Dark Stars (The Thief Taker Book 3)

by C. S. Quinn

  They’d had a brief liaison the last time they’d worked together, but Lily seemed to have forgotten all about it. Now Charlie wasn’t sure if they were colleagues, relying on one another’s talents to seek treasure, or something more. He wasn’t even sure what to hope for.

  ‘The debtors’ prison is not so terrible,’ Lily remarked, settling her red skirts next to Charlie.

  He hid a smile. Lily’s gypsy upbringing made her a formidable knife thrower. And she’d sat in a way that suggested she’d concealed the blades beneath her dress from the prison guard.

  ‘This is the nobles’ side,’ said Charlie. ‘Most only wait for family to bail them out. You should see the common part,’ he added darkly.

  Charlie noticed a familiar pamphlet tucked in Lily’s belt. ‘Not you too,’ he said, eyeing the horoscope almanac.

  ‘It’s the only thing Londoners talk of,’ said Lily, ignoring his tone. ‘The city’s most famed astrologer turns to murder. Do you think Boney did it?’

  ‘Most likely a rival astrologer,’ said Charlie. ‘People wouldn’t think Ishmael guilty if he wasn’t Moorish. If you were a murderer, why would you publish pictures of your victim’s mutilations? Take the ale,’ he added as the woman approached with the jugs.

  Lily pointed for beer, watching as the woman filled her tankard. ‘Right to the top,’ she said as the beer stopped a fraction from the rim of her cup.

  The woman gave an ill-natured grunt and splashed more beer. Lily passed her coins.

  ‘My money is as clean as yours,’ she said sharply as the woman examined the pennies, glaring pointedly at Lily’s gypsy talismans.

  ‘You brought the ring?’ asked Charlie as the woman retreated.

  Lily nodded. She waved a small hand, causing charms and gold bracelets to jangle at her wrist. Amidst the cheap rings decorating her fingers a ruby sparkled.

  ‘You have yours?’ she asked.

  Charlie nodded, patting the top of his long buttoned coat.

  ‘We should be careful who sees us here,’ said Lily, casting her dark eyes around the prison.

  ‘Because you stole your ring?’ Charlie sometimes couldn’t help but bait Lily on her dubious ethics.

  ‘I retrieved it on behalf of the Crown,’ said Lily defensively.

  ‘You pickpocketed it from a drunk man after convincing him you were a prostitute.’

  ‘I’m a spy,’ said Lily with a dismissive wave of her ringed fingers. ‘Such means are necessary in the King’s service. Besides,’ she added, lowering her voice, ‘just because you found your ring in your dead mother’s possessions means nothing. She might have thieved it for all you know.’

  Charlie couldn’t dispute the truth of this. His mother had been murdered when he was a small boy, and he barely remembered her. He and Lily had unearthed a bundle of Sally Oakley’s possessions from the household where she had worked as a maid – mostly meagre servant things, along with a mysteriously expensive ruby ring.

  ‘You’re certain your spymaster won’t miss the ring he sent you to steal?’ Charlie countered.

  Lily made an exasperated noise. ‘Do you want to uncover the treasure or don’t you?’

  ‘We don’t even know if there is treasure,’ Charlie pointed out reasonably.

  ‘I have a feeling for such things,’ said Lily. ‘These rings unlock something important. Your thief taker mind cannot help but wonder what.’

  Charlie had to concede it was a tantalising mystery. Two months ago, during the Great Fire, Lily had been dispatched as a royal spy to retrieve a matching ring to his mother’s.

  ‘I do wonder,’ admitted Charlie. ‘My brother and I were orphaned with no family. Perhaps there is more to our past than we realised. But,’ he added, his brown eyes on hers, ‘I also suspect you’re making a greater violation of your spying obligations than you pretend.’

  Until she’d met Charlie, Lily had never lost a card game. It had taken him a while to see any tell in her expression. And the glimmer in Lily’s face now told Charlie he’d hit the mark.

  ‘What does it matter?’ she said, batting her long eyelashes and moving a little closer. ‘You need me.’ She held up her ringed finger. ‘You need both rings to solve the mystery. And I’m the only woman in this city you can’t charm this clue from.’

  Lily brought her face almost to his and laid a seductive hand on his chest. Then she drew back, holding up Charlie’s ring, pickpocketed from his coat.

  ‘Yet I can take your ring,’ she concluded, ‘anytime I choose.’

  Charlie smiled. ‘You need me too,’ he pointed out. ‘I know how London’s underbelly works. And I keep a close network of friends who owe me favours. You leave only betrayed men and angry women in your wake. And what makes you think,’ he added, ‘I can’t take your ring when I choose?’

  Charlie held up Lily’s ring, slid from her hand whilst she’d been delving in his coat. Lily gave an annoyed gasp and stared at her empty finger.

  ‘You forget I’m a better pickpocket than you,’ he grinned.

  Lily made to snatch her ring back. Charlie drew it away and put his hand out. She pushed his ring begrudgingly back in his palm, and he dropped hers back on the table. Lily pushed it on to her finger.

  ‘I hope your jewellery man is as good as you say,’ said Lily, leaning down to sip from her overfull tankard. She eyed a plate of griddled meat as it passed. ‘Is he here yet?’

  Charlie was about to shake his head. Then the door opened and a tall silver-haired man entered the debtors’ prison chophouse. He had a magnifying lens mounted above his left eye that gave him the appearance of a friendly Cyclops.

  ‘There,’ said Charlie, pointing.

  ‘He’s a prisoner?’ said Lily uncertainly, taking in the man’s strange hotchpotch of fashionable clothing.

  ‘Riley was gaoled as a debtor after the war, when the jewel trade turned sour,’ explained Charlie. ‘He began valuing and selling on jewels for other prisoners. Now he stays by choice. If anyone will know the history of two old rings, it’s him.’

  Lily nodded, her expression evaluating.

  Charlie stood. ‘Riley!’

  ‘Charlie Tuesday,’ said Riley, drawing closer and enclosing Charlie’s hands in his large ringed fingers.

  Before Charlie could reply Riley signalled to the waiting woman.

  ‘Add a splash of the other,’ Riley said with a wink as the woman filled his tankard from the punch jug, leaning low to expose another inch of deep cleavage. She produced a glass bottle of plum-hued liquid from her skirts and added a generous slug.

  Riley turned to his visitors. ‘What do you think of my new coat?’ he asked, turning the red velvet sleeves for Charlie to inspect. ‘I won it from a debtor,’ he explained, seeing Lily’s gaze travel over his mismatched clothes. He adjusted his overtight striped silk breeches, which exposed six inches of hairy unstockinged thigh.

  ‘Shall we eat?’ asked Riley. ‘The mutton is excellent.’

  Charlie nodded the weary approval of a man who wasn’t particularly hungry but would be footing the bill. Dishes were ordered and the woman bustled away.

  Riley settled back comfortably, bringing out a long white clay pipe and packing it with leaf tobacco. He adjusted the magnifying lens strung around his forehead like a third eye, reached for a candle and lit his pipe.

  ‘Back for another jewel thief?’ Riley asked, puffing contentedly.

  Charlie shook his head and reached into his coat.

  ‘Something else,’ he said, bringing out the ruby ring. ‘Wondered if you might take a look at it.’

  Riley eyed the jewel in Charlie’s hand and sent up a cloud of pipe smoke.

  ‘Times are hard,’ he said. ‘I’d need to ask for something for the information.’

  Riley held his hands up at Charlie’s expression. ‘I know you’ve done me a few good turns . . .’ he began, toying with his magnifying lens.

  ‘I saved your wife from Newgate,’ said Charlie indignantly.

  ‘All the same
, charity has to end somewhere,’ said Riley, businesslike. He took a deep draw on his pipe. ‘And she’s not my wife any more,’ he added, blowing out a stream of smoke regretfully.

  Charlie hesitated. Riley was the best. They both knew it.

  Two steaming plates of griddled chops, a haunch of mutton and a dish of pickled carrots were dropped unceremoniously in front of them.

  Riley’s eyes widened hungrily. He slid a plate closer and began eating. Lily took out her knife, stabbed the nearest chop and gnawed at the edge. After a moment Charlie cut himself some meat and chewed. It was good. He was hungrier than he realised – a side effect of growing up in a London orphan house.

  ‘What price did you have in mind?’ Charlie asked Riley, cutting another mouthful of pork chop.

  ‘My usual price for a valuation is a shilling,’ said Riley between swallows of mutton shoulder.

  ‘By my reckoning,’ said Charlie, ‘I’ve sent five shillings of new business your way this year.’ He met Riley’s eyes. ‘You’re the best jewellery man,’ he concluded, ‘but not everyone knows it.’

  Riley took in Charlie’s expression. ‘Show it to me then,’ he grumbled, defeated. ‘But if anyone asks, you paid a shilling.’

  Charlie slid him the ring. Riley’s eyes dropped to the jewellery. He picked it up and looked at it for a long time.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ he said finally.

  Charlie hesitated. ‘It was my mother’s,’ he said. ‘I found it amongst some old things of hers.’

  ‘Where exactly were these things?’

  Riley’s fingers were clutching the ring tight. Charlie had a sudden compulsion to grab it back.

  ‘She was a . . . servant in a household,’ said Charlie cautiously. ‘She left a bundle with the master of the house. They were lost for a long time. Then the master died and her things came to me.’

  Charlie didn’t add that Master Blackstone had murdered his mother. That the key at his neck unlocked a chest of dangerous papers. Papers he and Lily had managed to discover during the Great Fire.

  Riley brought down the magnifying lens, leaving a red ring on his forehead. The glass made his left eye loom huge. He turned the ring carefully, examining the stone. His finger slid around the edge of the ring casing.

  ‘Had you noticed this?’ he asked. ‘This marking?’

  He tapped a familiar symbol. Two wavy lines to represent water.

  Charlie glanced and nodded. ‘It’s an astrological symbol,’ he said. ‘For Aquarius.’

  Riley nodded his confirmation. ‘Common enough to mark a sun sign on jewellery,’ he said. His face crinkled. ‘Perhaps your father was a sailor?’

  ‘My father died at sea when I was a baby,’ said Charlie. ‘He could have been a sailor. I don’t remember.’

  As an orphan, Charlie had scant details of his family. He had no memory of ever meeting his father and barely recollected his mother.

  Riley peered deep into the ruby. ‘Peculiar,’ he muttered. ‘Most peculiar.’

  After a moment he set the ring on the table. Charlie picked it up.

  ‘It’s a very unusual item,’ said Riley. ‘I’ve only ever seen one other like it.’

  Charlie and Lily waited patiently.

  ‘I can’t be certain,’ continued Riley, ‘but to my best understanding it’s a Royalist codebreaker ring. But it’s very strange you should come to me with it now.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Because the last time I saw one of these rings . . .’ Riley paused. ‘At that time bodies marked with constellations had washed up at Deptford,’ he continued. ‘Exactly nineteen years ago.’

  Chapter 2

  The Earl of Amesbury’s thick military cloak fanned behind him as he strode down to the dungeon. The naval fort was old and dilapidated, and the general’s well-worn leather boots crossed cracks in the stone floor.

  ‘How does His Majesty?’ asked the naval officer nervously.

  Men of rank rarely knew how to take Amesbury. He’d switched sides twice during the Civil War and should have been condemned as a traitor. But his excellence in military strategy made him too valuable to execute.

  ‘The King is lovesick,’ said Amesbury bluntly. ‘He is chasing a fifteen-year-old lady-in-waiting when he should be looking to naval business.’

  Amesbury was approaching fifty, his thick, dark hair greying and his tall frame now large rather than muscular. But he retained the stature and self-assurance of a man who had never lost a battle on sea or land. He’d worn the same boiled-leather military clothes and thick sash of office for as long as anyone could remember.

  ‘You’re sure it’s him?’ Amesbury demanded. ‘Janus? The fireship pilot who sunk the Queen Catherine?’

  ‘He’s confessed his name is Janus,’ said the naval officer. ‘But he doesn’t speak English.’

  ‘Doesn’t or won’t?’

  The naval officer frowned. ‘He only says three words of English. Your name, and something we don’t understand. We think he’s saying “the Eye”.’

  ‘He requests me by name?’ asked Amesbury.

  The officer nodded. ‘Other than that, he’s told us nothing. Not even after I showed him the instruments.’

  ‘I used to speak good Dutch,’ said Amesbury. ‘Perhaps it will suffice. How were our losses at sea?’

  ‘Bad,’ admitted the officer, glancing back at Amesbury’s bear-like bulk. ‘They attacked in the dead of night.’

  ‘Not much defence could have been made,’ grunted Amesbury. ‘Not once a fireship is so close. It took some skill to launch at night.’ Amesbury assessed the crumbling corridors of the old naval fort. ‘Better we take Janus to a more secure place,’ he added, slapping his hand on a rotting door. ‘Repairs should have been made here. The fort is as loose as Barbara Castlemaine’s wedding vows.’ Amesbury shook his head. ‘Plague and fire have bankrupted us. The Dutch mean a full-scale invasion – and soon. Those Dutch hellburners,’ he swore quietly, ‘will be the end of us.’

  ‘Fireships have no place in honourable warfare,’ agreed the naval officer loyally. ‘They’re a Devil’s trick.’

  Amesbury raised an eyebrow. ‘Warfare isn’t an honourable business,’ he said. ‘We’d use fireships if we could. But the Dutch have the best pilot. Janus,’ he added, smiling, ‘named from the two-faced Roman god. It makes him sound mythical.’

  They’d reached the door of the fort strongroom. The naval man inserted a thick key and turned the rusty lock with difficulty. He stepped back to let Amesbury go first.

  The old general quelled a start of surprise. The mention of the Eye had filled him with strange memories and secret fears. He didn’t know who might come asking, nineteen years later. But he wasn’t expecting the man who sat in front of him.

  Chapter 3

  In the debtors’ prison a song had started up. The chophouse was awash with spilled punch and cheers.

  Amongst the chaos, Charlie and Lily were hanging on Riley’s every word.

  ‘The last time I saw a ring like this,’ the old jeweller was explaining, ‘was during the Civil War. People were all talk of the dead girls washing up at Deptford tide, just like now.’

  ‘So where did you see this ring?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘It was just a picture I saw,’ said Riley. ‘A kind of joke that went around the jewellers. We thought them too intricate, too difficult to be made.’ He hesitated. ‘The rumour was the King’s astrologer made the rings. A man named Thorne.’

  ‘What happened to Thorne?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘He was executed,’ said Riley. ‘By the old King.’

  Riley gestured for the ring again and turned it wonderingly. ‘What you have here is a codebreaker ring,’ he explained. ‘They’re valuable.’ He looked hard into the depths of the ruby.

  Riley’s eyes met the thief taker’s, assessing the other man for a reaction. Instinctively Charlie’s card-sharping skills set his face impassive.

  ‘It was your mother’s?’ added Riley. �
��You’re sure?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because I’ve never known these rings to be given to women,’ said Riley. ‘They were made during the war for elite Royalist spies.’

  ‘How is it used to break codes?’ asked Charlie.

  Riley shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ He hesitated. ‘And all the cryptographers from that time were executed by Cromwell.’

  ‘Not all,’ said Charlie. ‘There’s the Cipher.’

  Riley’s laugh sounded the futility of this observation.

  ‘Who’s the Cipher?’ Lily looked to Charlie.

  ‘Best codebreaker in England,’ said Charlie. ‘The only one who lived past Cromwell. His genius for codes kept him alive. But those high up keep him closely guarded. The Cipher’s whereabouts is the best kept secret in London.’

  ‘Clever as a fox and just as deadly,’ interjected Riley. ‘They say he’s a ghost who can vanish at will. Lives in a Temple of Death.’

  ‘I do know the rings come as a set,’ added Riley helpfully, watching Lily’s disappointed face. ‘They were designed to be used together, in case a spy is discovered and his ring falls into the wrong hands. No single ring can break the code.’

  A second ruby ring clattered on to the table. Lily had taken off her ring. Riley looked at her in surprise.

  ‘We also have this one,’ she explained.

  The way Riley picked up the second ring told Charlie they were extremely valuable. And perhaps not just for the jewels inside.

  ‘The same,’ he breathed after a moment. ‘Old stone. They don’t turn gems like this any more. Not for a long time.’ His eyes flicked up to Charlie. ‘This one is engraved with the sign for Leo. The royal sign,’ he added. ‘A lion.’

  Riley began turning the ring delicately, touching different parts on the inside band.

  ‘Why are these rings so hard to make?’ asked Charlie.

  Riley held the two rings together. ‘To make something so small, so intricate,’ he said.

  The woman arrived at the table. ‘Shall I take the leavings?’ she asked, eyeing the leftover scraps of meat. They’d all stopped eating.