Jago

by Kim Newman

  ‘Now,’ said Lytton. ‘What is this all about?’

  Orlando shrugged.

  Lytton turned and walked away, disappearing completely.

  Terror rose. Orlando had been abandoned.

  ‘Wait,’ he shouted. ‘I saw something I shouldn’t. Something important.’

  He looked into the dark and saw nothing.

  ‘Go on,’ said Lytton.

  Orlando jumped, at being addressed by an invisible presence. He couldn’t even work out where Lytton was standing.

  ‘I caught a bloody bus. It was marked “Not in Service”, but I didn’t notice. I had, ahem, been drinking, in celebration of a tidy bit of business and, not to mince words, was fairly bladdered. It was a good old routemaster, with the open platform at the back. None of your OMOV bollocks. I found it at a traffic light, and climbed aboard. The bus had three conductors, and one particular passenger. Unwilling, I’d say. He was handcuffed to a hanging-strap and drugged to the eyeballs. When I got on, the conductors were seeing to the prisoner. A leather-mask was being fitted over his face, like a bondage hood. It had been taken off because Old Yellow Eye was afraid he had choked on his tongue, but they were satisfied he was just zonked and were fitting the thing on again. I saw this man’s face, and I recognised it. Just as I recognised your face, Captain Lytton.’

  ‘Who was this unfortunate?’

  Orlando thought a moment. ‘Not yet. I have to think hard before I say. But, besides the conductors, three other men were on the bus. I knew them too. Those names I will give you. Strawjack Crowe, Geodfroy Arachnid, Truro Daine.’

  Lytton’s face appeared. ‘A fine collection of rogues.’

  ‘The Prime Minister’s Spy-Master, the disgraced High Elder of the Sect of Diana, and the worst criminal in London. Not exactly the sort of folk you expect to find on the last bus to Streatham Hill.’

  ‘If those three have common interests, it’d be a sorry day for the city.’

  ‘Believe me, that’s true,’ said Orlando.

  ‘Still, I hadn’t planned on biding long here. I’d advise you get out too, especially if they know your name.’

  Orlando’s insides knotted. Leave London! He’d tried that once, and would not be going down that sad road any time in the near future, no matter what. Beyond the city limits, wearing socks made you unspeakably posh and they sweetened the tea with cat’s-piss.

  Besides, he would never be safe. Strawjack Crowe, a poxcheeked Puritan who had been master of the Lord Protector’s Secret Police, ruled the Star Chamber of the Parliament of the Marches, the central agency entrusted by the new Prime Minister with overall command of all police forces, civil militias and honour guards in the country. Famous for having his own son flogged in public for singing on a Sunday, Crowe was the most frighteningly efficient enemy of harmless pleasure England had ever seen. His power—mandated by the Prime Minister of the Marches, not the London Assembly—was on the rise even within the city.

  And, if there was a place in these islands beyond Crowe’s reach, it would still be within the grasp of Truro Daine, Emperor of the Underworld, the ‘Cromwell of Crime’. They said the fog itself worked for Daine, whose initial riverside power-base was so permanently thick with the stuff he could no longer breathe fresh air or see clearly without the murk. He lived in rooms especially pumped full of fog and, on the bus, had been taking draughts through a breathing mask which left a yellow triangle around his mouth and nose.

  ‘You’re in this too,’ Orlando said. ‘The conductor found out my name, but he must have known your face.’

  Lytton held his chin, and conceded the point.

  ‘I’m sorry, Captain, but we’re on the bus together, as it were, until we get to the depot. Between them, Crowe and Daine can have every man against us. Even Arachnid has followers, and he’s a standing joke among his own sect let alone real people. Think of it: coppers, crooks, Dianaheads—all against us. Eyes in the fog. They expect us to run, to try and get out of the city, to head for the walls. The gates will be double- and triple-guarded. Hunting dogs will be loose in the green-belt. They’ll be searching the trains and coaches. Our only hope is to stay in the smoke, to scare up some friends.’

  ‘We have no friends.’

  Orlando understood. ‘Maybe not, but we can find allies. Have you heard of the Diogenes Club?’

  Lytton nodded. He accepted casually that Orlando could drop the name of an institution which was supposedly unknown to the general public.

  ‘They were supposed to be broken up, as a condition of the reunification,’ Orlando said. ‘It’s part of the Prime Minister’s programme of recovery, but the Parliament of the Marches is out there in the sticks, hopping like a bunch of ravers between New Towns and the fens. What the PM says in some jumped-up Women’s Institute Hall doesn’t mean a fly’s fart in London. The Diogenes Club is in Pall Mall. Would you wager that some of its members still take an interest in matters of state?’

  ‘In the War, I ran ops for Diogenes,’ Lytton admitted.

  ‘Didn’t we all?’

  Lytton looked at him, really taking him in for the first time. Orlando knew he wasn’t impressive, wasn’t tall, didn’t sound like the BBC. But sometimes blending in was more important than standing out.

  ‘Pall Mall, eh? There’s Battersea, the Thames, Belgravia, the Palace and Green Park between here and there. Quite a stroll in the best of times. We’d best shift ourselves, Goodman Boldt.’

  ‘Just what I was going to say.’

  * * *

  By dawn, they had made it to the Thames, and stood on Chelsea Reach. Day brought light but not clarity. The fog was thicker and yellower than school custard. Back in his crib, Orlando had a selection of stylish breathing masks—but he’d neglected to bring any of them out. His perennially troublesome lungs gave him gyp. He clocked Lytton noticing the blood in his hankie after he had a good old Frank Bough.

  They’d kept out of the way of trouble, staying off main thoroughfares, avoiding all other early-morning folk. Orlando, A to Z imprinted on his brain from birth, knew the city in a way that made a black cabbie with a headful of Knowledge seem like a Geordie wandering out of Victoria coach station for the first time and wondering where his wallet had gone. Lytton let him lead and Orlando had a little puff of pride, understanding the Captain judged him sound in this area of expertise, and was prepared to entrust him with his life.

  ‘Battersea, Albert or Chelsea?’ Orlando asked. ‘Maybe Vauxhall, if you fancy a bit of a hike.’

  Lytton considered. They were closest to the Chelsea Bridge. Beyond the fog-wall that hung over the river was the Chelsea Embankment. Orlando was antsy about the Chelsea Bridge just now, perhaps because there was a Bus Depot attached to the approach road. He still half-thought London Transport was in on this whole thing with the Three Villains, fighting the Lord Mayor Elect’s policies on low fares and public ownership.

  They looked up at the span of the bridge. Vague shapes stood idling. Orlando made out the tithead shape of a bobby’s helmet on one of them, but the other fellows wore tricorns like his.

  ‘They’ll have all the bridges guarded,’ said Lytton. ‘Damn, I hadn’t expected them to be this fast.’

  ‘We can hardly swim across.’

  Orlando was worried when Lytton didn’t immediately agree with him. Because of his back and limbs, he could barely do a width in the Lambeth Baths. And the Thames was definitely not fit for human immersion. Trapped in the sargasso of detergent scum that drifted slowly by the Reach were dead cats, clumps of raw sewage, a myriad partial clay pipes and an amazing amount of assorted jetsam. A faceless grandfather clock bobbed past, a raft for a large, red-eyed rat. More than a few unwary folk of Orlando’s acquaintance had taken a last dip in these waters.

  ‘No, but we can make an effort to be unpredictable.’

  ‘You’re hoping for a small boat we can, ah…’

  ‘Requisition? Not necessarily. What do you weigh?’

  Orlando didn’t know. His only scale
was a wonky jeweller’s cast-off.

  ‘About nine stone, I’d think. And I’m fourteen. Together, we’re not too heavy.’

  ‘I’m not going in the river.’

  Lytton shuddered. ‘No fear of that.’

  Nearby was a pier, gated and locked at this hour. Lytton took out an impressive Swiss Army implement and unfolded a blade. He started working on the hinges of the tall gates.

  ‘What’s behind those that you want?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Lytton said. ‘I want the gates themselves.’

  * * *

  The makeshift raft drifted out onto the river, dubious liquids sloshing over the edges. Orlando’s tummy was distinctly roiling, from the stench as much as the movement. God didn’t mean for him to live on water, which is why He had built many fine bridges over His favoured river. It took nervous minutes to get beyond the clogged banks, but when the current caught them, the board whirled out, not towards the opposite bank but along the Thames, seaward. They had a couple of planks for oars, but Lytton wouldn’t let Orlando use them yet. They lay quiet on the raft as it passed under the Chelsea Bridge. The knot of fellows up above were harassing early foot-commuters like licensed footpads.

  ‘Someone on the river,’ shouted a voice.

  Lytton mouthed a swear word.

  Orlando cringed and reconsidered his aversion to sliding off the raft and into the water. The worst of the filth was along the banks, not in mid-stream.

  ‘You there, halt,’ said a bobby. ‘In the name of the law.’

  ‘Bugger that,’ said a rougher voice.

  There was a blast and a plop. It wasn’t a warning shot, but inaccurate marksmanship. The next rifle-shot blew a spouting hole in the raft.

  Lytton was on one knee, pistol up, sighting carefully. He judged their sluggish drift and the upward angle, probably the wind.

  He fired twice.

  The policeman’s helmet flew off and the rifleman’s shoulder came bloodily apart.

  A fusillade, mostly cobbles but with a few wild shots mixed in, came down on the river, raining into the water where the raft had been. Orlando paddled furiously now, wrestling with the board as the river tried to take it away from him.

  The bridge receded into the fog. There was a glint, off the glass of a scope. Lytton fired at it, and someone whirled away from a broken implement.

  ‘There’ll be another krewe on Vauxhall Bridge,’ Lytton said. ‘We’ve got to make it to the other side.’

  ‘You could help by paddling. I’m just tiddling us round in a circle.’

  Lytton holstered his pistol, and took up a plank.

  A flare rose from the bridge, spurting through the fog, and exploded like a Guy Fawkes rocket. Orlando wondered how many eyes were up for the signal.

  Paddling faster, they could see the other embankment now.

  ‘Where are we?’ Lytton asked.

  ‘Pimlico,’ Orlando said, heart sinking. ‘Not a good place to strike land.’

  The raft nudged shingles, scraped through another drift of muck, and fetched up somewhere under the Grosvenor Road.

  Orlando was pleased to get his shaky knees onto dry land, even here.

  ‘Come on,’ Lytton said, hauling him upright, ‘hurry along.’

  Orlando allowed himself to be dragged into the worst borough in London for the likes of him.

  * * *

  They passed under a lamp-post. Reeking feet knocked Orlando’s hat off. He scrambled around on the cobbles for it.

  ‘What’s that?’ Lytton asked.

  They looked up. The corpse had been dangling for a few weeks and the deader’s face probably hadn’t been much in the first place. A neatly printed sign was pinned to the chest, in the style of a special offer in a greengrocer’s window. ‘Sturdy Beggar’. The hanged man’s coat pockets were stuffed with rolled-up copies of The Big Issue.

  ‘Neighbourhood Watch,’ spat Orlando. ‘It’s the borough’s Short Sharp Shock policy.’

  They hurried on, away from the ghastly reminder.

  Pimlico, in loose alliance with Westminster and Lambeth, was a law unto itself. The Lord Mayor Elect was holding talks with the councillors of these districts, to bring them back into the Assembly. Orlando thought the tinpot dictators, imposing their ‘emergency regulations’ years after the emergency, would not easily give up power.

  Now, with what he knew, that was all open for argument.

  ‘You two there,’ said someone. ‘Passports, please.’

  A patrol emerged around them, like an ambush. Soldier suits and deckchair attendant hats, flintlock side-arms and butcher-knives.

  Even if Orlando still had his papers, none of them would be of any use. He’d never been sent down for anything serious, but Pimlico operated Zero Tolerance. A few parking tickets or a drunk and disorderly earned a stripe from the cat. With Orlando’s sheet, he was due for a hoist up the nearest lamp-post.

  Lytton made no move to produce any document.

  ‘Passports,’ repeated the Watchman, a short, balding, brush-moustached bank manager-type. None of his fellows were especially hard, but they had the numbers. One was a tubby woman, with Diana hair and white robes. She carried a clockwork-powered prod, crackling with blue electricity. Flounces of multicoloured ribbon were pinned to their breasts with badges that emblazoned their post-codes.

  ‘They won’t have any,’ said a taller man, with a deeper voice.

  He didn’t have NW insignia, and wore no council ribbons. He reminded Orlando of the conductor-in-chief, but where Yellow-Eye’s face had been hard but bland this man was black-browed and hollow-cheeked, a skull coated with papier mache. His eyes were like bullet-holes.

  ‘Good morning, James,’ the new man said to Lytton.

  Orlando realised Lytton was tense, hand close to his pistol.

  ‘Hello, Stryng,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t realise we were scouting for you,’ said Stryng. He had a slightly recessive r, which should have sounded silly but didn’t. ‘I’d have demanded a bigger purse if I’d known there was challenge involved. They only told me about your crookback pet.’

  ‘Really, there are procedures,’ said the NW jobsworth.

  ‘Shut up, little man,’ said Stryng. The petty Watchman swallowed it, but went red. His mates muttered at the breach of discipline. The Dianahead raised her prod like a magic wand.

  ‘This is Captain James Lytton,’ said Stryng. ‘My old c.o. at the Siege of Manchester. He got a Victoria Cross. And I got a dishonourable. You wouldn’t credit how close things came to being the other way round.’

  ‘Lieutenant Rutland Stryng,’ said Lytton. ‘You were lucky to get off with a dishonourable discharge.’

  ‘You voted for the blindfold, didn’t you? Well, we all make mistakes’

  Stryng drew a serious pistol, a Webley. Lytton let him, which surprised Orlando. Stryng didn’t fire, as Lytton must have known.

  ‘I’m disappointed,’ said Stryng. ‘It seems your reputation for sharp reflexes is exaggerated. When it comes down to it, you’re a snail-fingered slowcoach.’

  Lytton tapped his left hip, drawing Stryng’s attention, and slapped away Stryng’s gun-barrel with his right hand, twisting the pistol out of the Lieutenant’s grip and tossing it into the street. Then, he drew his own pistol and pointed it at Stryng’s surprised face.

  Stryng whistled, unevenly. A drip of sweat ran from under his feather-brimmed hat and into his eye.

  ‘So, you are swift. Pity it isn’t loaded.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lytton. ‘Isn’t it?’

  Counting, Orlando realised the Captain had shot his six and not reloaded. Always a mistake to go about without spare ammo.

  He smashed Stryng across the side of the head with the heavy barrel, raising a red welt.

  ‘Run,’ he shouted.

  Stryng tried to grab Lytton’s shoulders but the Captain heaved him off, throwing him against the NW krewe. Stryng landed on the plump Dianahead, who charged her shock prod full into his arse. He yel
led as blue light arced all around.

  Orlando didn’t need to be told twice.

  He was running. And Lytton was catching up fast.

  * * *

  They were in Greencoat Place, coming up to the kink of Greycoat Place, into Artillery Row and Victoria Street. Even in dire panic, with street-signs obscured by fog, Orlando knew that much. St James’s Park wasn’t far off, and the Mall.

  Though he’d never been inside the building, he knew the Diogenes Club. It was an unobtrusive establishment, with the most modest of brass plates. Orlando had exaggerated a smidge when he told Lytton he had run ops for the Club during the Civil War. In those troubled times, there had been opportunities, and he’d found agents of the Diogenes Club by far the best people to pass on any information that came his way. They paid better than the police or parliament, and could protect you from the likes of Truro Daine or the Traffic Wardens. At least, that had once been the case. Now that the Lord Mayor Elect and the Prime Minister agreed the faithful dogs had had their day, Orlando didn’t know what to expect.

  Since their tangle with the Pimlico Watch and Rutland Stryng, Lytton had said nothing. Orlando wondered if he was professionally shamed to have fired his gun empty. Obviously, there was unsettled business between the Captain and the former Lieutenant. Orlando didn’t understand the honour of the service thing, but then again he had ducked conscription through his feet and a week’s soap diet.

  It was mid-morning. Hardy Londoners were on the streets around Victoria Station, swarming to Whitehall and Westminster. They wore fog-breather faceplates with dangling elephant’s trunk filters, topped offwith bowler hats. Everyone had a furled umbrella, most containing flick-blades as insurance against road agents or persistent spare change extortionists. Unmasked, Orlando and Lytton stood out among civil servants and office workers.

  They crossed Victoria Road and made their way to St James’s Park through back-streets. The fog was less thick in the park, but chill mist rose from the duck-pond. It was a foolhardy soul indeed who stepped off Birdcage Walk and walked on the grass. The grounds had controversially been declared sacred to Diana by Geodfroy Arachnid, and his sect sent patrols out to keep the paths virginally untrodden, though word from the Palace was that the sanctification of the Martyr Princess was highly unofficial. Frequent punch-ups took place between the Household Guard and the Dianaheads, skirmishing over rotting floral tributes left at the Palace gates, which the Guards liked to dump in the pond.