by KJ Charles
“It’s nothing I can’t manage,” Stephen said. “It’s hardly as if I’ve been practising self-denial. Every time we go to bed—”
“But that’s on a different scale. I know that’s different and I’m no practitioner.”
Stephen rubbed at his face. “Look, I have three choices. I never see you again so I’m not tempted; I give in to temptation and milk you for power until I’m a raging madman; or I control myself. I don’t like the first two options.”
“Nor do I.” Crane reached for his hand. Stephen’s fingers were still humming with power, the familiar needles stabbing Crane’s nerves. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Can I make it easier for you?”
“It’s fine. This is my problem, Lucien.”
Crane bit back his urge to insist, took a breath, felt his way carefully. “It occurs to me that I have never fully appreciated my good fortune that you were the shaman that came to help me. Not only that I got my hands on your delectable arse, but that apparently most of your colleagues would have turned into power-mad lunatics through my malign influence, whereas you remain the strongest and the best man I know. I’d thank Rackham again for introducing us, were he not dead, and had I not planned to kill him myself.” He heard Stephen’s snort, felt a wave of relief at an obstacle negotiated. “Why do you think the Chinese shamans went bad?”
Stephen sighed. “We’re precariously balanced people, you know. Having too much power drives you mad and so does having too little. Using it too much can be very, very bad; not using it is worse. Perhaps there’s something in the system you described, bodily asceticism, self-denial. Maybe that helps them control it. I don’t know. We don’t act like monks here, the Church doesn’t love us, so nobody feels any great urge to ape its ways. Anyway, to answer your question, it sounds like Pa and Lo relied on their physical discipline for mental control. When one went, so did the other.”
“And thus they were corrupted. Tom corrupted them,” Crane said. “God, I find that deeply disheartening. That Tom could do that.”
“It wasn’t an inspiring story. But…well, were you really surprised by it?”
“Yes, actually. I was. Not that he covered up murder. He would, if they were his men.” Crane caught the other’s look. “Oh, please, Stephen, what do you imagine happens to men who die in pub fights or street brawls down in Limehouse? A coroner’s inquest and a decent burial?”
“I know that, but—”
“A rival sends a few thugs to your house to break your kneecaps. Pitched battle, two of them get killed. You call the law, get thrown in jail as a matter of course, spend half your fortune on bribes to get out, and the other half on lawyers for the next two years. Or you dump the bodies in Shanghai harbour and have done. It amazes me they can get ships through it for the corpses.”
Stephen grimaced. “If the law isn’t just, I see your point. But that’s not what happened here.”
“No. It’s not. But I’m sure Tom didn’t order the killing of a girl who posed no threat, and I don’t…want to believe he ordered Xan’s death. I prefer to believe it happened as Leo told it.” He felt Stephen’s fingers tighten. “Tom was a hard man, but he wasn’t a bad one. He never corrupted innocents.”
“No? How old were you when he turned you into a smuggler?” Stephen asked. “Come to that, how old was Mrs. Hart when he married her?”
“Leo was eighteen when they married, and knowing what she knows now, she’d do it again in a heartbeat. I was nineteen when I started working for him, and as for innocent… I’d been selling my arse for months by then in an effort not to starve. Merrick was getting shit beaten out of him in the fight cages every few days, because a white man was enough of a novelty to bring in a few cash even if he lost. We had the corner of a filthy room in the worst of the slums, living on dishwater congee and cheap baijiu, the stuff that can send you blind. We were royally fucked, Stephen. We would not have made it through one more winter. Then we met Tom in a drinking den, we talked, and that evening he paid off our debts and gave us work, money upfront. He hauled us out of the gutter and saved our lives, for no more reason than he thought we might be worth it.”
Stephen’s fingers were clenched on his, painfully hard, eyes wide and appalled. “You never told me this. You said you were poor, but—I had no idea—”
“Don’t look like that, sweet boy. It doesn’t matter. It’s been over for a very long time. I’m just trying to explain Tom. He wasn’t moral, by any standards, but he wasn’t a bad man, and I’m surprised that he crossed that line. Corrupting shamans is wrong. Grotesque.” Crane searched for words, struggling to convey the visceral revulsion any Shanghai-dweller would feel. “They’re better than the rest of us. Encouraging them to drink and whore and dice is like—I don’t know, pissing on a church altar.” He thought about it. “And Tom would probably have done that too, if he needed a piss and the church was convenient. Oh, maybe I’m not so surprised, after all. He had the devil of a strong personality, it was hard not to be carried away, to make him into more than he was.”
“It doesn’t sound as though Pa and Lo were particularly unwilling to be carried,” Stephen said. “We’re all responsible for ourselves. They made their choices to fall, even if Hart helped them down. And they were shamans, after all. Not powerless.”
“Maybe. But you could follow Tom to hell and not notice where you were going till your shoes caught fire.”
“Charm’s a very dangerous thing. Lucien, tell me,” Stephen said thoughtfully. “This respect for shamans, this inviolability…”
“Mmm?”
“Well, I don’t know if you remember, but some three weeks ago, you tied me to your bedposts and spent two hours subjecting me to acts of unimaginable depravity. And considering you call me a shaman—”
“I take issue with ‘unimaginable’,” Crane interrupted, sudden heat and light rushing through him. “I imagine those acts in detail every night you’re not there. In fact, I’ve imagined quite a few more that I have every intention of subjecting you to when I get a chance.”
“Really?” murmured Stephen, shifting closer. “Like what?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out when you’re chained to my bed. And I do mean chained. With iron, next time. I want you helpless.” He felt Stephen’s quiver over the motion of the carriage. “Naked, helpless, pleading. And absolutely vulnerable to everything I choose to do to you.”
Stephen gulped. “You do love to put me on my knees, don’t you?”
“I like to make you know your master,” Crane said. “It’s only fair. The rest of the time, you’ve got me so thoroughly enslaved, I might as well be wearing a collar with your name on it.”
“What? Lucien— Oh, God damn it!” Stephen said, as the hackney jolted to a stop.
Crane hissed, trying to force down his arousal. “I swear, we will have a proper conversation at some point today if I have to do murder to make it happen. We couldn’t just go home, I suppose?”
“Come on.” Stephen hopped out of the carriage. “Let’s get this over.”
They caught Town as he was on his way out of his lodgings for luncheon. Crane was startled to realise it was not quite noon. The day seemed to have gone on forever.
“Good to see you, dear chap,” Town told Crane. “And Mr. Day, nice to meet you again. Ah, I understood your interests lay with Java?” He gave Crane an interrogative and amused look.
“I may not have been strictly accurate with you the last time we met,” Crane said. “We need to pick your brains, Town. Can we go in?”
Town’s eyebrows rose, if possible, even higher, as he ushered them into his rooms. “My dear fellow. Do I scent a story?”
“A devil of a one. All yours, later. For now, I need some answers. Do you recall when Xan Ji-yin disappeared?”
“Hard to forget,” Town said. “The fuss went on for months. We had three or four rounds of guards and sh
amans asking questions. Didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t there. I was in the north for a year or more, missed the whole thing.”
“Of course. Yes, I recall. Well, I hope you won’t ask me to tell you what happened to him, because that’s beyond even my knowledge.”
“What do you think happened to him?” Stephen asked.
Town gave him a shrewd look. “I couldn’t speculate. There were some said he was translated, transfigured, lifted up bodily by the Jade Emperor in the sky, you know. Others thought he’d fallen foul of the emperor on the ground. I never heard a convincing tale. Did you?”
Crane shook his head. “But in any case, I’m not asking you to solve that mystery. This is something else, but around the same time. Did you happen to know any of the people from the Baptist mission?”
Town put a finger on his plump lips. “Mission. The big one on the hill? Yes…”
“There was a girl, or a woman, called Arabella,” Crane said. “She also went missing, just before Xan did. I’m hoping to find out her name.”
Town took a few thoughtful steps towards the window. “Arabella. Arabella… One wasn’t on first-name terms with the ladies, naturally.”
“Indeed not,” Crane said. “But I can’t imagine more than one of them vanished just before Xan did.”
“No, of course.” Town turned back to face them. “May I ask why?”
“Later. It’s a little urgent.”
Town’s brows went up again. “A girl who’s been missing thirteen years is urgent?”
“It’s complicated,” Crane assured him. “I need to know who she was.”
“Was? Is she dead?”
Crane hesitated, shrugged. “So I’m told. Did you know her?”
“Vaguely.” Town’s normally cheerful face was heavy. “Heavens, Vaudrey, I didn’t expect you to bring this up. It was a terrible thing.” He took a turn up and down the room, then stopped and put his hand on the back of a chair as if for support. “She went missing, as you say. A very lovely girl, very religious of course, but with so much life. She was in the mission to bring hope and joy, not like most of the crows and vultures that perched there. She was bright, like sunshine. And then she disappeared, and there was a fuss for a few days, and then Xan disappeared and nobody cared about her any more. The officers, the agents, the people—all the resources went to find Xan. She was forgotten. The mission kept looking, for a while, but there were spiteful rumours, slander really, accusations of a man—the usual rubbish—and it was easier for everyone to believe them and forget about her. And then life went on and nobody remembered. You must be the first person in years to have mentioned her.”
“What was her name?” Stephen asked.
“Peyton. Arabella Peyton.”
“Peyton. Our Peyton? That’s his—?”
“Sister,” Town said. “Or perhaps not, maybe she was too young. His cousin, his niece, I don’t know. She was his only family, that I can tell you. He had nobody else. Just the two of them. She came out to Shanghai to be with him as well as serve her God. And when she vanished, well, it ate away at him, especially with all the people saying she’d run away with a man. He never believed that. He had to stop looking eventually, he kept up the social façade, as it were, but he never forgot her. And I don’t suppose he would forgive her killer. No. Never forgive.”
Crane nodded. “Thank you, Town. Can I charge you, strongly, to keep this conversation to yourself? I will give you the full story in time, but for now, this is not a topic to raise, and particularly not with Peyton. Will he be at the Traders, do you think?”
“He lodges in Hammersmith. King Street, I believe. You should look there first. He’s never at the club for luncheon. I hope you don’t plan to revive painful memories, Vaudrey, I think he’s suffered enough.”
“I plan nothing,” Crane said. “I just want a word with him. See you later.”
“Farewell, dear chap. Nice to see you again, Mr. Day.”
Chapter Fourteen
They walked together out of the house into the baking sunshine as the clocks struck noon.
“Hammersmith, then?” Stephen said.
“Let’s drop in at the Traders first. It’s on the way, and we can get his direction without having to guess the house number. Well. Peyton. The little shit.”
“It sounds like he has reason. Mr. Cryer clearly liked Miss Peyton very much. Did you know her?”
“I didn’t mix with the mission people. For obvious reasons. Can you do the silent thing as we walk? So we can talk?”
Stephen hesitated, then gave a twitch of his fingers and the noise of the road dropped away sharply. He was still wearing the Magpie Lord’s ring, Crane noted, and felt a pulse of hope.
He took a deep breath. “Listen. I feel—it’s a day for painful truths—I need to say something.”
“What?” Stephen’s voice was wary.
Crane’s throat felt uncomfortably dry, and for once, the words didn’t come. He had no idea, now, precisely what to say or how, no rehearsed phrases; he simply knew what had to be said.
The hell with it, Vaudrey. Talk.
“Look. I am quite sure I’ve told you how remarkable you are. I know I have. Magical, and infinitely fuckable, and extraordinarily brave. I’m also well aware that you’re a better man than I will ever be. I’m fairly sure you have no idea just how glorious you are, which is fortunate for me, because the more time I have with you, the more aware I am of my own very obvious flaws. And I realise you don’t entirely trust me—no, let me say this,” he insisted as Stephen tried to interrupt. “I realise that and I don’t blame you, but I want—I would like—you to give me a chance to demonstrate that you can. I’m not going back to Shanghai while you will have me here. In fact, I’m not leaving this damned country at all unless you’re on the boat with me. I seem to be peculiarly inept at understanding your needs when we’re not in bed, and I know I’ve got a hell of a lot wrong to date, but…don’t run away from me, please. Don’t disappear.”
He looked up at the clear, cloudless sky to avoid Stephen’s face. “I recall when Tom first met Leo. Not first, but she had gone almost overnight from a gawky schoolgirl to a beauty, and we went to a party at her father’s compound. She was quite wonderful, and afterwards Tom was silent for what felt like hours, and then he said to me, ‘My life changed tonight.’ Well, he had more sense than me, or saw things more clearly. My life changed four months ago, and I utterly failed to understand that until just recently, and therefore…I may have omitted to tell you that I love you.” He took a breath. “That’s all.”
They walked through the crowded streets, side by side, Crane limiting his stride to Stephen’s, in silence for a few seconds. When Stephen spoke, his voice was strangled. “Is there a reason you did that in public, when I can’t even touch you, let alone—let alone say anything properly?”
“Well, yes. I already know what your cock thinks. I’d like to hear from your head as well. Or your heart.”
Stephen kept walking, head down, hands in pockets. Crane could feel his tension, pacing by his side. “Oh God,” he said at last. “I’m pathetic. You know perfectly well that I’m all yours, Lucien, or you should. I’ve got your tattoo, for heaven’s sake. I’m marked for life. And I’m scared by that, I’m terrified. I have no idea why you think I’m brave, I’m an abject coward. I’m too frightened to believe this, you and I, can last because if it doesn’t, I don’t think I can bear it, so it would be easier not to start, but it’s too late now.” He swallowed. “And it’s not that I don’t trust you. I just…struggle to believe that someone like you could really want someone like me. No, it’s my turn, let me finish. You’re an extremely attractive and eligible man, and I’m not. And I seem to do nothing but take from you—”
“No, I can’t let that pass, that is objectively horseshit. For heaven’s sake, man, I can barely give you the time of
day without a fight. Merrick says you’re held together by spit and pride.”
“Thank him for me.” Stephen pushed a hand through his hair. “In any case, that’s not the point. I’m not sure what the point was. Oh, hellfire. I love you, Lucien. It wouldn’t be so nerve-wracking if I didn’t.”
Crane took two more paces, feeling the illuminating joy spread through him, and had to control his voice as he observed, “No, you’re right, it was a terrible idea to do this in public. I don’t suppose you could make us invisible?”
“You must be joking,” Stephen said. “Look up.”
Crane looked and groaned aloud as he registered the magpies. They were clustered on gas lamps and roof edges and railings, circling in the skies looking for roosts, a few of them landing in front of him on the pavement, staring with bright, beady eyes. “Oh for— Can’t you make them go away?”
“Don’t blame me, I didn’t call them.” Stephen was grinning up at him with that familiar snag-toothed tweak in his top lip, and a light in his golden eyes that made Crane’s heart lurch. “And I suspect that anything I attempt to do will light up the street like a bonfire and summon practitioners from miles around. I’m feeling somewhat explosive right now.”
“You and me both. I would very much like to get my hands on you.”
“I want to get my mouth on you,” said Stephen, astonishingly forward considering they weren’t in bed, and now it wasn’t only Crane’s heart that was thumping. “When this is over, could we go away? Your shooting place again?”
“As soon as you like. How long can you take?”
“How long do you want?”
“The rest of your life.” Crane watched Stephen’s eyes widen. “For now, how about a fortnight?”
“Done,” Stephen said. “And…done.”
“God, sweet boy. I love you. I think I need to say that quite a lot.”
“Any time.” Stephen’s voice was a little shaky, his eyes bright.
