by Ian Doyle
I told him that I did, that what he had to tell us was most important, and to please continue.
“An’ women, them good ‘uns what lives in the Gutbucket because they was born there an’ can’t get out, as well as them women what works there in the rough trade,” Mr. Byars turned a little red with embarrassment at this point, “they stays away from Mr. Martin Landro. ‘E’s ‘ard on ‘em, ‘e is.”
James thanked Mr. Byars for the information and we took our leave. On our way back to the coach, James took my hand and showed me a grim smile. “You know what it means if the women of the Gutbucket avoid Landro.”
“I do,” I said, for sometimes I was as quick as my beloved. “It means that in order to avoid Mr. Martin Landro that they must first know where he is.”
“Yes. You’ve got a good mind.”
“I’ve got a good teacher,” I replied.
Grinning, but still somewhat deflected by his anger, he pulled me close and kissed me. Although few people were about, it was still not something he did easily because he is more bound by societal restraints than am I.
Hand in hand, then, we returned to the coach and headed into the Gutbucket.
*
The Gutbucket got its name from the slaughterhouses that lined the Merchants Ward, which was behind the Dockyards along the Traveler River. The stink of blood and offal hung over the area, so thick that people swore they could actually see it in the air on clear days.
Cows and sheep and chickens were killed and processed in the meatpacking plants. Part of the rendered meat was sold fresh to butchers, who further cut it up and sold it to people that could afford it in the Merchant Ward, the Artisan’s Ward, and on High Hill where most of the nobles and the truly wealthy lived.
But the tripes were hauled down to the Gutbucket where the poor picked over the remains, got as much as they could for a price they could afford, then made soups and coarse sausages from them. The stink never went away, and the blood along the cobblestones from the dripping wagons carrying the leavings drew rats and other predators – not all of them truly animal – down into the ward. There is an unspoken caveat about the Gutbucket that no one goes there alone at night.
The houses there are clapboard. Pieces torn from other wrecks and even shipyards where vessels are salvaged contribute to the building materials. Oiled parchment, not glass, filled most of the windows, and the light came from tallow candles. Low-grade coal that didn’t burn cleanly heated homes and staved most of the winter’s chill. Having food hauled in was too expensive. Three and four families slept tight and uncomfortable in two-room homes.
Whenever I go there, I always feel guilty. I know that my beloved experiences similar pangs.
*
Edmond halted the coach in front of the Boar’s Tusk, a tavern where my husband and I are always welcome. Despite the lateness of the hour, Natty – the owner – was still tending bar for the longshoremen and visitors who didn’t want to pay the price for a room for the night before sailing on the morrow.
Natty was an old, gray fox of a man. Short and slight and balding, though he pulled his long gray hair back in a queue. He habitually wears sailor’s breeches and dark sweaters and shaves once a week.
The Boar’s Tusk was a quiet, desperate place for men who wish to drink their worries off their minds for as long as their money and time held out. Most of the furniture was brought in to trade for ale and liquor by sailors who came from all around the world.
Natty tended bar that night when we went in. A dozen sailors and longshoremen and a few men only passing through held down chairs, swapped lies, and stared into the fire.
When he saw us, Natty came over at once. “Milord, milady,” he greeted, pleased as always to see us.
“Hello, Natty,” my beloved replied, taking the older man’s hand.
“Come for a bite or a draft?” Natty asked. The Boar’s Tusk offered a good but simple bill of fare.
“No,” James told him. “I’m afraid we’re working.”
“In the Gutbucket?” Natty didn’t like it when we did. Even though he knew from personal experience that we could take care of ourselves, he feared for us when we ventured into his home turf.
“We’re looking for a man named Martin Landro,” James said.
Natty shook his head. “A truly evil one, that man.”
“So we’d heard,” I told him. “May I use the back room?”
“Of course, milady.” He stood like a proper gallant and waved me to the back room.
I left James talking to Natty and went to the back room. I kept a change of clothes there, pants and a shirt that were more suitable for whatever action I might see in the Gutbucket. A quick change and I no longer looked like a lady from High Hill. My beloved, though, insists that I am beautiful no matter what I wear. I don’t think so, but I’m glad that he does.
I added a pistol to my outfit, extra rounds in a pocket, then covered everything with an old cloak that would never draw attention from a cutpurse or any foolish or brave-hearted policemen that ventured down into the Gutbucket.
I added the weapon with reluctance. I don’t prefer them as a general rule because I think they tend to dull a user’s senses. I prefer quick wits to a quick trigger finger, but my beloved believes in them. So I carry one whenever he wants me to. After the attack by the Shambler, I knew I would be remiss in my beloved’s eyes if I didn’t arm myself.
Ready once more for the predators that run amok among the desperate denizens of the Gutbucket, I went to join my beloved to once more take up the hunt for the malefactor who had seized poor Simon Delhalm’s body.
6
“Simon,” I said, gazing into the blue eyes plunked into the wooden puppet’s head, “I want you to stay here with Natty.”
Not at all wanting to separate from us, Simon sat on one of the stools in front of the counter. Only a few of the tavern patrons gazed in our direction. Many strange things were seen in the Gutbucket. They didn’t bother to hide there as much as they did in the other wards of Drummond.
“You will be safer here,” I insisted.
In a truly childlike manner, Simon clasped his wooden hands together and ducked his head sadly. His neck squeaked with the effort.
“Simon,” I said, with a touch of sternness.
He looked up at me then and his eyes were pools of woe. “Do I have to?”
“Yes,” I said, maintaining the firmness. “Where Lord Gallatin and I must go tonight is not safe.” I gripped his shoulder. “I don’t want to worry about you while I need to worry about my husband and myself. Do you understand?”
I had not thought it possible that a wooden puppet – a child’s toy – like Mr. Jinks could look so lost and abandoned, but he did. My heart went out to the small boy trapped within the puppet, but I made myself be strong.
“I understand,” he told me. “But I’m just so scared.” He turned to me then and held me round my neck, clinging tightly.
I held him back, knowing that even if he couldn’t feel my arms around him, Simon at least knew I was there for him. “Soon,” I whispered to him, “soon this will be over, Simon. Until that time, I ask you to be brave.”
He nodded and withdrew.
“You’ll be safe here with Natty,” my beloved said.
So caught up was I in the boy’s pain that I hadn’t heard James come up behind me. I resolved to pay more attention to my surroundings before my lack got James killed.
Together, we went out into the night.
*
We found Edgar Chalmers at a ratting event in the Underground, the vast Labyrinth that runs beneath the Gutbucket, the Dockyards, and even underneath the Traveler River. Over the years as the metropolitan area developed, a number of businesses – mostly those involving smugglers – had created a network of tunnels that connected warehouses and dwellings to ferry in goods that avoided the Queen’s taxman.
When the poor and the desperate had needed places to live and to get away from the Drummond Police, th
ey ran through those tunnels and hid out till they thought they were safe. They weren’t, of course, but they thought they were. There are Underground graveyards too, and rumors of people who have never left those earthen tunnels and cinderblock walls. Should the Traveler River ever find holes into the tunnel that runs under it, drowning victims will flush out into the Dockyards on both sides.
Natty had known Mr. Chalmers, and informed James that the man was a wastrel by any account, but not a brave man. Natty had said that Mr. Landro and Mr. Chalmers were often in each other’s company of late, and were sometimes accompanied by a red-haired woman.
I immediately remembered that Mrs. Courtland Delhalm, Simon’s stepmother, also had red hair, and I wondered at the coincidence. Mainly, I supposed, because my beloved didn’t believe in coincidences.
Mr. Chalmers was at a gambling den, crowded round a cage where a tiny dragonet warred against two dozen rats as long as my arm. The dragonet was smaller, but it had wings and could fly inside the cage, had razor-sharp claws, and breathed flames.
Sometimes men catch the dragonets, which is against Empire laws, and subject them to all manner of tortures. This is probably a result of the Dragon Campaigns. Dragonets are not true dragons, of course, for they only have the intelligence of Mynah birds. They can be housebroken and taught a few words, but that is about the extent of their abilities. Still, they are skilled combatants when fighting for their lives.
As we closed on Mr. Edgar Chalmers, who was skinny as a rake, marked by smallpox scarring, and jaundiced yellow from habitual drinking, the dragonet dropped from the side of the cage where it had hung and breathed fire on the crimson-toothed rat climbing up after it. The hungry rats had started feeding on their vanquished fellows, though they still preferred to savage their living foe.
The burning rat shrilled as it dropped from the cage’s side, eliciting cheering from many of the men and curses from a few others. Money changed hands, most of it copper pels and every now and again a silver Lunar or a small gold Solar.
Not enthralled with his luck, Mr. Edgar Chalmers kicked the restraining wall. James and I slipped up on him in the crowd as he cursed the dragonet, which flew down and struck again, killing another rat with its breath.
I took Mr. Chalmers’ arm on one side while James did the same on the other.
“’Ere now!” he protested, trying to jerk away. James held him in a clever hold, one of those he no doubt learned from the open-handed boxers he trained with, while I closed my hand and surprised our captive with my strength. “Ye can’t just – ”
He stopped protesting then, and I knew that James had prodded him with the pistol or one of the Ikari knives.
“You’ll come with us, Mr. Chalmers,” James said in a low voice. His beautiful lips curved into a smile, but the effort never touched his hard eyes. “Or I’ll kill you where you stand.”
We led our prisoner through the crowd then, out the door, and up into the alley behind the warehouse where the ratter’s pit was. Mr. Chalmers pleaded again and again to be set free, and he told us over and over that we obviously had the wrong man because he couldn’t possibly be the man we were searching for.
Outside, James put his hand in the center of the man’s chest and pushed him up against the alley wall. He pressed his pistol against the man’s nose, gaining his immediate and complete attention.
High above, a Drummond Police dirigible floated sedately by, projecting a beam of light across the city streets. Even if someone had seen us confronting Mr. Chalmers, the chances of someone – even the police – of helping someone else in the Gutbucket was infinitesimal.
“I’m tellin’ ye,” Mr. Chalmers said again, “I’m not the man ye’re lookin’ for.”
James stared into the man’s eyes. “I am James Stark,” my beloved said so fierce that excitement fluttered through me. “Called Lord Gallatin. Perhaps you’ve heard of me.”
Mr. Chalmers blinked like a halfwit for a moment, then started trembling. “Aye,” said he. “I’ve ‘eard of ye.”
“I want to know about young Simon Delhalm,” James said. “About what you and Mr. Martin Landro have done to him.”
“I can’t,” Mr. Chalmers said, shaking his head. “I can’t tell ye anythin’. ‘E’ll kill me, ‘e will.”
“I’ll kill you if you don’t,” James said. “You have my word on that. And I always keep my word. By my lights, you should swing from the gallows in Justice Square for what you’ve done to that poor boy.”
Mr. Chalmers’ fear of Mr. Landro was a strong thing, though, for he still did not talk.
James turned his face up to the top of the alley. I followed his gaze, as did Mr. Chalmers. As we watched, gargoyles circled and landed on the edges of the buildings. They sat, some of them looking moderately human and others resembling the vilest grotesqueries, and watched the action unfolding below.
“Come down,” James said.
As one, at least forty gargoyles spread their bat-shaped wings and dropped to the alley floor with muffled thumps. The smallest was no taller than my knee and the biggest no taller than my waist. They ringed James and Mr. Chalmers.
Even I, who had been married to James for eight years, who had seen so many of the mysteries he’d unraveled, didn’t know why the gargoyles loved him so.
“At a word from me,” James told Mr. Chalmers, “they will rend you limb from limb and devour your flesh even before you are completely dead.”
Anyone who had seen gargoyles feed on a victim knew that was true. They didn’t often do such a thing because spells were in place to prevent that, but not everyone is protected by those spells.
Mr. Chalmers held out only for a few seconds. “All right. Don’t let ‘em eat me. Please. I’m beggin’ ye.”
“Tell me where I can find Mr. Martin Landro,” James ordered.
“In Goodhaven Cemetery,” Mr. Chalmers said. “In one of the mausoleums.”
As hiding places went, I had to admit it was a most ingenious one. I would not have searched for him there. But what better place for a man nearly dead?
“Take us there,” James commanded, and we were once more underway.
*
Goodhaven Cemetery was at the heart of the Gutbucket. The last funeral had probably been held there over a hundred years ago because all the graves and mausoleums were filled. Unadorned and plain, surrounded by tall iron fences sagging from the march of years as well as the weight of trees, brush, and dead vines, the cemetery sat silent and still without a light.
We went through the creaking gates and followed the winding trail that led within. I guessed that drunks and trespassers simply walked through the cemetery rather than around it to save time, for there were rotgut bottles and wine bottles everywhere.
Mr. Chalmers led us to one of the back mausoleums, then entered. Inside the Randall Family vault, the man told us that Mr. Martin Landro’s comatose body had been laid to rest, all without benefit of removing the previous occupant. I lit a few of the candles sitting around the room while James and Mr. Chalmers lifted the heavy stone lid from the coffin.
Peering inside, James and I discovered that Mr. Martin Landro had been laid amid the bones of the coffin’s rightful owner. He was a tall and powerfully built man, as Simon had described him. His burnished red hair caught the light from the candles. He was not an unhandsome man, but there laid upon him a veneer of cruelty that could be seen even in repose. I had known men like him all my life.
James looked up at Mr. Chalmers, who was in fear for his very life. “Why did Mr. Landro steal Simon Delhalm’s body?”
“Because they were tired of waitin’ for Mr. Courtland Delhalm to die,” Mr. Chalmers said in a strained whisper.
“‘They’?” I repeated.
Mr. Chalmers nodded, trading on his words to continue his life. “Mr. Landro an’ ‘er. Mrs. Delhalm.”
“Mrs. Delhalm plotted to kill her own husband?”
Intent though I was on Mr. Chalmers’ reply, my mind already spinning with
the complexity of what had truly been going on, I heard the scrape of shoe leather across the ground behind me. It was almost in time.
But then Mrs. Courtland Delhalm stepped into the room with a large pistol clutched in her hand. She looked different, grungier in hand-me-down shirt and pants, but she looked at home as well.
“Get your hands up,” she admonished.
Since she was pointing the pistol directly at James, we did as she bade.
7
“Mrs. Delhalm,” my husband greeted as casually as though he’d been expecting her.
“Don’t call me by that name,” she snapped, stepping into the mausoleum room with the pistol leveled. “I hate that name. You can call me Vivian.”
Three more men, all of them armed as well, followed her. All of them looked like they were on frequent terms with violence and death.
“I didn’t just plan to steal my stepson’s body and kill my husband,” the woman said. “I also planned and killed my husband’s former wife. The incident on Markham Bridge that resulted in her death was a carefully organized event. Just so you know I’m not someone to trifle with.”
Somehow, I was not surprised, for I had seen how she had acted around the imposter. And again, she proved how vain she was by calling attention to her work.
Moving slowly, Vivian Delhalm walked to the body lying in the coffin. “Martin,” she called.
A moment later, Mr. Martin Landro roused from his slumber and stared up at us with naked hate showing in his brown eyes. Stiffly, he clambered from the coffin and took his place beside Vivian Delhalm. He leaned down and kissed her.
“I’ve wanted to do that all day,” he told her.
She laughed. “We’ll have to let you grow up a bit first,” she said. “Though I look forward to seeing you as a young man again.”
