Dark Stars (The Thief Taker Book 3)

by C. S. Quinn

  ‘I could ask you the same question,’ said Charlie. He was suddenly furious with her. ‘You should have told me,’ he said angrily, ‘if you needed money. I would have done anything, Maria. All you needed do was ask. You didn’t need to come here.’

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ she hissed, glancing about to check no one was watching them. ‘I’m just part of the display. I don’t . . . I never take my clothes off,’ she added.

  ‘You don’t need to,’ said Charlie. ‘That dress is tight enough to show everything.’

  He saw the hurt on her face and regretted the remark.

  ‘It’s no business of yours,’ snapped Maria, ‘what I do or what I wear.’

  He felt an urge to wrap her in his coat, to carry her away.

  ‘Does your fiancé know?’ he asked. It was a low blow and he knew it.

  Maria flinched. Her face darkened. ‘Don’t use your thief taker tricks with me,’ she hissed, flushing. ‘You’ve no right. Not after what you did.’

  ‘You left me!’ Charlie’s voice rose without his meaning it to. A few aristocrats turned, wondering why the sun goddess was arguing with a commoner.

  ‘What choice did you give me?’ Maria accused. ‘You weren’t there. All you cared about was your family secrets and your no-good brother.’

  She stopped abruptly, biting her lip. Guilt flooded her features.

  ‘I heard about Rowan,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Nothing to be sorry about,’ Charlie said evenly. ‘Rowan vanishes all the time, plague or no. He’ll come back owing money, and I’ll bail him out again.’

  Pity glowed in Maria’s eyes. It was worse than the anger, Charlie thought.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she asked softly. ‘Did you come for me?’

  ‘No.’ He admitted it too quickly and wondered how she always did this to him. Maria somehow made him honest when he shouldn’t be. ‘I didn’t know you were here,’ he added. He wanted to tell her that if he’d have known, he would have stopped her working for Mother Mitchell. But he didn’t want her angry again.

  ‘Mother Mitchell thinks you can help me with some information,’ he admitted, ‘about astrology.’

  Maria hesitated, taking him in. Charlie saw something flash in her face. Something she was trying to hide. Maria missed him, he realised.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ll go somewhere quieter. These men love a drama. They’re so bored spending their money.’

  Her eyes ranged the room and landed on Mother Mitchell, who was now physically restraining three drunk girls from attacking one another. The old madam was trying to separate the girls without damaging their dresses and didn’t notice them slip away.

  ‘You have some new mystery?’ asked Maria, closing the dressing room door behind them. ‘Something to do with astrology?’

  The room was small and stank of thick perfume. It had once been the Palace of Venus room, Charlie remembered. His eyes found the old statue.

  ‘Yes. The beer is still in the marble Venus?’ asked Charlie.

  She nodded.

  Charlie took out his tankard, filled it from a tap strategically placed on Venus’s nipple and dutifully laid small change at the base. This particular statue held cheap small beer for the girls, whilst their high-paying clients drank fine wines. But nothing in Mother Mitchell’s house was ever free, even for friends.

  Drinking the beer, Charlie outlined everything he knew, watching Maria’s disappointment grow.

  ‘You’re still chasing that mystery,’ she said sadly. ‘Charlie, perhaps some things can’t be solved.’

  She was talking about Rowan, he realised.

  ‘It was never about that,’ Charlie retorted angrily. He stopped himself, knowing he was on the brink of starting the same argument.

  ‘You want to find out who you are?’ she interjected. ‘I’ll tell you who you are. You’re Charlie Tuesday. Everyone in London knows you or owes you a favour. Particularly the women,’ she added with a wry smile. ‘You’re clever and quick and unreliable and impossible. When you get a mystery under your skin, you can’t let it go. But I believe you’re good-hearted underneath it all. What else do you need to know?’ She glared at him.

  ‘Right at this moment?’ Charlie grinned at her. ‘I need to know something about the stars.’

  She looked defeated and charmed all at once.

  ‘You’ll never be happy,’ she said, ‘if you keep this mystery hanging over you.’

  ‘So help me solve it,’ Charlie said. He took her arm. ‘I know you’re interested too. And I think you might know enough about astrology to help me. Because whenever you set your mind to something you do it properly.’

  She hid a smile.

  He told her about the rings. About his mother’s bundle, the angels and finally the corpse at Dead Man’s Curve.

  ‘What about the astrology on the body?’ asked Charlie. ‘Do you understand anything of it?’

  Maria shook her head. ‘I only know a little,’ she said. ‘Maybe no more than you. There are seven planets,’ she continued, ‘the sun, the moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Neptune and Venus. The planets move around constellations of stars – the twelve signs of the zodiac. Dependent on where the planets are in relation to the constellations, astrologers predict future events.’

  She noticed the disappointment on Charlie’s face.

  ‘Show me the almanac,’ she suggested.

  He took it out and flicked through until he found the right page.

  ‘The cherubim were taken from old astrology,’ she said. ‘It’s quite well known. The four seasons that surround the sun became the four angels closest to God. The cherubim heads still mark it,’ she added. ‘Aquarius, Taurus, Leo and Scorpio – spring, summer, autumn and winter.’

  Charlie looked at the angels’ faces. What he’d assumed to be a bird was a scorpion.

  ‘Much of Christianity and astrology is mixed,’ added Maria. ‘It was how they tempted pagans to believe in Jesus. The festivals – Christmas, Easter – they mark equinoxes. Changes in the stars and the seasons.’

  ‘Four rings . . .’ Charlie was thinking out loud. ‘Four people. Each given a ring to solve a code. So the cherubim could match their star signs,’ he decided, ‘but they could also represent something else.

  ‘What of the date?’ he said. ‘All Hallows’ Eve.’

  ‘Yes.’ Maria nodded. ‘According to the astrologers, that is the darkest time of all. There’s a lunar eclipse,’ she said slowly. ‘At midnight. The moon will turn to blood.’

  Charlie nodded, remembering the same words in Ishmael’s almanac.

  ‘The moon into blood,’ repeated Maria. ‘It’s from the Bible. Every churchgoer has heard it. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood,’ she intoned in the static voice of someone repeating by rote. ‘Armageddon,’ she concluded.

  ‘The end of time,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s what Ishmael meant. The end is nigh.’

  Maria nodded. ‘The astrologers are all in a frenzy. They think the All Hallows’ eclipse heralds a kind of apocalypse.’

  ‘A kind of apocalypse?’

  ‘No one can quite agree on what terrible event will take place,’ said Maria. ‘Some think the whole world will end. Others say when the clocks strike twelve, London will fall. And others say a great discovery will destroy the world or be lost forever.’

  Chapter 22

  Janus’s boat bobbed on the water. She was a small ship and old. Not large enough to make any deep-sea venture, but fitted with sails and easy enough for one man to work.

  In the hull the dark shape lay under its blanket. Was it Janus’s imagination, or was the river calling to it? He could feel the tides tugging at the underside of his boat, adding dead weight, calling for their offering to be returned.

  Janus looked at the covered shape. Then he dropped the sails, jumped easily down and unveiled his offering, ready to begin work.

  First he weighed the corpse, hitching it to the mast with a rudimen
tary pulley and approximating the mass, as Thorne had taught him. Then he took a calculation of the height and breadth – factors likely to impact on the woman’s journey along the Thames.

  After logging the position of the moon and the high tide, Janus was ready to begin his work. Carefully he pulled away the blanket and drew out his knife.

  The copper-handled blade twisted in his grip. Waterlogged skin gave way easily, and dark liquid flowed from the wound. He moved the rag, wiped, cut again, then grasped the edge of severed flesh and pulled. The corpse’s blood leaked under his fingernails. His breathing was ragged, he noticed, his upper lip beaded with sweat. A neat triangle of skin came away in his hand, cold and wet. Dark blood ran in rivulets down the corpse’s neck.

  Janus’s mind was flipped back nineteen years, to the day of the execution.

  Thorne, walking silently up the steps to his end. Janus had watched from the crowd, his every muscle tensed. Had Thorne really betrayed him? He couldn’t believe it. And yet here Thorne was, moving calmly to the executioner’s block, his secret ready to die with him. But there was still time. His master was not yet dead.

  Janus’s eyes scanned the crowd. Then he saw him. Tobias Oakley. Hot hatred swirled in his belly. Then a flash of fear. What was his rival doing here? Had Oakley convinced Thorne to betray him?

  The astrologer was on his knees now. Janus saw the condemned man shake his head, and cold disbelief shot through him.

  Thorne had declined to say any last words.

  Janus’s eyes filled with tears of fury and betrayal. His fists were clenched in tight balls.

  The Eye. You said it was mine!

  His eyes switched again to Tobias Oakley. The sailor’s face was pale, lips murmuring a prayer.

  Janus wanted to shout to him that Thorne wouldn’t want his prayers. Then he saw Thorne make a slight movement. The astrologer touched his mouth, as if in benediction.

  The crowd screamed and taunted, thinking Thorne was making a Catholic gesture to save his soul. But Janus knew better.

  Thorne has slipped a silver coin into his mouth, the Roman token of passage to the underworld. His soul will cross the River Styx, thought Janus, to Saturn, the dark god.

  Suddenly Janus knew. The coin was a sign. Something he knew only Janus would understand. He leaned forward, straining to hear against the noise of the crowd. The executioner raised his axe. Thorne’s face was calm, almost serene.

  The axe fell. And Janus’s heart seemed to split in two.

  Thorne, his greatest love and deepest fear, was gone.

  As the blood gushed over the wooden scaffold, Janus felt his hopes leak away with it. Then the mouth of the corpse had dropped open. The silver coin had fallen free. With blood streaming from the neck, Janus was the only one to see it drop. And no one had noticed a little boy run through the crowd and scoop it up from the bloody mud.

  Not even Tobias Oakley.

  It was only when Janus later examined the coin that he realised it was meaningless. He’d been right to suspect Tobias. Oakley had stolen almost everything from Janus. Even Thorne’s trust.

  Suddenly back on the river, Janus realised the woman’s dead eyes were staring up at him accusingly. He drove down his self-loathing.

  Embrace your dark stars.

  If Thorne would not leave him his birthright, then Janus would take it for himself.

  And destroy Charlie Oakley.

  Tobias Oakley’s son had no noble blood, no learning. He knew nothing of the stars. Janus looked at the body, carved with his calculations. Only he and Thorne knew what they really meant. Every other ignorant Londoner would mistake them for astrological predictions.

  Janus made a quick assessment of the Thames.

  The river was full of boats going about their daily trade. But no one would notice another Londoner dumping his detritus into the water.

  He dragged the body on to the deck, leaving a slick bloody trail behind. Then he slipped a silver coin in her mouth.

  ‘Go to the deep waters,’ he murmured as he heaved her up, ‘into His embrace.’

  Janus let the body fall with a heavy splash into the water. As the tide took the dead girl, she left a trail of scarlet in her wake.

  Janus drew out a leather tankard in a toast, splashed red wine, drank, then bowed his head to Saturn and watched. The dead body had begun her inexorable journey towards Dead Man’s Curve.

  Chapter 23

  The dressing room at Mother Mitchell’s house suddenly seemed close and stifling. Maria was toying with the edge of her tight-fitting dress.

  ‘Lunar eclipses are always bad omens,’ she continued, ‘but this is a total eclipse. The moon will be in complete shadow. And it happens on All Hallows’ Eve, when the dead walk the earth.’

  ‘Do you think the stars have such power?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Maria, ‘but all the astrologers agree this is a year of revelation. Of great change, good or bad. Mostly bad,’ she added.

  ‘How?’

  ‘When the planets align with the constellations of the zodiac,’ she said, ‘they mean things.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Each planet is a god,’ said Maria. ‘An ancient Roman god. Some think the planets each have their own personality, their own whims. They must be appeased to prevent bad luck. Each demands an offering to bring in the next term.’

  ‘What kind of offering?’

  ‘Well,’ said Maria slowly, ‘Venus is the Goddess of Love and Fertility. When she ascends, we offer apples, rose oils, candles. She traditionally comes at Halloween for Libra. This year Saturn is in Gemini, the sign for London.’

  ‘What does Saturn want?’

  She swallowed. ‘Saturn is the God of Death,’ she said. ‘He comes in winter and walks with a harvest scythe. Saturn demands the greatest of sacrifices to make the sun rise again.’

  ‘Blood sacrifice?’ guessed Charlie.

  ‘Human sacrifice,’ nodded Maria. ‘Specifically he demands children. It’s where our notion of Satan the Devil comes from,’ she added. ‘Saturn, the Roman death god, became Satan, the Christian force of evil.’

  ‘What about the All-Seeing Eye?’ asked Charlie. ‘Does that have any connection with Saturn?’

  Maria thought for a moment. ‘In the Bible there’s a story of Lucifer and a lost eye,’ she said. ‘When the Devil was cast from heaven, an emerald fell from his crown. It’s sometimes represented as an eye with rays of light emitting. The Eye of Heaven. But you’d have to ask an astrologer if there’s a connection to the stars.’

  ‘It sounds like Devil worshipping,’ said Charlie, remembering the five-pointed star carved into the body of the dead girl. ‘Pentagrams, symbols of Lucifer, human sacrifice.’

  She gestured with her thumb to the room they’d just come from. ‘The nobles here are all talk of a Dutch fireship pilot named Janus in London. They have it he is searching for the Eye. Means to destroy London.’

  Charlie digested this. The name sounded familiar somehow. He had a strong image of a dark figure, burning with hatred.

  ‘Do they think him dangerous?’ he asked.

  ‘Very,’ said Maria. ‘Janus is suspected to be an English noble. Someone very high-born.’ She eyed Charlie. ‘You should be careful,’ she said. ‘He sounds like a powerful enemy. A man who will stop at nothing.’

  Chapter 24

  The men were sweating, heads pounding. Reeking fumes swirled in the close confines of the ship. The hull had been gutted, and a flammable mixture of pitch, pine resin and pork fat painted on the wood floor.

  De Ryker’s one good eye watched his men as they worked to build a snaking path of metal guttering. His deeply sun-lined face was folded in concentration.

  ‘Very good,’ he said approvingly. ‘Janus’s plans are excellent.’ He tapped the high metal gutter. ‘Once we fill this with flammable things, it will take fire fore and aft in moments.’

  ‘You’re certain we should venture such an expensive ship?’ managed hi
s first mate, Cornelius, a beanpole-thin man who was reeling from the stench of sulphur and pitch.

  De Ryker turned to his first mate, who shrank back a little. The admiral cut an imposing figure, tall in his long captain’s coat, with well-worn black leather boots, a grey shirt open at the neck and a thick crucifix hanging down to chest level. A thick brown belt crossed his torso, fastened with four loaded pistols. His long greying hair was tied across with a green handkerchief and topped with a battered black hat. He was the only one of the crew who didn’t seem to suffer from the headaches and fainting fits that troubled the fireship sailors.

  ‘You still don’t trust Janus?’ asked De Ryker.

  ‘He was a prisoner of war,’ frowned Cornelius. He didn’t voice what most of the crew thought. That Janus was cursed. The fireship pilot’s ascent to De Ryker’s side had been fast enough to justify mutterings of sorcery.

  ‘Janus and I have an accord,’ said De Ryker. ‘I know his weaknesses. He is clever, but not so clever as he thinks.’

  The admiral noticed two men rolling a huge barrel below deck. He moved to help position it.

  ‘Another of Janus’s inventions,’ he told Cornelius as he rolled up his sleeves. The admiral’s muscular forearms were etched in rudimentary black-inked tattoos – planetary symbols and constellations for luck in navigation. ‘Pork fat mixed with dry brush and pine resin,’ continued De Ryker proudly. ‘With the right fuse it will blow like a cannon.’

  ‘We’d better pray it hits its target,’ said Cornelius pointedly. ‘The price of pine resin has skyrocketed. The purser calculates the total cost of flammables runs to thousands. And the use of such a fine ship—’

  De Ryker patted the wooden side of the boat. ‘A fireship must be fast,’ he said. ‘We are not like the English. We need not fear she will miss her target. We have the best pilot on the seven seas.’

  Cornelius had to grudgingly agree with this. Aboard a fireship, Janus was a phenomenon. He was clever as a snake and twice as fast. He’d burned targets others wouldn’t have attempted and escaped with his life against impossible odds.