With Fate Conspire (45 page)

But that was before she wasted a week in the East End, trying and failing to locate Whelan. He wasn’t among the crowds of men seeking work at the docks. He wasn’t in a pub, pickling himself with whiskey. He wasn’t in the tiny room he rented above a butcher’s shop in Limehouse, either, and his rent was due to run out today. The landlord didn’t know and didn’t care where his tenant had gone; nobody did.

If there was a photograph with part of Owen in it, nobody knew where it was, and she couldn’t assume it would ever be found. Which meant she needed the fairy doctor’s help. Which meant she needed help finding him.

The skriker walked beside her in human form, not saying a word. That was how Eliza wanted it. There was nothing he could say to her that she wanted to hear, except for directions to where Whelan might be—and nothing he wanted to say, it seemed. But she couldn’t help sneaking glances at him as they made their way through the dockside streets. The hard face that had once been so familiar had hardly changed; it was perhaps a shade harder now, marked with cynical distrust, but he hadn’t aged, any more than Owen had. It felt unfair, that everyone else should have stood still, while years of her life ground away.

At the butcher’s shop, she led him up to Whelan’s room. A simple thrust of his shoulder did for the latch; then he paced around like the dog he sometimes was, bending to sniff the bedclothes, an empty bottle, a lewd photograph tacked to the wall. “You have his scent?” Eliza asked, and when he nodded, she said, “Find him, then.”

The faerie exhaled sharply, not quite a snort. “All of London to search in, and you think I can find one bloody man. My nose ain’t
that
sharp.”

He’d always sounded like a cockney, but these days his speech had a rougher edge: less colorful slang, more bitter swearing. “I know where he spends his time,” Eliza said. “You can track him—”

“If we’re lucky.” He stiffened, and she knew he’d noticed the same thing she had, that casual use of
we
. “Come on,” he growled, and shoved past her to the stairs.

A little way into the slow process of quartering the riverside districts, Eliza remembered there
was
something she wanted to hear from Dead Rick. “Last year, in October—when the railway was bombed. I saw you, didn’t I?”

She was trailing behind him, letting his nose do the work; she saw his shoulders tighten, and that was answer enough. “The Goodemeades told me about the Underground. I’m surprised ye fellows stopped at a few bombs. Why not go further? Why not kill everyone working on them, until nobody will do it anymore?”

He whirled suddenly enough that she almost ran into him. “Because there’s two kinds of people in the Onyx Hall,” he snarled, inches from her face. “The ones as are too soft-hearted to kill mortals, and the ones as don’t care a twopenny damn what ’appens to anybody else. The first keep thinking there’s got to be some other way, and the second are too busy getting their own to do anything useful.”

Eliza set her jaw. “And which kind are you?”

His mouth twisted with self-loathing humor. “The third kind. What gets buggered up the arse by the second.”

He started off again. After a moment, she followed. He didn’t remember anything, the little green-eyed faerie had said. In the library, Eliza had been too angry to think much about what he said and did, but observing him now, the difference was painfully obvious. His face might be the same, but the man beneath it had changed profoundly.

Or had he? They could make illusions to cover their real bodies; maybe they did the same with their behavior. It could have been an act, before, and only now was she seeing the real Dead Rick.

She didn’t think so, though. He’d always been such a bad liar. And the man he’d become was too raw for him to mask, even when he tried.

That makes two of us,
Eliza thought.

They tried docks and pubs, boardinghouses and brothels. In desperation, Eliza pointed Dead Rick north, into Whitechapel; Whelan was a Galway man, and might have looked to others from that county for help.

They asked in all the quarters Eliza could think of, but with no luck. Not until they left one of the narrow back courts into which the poor Irish crowded, and Dead Rick stopped, then knelt without warning to sniff the base of a brick wall.

He gathered odd stares from those passing by. “What is it?” Eliza whispered, crouching over him.

The faerie grimaced. “Piss and puke. Might ’ave been ’im. Three days ago, would be my guess.” He straightened and scratched at the back of his neck with dirty fingernails. “’E don’t smell too good. Sick, I mean.”

Sick.
Eliza grabbed Dead Rick’s arm, dragging him up Turner Street, following a hunch.

The Royal London Hospital lay a stone’s throw away on Whitechapel Road, across from the Jews’ cemetery. Its beds were filled with the sick poor, and more waited for the next that might open up; sometimes the nurses didn’t even have time to change the sheets before a patient took the place of a corpse. Fortunately, when Eliza gave her name as Whelan and claimed Dónall as her father, she discovered he wasn’t in the infectious ward. When she asked what ailed him, the nurse snorted. “Too much drink, not enough food, old age … he’ll recover or he won’t; there isn’t much we can do for him. But Father Tooley asked that we give him a bed, so.”

Father Tooley? Whelan hadn’t set foot in a church since coming to England, but as the priest had once said, it didn’t matter how far a sheep had strayed from the flock; it still needed a shepherd’s care.

They were directed to a third-floor ward, thick with the smells of chemicals and sickness. Eliza spotted Whelan along the left wall, but when she tried to hurry to his side, Dead Rick’s hand clamped around her arm like a vise. “Careful. ’E’s dying.”

She froze. “What? How can you tell?”

His hard mouth twisted in something that wasn’t a smile. “Skriker, ain’t I? Death omen. I know when a man’s about to snuff it.”

They’d said he wasn’t infectious—but doctors had been wrong before. “What’s killing him?”

“Who knows? I don’t see the way, only the when. Don’t touch ’im, is all.”

He released her arm, and Eliza went forward more carefully. Not that she’d been intending to throw her arms around Whelan in the first place, but now she kept a wary distance. “Mr. Whelan … Dónall Whelan, can you hear me?”

He didn’t look like a dying man, any more than usual. But he didn’t rouse at her voice, until she wrapped her shawl over her hand—she hadn’t had gloves since the workhouse—and touched his shoulder. A firmer shake brought his head rolling across his pillow, and he opened his rheumy eyes. At first she wasn’t sure he recognized her, but then he said, “You’re no nurse.”

“I’m not.” Eliza wet her lips.
Damn that faerie.
The questions she wanted to ask had all but flown her mind; all she could think was that the man in front of her was dying. “Has it come to such a bad pass, Dónall Whelan, that you’d be looking to the priests for help?”

He mumbled something indistinct, and probably sacrilegious. Then, more clearly, he said, “I’ll be up and about soon enough—if these doctors don’t kill me. Never trust a doctor. Did you find the girls? The ones from West Ham?”

She swallowed. Those disappearances that Whelan had told her about in May. She’d clean forgotten about them, with everything that happened in between.

Instinct made her look up at Dead Rick, but he just shrugged. Whelan followed her gaze. “Who’s that?” He blinked, as if he could not quite focus on the skriker. For once, he didn’t reek of spirits; it must be illness that blurred his eyes.

Eliza bit her lip, wondering how to answer.
With the truth; he deserves it.
“It’s a faerie, Mr. Whelan,” she said, addressing him with far more courtesy than she’d used in the past. “I found them, just like I said I would. And I found Owen. That’s why I’ve come, because Owen needs your help.”

“A fairy?” He reached out blindly. Dead Rick hesitated, until Eliza gestured impatiently; then he took Whelan’s hand, his thin lips pressed together until they nearly disappeared.

Eliza said, “Yes, Mr. Whelan, a fairy. Just like you used to see, back in Ireland.”

His laugh was a dry, hacking thing, indistinguishable from a cough. “Never saw one,” he whispered, when he could speak. “Only ever knew what my father said. The rest, I made up.”

Her heart sank into her gut. She’d always thought the fairy doctor half a fraud; but it was another thing entirely to hear him confess himself one complete. “All the changelings you said you’d driven out—”

“Stories, lass. Stories.” He turned to look at her, still gripping Dead Rick’s hand. “Did they work?”

“I never tried them,” she lied. What was she supposed to do—tell this broken and dying old man he’d done her no good at all? But no, he’d done
some;
she was sure her farce with the furniture had confused the new Louisa Kittering. Just not enough to make the changeling admit what she was. “What Owen needs is something else. He’s half gone, Mr. Whelan—like they tried to make him a changeling, but it went wrong. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t seem to understand much; he doesn’t even recognize his name. Sometimes I think I’m the only one who remembers it. Like it’s been taken from him somehow.”

Whelan’s breath rasped in and out for a few moments, and his eyes drifted shut; she was afraid he’d fallen asleep, or worse. Then he spoke. “To prevent a child from being taken changeling, you baptize him.”

“Owen
was
baptized. It didn’t save him.”

He mustered enough energy to be impatient with her. “If he’s lost his name, you give him a new one. Baptism, lass. To wash their stain from him.”

Dead Rick grimaced when she turned to him. “It turns a faerie human; it ought to do some good for ’im.”

“But what about his memories? Will he get those back?”

The skriker shook his head, free hand twisting up to show he didn’t know. Whelan mumbled, “At least he’ll be human.”

It wasn’t everything, but it was more than nothing. Especially if it kept Owen from wasting away after he left the faeries’ realm. “Thank you,” Eliza said, and strengthened her voice. “You should get some rest, now.”

Whelan nodded, already drifting off. His hand slipped from Dead Rick’s and fell to the mattress. For a moment Eliza thought Whelan had died, but the skriker shook his head again. When they were a few steps from the bed, she asked him quietly, “How long?”

“Tomorrow,” Dead Rick said. “At the latest.”

She didn’t dare wait that long; too many people had seen her, and might tell Special Branch where she’d gone. Eliza hadn’t decided yet what to do about her impulsive confession to Quinn, back in the workhouse, and he wasn’t the only man working for them. Still, Whelan had awoken pity in her heart. She hated to leave him here, forgotten and alone.

Dead Rick stepped into the path of a passing nurse. The woman opened her mouth to snap at him, but closed it when he lifted his hand, a silver crown winking between his fingers. “The Irishman there. This is for ’is care. You give ’im a good supper, and some whiskey if ’e wants it; you treat ’im well, understand?” His voice hardened. “If you don’t, I’ll know.”

She bobbed a curtsy, and snatched the coin from his hand. “Treat ’im like a prince, I will, sir.”

Eliza stood, openmouthed, as the nurse hurried on down the ward. When Dead Rick saw it, he shrugged uncomfortably. “Irrith says I used to be a decent cove. I figures, if that’s true, maybe I should act like one.”

A decent cove who didn’t mind the occasional threat—but that was more like the faerie she’d known, seven years ago. “The money’s faerie silver,” he added roughly, before she could say anything. “It’ll turn to a leaf tomorrow.”

She closed her mouth and followed him to the stairs.

The Prince’s Court, Onyx Hall: August 15, 1884

“Still no sign of him,” Bonecruncher said, wiping blood from his face and dabbing his nose, which seeped red. A souvenir of his venture into the increasingly chaotic Goblin Market. “I can tell you one thing, though: it isn’t some cunning plan of his. Unless Aspell really thinks he’ll gain something by letting his entire gang fall apart for lack of leadership.”

The barguest didn’t sound like he believed it, and neither did Hodge. They knew Aspell had been shot, with iron. Had he crawled off somewhere to die? Dead Rick had said it didn’t look like a lethal wound, but the death might have been too far off for him to sense.

Hodge didn’t care much what happened to the old traitor, just the photograph he’d been carrying. Admittedly, the Prince had bigger problems than a cove who was already dead. The impending end of the Onyx Hall, for example. Common sense said he should let Galen St. Clair go.

But one thing stopped him: Lune. He knew the stories; she’d loved her first Prince, Sir Michael Deven, hundreds of years ago. His successors had been friends and partners, nothing more. Still, she cared about them, all those names carved into the memorial in the ruins of the night garden. Just as she cared for her subjects, and her realm—but if Hodge couldn’t save those, he could at least save one bloody ghost.

And there was the faintest outside chance that it might do some larger good. Nadrett, after all, had taken that photograph for a reason. If only they could figure out what it was.

A question from Bonecruncher interrupted his thoughts. “Guess who else is missing from the Market?”

Quite a lot of fae; there wasn’t much Market left to hold them, not with the Inner Circle so close to completion. But Bonecruncher wouldn’t have said anything if he just meant the general exodus. Stomach sinking, Hodge asked, “Who?”

“Nadrett. And about half his lieutenants, too.”

Hodge stared, not sure whether to be overjoyed or appalled. His heart settled on the latter; instinct—not to mention his entire reign as Prince—told him that anything Nadrett did couldn’t be good. Including going away. “Where’s ’e gone?”

Bonecruncher shook his head, then dabbed again at his face. “Got my nose broken for asking. But it isn’t like Aspell, vanishing without a trace. Nadrett’s people, the top ones, know what’s going on. They just aren’t telling.”