That might explain why they continued to make claims on my freedom, rather than murder me outright; though this appeared to have altered somewhat in my absence.
I was left with a distinct impression that were it to come down to my imprisonment or Hawke’s servitude, the Veil preferred the latter.
I could not blame them. He had been, at one time, a most admirable servant. I had once thought his will inseparable from the Veil’s. The whisper of warmth in my chest—a fragile and fluttery feeling—forced me to splay a hand across the front closure of my gifted coat.
Ambitious, no doubt, and too soon for such fragile optimism.
There was nothing to say for certain that Hawke had chosen me, despite his efforts to refrain from hurting me directly. He had, no doubt, protected me from the Veil’s various attempts to bring me to heel, but he still remained within the bounds of the Menagerie.
I could not believe that he be held unwillingly.
And yet, I could not walk away until I tried to free him.
That I wanted to laugh was not indicative of amusement. Instead, as the fragile warmth of cautious optimism shifted to a sharp pang, I wondered instead which one of us—the ringmaster or the collector—was truly the imprisoned soul.
My sigh gusted from me, and Piers glanced up from his book. In my peripheral vision, I saw his gaze level upon my face, but I dared not meet it direct.
If he asked me, I was not prepared to answer—or to lie.
What was Hawke to me?
An unfinished thread.
I could think no further than that. Anything else seemed too great a step into a yawning chasm from which there was no going back. I was not prepared to address this aspect of my feelings. A laughable state from any angle; wholly aware that I avoided myself, and unwilling to address just what it was I avoided.
It was an interminable two hours of this cerebral dance I engaged in before a knock came at the front door, and not the back.
I tensed. The multitude of concerns I nursed upon simmered to a taut silence.
While it was not entirely out of the question that Adelaide had returned with her carriage and now expected to escort me to wherever I was meant to meet Ashmore, I found it rather unlikely.
This was her home. She would walk in, would she not?
Could Ashmore be on the other side?
Also unlikely. He was polite enough to knock, but not so foolish as to stroll up to the front door of a lady’s home when it was being watched. To assume otherwise would be to doubt the intelligence of Ashmore, Maddie Ruth and Lord Piers’s lady.
“Wait,” I said quickly as another knock, more insistent, rapped through the small home. An unnecessary command, for Lord Piers did not rise from his lazy sprawl upon Miss Turner’s sofa. He stared up at the ceiling, hands laced casually behind his head and book left upon the floor beside him, but there were grooves at the corners of his mouth.
I may have lost the acuity of my fog-sense, but the instinct carved into me by way of old habits wasn’t dead—merely sluggish. It warmed now, its refrain like the pinging retort of an aether engine in one of Lord Piers’s gondolas above.
My gaze fixed upon that tense face. “What did you do?”
The lines carved into each side of his mouth deepened. The guilt I read there, the haggard tension as his eyes closed, reassured me my senses had not gone awry.
Even as it painted Piers the villain.
My innards dropped, anxiety merged with bitter disappointment. “Piers,” I whispered, too close to a plead for my taste but too raw for anything but honesty. “Why?”
“Please understand.” A strained whisper; a sharper scrutiny revealed that it was not laziness that kept him upon that sofa, but a fixed rigidity. He clutched the armrest beneath his head with white-knuckled intensity. “The Veil has been searching for you for months.”
“Why?” I asked again, sharper now.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Bloody hell,” I hissed, and leapt over the back of the chair. “What did you tell them?”
“Only that you remained here,” he said, throwing an arm over his face. His voice muffled into the bend of his elbow. “Things are different, my dear sister. The Veil has marked every person you knew. If we do not play along...”
The sentence trailed, but the threat remained implicit.
The door thudded hard enough that I knew someone on the other side had tested it with a boot. I flinched. “How powerful is the Veil that you would be caught in such a scheme?” I demanded.
His laughter trembled with exhaustion. “Powerful enough that I would trade you for protection.”
“For you?” When he said nothing, I understood. More than he hoped I would, I had no doubt. “For Adelaide.”
I could all but picture his weary smile now; a paler shade of that gentle expression he favored the young lady he’d taken into his protection. I understood what it meant. Perhaps more than he thought I might.
I understood, but I did not like the cost.
“Damn it, Piers,” I said tightly, and dashed for the parlor’s exit.
“I told them I would have you prepared for delivery,” he called after me, still muted by his own lethargy. “Take the back door. They’ll expect you through the front.”
It was the least he owed me. Or perhaps it was not enough that I owed him.
The weight of this swinging balance was impossible to track.
Had I listened less to the wounds of my heart, I would never have placed my trust in a man whose own wounds were not yet healed. More fool I, who thought a friendly embrace and a bout of tears could mend them so completely.
My life in exchange for Adelaide’s, was it?
The Veil was desperate to find me; an unusual truth I had not thought pinned so firmly on me, but on what I represented. Was it simply to murder me?
I will have my tiger returned!
Yes. I imagine the truth was not so complex after all.
I fled down the hall, into the small kitchen, and tore the lock open. A terrible crack of wood and crashing thud behind me warned the Veil’s men had not taken the lack of welcome as a deterrent, and I hesitated only briefly.
Would Piers be all right?
He would have to be. Surely not even the Veil would lay hands on an earl—especially the Marquess of Northampton’s last remaining son.
Holding my breath, I ran out into the cramped lane between this rowhouse and the one behind, and left the earl to his own consequences.
At least he’d given me the opportunity to escape. I recognized that for what it was. He could not be accused of hiding me, and at the same time, I could not say that he did not in some small way help.
And he thought his mistress possessed a manipulative mind.
Chapter Ten
Escaping the men who came to collect me at the Veil’s behest was entirely too easy. Making my way through Limehouse without a hue and cry much less so.
I was not so foolish as to let down my guard, but there were only so many paths that one could attempt, and each proved to be watched by the Veil’s new favored hounds.
The Black Fish Ferrymen infested the district, and my luck was not so long-lived that I could avoid them entirely.
The hue and cry rose less than an hour into my flight, and weariness was beginning to take its toll. My throat had become something of a ragged burn, overly sensitive to the fog I breathed in as I darted lane to lane, road to road and between structures that provided little enough shelter for moments of peace.
To think that most I passed continued to behave as I was certain they always did, even whilst full grown men chased an urchin across the bloody whole. I lived quite the surreal life, and this without the duality of Society’s aether-guided gondolas or alchemy’s interventions.
By the time I made it to the edge of Limehouse proper, I counted no less than fourteen Ferrymen, and three I’d recognized from the Menagerie.
One looked strikingly like the man in work
overalls I’d seen the night prior when Ashmore and I had played our little drama.
The Ferrymen were among the nastiest of the gangs already, dabbling in all matters from wares to forced flesh; to know they’d allied with the Veil worried me. The stakes, still unknown, seemed to culminate in the increase of reach and labor. When the Veil had simply relied on their own reputation—and the uncanny loyalty of its own Chinese people—it had been dangerous enough.
The Footmen were among the meanest of the low pads, and recalling the ease with which they pulled pistols and irons spoke of a greater conflict at hand. One that had certainly been brewing long enough to spill over at the slightest provocation.
I had thought to wait to visit Ishmael, but now I wasn’t certain I could afford to be so patient. If he were not in immediate danger at this moment, I worried that he would be soon.
Lord Piers’s words had been dire. The Veil has marked every person you knew.
How far? How deep did they delve in their efforts to find me?
Had they found Fanny? My staff?
Bleeding martyrs and the Devil’s own, what in the name of all things reasonable was I meant to do?
I found shelter within the vee of a ramshackle tenement known for the cheapest doxies outside the worst of the stews. Gasping for breath, I leaned back against the rotting wood and tipped my face to the rapidly darkening ambience. It couldn’t be all that late into the afternoon, but the fog choked off light like a creeping vine destroyed all life, and the lamplighters were already making the rounds.
Darkness might help my cause, but it could hinder if I wasn’t cautious.
All my concerns for those I cared for would be worthless if I were caught here.
I could think of only one safe place to go.
In the long and storied history of the London railway, tracks had been laid and abandoned, utilized and discarded, leaving rail stations to wither and rot. Not all that far from where I rested—perhaps ten minutes’ sprint if I could resolve my flagging energies—one such station squatted.
Many years back, it had provided a bustling rail station for use of London low’s working residents. When Parliament redrafted the lines, the station was abandoned, and none had ever claimed it.
Well, none had claimed it openly. I had never known who owned it, or who maintained it, but this station had become the heart of the collectors’ headquarters.
I’d learned of it one bored afternoon at a Society luncheon, and thus began my collecting profession.
Collectors by nature were a wary sort, as one must be when coin could be competed for, but they were also afforded a great deal more respect than most. When a profession allowed one to escape many aspects of the law in pursuit of a bounty, even if such antics were not openly accepted by said law, one learned how to spot a collector in the street.
I had been visible enough, masked as I was behind goggles I’d made myself for use in the fog and a respirator to breathe freely through, and scarce were the footpads who thought it a lark to take on a collector. The few times I had come across other collectors at the station, we had not spoken but afforded each other wary courtesy.
The station was not for others to visit. Collectors only, and God help the fool who wandered in, for no one else would.
The only trouble, aside from reaching it, was that I did not look like a collector. Apart from my sex, which was telling enough, I lacked those accouterments that collectors tended to exhibit. The goggles that had served as my fog-preventatives, the respirator made to mold over my mouth and nose and allow for easy breathing in the dense smoke, had served a dual purpose. Certainly, they made collecting easier, but they also marked me as one of them what prowled the fog in search of quarry. This unwitting lapse might lead to a brawl to prove myself if anyone else was about.
I scrubbed at my face, knowing I only smeared more grit about in the sweat coating my skin, and took a deep breath to ease the pain in my chest.
Given rational thought, I understood that this was not the worst predicament I had ever been in. I knew these streets, I had a place to hide—if I could only get there—and it wasn’t as though Piers had trussed me up and delivered me to the Veil.
Of course, I had questions in need of answers, and there were few I could ask. For starters, I needed to wait out the Ferrymen, then locate Ashmore—although I fully expected him to locate me, for he had an uncanny ability to do just that. I wasn’t positive he utilized alchemy to do it. The gentleman had wonderful acumen.
The shouting and sense of urgency that had dogged me thus far had faded, leaving me mired in the thrum I associated with the usual activities of them what lived below the drift.
I wasn’t so foolish as to assume I could stroll deeper into the East End without fear, but at least I’d earned something of a respite.
The entirety of my day felt consumed by running. I was, to put it mildly, beyond weary of it.
And to think that I had rather subconsciously thwarted the Veil’s many schemes over the past year. Certainly, original events had not been entirely on purpose. I wished I could go back to my younger self and warn her to pay closer attention to the games she played.
I might not have made different decisions, but at least I could enjoy the frustration inflicted on the criminal organization that hunted me now.
A rapid beat of footsteps thudded down the lane just beside my hiding place, and I shrank back into the dark and discomfort provided. They did not hurry past, but slowed, jarring my heart into an uneven beat.
I held my breath lest the sting of it force me to cough, giving away my location.
I could see little more than a narrow band of shrouded light, and that would quickly fade.
“Where’s th’ downy bitch?” demanded a rough voice, unfamiliar and low class.
I wrinkled my nose.
“Nowt but deadlurk ‘at way,” replied another. This one was higher in octave, but nasal and tinted by cant closer to Haymarket than here. Too mean for the Scavengers, then. That loose gang preferred an abram’s calling to that of the Ferrymen’s more physical leanings. “Bloody pricks’n plums, can’t see’n this particular.”
The particular was something of a less than affectionate moniker for the peasouper we all slogged through. The London Particular to be precise, although this one didn’t sound as though he were the sort to give a toss about such matters as proper noun use.
“Commat,” snarled the other. “Leave it t’the dogs.”
As the heavy tread of two men passed my hiding place, a flicker of black silhouettes briefly framed by sickly yellow fog, I pondered the meaning of dogs. It wasn’t often a word of respect, but the manner in which he’d said it conferred something like confidence.
Had the Ferrymen a new ranking within its hierarchy?
I couldn’t imagine what the dogs would be. In most cases of cant, anything labeled a dog was sure to be worth less than the play-acting insanity of the abram man. Then again, perhaps them what favored such casual violence were just that.
When no sign of the Ferrymen lingered, I eased my way out from the cramped corner. I squinted left, then right, and saw little more than swirling streaks of black and yellow. I missed my fog-preventatives fiercely. I’d built them with a yellow lens in one eye, so that I might see more clearly than most. The color disparity allowed me sharper visual acuity, especially since the fog tended to reflect light and make it worse.
As I carefully made my way across the Limehouse border, the sonorous tones of the Westminster bells rang thrice.
To think that only half a year ago, it would have been tolling out the third hour past midnight. Now it warned me that it was merely three in the afternoon, for all it was rapidly turning to gloom and dusk, and I felt unaccountably old to be wandering so early in the day.
At least there was no one to chase me as I hunched my shoulders, lowered my soot-streaked head, and forged my way deeper into the East End.
Chapter Eleven
By the time I’d traverse
d the streets and made my way to the old, crumbling station abandoned in the fog, darkness had well and truly fallen. I was exhausted beyond measure, with feet throbbing and limbs wearied. The sweat of my excursions had combined to turn the filth coating my face into an itchy mask.
I’d lost more than my fog-sense; I’d gone and grown accustomed to all-day cleanliness while in Ashmore’s company.
Perish the thought.
With the setting of the sun somewhere beyond all the choking miasma, the districts I navigated slowly changed its residents. The working class melded away to homes they were fortunate enough to possess, retiring to supper or an opportunity to get off wearied limbs. Some skipped supper altogether and visited the taverns and bars that supported the underbelly of London’s lower classes.
That left me, a wayward collector with neither attire nor evidential proof, and them what crept into the burgeoning dark.
Perhaps it was credit to my imagination that I began to consider more deeply the consequences of my alchemical knowledge when there was no longer any daylight to fend away the shadows. Perhaps I found more in common with the nighttime creepers than I did the daily world with its everyday lives.
The abandoned station hunkered in the dark, filthy windows smeared with grime to damp the faint glow of a lamp kept lit within. In what spirit of kinship we possessed, he who found the single lamp at its lowest topped the oil—the smallest of payment for a profession kept in order by use of the collecting wall.
I strode inside the station, knee-high in a blackened swell of fog. It danced and tumbled in my wake, like ghosts cavorting in a murky pool. The station bent both left and right, the latter being where the platform had once stood.
Collectors turned left for the wall. All else turned right for ignorance of the crumbled trap the station platform had become.
Whoever maintained it did so with very little fuss. Notes were scribed by them what provided the bounties, and placed by some keeper or another. The whole became a wall of parchment of various heft and color, some waxy and others fine.
Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles Page 14
