by Kim Foster
This is my last chance to escape before they lock me inside. If only I knew how to harness my Tainted ability. But I have no idea how to even begin. Perhaps it is not even possible to control.
The cell door swings wide and a guard shoves me inside. I fall to my knees as the door clangs back in place. In the cell directly across the corridor, an old woman with wild hair is staring at me with a crazed expression. She grips the bars with gnarled fingers, and makes chomping, smacking sounds with her gums.
I back into a corner, shivering in the cold and damp. The air reeks of urine, vomit, and feces. I didn’t think anything could smell as bad as the slums. I was wrong.
Somehow, I have to stay calm, even as the pieces of my mind threaten to fly apart. There must be a way out of here. Nate can’t afford for me to crumble.
Scratchy, witchy voices creep out of the darkness. The voices of nightmares.
“You’ll never get out of ’ere.”
“Nothin’ but death coming for the likes of ye now.”
“We’ll see you in hell, dearie.”
I try to block out the voices and focus on Nate.
Images flash in my mind of him on the street, terrified, huddled against the cold. Not knowing where to go or how to get help. He is so young. He must be hungry.
Will he go home to our attic flat, or will he be too scared, worried that the police will come for him?
Somehow, I have to get word to him.
A guard comes by soon after, patrolling the corridor. “Sir, could I please have paper and a writing instrument? It’s terribly important. My little brother—he’s all alone. I must send him a message.”
The guard blinks at me—a blank look—and then walks away, leaving me staring helplessly at the bars of my cell.
My stomach roils. How did this happen? I am overcome by a desperate, irrational wish to go back in time and change that moment. Have everything be normal again.
There is a thin, stained straw pallet in one corner. My mind goes to the soft bed my brother and I shared in our cozy attic. I stop the thought quickly when it threatens to pull me under. Crawling to the pallet, I slip in and out of dreamless sleep.
When I wake, some time later, my stomach cramps with hunger. A small tray rests in front of the bars—water in a tin cup and a chunk of stale bread. As I chew, my mind spools back to the market.
The man in the smoke-gray suit, who had looked at me like he knew me, who was he? Why was he there? And then I recall something else: the man who killed Kit, he said, It’s time for us to have that talk, Felicity. He used my name. I frown and try to concentrate, but suddenly nothing in the world makes any sense.
A vision of Kit enters my head. Oh, God, Kit. Lying dead on the ground, a black pool of blood beneath him….
I squeeze my eyes shut, willing the image from my mind. The bread sticks in my throat, and I take a sip of the cool water to force it down. And breathe. The prison is quiet now, allowing me to organize my thoughts.
One pushes ahead of the others: I am Tainted.
How did I not know?
I recall a story going around last year about a Tainted who could do incredible things. Terrible things. They say he could plant thoughts in a person’s mind. Make a mother think she wanted to murder her own baby.
Sam, the fishmonger, once told me about a Tainted who could tear down walls with her mind. Control fire. Cause untold destruction just by willing it to be so.
I want no part of any of it.
I think of all the theories about the curse, the causes people have guessed at over the years. There must be someone out there who knows why it happens.
I shake my head, trying to rattle the pieces into place, but it’s impossible. There’s something I’m missing. Something I could make sense of, if only I could clear my thoughts.
Use your head, Felicity. That’s what my father always said. What he would say if he were here now. It’s all up there. He would tap a finger to his temple. I can see him now, a ghostlike remembrance….
My father came to England as a young man from Greece. He and my mother were newlyweds, on the adventure of a lifetime, seeking new opportunities. He was an educated man and a stonemason, a respected craftsman in his mother country. But in England, he had no status. On British soil, he had no choice but to work as a laborer, building roads and digging ditches. The lowliest jobs.
By the time they considered returning home, my mother was pregnant and unable to travel. They settled into a meager, but content, life. And then, after a while, came another baby.
After our mother was killed, it was up to our father to raise us. Which he did in the best way he knew how.
My heart aches thinking of my father now. He gave me all he could.
And now, I have let him down.
“You must keep your brother’s secret, Felicity,” he told me over and over again when I was little. A cold pain twists my gut as I think of why he was so firm on this, so desperate.
My mother’s death was no accident. She was killed because a neighbor discovered she was Tainted. It doesn’t take much for the fearful to turn into a mob, evil and murderous.
Three Tainted in one family. It’s like the plague. Or that cholera discovery in London a few years ago. I remember my father showing me the newspaper stories about a scientist who proposed a “germ theory” about an outbreak, the Broad Street cholera outbreak they called it, not far from where we lived. He claimed it spread on the handle of a public water pump.
A tiny glimmer of hope sparks in my brain. If being Tainted is an illness like the plague, like cholera … perhaps there is a cure.
But I quickly push that thought aside. All I can afford to think about is getting out of here.
The guard returns to collect the tray. When he bends to scoop them up, he shoves a piece of paper, a quill, and ink through the bars.
I stare at the items and almost weep. It’s the first niceness I’ve received since entering these walls.
I hesitate, then fill the page, reassuring Nate that I’ll be all right—although it is a lie—telling him exactly where he needs to go and what he needs to do. Whatever you do, don’t let them take you to the orphanage or the workhouse. Find a way to get to the old seamstress in Plough Street. She will help you. She will know what to do.
I can only hope it’s true. It’s the best plan I can come up with.
I dig into my skirts and find the two coins I earned this morning in the market. They feel cold and smooth in my hand. Finishing the letter, I carefully fold it with one of the coins inside, and then wait for the guard to return.
One of the other prisoners begins speaking to me. Her voice creeps out of the darkness like a spider. “Hey, girlie. What’s yer name?”
I say nothing.
“It’s Felicity, innit?” the voice hisses.
I take in a sharp breath. Were the guards talking about me while I slept?
“Ooh, it is,” says the voice, gleefully. “Perhaps you might like to know what they’re sayin’ about you.”
Still, I remain quiet, but hold my breath in anticipation. Maybe the authorities have realized they’ve made a terrible mistake. I don’t belong here.
“Tell me,” I whisper.
There’s a pause. And then a raucous laugh. “They say you’re going to hang. That right proper gentleman? ’E says you and yer friend attacked him, tried to rob ’im.”
“No! That’s not true!”
“Yer friend in the market who got shot—who was that? Yer sweetheart? Cousin? They’re calling that self-defense. Gentleman who shot ’im will walk. But you, dearie, you are going to swing, my sweet.”
The room spins. I retch, right there on the prison floor. The pathetic serving of bread and water—the whole thing—comes up, burning my throat with bile. My stomach and sides ache from the heaving.
I lie there on the ground, losing grip on my resolve. I am breaking apart in a hundred pieces.
Then I hear footsteps. The guard. He’s back.
&nb
sp; I scrabble forward, clutching my letter. “Please, sir. I’m not asking for anything for myself. Just my brother. If you could arrange to get this to him. It won’t be much trouble—if someone might give it to the first Whitechapel fishmonger or flower seller they see, they’ll know how to get it to him.”
The guard tilts his head.
I swallow hard. “Please, sir, if there’s any humanity in you—” My voice breaks. “There are two coins. One for him—he has nothing, you see—and one is for you.”
My hand stretches forward, holding the letter and the coin out. I hate that the paper trembles. I’m begging. But I have no farther to fall.
At last, he reaches forward and takes the letter.
“Thank you, sir,” I say, tears welling up in my eyes. “Oh, thank you so …”
The words die in my mouth as the guard tilts my folded letter, dropping the coin out of it. He holds both coins in his hand and smiles wide.
“Deliver the letter, you say? Sure thing.”
He turns to look at the woman in the stall across from me, the mad old bat, and tosses the paper through the bars.
’Ere you go, sweetheart. Want a letter?”
She scrabbles after the folded paper, picking it up, and with lunatic eyes wide, shredding and tearing at the sheet before stuffing the pieces in her mouth and chewing.
My gaze swings back to the guard as he pockets the coins and strolls away, whistling.
CHAPTER SIX
“A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.”
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Harold: A Drama
I barely sleep that night. Or the next.
Over the next few days I hear more rumors about my fate and they all say the same thing: I am going to hang.
The authorities are speeding up my trial. They say the public is in need of a good execution. The system has become soft of late and it’s good for morale to have an evil girl from a depraved neighborhood meet her maker for her crimes, a good lesson for everyone. And entertainment, to boot.
I do not speak to the other prisoners. I avoid the gazes of the guards. To pass the time, I eat the meager food they supply and find what little comfort I can in the straw pallet, in my cold, dirty cell. And I worry about Nate ceaselessly.
The voice in my head remains silent.
And then one night everything changes.
I must have been sleeping because I’m startled by a faint scratching outside my cell. A rat, I think drowsily. No shortage of those. I turn over, ignoring the sound.
But the rat continues its scraping. And then the rat clears its throat.
I sit bolt upright. Standing outside my cell is a man. In the gloom, I can just make out his silhouette. Including a dark top hat.
My heart seizes with terror, and I scramble toward the back wall of my cell. The stranger who killed Kit.
“Quiet,” whispers the man. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
He steps forward and his face is illuminated by the dim moonlight filtering in from a lone window. It’s not the gentleman who murdered Kit. It’s the man with the trim beard and light eyes, the one in the smoke-gray suit who was watching me in the market.
I feel relief, but only a little. “Who are you?”
“Your last chance,” he says calmly.
I say nothing. Glancing past him, I wonder where the guards are.
“I’m here to free you,” he says. “You must come with me now.”
I don’t move.
He stares at me levelly. “While I commend your skepticism, the truth is if you want to live, you’ll have to come now. I am the only one who can help you.”
I frown. “Why would you do that?”
“Because you are one of us,” he states flatly. His cold eyes flick around, like a wolf’s.
“You’re Tainted,” I say, not really a question. “Who is ‘us’?”
He is dangerous, that much I can tell. And though I’m desperate to be free of these walls, I’m not keen to go from the frying pan into the fire.
“My name is Nigel Hawksmoor. It is my life’s work to find people like you, people who are Tainted—although we don’t call ourselves that.” He waves a hand, dismissively. “I will explain everything later, but it’s imperative that you come with me now. We must not wait one minute longer.”
I narrow my eyes. “What do you … do with the Tainted you find?”
“We give you a chance. And a life. An opportunity to contribute to something important.” I wait expectantly. He looks at me with great intensity. “Queen and Country important.”
This is a trap. A trick. I’m not going anywhere.
Nigel Hawksmoor exhales impatiently and tightens his jaw. He moves one step closer to my cell and crouches down low so that he’s on my level now, staring at me through the bars.
“Miss Cole, you will hang,” he says in a low, even voice. “And perhaps you don’t care about yourself anymore. But what about your brother? How well do you think he will fare without you?”
I keep my face impassive, but my ears are ringing. How much does he know about Nate?
“Has he been able to reach you?” he asks. “Do you know what’s happening to him, even now?”
How does he know so much about us? Who is this man?
“Take my hand. I can help you … see him.” Hawksmoor stretches a hand through the bars.
I hesitate. But if he’s telling the truth, and he really can help me contact Nate …
The instant my fingers touch his, the prison grows foggy and my mind is whisked away. There’s a voice. The fogginess clears, and I see an image of Nate cowering in an alley, scared, alone, and shivering. Dark shadows smudge the hollows beneath his eyes.
I choke, screaming out to him. He must get to Plough Street … or find the fishmonger … anyone who might help. But Nate can’t hear me. I sob, shouting his name.
And then a hand clamps tightly over my mouth.
I feel myself pulled away from the alley as if by a wire. I’m back in the prison cell. Nigel Hawksmoor’s hand is tight over my mouth. “Hush,” he hisses in my ear.
His gaze pierces mine, shocking me into silence. Eyes widened, I nod, and he removes his hand.
“How can I trust you?” I whisper.
“What choice do you have?”
I struggle to form a response.
“I guarantee you this, Miss Cole: if you don’t come with me now, they will find you again. And then you’ll wish the executioner had had his chance with you.”
“Who will find me?”
“The Huntsmen.”
“How do you know that?” My voice is a hoarse whisper. “And what do you mean ‘find me again’?”
“You’ve already encountered them. One of them killed your friend.”
My mouth goes dry.
“And although I can’t be certain, I’m reasonably sure he was there for you, Miss Cole.”
My stomach twists as I remember the moment in the market. We have business to discuss, the stranger had said.
“I have to get to Nate.”
Hawksmoor shakes his head once. “I have sent a man. On my word, he will collect your brother. You will both be brought to safety. Come with me now and I will take you to the Academy.”
Academy? My brain is muddled, a blistered mess of fear and exhaustion. So little of what Hawksmoor is saying makes sense, and I’m not about to abandon Nate to go off with this stranger.
“Miss Cole,” Hawksmoor says, as though reading my thoughts, “you cannot go back to Whitechapel. An escaped prisoner? Your face can never be seen there again.”
I lick my lips, trying to think through all he has said. I’ve heard the stories. Escaped prisoners suffer the worst fate of all, once caught. Could I make it on my own? And if this man is being truthful, if he really can help us …
“There comes a time when you have no choice but to trust someone,” he says.
I stand and draw nearer, searching his face, hunting for the truth behind those wolf-like
eyes.
There are no answers there. I don’t know with any certainty what will happen if I go with him, but the trouble is, I do know exactly what will happen if I don’t.
“All right, Mr. Hawksmoor. Let us go.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“The game is afoot.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return of Sherlock Holmes
I hardly see how he does it. One minute, the bars of my cell are shut fast. Hawksmoor places his hands on the iron lock. And suddenly, the door is swinging freely. How did he pick the lock so quickly? And with what? I saw nothing in his hands.
“Follow me,” he says before turning and moving swiftly down the corridor.
I swallow. Last chance to change my mind.
After a second’s hesitation, I step out of the cell, following Hawksmoor as we hurry away from the guard’s station, deeper into the hushed prison. I wonder where we’re going but Hawksmoor is moving too quickly.
The prisoners in the cells we pass by are all asleep. Any minute, one of them will wake at the sound of our footsteps, hollering bloody murder at the sight of us.
The smell of the prison—the acrid scent of urine and rot—make my eyes water as we pass through the shadows. Only faint slivers of moonlight guide us. But Hawksmoor seems to have no trouble knowing where we are going.
At the end of a long corridor, after a sharp bend, we stop before a door. It looks like it hasn’t been opened in a hundred years. But, once more, under Hawksmoor’s hands, the door swings open with a low creak. A long, dark corridor lies ahead of us, lined with bare stone walls.
“Where are we going?” I whisper as we travel the length of the hallway.
“Shhh. Almost there.”
“Almost where?”
Then, Hawksmoor freezes. My eyes jerk to his. Has he heard something? He pushes me into a tiny gap in the wall, although I barely fit. “Stay here,” he commands. “Do not move. If you can manage it, don’t breathe.”
“What—” I begin to ask, but his piercing glare silences me.
He quickly glances around, then clambers up a wall—all the more impressive given his fine suit—and I gape as he effortlessly swings up into the beams that crisscross the roof of the tunnels. He tucks himself small and goes still, just as three figures turn the corner ahead of us. I can see them through a small crack in the stone. My heart thunders and I push myself deeper into the shadows. They stalk in our direction, heading toward the prison.
