by Gaie Sebold
“So, Harp,” he said. “What do you make of my Court?” He spoke in English, to the annoyance of those of his court who could not.
Liu held his breath.
The Harp’s gaze scanned the walls, the lacquered columns and silk robes, the enamelled boxes and painted scrolls. “It is most magnificent,” he said. At the sound of his voice, a stillness passed through the court, quieting the soft shuffle of feet, the whisper of garments.
“More so than the place from which you have been freed?” Ao Guang said.
“There are riches here the Queen dare not dream of.”
Ao Guang smiled. “And now you are here.”
“I am.”
“Play for me, Harp. Show me what it was that made the gweilo Queen so eager for your skills.”
“My Lord, I will do my best.”
And he began to play, reaching back with his hands in a way impossible to one still human, to strum his own strings. It looked, and almost certainly was, painful.
He began to play, and to sing.
Liu had spent a great deal of time in Great Britain, one way and another, and in its shadow world. He had learned some of their ways and heard a great deal of their music. But the voice of the Harp was unique. It made his ears quiver and his brush puff out. Tragedy wound through every phrase. The most lilting tones took their shape from sorrow carved pure as crystal. Had he once, Liu wondered, been a merry singer? Had he sung of shining spring days unmarked by frost, of happy lovers hand in hand? What would a merry song become, if he were to sing it now?
His sorrow was beautiful, even as it tore at the heart, even as it wrenched Liu with every regret and loss he had ever encountered, as it brought Liu’s mother’s face before him, drawn with the ravages of her last sickness. And something else began to tug at him. A sense of some other, terrible loss; of some awful tearing sorrow. Something that began to send steely threads of fear winding along his veins.
But even as he listened, and shivered, Liu was still what he was. And he was aware that things were not... right. He tore his gaze from the Harp.
The Court was still; listening. Waiting on Ao Guang’s verdict. But their faces...
The Harp came to the end of the song. The last note hung in the air. He folded his hands on his breast, and lowered his head.
And then Ao Guang yawned.
“This?” he said. “This is the taste of the great, the mighty Queen of the Isles? With this she charms her court? I am surprised their ears do not fall from their heads and crawl away.”
The Harp’s head rose, the merest fraction. Liu wondered what might be in his eyes. Some vagrant flicker of pride? Some sense of insult? Don’t... he thought. Don’t be a fool.
But the Harp’s head sank down again.
Liu was already thinking, as fast as he could. The music of the English, of course, was not the music of the Chinese. He might have become used to it, even learned to love it – but here, the harmonies that charmed an English ear fell heavy and strange.
Ao Guang was disappointed. This had to be turned around, and fast.
But that sense of terror and loss was twisting up in him, making it hard to think.
“Indeed, O great Lord,” he said. “But how could I have convinced you, without the work of bringing him before you?”
“Hah.” Thin threads of smoke curled from Ao Guang’s human nostrils, and the long white moustaches he wore wavered as if in a slow current. “If nothing else you have convinced me the Queen has even worse taste than I suspected.”
Then, of course, because it was inevitable, Min leaned forward and bowed, not looking at Liu. “Great Lord,” he said, “how can we be sure this is the Harp she loves so much? Surely this could be some scheme or trick, designed to free Chen Sun from your most righteous justice?”
“Hah,” Ao Guang said. “Indeed.” He pointed one long, gilded nail at Liu. “Speak,” he said.
Sometimes Liu wondered if life would be easier if Ao Guang ever thought for himself, instead of relying on his advisors even for this. But probably not. “Great Lord, he is the very one – I was forced to create schemes and tricks indeed, in order to obtain him, but they were to fool the Queen, not your noble self. That would be far too hard a task.”
Normally Ao Guang was susceptible to such easy flattery. But this time, with Min at his ear, he shrugged, and turned away.
Think, Liu. It was getting harder. His heart shivered in his chest.
Evvie.
Evvie was heading into trouble. The jade fox he had given her was trembling with the racing beat of her heart.
But his honour demanded he save his father; that was the pact of fathers and sons – and there was the Harp, who he had dragged all this way with half-promises, only for him to be humiliated and dismissed. Broken though he was, it was surely a bitter thing.
Think! Are you not the Fox, the tricksy thief with a foot in both worlds? Talk, use that tongue of yours!
But his heart was beating Evvie Evvie Evvie and suddenly there was a terrible pain in his side, and as a strange chilly grey, the grey of a London smog, began to creep across his vision, he heard the voice of Ao Guang saying, “Take him away. Put him in the Room of Reflection, and there let him contemplate his failure, while we decide on his fate. And let that go with him.”
He was aware of the faces that turned towards him as the Shi lioness padded across the floor towards him. The raised fans, the whispers. Min, his heavy face pulled even further down by a look of bitter satisfaction. And his father, who turned from his game, shocked, his mouth opening, his eyes darting from Liu to Ao Guang. If you’d been paying attention, you could have run, Liu had time to think before the teeth of the lioness closed on his robes, and he was carried away, dangling like prey, like a toy. Servants lifted the Harp and carried it after him.
He could not stop himself from glancing at it. Its eyes were closed. He could not bear to think what expression might be in them.
And the pain in his side worsened, and worsened, and his heart was shivering as though it had been plunged into a winter river.
Evvie...
The Russian Embassy
SIMMS DIDN’T ATTEMPT to creep up the stairs. It was the best way to attract attention. Stride everywhere as though you owned the place, and doors would open.
He glanced into rooms as he passed, noting some very fine things, things that would be worth a second look, but he wasn’t here for such frivols.
There, a door opening, and there she was, looking down at the bundle in her arms. Simms slipped himself into another doorway. As she came past, he noticed that she held the bundle slightly away from her. At least the bantling was quiet. Let’s keep it that way, nip out, hand over her mouth, pull her back into the room, smooth, not jerking, no need to wake the cub. She writhed and tried to bite, that was Evvie Duchen, but he was bull-strong. She went limp, but he knew that trick, and didn’t loosen his grip. He put his mouth to her ear, feeling her writhe away from the tickle of his whiskers. “Now, now, Evvie, where are you going to run to, eh? Be a good girl. Just hand me the nipper, and we’ll keep it all quiet.”
“Bartholomew Simms?”
“Large as life and twice as handsome. Now you just be still. Don’t want ’em all pounding up the stairs to see what’s wrong with the precious little kinchin, do we? Let’s just keep her sleeping. I’ll take her now.”
“What? What are you doing here? You can’t!” Evvie said.
“Oh, yes, I can, and I am.” He slid the knife out of his sleeve, and pressed it against her side. “What you feel there,” he said, “is my chiv. And I expect you might’ve heard, it’s an experienced blade, it is. Knows its job.” He heard her breathing catch and quicken. “Don’t make a fuss, and it won’t be getting no more experience, not tonight.”
“But... I’m supposed to...”
“I know exactly what you’re supposed to, young missy. Only Stug sent a girl to do a man’s job and I’m going to prove to him the error of his ways, bring him what he ask
ed for all nice and neat and no questions asked.” Though he did have questions, oh, most definitely. He had a whole barrel of questions, not that he’d ask them of Stug, he’d find answers his own way, as to just what business his employer was getting his soft, pale, clean gentleman’s fingers into now. This was high-class business. Maybe some might consider it a little rich for the blood of such as Bartholomew Simms, but he’d never been one to turn down an opportunity before giving it a good looking-over. He moved around so he could get an arm under the baby without taking his blade from Evvie’s side. “Give her over.”
“You won’t hurt her?”
Bartholomew mentally shook his head. A typical female, it wasn’t as though she even knew this cub. “And why would I harm a hair of her precious little head? She’s why I’m here.”
Reluctantly, she eased the child into his arms. It barely stirred – Bartholomew wondered if it was doped, or sick, but that wasn’t his problem, so long as he delivered it whole and breathing.
“Now, as for you, missy,” he said, the little girl safely tucked inside his jacket, the flat of his blade still against Evvie’s side, “what shall we do with you?”
“You’ve got what you wanted,” she said. Her hands hung limp at her sides, as though she’d given up. “Just go, I’ll try and get out after you’ve gone.”
“How’d you get in?”
“I climbed.”
“And there’s me thinking you’d jawed your way in. And climbed how? I had a look and it didn’t seem any too easy to me.”
She jerked her head towards something in the corner. “Steps. They fold up. My... someone made them for me.”
He could just make it out. “Clever. How’d they work?”
“I can show you...”
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so. You’re a sly-boots, Evvie Duchen. Slippery as waterweed. What if you should decide to call the servants up here, tell ’em some bad man went off with the little girl, eh?”
“Why would I do that? I’m no more s’posed to be here than you are!”
“Why? For vengeance? For spite? To take their minds off you or get in with Stug? Who knows, not me, and nor’d I care, not a whit. I just ain’t inclined for taking a risk. I’m a careful man, Evvie.”
She had guessed, and started to twist away. He drove his hand forward. She let out a breathless grunt, dropped limp over his arm.
He lowered her to the ground, grabbed the folding steps, saw in a moment how they opened. Neat, very neat. He swung up the sash, ah, this was like his old housebreaking days, before he’d found his real calling. He had his legs over the sill and his feet on the ledge below in a wink. The steps shook out, silently unfolding down into the dark below like Jacob’s ladder in reverse – they were even painted splotchy to hide their silhouette against the brickwork and disguise any shine. When he reached the bottom he rested his hand on them for a moment – seemed a shame to leave such a neat device – but then... he glanced up at the window. No. It would make it obvious she’d broken in, and if by any chance she was still alive – he should have checked, but his back hairs were telling him to get moving – anything she might have to say would be given the lie by this same device, so clever, so obviously burglarious in intent.
Simms shook his head and resettled his bowler. A waste. She was a clever girl, but now, alive or dead, she would be shut away in prison to rot. If she was so foolish as to mention Stug’s name, who was going to listen to her? All the same, he should warn Stug to come up with some tale, maybe even provide him with one. Which would put Stug further in his debt, whether he liked to acknowledge it or not.
Supporting the child’s slight breathing weight with one hand, Bartholomew Simms strolled into the night, a man well pleased with a job well done.
Bermondsey
BETH HUDDLED CLOSE behind Ma as they walked. The area only seemed to get worse. The tiny narrow streets, the dense increasing stench, the grimy shuffling figures that sometimes scurried out of the way like vermin disturbed by light. Men lounged in doorways with their caps tipped over their eyes, but she could feel those eyes following her and Ma.
Eventually Ma gave a huff of exasperation and pulled Beth after her into a doorway.
“Wh... what is it?”
“Listen, you daft ha’porth,” Ma hissed. “You wondering why I keep the place I live in the way I do? Think I like that stinking mess out front? It’s all deception, innit. Anyone sees that, they en’t looking for something to prig, nor even somewhere to lay down less’n they’re proper desperate, and proper desperate I can deal with even caught sleeping. Now you see me? See how I walk? Place like this, you walk like a mouse, there’s going to be a dozen cats after you. You got to walk like the biggest savagest bastard dog that ever ripped a bullock’s throat out and ate tigers for afters.”
“Me?” Beth squeaked.
Ma looked her up and down. “Din’t you learn nothing from that actress at yer old school?”
“I’m no good at that stuff,” Beth said. “I’m not like Evvie.”
“No, you en’t. But you gotta have some armour, you gotta... here. You’re good at mechanisms, engines, right? Best in the school. Best outside it too, probably, better’n me, better’n this old fool we’re going to see, I en’t got no doubt at all. You’re an engineer like no-one else, the tip top at engines, you.”
“Well...”
“So you get that in your head. You get that in your eyes and your chin and your shoulders and your stride. Anyone or anything makes you nervous, you just think – I can build an engine that’d run right over you, if I’d a mind. I can hear the heart of metal and make it beat to my drum, I can, and you en’t nothing to me. Right?”
Beth stood for a moment blinking, as though in sudden light. “The heart of metal,” she said. “Oh, yes.”
“Good. Keep that in yer head and come on.” Ma let go of her arm and stalked off, the biggest savagest bastard dog in the street.
Beth started to scurry after her and thought, I’m an Engineer, I know the heart of metal. And she set her feet to a beat of brass, and strode on after Ma.
THE ‘OLD FOOL’ turned out to be a skinny, grimy, whip of a man with a few strands of grey hair crawling across an age-spotted skull, hugely-knuckled hands so ingrained with oil and random dirt that every crease and line stood out like a contour map, and a high pitched whinny of a laugh.
He peered at them around one side of a great heavy iron double door, set in a high brick wall beyond which Beth could hear enticing clangs and smell the scent of machine oil.
“Oh, so you wants a favour, eh?” he said. “Well well, what’s brought Ma Pether so low?”
“I don’t want a favour,” Ma said. “I don’t ask for favours, Augustus Drape. I come for a payment.”
“What payment?” Augustus Drape scowled. “I don’t owe you no payment.” He pulled the door closer, so only one eye, a long nose, a strip of scalp and a few fingers were visible. He put Beth in mind of the grumpy, wattled cockerels she’d seen glaring out of their cages at the market.
Ma looked at her fingernails. “Little matter of a job down Southwark way, last June, and a piece of equipment what was supposed to turn up, and didn’t, and me getting away by the skin of my grandmother’s last remaining tooth. You owe me, Augustus. You owe me ’cos I didn’t come and drag you out of your hole and chuck you in the Thames with one of your engines tied to your scrawny neck.”
“Ah. Southwark, was it? Don’t know as I remember that...”
“Oh, I think you do. Having a bad memory, in your business, that’d be unfortunate, that would. Do your reputation no end of harm, that would. And since I’m being generous enough not to take it out of your hide, Mr Drape, I’d thank you to let us in like a proper gent before... well, let’s say before I remember how long I had to hide in the sewers that night. In June. When it was hotter’n hell and twice as stinksome.”
Ma Pether seemed to have got taller as she was talking. She was taller than Drape to start with,
but somehow during this conversation she had stretched, and he had shrunk. She loomed and he scriggled up like a dried pea, and then with obvious reluctance edged open the door just enough to let the two of them pass.
The door led to a half-roofed yard, lit pale and hissing with gas-lamps, full of carts and steam-cars and even what looked to Beth very much like a steam-tricycle; every sort of vehicle, some half-built, most in poor repair, including at least one that was so neglected it was hard to tell what it had been before it became little but rust and holes.
“So what can I do you for?” said Mr Drape, who, having given up on keeping them out, seemed to have recovered a kind of pessimistic cheer.
“I need something as is fast, carries at least five, and won’t get noticed,” Ma said.
“Well,” he said, rubbing his grey-bristled chin, “to be fair, you can have one, or you can have t’other, but likely not both. I does machines, not magic. Who’s this then?” He said, looking Beth up and down.
“She’s an engineer,” Ma said. “And she knows a rivet from a watchspring, so don’t think you can pass off any old rubbish, Augustus. You try, and... well.”
“All right, all right, there’s no need for unpleasantness, now is there?”
“Not if you get us what we want, there isn’t.”
“Fast, and unnoticeable. Depends which’s most important. What sort of place you taking it into?”
“High-class.”
“Hmm. Buildings close together?”
“Probably.”
“Peelers?”
“Likely.”
“People? Crowds?”
“Maybe.”
“What sort? Fancy?”
“Most like. Maybe mixed, but mostly toffs.”
“Now, see,” Drape said, “what you want there, I reckon, ain’t inconspicuous. You turn up in something looks like a butcher’s cart, it’s going to stick out like a spare prick at a wedding, that is.” He saw Beth’s blush, and snickered. “Engineer, is it?”
