The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

by Chris Wooding

  “I have an estate, then,” she said at length. “Money. I should thank them for that, if the Fraternity has not already taken it away from me.” She paused, and looked up at him. “But what else do I have? I do not recall any friends, any loved ones. Do you know what is frightening, Thaniel? I remember almost everything now, and yet there are still gaps. Places where warmth should have been, I remember only blanks. Thaniel, what did I do with my childhood?”

  Thaniel didn’t reply.

  “I am all alone, Thaniel,” she said quietly. “I know that now; I think I always did, really, even when I could not remember. I never... I never made much of an effort, did I? To find my parents. Do you think I knew?”

  “Perhaps,” said Thaniel. After a moments pause, he added, “But you have us now.”

  Her small features curved into a smile, her hair limned in the brightening dawn light. “I was lucky you found me,” she said. “No-one else would have done for me what you did.”

  “Anyone else... would have done the same,” he said, feeling a little mawkish.

  “You really believe that?” she asked, and suddenly she embraced him, softly. Surprised, he let his own arms fall across her back. With her cheek to his shoulder, she murmured, “You have a good heart, Thaniel. I have seen enough rotten hearts to know the difference. There has been little but horror in this city for me, but you...” She paused. “You are like the diamond at the heart of the coal.”

  “Alaizabel, I...” he began, but his throat closed on the words he wanted to say.

  “Say it,” she said, drawing back a little and fixing him with her soft green gaze. “Say whatever you feel. It is not so hard.”

  “I...” he said, then averted his eyes in defeat. “I am honoured by your compliment,” he finished, and they both knew that it was a pitiful substitute for what he was intending to confess.

  She drew back from him, a small measure of hurt and not a little disappointment written on her features, and changed the subject.

  “The Devil-boy says he can draw Thatch out of me,” she said, a rising morning breeze making the tips of her hair dance against her dress. No—Thaniel’s mothers dress, like all the other ones she had been given.

  “Will you be free then?” Thaniel asked. “When the foreign spirit is gone from your body?”

  Alaizabel began to wander through the rows of vegetables that were being cultivated up here, occasionally letting her hand trail on a rough green leaf. Thaniel followed.

  “I do not know,” she said. “He says that Thatch is calling out to her kind; that is why they hunt me. She sleeps inside me now; the charm that Cathaline made has exhausted her. At any rate, it will take him at least three days to prepare the ceremony.”

  “It is terrifically complex,” Thaniel said. “Beyond the range of most wych-hunters. The Devil-boy must have some great talent.” He paused; Alaizabel stopped with him. “Who is she, really?” he asked. “Did the Devil-boy tell you?”

  “She is a wych,” Alaizabel replied. “Two hundred years old or more. She is a friend to the wych-kin, and a powerful one. When she died, her spirit was still strong. The Fraternity summoned her... and I was the host. She has a great purpose. The Fraternity have a plan, and she is essential to it. But while she is within me, they cannot act.”

  “Do you remember what happened that night?”

  She shook her head. “Hardly at all. I remember clearly going to sleep that night, and next I knew I was in your house.”

  “You were drugged?”

  “I do not know,” she said. “But now that I know... now I know who I am, what I was... I am stronger now. Stronger than them.”

  “I believe you are,” Thaniel said quietly.

  Lord Crott had a lot to think about. The day had come and gone, and the beggars in his gang had gone about their business as usual while he slept, everything running like a clockwork timepiece. Everything smooth, everything nice. As usual, his troop returned to the fold, handing their takings to the accountants and receiving them back when they had been logged and twenty per cent deducted. Twenty per cent of their takings in return for the brotherhood and the contacts and the safety that his gang provided. It had always been that way.

  But things were changing, and Crott felt an uncomfortable stirring deep in his gut that told him they were changing for the worse.

  That girl... If it had been anyone other than Jedriah’s son, he might be tempted to just get rid of her. Sent out of the Lanes, maybe; or perhaps a more permanent removal. If she was that precious to the Fraternity, she was dangerous to everybody else. Devil-boy Jack certainly thought so. He counselled having her killed, and he was rarely wrong. “The spirit she harbours is not the dangerous one,” he said. “But she is the key to something, of that I am sure. If we destroy the key, the door stays locked.” But Thaniel had second-guessed that particular possibility. He had come to Crott after they had returned from their meeting with Perris the Boar.

  “You promised us your hospitality if we removed your troublesome guest in the sewers,” he said. “I hope that extends to guaranteeing our safety from you and your men.”

  “Of course,” said Crott, smiling genially.

  “And your women and children, and any other tricks you might have up your sleeve now that you realize what danger we—and you—are in.”

  “Of course, Thaniel,” Crott repeated, a little colder this time. Thaniel had rightly surmised that Crott did not consider some of his more murderous womenfolk to fall under the title of his “men”, and would have considered sidestepping his promise if Thaniel had not caught him.

  So, they had his word. And a beggars word was as ironclad as a thief’s. A strange irony, Crott reflected, that the most base and lowly of London folk were the most honour-bound of all, and that the value of honour diminished in direct proportion to the heights of society a man climbed to.

  He was locked in contemplation when Millenda the Scot knocked on the doors of his inner chambers and was admitted. “Millenda,” Crott said. “Hows your boy?”

  Millenda smiled a gap-toothed grin. Despite her name, she had been born near Leicester, and begged around the market until she had moved south to London. Her outrageously false accent elicited extra sympathy from the London aristocracy, who believed that the poor woman had enough trials in her life without being Scottish, too. Crott liked that; she played on their old notions of Britain as an Empire, and they felt benevolently towards one of their “subjects”.

  “He’s just fine, Lord Crott, just fine. Listen ’ere, though. Some blighter’s been caught wanderin’ about upstairs, if yer know what I mean. One o’ us recognizes him as a Peeler, right, ’cept one o’ them fancy ones, not a reg’lar uniformed one.”

  “What have you done with him?”

  Millenda scratched an earlobe. “We was goin’ to just send ’im on ’is way, like always; but then he starts saying he’s got to see the big cheese o’ the place, that he has somethin’ important to tell yer.”

  “This is interesting. What’s his name?”

  “Carver, he says. Ezrael Carver, Detective wiv the Cheapside Peelers.”

  “Well, then, bring him to me. Let’s hear what he has to say.” Millenda nodded and disappeared through the door again. Crott leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Curiouser and curiouser,” he muttered to himself, unconsciously quoting from the book he had just read.

  It took fifteen minutes for Millenda to return with Carver, by which time Crott had prepared the room in which he had met with Thaniel and the others early that morning. Though he was far underground, he could sense the gathering night without looking at his pocket watch. There was brandy, sherry and wine in crystal decanters waiting when Carver was shown in, for Lord Crott always took his title seriously, and unlike Rickarack and the other Beggar Lords, he believed that a certain amount of dignity was necessary when dealing with the outside world.

  He was pleased to see that Carver was a neatly dressed man, his black hair slicked back imm
aculately and his moustache maintained with exactitude. He knew of Carver, though he had never had to deal with him before. He couldn’t be worse than Maycraft, whom he had run into several times now.

  “Detective Carver, welcome to my home,” he said, ushering him towards a seat on the other side of the low table.

  “Lord Crott, its a pleasure to meet you at last,” he said, without a trace of irony in his tone. He sat down.

  “Brandy, sherry, or wine?” Crott asked with a smile. “Or are you on duty?”

  “Even if I were, I should ask you for a sherry,” Carver replied. “I have had a harrowing few days.”

  “Ah, yes; Millenda mentioned something....” he said, pouring the sherry. “What can be so important to bring an Inspector—off-duty, no less—into the Crooked Lanes? Surely you know better.”

  “I need your help, Lord Crott,” Carver said bluntly.

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Crott smiled, his scarred face twitching in amusement.

  “I’m at a loss,” the Detective said. “I have no-one else to turn to except you, a Beggar Lord, and only then because I know that you cannot possibly be involved in this and I have no other recourse I can imagine.”

  “Then tell me what has happened, and what you need, and we can talk terms,” Crott said.

  So he told his story. He began with the Green Tack murders, then spoke of how he had discovered that Maycraft was withholding information from him, that he must have known what the Green Tack murders really were, and was involved in them somehow. He spoke of how he laid the strange, tentacled shape that he had found in Maycraft’s address book over the map of London, and found only two points left to complete the shape—and he spoke of how a lady named Alista White had been killed only yesterday at one of those points, leaving one more to go. Then he talked of Maycraft’s close friendship with Doctor Mammon Pyke, and how it was Pyke’s secretary Lucinda Watt who was brutally murdered last night, with the same symbol drawn in blood on the wall behind her.

  Crott sat back and drained the brandy he had poured for himself. “You think this is all connected. Tell me how.”

  “Maycraft, Pyke and Miss Watt are all part of something,” he said. “Something to do with that symbol; and that symbol is something to do with the Green Tack murders. Now Stitch-face has got involved, and he killed Miss Watt and left her as a warning, or a message.”

  There was a pause. “Would you like another sherry, Detective?” Crott offered, and when Carver agreed, he poured them both refills of their chosen liquor.

  “You have come to me because you believe I may know something that your police colleagues can’t tell you,” Crott observed, as he gave Carver the sherry glass. He paused as Carver took it. “Or is it that you don’t trust them?”

  Carver looked at him levelly. “I came because you are the man that people come to when they have no other way to find out what they need to. And because I dread to think what might happen when the last of the points on that cursed symbol is completed. This is not just a matter of murders, Lord Crott, nor of catching the murderer. There is something greater here, I know it. I need to know what I am facing.” He leaned closer. “I hear you have a friend called the Devil-boy, who can divine answers from objects. I have brought something from one of the Green Tack victims, and I—”

  “This symbol you described...” Crott said suddenly, reaching behind his seat and unrolling a piece of coarse paper. “Did it look anything like this?”

  It was the chackh’morg—the symbol of the tentacled thing, unnerving to the eye—etched in scratchy ink.

  Carver blinked, looking up at Crott in sudden alarm.

  “I’m not one of them, don’t worry,” the Beggar Lord said. “My advisor Jack drew it for me after talking with Alaizabel. He’s a particularly talented artist for a blind boy, don’t you think?”

  “Who is Alaizabel?” Carver asked.

  “A girl you should meet,” Crott said. “Well, as I was saying, the Devil-boy saw it all over her thoughts. He is... gifted in that way. I showed this symbol to Thaniel Fox, and they told me it was tattooed on Alaizabel’s back.”

  “Thaniel Fox? The son of the great wych-hunter? It is all connected, somehow,” Carver said. “All of it.”

  “Have you heard of the Fraternity, Detective Carver?” Carver frowned. “Heard of them, yes, but... aren’t they...”

  “From what you have said, I think you could better choose your partners in future.” Crott spoke gravely. “You are in Fraternity business now. Inspector Maycraft, Miss Watt and undoubtedly Doctor Pyke... you can be sure that they are all involved in whatever plan is unfolding.”

  “But the Fraternity don’t exist,” Carver said.

  “They’re as real as Stitch-face,” Crott replied. “Perhaps it is time you and I joined forces, Detective. There are things afoot greater than each of us, and I shiver to think what will happen when the great chackh’morg of murders that covers London is finally complete.”

  “Do you think it is that bad?”

  Crott held his gaze coolly. “I will take you to Devil-boy Jack and the others, and you will see. The darkness is almost upon us, Detective. We are the only ones who can prevent it.”

  PART THREE:

  THE FRATERNITY ASCENDANT

  A LADY IN DISTRESS

  THANIEL FIGHTS ALONE

  DISASTER STRIKES 15

  The chill breath of the London night stirred and swirled in the gas-glow, curling with a serpentine malevolence through the islands of man-made light. The mists from the Thames were stealthy at this hour, hiding at the edges of the clutter of Whitechapel streets. It was relatively clear for November, and the usual murk had been tattered into eddies by a sharp northerly breeze that cut through to the bone without being warmed by the intervening flesh.

  The city is turning evil, Alaizabel thought. You can feel it, too, can’t you?

  This last was directed at Thaniel, who walked by her side with his arm in hers, stiffly playing the role of the husband escorting his wife through the deepest hours of the dark. He glanced around with a frequency that betrayed his nervous alertness. He was a little afraid, she knew that. But fear alone did not account for the whole of his manner. Like her, he could feel the rot at the heart of London, could feel the cancerous tendrils snaking through the veins of the metropolis.

  The sensation was not a new one, even to people such as Thaniel and herself—he with his highly developed intuition, honed over years of wych-kin contact; she, harbouring a slumbering spirit in her breast. Everybody in the city felt it to some degree, something so subtle as to be almost unnoticeable. Always, it had been there on the edge of perception, lending speed to the footsteps of those who walked London’s streets, making eye flick away from eye in fear of contact with another who might be an agent of that nameless dread. In the last few days, however, it had gathered in strength until it was like a dull throb in the stones of the terraces, bleeding through the cement.

  Today was the date that the Devil-boy predicted would bring the final Green Tack murder, and the brooding sensation that enwrapped the capital had shifted to palpable eagerness. The air was charged, like lightning straining to jump the gap to earth, desperate to complete the circuit and fulfil its promise.

  The meeting with Carver had been a strange affair. Alaizabel had been initially uneasy at the sight of the neatly dressed Detective, with his trim moustache and slicked-back hair; it had taken her some time to work out why. It was an odd sensation that had seized her, as if Carver’s appearance was not so much coincidental as predetermined. He had come holding missing pieces of their jigsaw, and suddenly, all had become clear.

  He had brought with him a knick-knack from one of the previous Green Tack victims, for he knew the way of wychcraft. He knew where the next killing would be, but not when. Jack performed a Rite and divined what he could. What kind of opponent they faced, he could not say. But it would strike, tonight, in Whitechapel.

  There were forces at work here greater than anyone h
ad guessed at. Alaizabel had a terrible notion that her meeting with Thaniel had been a little more than luck, and that they were not finding each other by chance, but being assembled. Thaniel Fox, Cathaline Bennett, Lord Crott, Detective Carver: all united in a cause that they had not even known existed a week ago.

  “Are you warm, husband?” she asked gaily, attempting to introduce some levity into their lonely walk.

  “Warmer for having you by my side, wife,” Thaniel replied, then offered her a wry smile and a wink.

  The streets of Whitechapel appeared to be deserted at eleven o’clock this Sunday night, but the truth was a different matter. Those who watched the tortuous lanes and darkened alleys were masters at the craft of hiding, observing unseen. Lord Crott and his minions were here tonight, slinking from shadowed doorways or peering over gutters from tiled roofs. Among them walked Carver, strolling nonchalantly alongside the slender frame of Cathaline Bennett. They patrolled Whitechapel just as Thaniel and Alaizabel did, pushing through the sparse tendrils of mist with their eyes darting about, knowing that, somewhere nearby, something was waiting to strike. In all of Whitechapel, there were perhaps fifty men and women whose sole aim was to spot the Green Tack murderer and prevent the kill. But Whitechapel had many streets and many alleys, and in the final analysis, would it be enough?

  A cart clattered past Thaniel and Alaizabel, returning from some late-night delivery. Thaniel, a night-creature by trade, knew well how the heartbeat of the city sped and slowed in the dark hours, and he knew that even on a Sunday night it still pulsed dully with traffic and commerce. People still visited, lovers stalked home after arguments, favours were called, urgent business was concluded. London never slept, but only dozed with one eye open.

  “What do you think the wych-kin are, Thaniel?” Alaizabel asked. They had walked a long time now, and she craved distraction.

  Thaniel’s face was neutral. “They are just wych-kin, the way a cat is a cat and a dog is a dog.”

  Alaizabel frowned briefly. “But we know why a cat is a cat and a dog is a dog. We know where they came from. Darwin has explained them in his theory of evolution. They have been with us for ever.” She paused, then looked up at Thaniel. “But what of the wych-kin? Why do they disobey science? How do they exist in a world where everything lives by the same laws except them?”