by Dave Butler
“So let’s get to work,” Ollie said. “Time to help my mate Charlie.”
Bob slapped Charlie on the shoulder, and Henry Clockswain nodded.
“Right,” Grim Grumblesson said. “Let’s see this handbill you were talking about.”
Charlie brought out the broadsheet and unfolded it on the table. It had survived his underwater journey, but the ink was running and barely readable.
!!! A warning to the SONS of APES !!!
You have trodden upon the Elder Folk of this Island long enough!! Today we remove your Queen, like a Louse—easily and in clean conscience—Tomorrow, we will remove you too, and squash you in our invisible fingers!!
!!! FEAR the Anti-Human League and OBEY !!!
“Hmm,” the kobold said, smoothing the paper over and over with his long fingers. “Er…not very impressive, is it?”
“ ’As something ’appened to the queen?” Bob asked.
“Not unless it happened while we were underground,” Grim answered. Outside the Port Royal, the rain was ushering in a dark evening. “Nothing we can do about it. Stay focused on the client.”
“Charlie’s dad,” Ollie clarified.
“Mr. Raj Pondicherry, alias Dr. Singh.” Grim turned the broadsheet over, looking at one side and then the other. “Bad print job,” he pronounced. “Amateurs. I’ve never heard of any Anti-Human League.”
“Nor I,” Gnat agreed.
“I haven’t either,” Henry Clockswain added. “They sound like complete nutters to me.”
“Nor have I heard of the Iron Cog. We’ll follow up on all those leads tomorrow, when we can get into a library, or maybe a bookshop.” Grim scratched his rough chin. “Tobacconists will all be shut now, too.”
“Do we ’ave to wait until tomorrow?” Bob asked. “What about the ’ats? Cavendish, innit?”
“Anxious, are you?” Gnat teased the chimney sweep with a grin.
“I’m worried about Mr. Pondicherry’s safety,” Bob said. Then he added, a little embarrassed-looking, “An’ the Jubilee aeronautical is the day after tomorrow.”
“Yes,” Grim agreed.
“Aren’t there hulder police who can help us?” Charlie asked. “Lawspeakers?”
“I am a lawspeaker,” Grim snorted.
“I know,” Charlie said. “I mean…more lawspeakers.”
Grim shook his head. “If we need more help, I can raise the hue and cry. That means I declare an emergency, and I make a deputy out of any troll we can find. Or another hulder could do it on my authority, as long as I ratify it afterward.”
“Better check to make sure your deputies ain’t smokers first,” Ollie said, a little sourly.
“ ’Tis Cavendish hats for tonight, then,” Gnat pronounced. “To see if they’ve a connection with the Anti-Human League, or the Iron Cog.”
“Kidnappers!” Charlie spat out the word like a curse.
“What do we do, just ask these ’atmakers if they’re ’atching an evil plot?” Bob asked.
“Cavendish will likely be closed for the evening,” Grim said. “And this is an emergency. So we’re going to break in.”
“We’ll want weapons.” Ollie scratched his belly. “Just in case. And Gnat’s pixie friends took my knife.”
“I saw a velocipede shop across the street,” Grim said. “It may still be open.”
Henry Clockswain scrambled to his feet and dug into his trousers pocket. “Let me, er, pay for the drinks. You know, to say thanks. I’ll be right behind you.”
The velocipede shop owner was a stout man with a walrus-like mustache, standing on the doorstep to lock up. When Grim opened his enormous wallet and started producing five-pound notes, he promptly reopened the shop.
“What interests you this evening?” he asked, sliding behind the counter. Velocipede wheels and pumps hung on the wall behind him, along with other ironmongery. Inside the glass counter lay rows of weapons. Charlie had never been inside a velocipede shop before, and he knew they carried a wide range of tools, but he was still a bit surprised to see so much fighting gear. There were knuckle-dusters and billy clubs and guns and knives, and things that he didn’t recognize but that looked fierce and cruel.
“We have the latest models, if you’re looking for personal transportation.” The shop owner waved stubby fingers at a velocipede in the corner, which had an enormous front wheel and a tiny back one. Charlie moved to look at it, but Grim stepped in front of him.
“Guns,” Grim said. “Something big for me, and something smaller. For a kobold. And powder, shot, and caps. And something suitable for the lads and the pixie.” He gestured at the walls, and Bob and Ollie set about examining clubs and knuckle-dusters. “Do you have a good clasp knife for the boy?”
“I only get a clasp knife?” Charlie demanded. “I’m not a baby.” It was his quick thinking that had saved all the others when they were in chains in the church basement. A clasp knife wasn’t even a weapon; it was for whittling.
“You’re not a baby,” Grim grunted, “but you’re…young. Bob and Ollie are older.”
“How do you know?” Charlie balled his fists.
Grim turned to the sweeps. “Boys, how old are you?”
“Fifteen,” Bob said at once. “Orphaned since I was six an’ on the street since I was nine.”
Ollie shrugged. “Dunno. I ain’t an orphan, as far as I know, but I ain’t seen either of my parents in donkey’s years, and they never told me.”
Grim looked back to Charlie. “And you?”
“I don’t know.” Charlie looked at the floor. “My bap never said.”
Grim Grumblesson snorted. “Petition quashed. That means no, in lawyer speech. You get a knife, if there’s a good one to be had. A decent knife is all a fellow really needs anyway.”
The shopkeeper did have a good knife for Charlie. It was a locking clasp knife, with a bone handle carved to look like a mermaid. Opening and closing it a few times made him feel grown-up.
For Natalie de Minimis, the shopkeeper reached under the counter and produced something that made the pixie smile from ear to ear: a spear, Gnat-sized and iron-tipped. “We have occasional dealings with the folk of Underthames,” he explained with an air of pride.
Bob chose a sword. It was short and slightly curved, with a blade along only one edge. Charlie thought it looked Japanese, but it suited Bob anyway when he tied the scabbard to his belt. Ollie picked an umbrella.
“That’s a surprising choice,” Bob said.
Ollie hefted it. “It’s heavy, mate. And the end is pointed. And besides, it feels…English.”
Bob nodded his approval. Then the chimney sweeps spent several minutes swaggering around the shop, catching glimpses of themselves in mirrors.
Charlie watched with wide eyes as Grim sorted through a rack of guns, choosing a small pistol called a Bulldog for the kobold just as Henry Clockswain himself appeared through the door. Then the shopkeeper passed Grim a hulder-sized firearm. The mustached man needed both hands to hold it up. “The Webley Eldjotun,” the merchant beamed. “ ‘Fire Giant,’ the name means. Sixty caliber: not a beast in Britain it won’t drop in a single shot.”
“What about an elephant?” Charlie asked.
The shopkeeper chuckled. “Elephant’s a beast in Britain, isn’t it?”
“I’ll take them all,” Grim chortled, sighting down the enormous pistol at a red velocipede in the corner. He slapped bills on the counter, then looked at Ollie’s umbrella. “And accessories, and rain slickers.”
While the shopkeeper wrote out a receipt, Grim loaded his pistol. Charlie watched, fascinated. The troll poured powder from a new powder horn into five of the six chambers of his pistol, then pressed in a neat round bullet. Next he flipped the gun over and tapped in five firing caps. Henry Clockswain did the same, though he dropped three bullets on the floor in the process, two of which rolled under the counter and disappeared.
“Hammer on the empty chamber,” Grim admonished the kobold, showing him what he m
eant with his own giant pistol. “Accidentally goes off in your pocket, someone will get hurt. And keep the gun dry, or there’s no point in having it.”
The shopkeeper produced Grim’s change and receipt and showed his last-minute customers into the evening rain.
Charlie and his companions all wore the new rain slickers: bulky coats made of oiled brown paper. The slickers smelled funny, but they kept the rain off with a soothing thump-rat-a-tat-thump. Charlie tried to imagine a melody to go along with the drumming, or the words of one of his father’s many stories.
They all walked, even Gnat. Her wings were folded neatly against her back under her tiny slicker, smaller than Charlie’s. To keep up with Grim’s enormous steps, she ran.
Charlie followed the troll. He didn’t know any of the buildings they passed or the streets they crossed, and he could barely guess at the nature of the places that whizzed by him.
He thought he heard rats. When he turned to look back at the chittering sounds, he seemed to see big rodents scampering to hide in every shadow. He told himself he was being silly. London was a big city, and a dirty one. No doubt there were a lot of rats, wherever you went.
They were getting closer to the river.
He knew at first because he saw more and more men who looked like sailors, with canvas trousers and tattoos and ribbons braided into their caps. Many of the buildings about him were public houses catering to the men of the sea: the Siren Sisters, the Calypso’s Island, the Admiral Benbow. The muddy, fishy, oily stink that clogged his nostrils must be coming from the Thames.
“What is this place?” he murmured out loud.
“Wapping,” Ollie said.
“ ’Old your breath,” Bob added. “We all know you can.”
“Shush,” Grim Grumblesson growled. “We’re here. Cavendish Hat Factory. And warehouse.”
They stood in a cobbled street lined with tall wooden buildings, its air thick with the smells of animals and coal. The street was wide, but not wide enough for its traffic; Charlie was surprised at how busy it was. Big wagons ground up and down the cobblestones, pulled by horses or llamas or buffalo or, in a few cases, puffing out smoke and steam and churning under their own power. They rubbed wheels with each other while their drivers cursed and wrestled for position. Men unloaded crates and barrels from the wagons into the tall buildings, or loaded barrels and crates back up in the other direction. Many yellow gaslights still burned in the street’s windows, but at least half the buildings were dark.
Grim pointed to a warehouse that stood in the elbow of the street. Over its wide front doors hung a board with the image of a black top hat painted on it, worn by weather to mud gray.
“How did you know how to find this place?” Henry Clockswain asked.
Grim laughed. “When you’ve got a size-twelve head and need holes in the brim,” he chuckled, “you have to go straight to the factory!” He rubbed his scalp as if remembering his own missing hat. “I also know all the shoemakers.”
Gnat shouldered forward. “I’ll just have a wee look, then,” she volunteered. “We can’t go in blind.”
Grim scratched his head. “Brave lass, Natalie de Minimis,” he acknowledged, “and I know you’ll have three mighty deeds under your belt in no time at all. But you’re hurt. We’ll do without a scout this time and just all go in together. We’re ready.” He patted the bulge in the rain slicker where his handheld cannon lurked at his belt.
“Nay, you can’t forego a scout,” Gnat insisted. “There may be an ambush.” She looked angry.
Grim nodded slowly. “Or maybe not,” he said. “Might just be an accident that broadsheet was printed on the back of a Cavendish advertisement.”
“This might be nothing,” Henry Clockswain agreed.
“Aye. Or it might be a trap.” The pixie folded her arms across her chest.
“We’ll go,” Bob jumped in. “Ollie an’ I will. We know roofs an’ climbing; this’ll be easy-peasy for us.”
“We will?” Ollie asked, but Bob shot him a look that shut him up. “Yeah, we will.”
“An’ we’ll take the boy along, too,” Bob added. “Come on, Charlie, come with us to ’ave a look-see. A butcher’s, like they say where I come from.”
Charlie jumped at the chance. He’d show Grim he was as brave as the other boys. “A butcher’s?” he asked.
“Butcher’s hook, look,” Ollie explained.
“Will you hold my hat?” Charlie held his bap’s John Bull out to Grim. He didn’t think it would stay on his head long if climbing was involved.
Grim scratched his head, but he accepted the hat. “If you want to go, Charlie, you can. Just remember, boys, be careful.”
“You ever climbed anything, Charlie?” Bob asked. He looked up a lead drainpipe that snaked its way down the side of one of the warehouses, gushing gray water onto a pothole it had pounded into the cobblestones.
“No,” Charlie admitted. The thrill of volunteering had passed, and he couldn’t help noticing that the pipe went up the height of three stories. He patted the clasp knife in his pocket to reassure himself, which was ridiculous. He wasn’t going to get into a knife fight with the pipe.
Ollie was muttering something under his breath and crossing his eyes.
“I’ve got a feeling you’ll be a natural,” Bob assured him. “Just keep your eyes on me an’ do as I do. An’ don’t look at the ground.”
Ollie puffed into smoke, and again Charlie smelled rotten eggs. In Ollie’s place a yellow snake coiled on the wet stones. It wasn’t the cobra Charlie had seen earlier, but it was the same color. It hissed, flicked its tongue in and out, and then slithered to the wall. With its body winding around the pipe, the snake began to climb.
“I knew it!” Charlie said. “That’s amazing! He’s a loup-garou…snake…a were-snake! Ollie’s a shape-changer!”
“Yeah,” Bob nodded. “Thanks for not saying anything about it. ’E’s a bit sensitive, old Ollie. Don’t want nobody to think ’e’s French. Follow me, then.”
Bob clambered up the pipe like a monkey. Charlie wrapped his own fingers around the lead and followed. Bob was right; climbing was easy. He followed Bob’s instructions and kept his eyes pointed upward.
He didn’t look down even when he heard chittering and scratching sounds in the alley below.
In no time at all he watched Ollie the Snake slither over the lip of the roof, followed by Bob. When Charlie arrived at the top, Bob and Ollie both reached down and pulled him up. Ollie was a boy again.
“I ain’t French,” Ollie said.
“I didn’t say you were,” Bob agreed affably. “It don’t matter what your dad might ’ave been, anyway. You’re as good a subject of ’Er Majesty as any Micklemuch ever born.”
“Shut it,” Ollie told his friend.
Charlie looked at Ollie.
Ollie stared back.
Charlie started slowly. “You think you might be French because shape-changing is French magic.”
Ollie spat. “Some people think that, but they’re wrong.”
Bob scooted close to Ollie on his other side. “Too right, mate.”
“Yeah,” Charlie agreed. “But what if they weren’t? Would it be so bad, to not be English?”
As he spoke, Bob on the other side of Ollie waved his arms to try to make Charlie stop talking. When Charlie was finished, Bob held his breath; he looked like he was waiting for an explosion.
None came.
“It’s like this,” Ollie said. “You’ve got your dad, right?”
“Bap.”
“Yeah. And the shop, and so on. And Bob’s got family, or anyway he had family, when he was young, and he remembers them. Robert, and, uh…”
“Alice,” Bob said.
“Alice.” Ollie looked Charlie square in the eye. “And he’s got his aeronaut schemes. Not me, mate. I’ve got nothing. Mostly what I remember about my parents is them abandoning me. So I grew up without them, in St. Jerome’s House for Wayward Youth by Gray’s Inn. I
grew up English, and a Londoner. Ain’t nobody taking that away from me.”
Charlie decided to change the subject. “What do we do now?”
All around them stretched a mountain range of peaked rooftops, covered in shingles. The black tar and the gray lead of rain gutters and the shadowy canyons between the buildings mirrored the sky above, which was a sheet of dark mottled iron. Rain hammered down, thump-rat-a-tat-thump, and streamed off the shingles. Pigeons huddled under eaves and cooed their objections.
“We walk very careful,” Ollie told him. “And we don’t fall.”
“I’ll go first.” Bob stood and led the way. Charlie followed, and Ollie came third.
They crossed the rooftop, then a second, then stopped on the flat peak of a third. “That’s the Cavendish,” Bob said, pointing. “Only there’s a bit of an ’ole between us an’ it.”
The “hole” was another alley. It was narrow, only six feet across, but it would have to be jumped. On the other side the roof was steep and slippery.
“I can jump that.” Charlie tried to sound confident.
“You know, I can see a spot on the back of your head where you got banged up,” Ollie observed.
“Am I bleeding?” Charlie asked, and felt the back of his skull. There it was, a dent the size of his thumb. He didn’t feel any blood, and there was no pain. It must be where he had hit his head in the underwater tunnel.
“We can fix it,” Bob said calmly, “an’ you ain’t bleeding.”
Bob went first, then Ollie. When they were sitting on the opposite roof, Ollie muttered something and—poof!—turned into a yellow snake again.
“Come on, Charlie!” Bob gestured at Charlie to jump.
Charlie stepped forward off the peak of the rooftop and trotted down its steep slope, picking up speed as he went. At the edge, he pushed off with one foot, sailed through the air, arms flailing—and crashed flat onto his belly on the shingles on the other side.
He smiled up at Bob, and Bob smiled back. “See?” Bob said. “Nothing to it. You’re a natural-born chimney sweep, Charlie Pondicherry.”
Then the shingles slipped loose, and Charlie slid off the rooftop.
