.

“Oliver?”

“Alive, if not well,” he said, absently rubbing the stretched white scar that crossed his neck, just above the collar line. “I’m glad to see you.”

She couldn’t say anything. Glad to see her?

He waited a minute, then went on. “I’ve spent a long time thinking it over, Michelle,” he said. “I don’t pretend to understand the least bit of what happened, but I don’t feel that it was your fault.”

She stammered a few nonsense syllables, looked away, looked back, looked at the basket. Fresh biscuits, a silver knife and butter dish, two plates of white china.

“You can’t be here,” she said.

“I’m trespassing, this is true,” he said with a shrug. “Dress correctly and act correctly and people simply assume what they will. That I learned from you.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“I know. The last favour of a god, perhaps? I hesitate to try to explain it.” He gestured to the basket. “Besides, I’m here for the picnic.”

Tears on her cheeks, dripping onto the buns.

“Oliver, you can’t be here. Why would you even think of finding me? You must hate me.”

When she looked up he was a step closer, half out of the shade, tears on his own cheeks.

“Quite the opposite, really,” he mumbled, then cleared his throat. “Michelle, it’s not my custom to hold people’s pasts against them. I’ve always known who you are. I don’t much care who you were. I have a gift that way. And, well…since we’re being truthful today…I just wanted to see you again.”

Missy wiped her eyes.

“Oliver, I thought you were…that I was…”

He caught her as she collapsed. She buried herself in the soft cotton jacket, and cried into his shoulder for a very long time. He gathered her up in one arm and stroked her hair, saying nothing, and held her while her every nameless shame bloomed to life and passed out of her and shrivelled to nothing.

When she was done, his shoulder and lapel were a mess of tears and snot. He discreetly passed her a handkerchief, and cursing audibly, she wiped her nose and cheeks clean. She parted from him and breathed, and for an instant the wind felt cold, the sun distant. She made automatic apologies and snits at herself and handed his kerchief back to him at full arm’s length.

He took it and absently mopped his shoulder.

“I found Phin’s old ship, still crewed by the same captain. In a week or so he’ll be sailing down the African coast and around to India. He has a passenger cabin, and he’s willing to take us along.” Hesitation in his eyes. A little boy. A caring man. “But I suppose we can talk about that later.”

Missy shook head to toe, hopes and daydreams and possibilities crowding her imagination. She didn’t speak, couldn’t move, not daring to break the moment and risk the fragile hope it brought.

“First, a picnic.” Oliver offered her his hand. “Will you do me the honour, my lady?”

Her eyes lingered on the waiting palm.

She reached out and took it.