The high sides of the gulley were gravel and clay, held back by a villainous patchwork of greasy pilings and tie-beams wedged in place by buttresses made from great baulks of timber, blackened with age and filth where they were not greened with slime and mossy waterweed. The tapering defile had an air of being a shunned, forgotten place, its forlorn atmosphere heightened by the largely blank rear elevations of the ramshackle warehouses and dwelling houses that overhung it on either side, as if the buildings had entered into a silent conspiracy to turn their backs on the narrow space that was, both physically and in terms of civic respectability, far beneath them.
It was also, thought Issachar Templebane as he peered down at it from one of the few garret windows that overlooked it, a perfect killing ground and a capital place for an ambush.
He checked his pocket-watch. The tide was almost at its lowest, and it was at this point that he had advised Mountfellon to come to the beach with his team of labourers and grapples to start the laborious process of dragging the river. Whether or not the noble lord succeeded in finding whatever chests The Oversight had notionally hidden beneath the water was of secondary importance to Issachar. It was simply the bait to a trap. He had offered to provide Mountfellon with a gang of workers but, given the failure of their last adventure on the river, Mountfellon had told him that he would provide his own men this time. Issachar didn’t care much about this in either way. All that mattered was that he draw Mountfellon out into the open and deliver him to the ambushers who lurked in the shadows. He could not see them, but he knew that by prior conspiracy the vengeful Sluagh were hidden beneath him in the many convenient shadows thrown by the buttresses and bulwarks of the stygian cut below. Delivering their hated enemy to them would mend his relations with the nightwalkers and restore their former profitable association.
Below Issachar, but above the hidden Sluagh, was the second layer of the ambush, his sons and their guns. They were not there for Mountfellon. Nor were they there for the Sluagh whom they had been most severely admonished to leave unmolested. They were there for the more significant eradication.
They were there for The Oversight.
Issachar was not a bloodthirsty man, and if it was possible to conduct his business without the need for killing he would always prefer that course of action: death made ripples in the smooth pool of commerce, and the secret of the Templebanes’ long success was that it was best achieved unobtrusively, beneath a calm surface of respectability. But The Oversight had been an obstacle to his family’s free trade for too long now, and since circumstance had reduced them to a conveniently eradicable size, he was committed to blot them from the ledger, once and for all.
It was for this that he had armed and trained his sons. It was for this that he now stood beside Garlickhythe Templebane and his rifle, the best shot of them all.
It was for the insurance of this that he had two of Coram’s explosive iron grenadoes laid on the windowsill, with a lit candle for their fuses standing by on a shelf, just in case bullets alone were not enough.
A very distant third item on his list was the retrieval of the object Dee had told him to tell Mountfellon about. If the day’s events ended with him able to hand them over to the goat-bearded mirror-walker, so much the better, but it was—for Issachar—only a secondary thing. Dee would always have a use for the Templebanes’ services, as he did not like to spend any time in London for reasons that were unclear. If the river had to be revisited, post the several mortems that were imminent, so much the better for Templebane, for he could extract further payment in kind, specie or favours. And he did like—as all businessmen do—to be able to dip twice into the same pocket if he could get away with it.
But the fact was that his pocket-watch told him Mountfellon should be on the beach with a gang of burly watermen, hurling grapples into the middle of the river and dragging them out, and his eyes told him this was not happening. Punctuality might be the courtesy of kings, but in this case it was clearly not the virtue of the viscount in question: and yet Templebane knew Mountfellon, though haughty and proud as any aristocrat he had ever met, prided himself most of all on being a man of scientific training and habit, and a man of that sort would not do other than respect the non-negotiable strictures of time and tide. Templebane’s watch told him that low tide had arrived without the attendant Mountfellon. He sucked his teeth in irritation. And then he saw the steam tug and the man at the stern, and with a sickening jolt realised the day was not, perhaps, going to go strictly according to plan.
Mountfellon strode back and forth on the deck of the Monarch, his eyes glued to the trawling rig being towed behind as it churned manfully against the turbid seaward current. The sound of the steam engine and the threshing of the paddle wheels obscured the noise of the city around them, and so most communication was yelled from close quarters or indicated by simple sign language, but the small crew was well used to each other, and things were progressing well.
The rig he had designed was proving to be an excellent device. Twice already the array of grapples had snagged and pulled up treasures from the deep bed of the river, and though those had only amounted to a broken cartwheel with part of a snapped axle still attached, and a stone anchor with a chain rusted fast in the hole through its middle, both were early proofs of concept and pointers towards eventual success. Mountfellon, for a change, was feeling distinctly bucked.
Every now and then, he looked up and took a rough bearing relative to the significant landmarks on the riverside, checking that the steersman provided by Mr. Watkins was following his instructions. He had been ordered to methodically quarter the section of river opposite Irongate Steps, going back and forth so as to leave no section of its bed unharrowed by the trailing grappling hooks.
Mountfellon squinted at the narrow gravel strand debouching from the cut and Irongate Steps, and thought how poor Templebane’s suggestion had been, the plan that he should attempt to drag the river by lobbing grapples from such an unpromising launching point: even the strongest sailor, well-practised at casting a line into the severest winds, would not have got a grapple even a quarter of the way across the width of the river. His own appliance of scientific principles to the problem was infinitely superior. Templebane’s suggestion was in fact so patently impractical that it made him doubt the man’s much vaunted intelligence. Perhaps the cunning man was more unnerved by the failure to eradicate The Oversight than Mountfellon had imagined.
Back in the deep shadows of the cut, the Sluagh too had finally seen and recognised Mountfellon on his steam tug.
“We cannot touch him out there on the flowing water,” snarled Badger Skull. “We have wended our way through this maze of a city for naught.”
“We are betrayed,” said Woodcock Crown.
Badger Skull shook his head.
“To what end?” he said. “It makes no sense.”
“The cunning man has been outfoxed then,” spat Woodcock Crown.
“Or maybe Mountfellon intends to land here,” volunteered a stocky Sluagh with a bull tattooed across his back.
“No, brother,” said Badger Skull. “Mountfellon is a walking vileness but he knows well that we hunt him. I left a clear enough message at his damned house.”
“Then maybe we can follow his progress along the river and waylay him when he lands …”
“A good thought, but a futile one. There are too many streams that cross any path along the river’s edge. We would lose track of him before he landed and he would be able to lose himself in this ant’s nest of a city before we came upon him.”
Bull Tattoo shook his head angrily and shared a look with Woodcock Crown.
“We did not sharpen our blades by the light of the new moon to leave them unslaked,” he growled. “If we cannot hack Mountfellon into the long darkness, maybe there are other reckonings to be had?”
Woodcock Crown was about to agree when his eye caught movement in the watery sunlight high above them on the edge of the cut, and he splayed his hand o
n Bull Tattoo’s broad chest and pressed himself and his murderous companion back into the shadows as all the Sluagh band followed the direction of his gaze.
Up on the outer edge of St. Katherine’s Dock, Sharp and Sara leapt from the dog cart only a step ahead of Hodge and Ida. Charlie swiftly looped the reins over the horse’s head and told it to stay where it was, and then ran after them with Amos at his side. Jed and Archie flowed down the slippery steps which led down the side of the cut ahead of them.
They all overtook the sightless Hodge who had to take the slippery steps slower, though he too was moving at quite a clip.
“Jed!” he said. “Slow up!”
The dog turned and waited, letting the Terrier Man use his eyes, though he was quivering to get into the coming mischief his every instinct told him was about to begin.
“I must warn Emmet,” said Sharp, drawing his knife as he ran across the beach to the old chain he had once rapped on to summon the patient golem from the depths of the river.
High above them in the garret window, Issachar put his hand gently on Garlickhythe’s shoulder.
“Wait for it, my boy,” he breathed. “Your brothers will not shoot until you do, and we must be sure all The Oversight is within their view.”
Amos, on the steps below, heard the voice of his father like a distant whisper in the back of his head. The shock of it made him slip and almost fall on the treacherous footing. He grabbed at Charlie and shouted words into his brain.
Stop them! It’s a trap!
Charlie looked at him in momentary incomprehension.
“Wh—?”
Jed barked a warning, and Hodge stopped and flattened against the wall, ten steps from the bottom.
“Where?” he shouted.
Amos pushed Charlie aside and ran towards Sara, waving mutely, his arms windmilling a warning he could not voice and she—at a greater distance than Charlie—could not quite catch. The metal plate around his neck bounced wildly as he ran, smacking an edge into his silently yelling mouth.
Stop! It’s an ambush. There are guns! Templebane is here!
He was oblivious to the pain in his now bleeding mouth. He sprinted past Ida, who was halfway between him and Sara. She had heard him and was already turning, eyes scanning the embankment above for sign of their enemies as she unslung the crossbow from beneath her cloak.
“Where?” she said.
Everywhere! Up there!
He could hear his brothers’ voices in his head. He could hear the shock in Issachar’s voice as he pointed down at him.
“By Christ’s bloody stripes, if it isn’t the damned mute!”
Amos felt the scream of rage and frustration that had been building inside him for a whole lifetime swell to such an immensity that he knew he was going to burst like an overripe fruit if he could not let it out. He pointed upwards for Ida, and went fast-but-slow as he leaped towards Sara who only now was turning as she heard the intensity of his silent shouts in her own head.
Mr. Sharp! Mr. Sharp! Come back!
Sara spun away, yelling at Sharp who was now crouched over the chain, tapping it urgently with the haft of his knife.
“Jack!” she shouted. “It’s a trap!”
From his godlike vantage point high among the overhanging rooftops, Issachar could see all The Oversight was fully exposed and in the open.
“Now,” he snarled. “Kill them all.”
Sharp’s instinct on hearing Sara Falk’s warning was of course not to save himself, but to run towards her in order to get her to a place of greater safety.
A bullet from the first volley unleashed by the hidden sons of Issachar sent him sprawling sideways, smacked untidily off his feet into the shallows.
Sara shouted his name in horror and lurched forward, trying to run towards him, but Amos grabbed her with one hand and slammed her into an angle of the broken jetty, putting himself between her and the guns.
Stay!
He held his other arm out and waved furiously, pointing at the badge around his neck, willing his brothers to recognise him.
They won’t shoot me. You’re safe—
A bullet had missed Jed by less than an inch, but sent a spray of sandy grit into his eyes. He yelped and stumbled blindly around the foot of the steps, pawing at his eyes, trying to clear them.
“Jed. Come! Come here!” Hodge shouted urgently, reaching sightlessly towards the animal. “Come. Let me.”
The dog loped towards him, navigating blurrily by the sound of his voice more than sight.
Cook had been the last but one of The Oversight to come down the steps, leaving Hodge and Jed just behind her, but she had been the first to fall. She dropped to her knees and then sat back, a surprised look on her face.
Ida turned and saw her.
“Cook!” she shouted.
Cook smiled and tried to wave her away. She appeared not to notice that her hand had been blasted away by a blast of buckshot and was lying behind her on the gravel, beside the shredded triple-wood bracelet. She also seemed unaware of the pumping wound on her chest.
“Just winded myself,” she said. “Don’t you worry about me. Just give me a help getting up—”
“No,” shouted Ida. “Stay down.”
She ran and slid in next to Cook in a spray of mud and gravel.
“Oh,” said Cook, looking down at her front and coughing. “I see. Bugger.”
She looked at her wrist.
“I could have had a hook,” she said. “If not for this other …”
She coughed red and grimaced. She looked more irritated than scared or in pain.
“Well,” she said. “Anyway, there it is. Stupid way to go. Tell them I loved them, eh, Trousers?”
“No,” said Ida, trying to drag her to her feet. “No, you’re not—”
Cook shook her head.
“I am. I’m not scared of this. Getting old and losing my wits and my faculties … having to be looked after. That’s what I was scared of. This is … I’ve seen the wide world and I’ve had my fill of all that took my fancy. No complaints,” she said, and coughed another gout of blood, which she wiped off her chin, trying to find a grin and almost getting there. “One of you’ll have to turn cook now … there’s a plum pudding I made in the back pantry. Been feeding it brandy for Christmas … Don’t let it go dry, eh?”
Ida tried to say something but the words got snagged in her throat.
“Don’t start blubbing, you fool.” Cook coughed more blood, finally smiling through it, and squeezed Ida’s hand. “Blub later. After you’ve killed the bastards.”
She coughed again, tried to reach for Ida’s face, but her hand missed and dropped and she was still.
Ida didn’t waste time wiping her eyes. She just turned and sprinted for the sheer wall of the cut beneath Issachar’s warehouse and leapt at it, reaching for a high handhold with a wild, animal roar of grief.
Sharp staggered to his feet, face white with shock, the hand clamped to his side wet with something darker and thicker than water. Sara shouted at him:
“Jack! No. Stay!”
She tried to wrench herself free again. Amos had tears in his eyes as he jammed himself back, keeping her trapped and safe by brute force alone.
No, please; you’re safe—
“Kill the Jewess; shoot the mute. I’ve no more use for him,” spat Issachar.
Garlickhythe was the sharpshooter among the brothers, the one Abchurch had been most jealous of. He was also the most cold-blooded of them, which might have been a contributing factor to his prowess as a marksman.
“I’ll blow his treacherous black heart right out the back of his spine,” he grinned, and pulled the trigger.
In the instant before the hammer fell, he thought he heard a voice screaming his name inside his own head, but by then it was too late.
Garlickhythe, no—!
The bullet flew true, the lethal lead rifling through the air at more than eight hundred feet per second, hitting Amos square in the ches
t, front and centre, the force of it sledgehammering him off his feet and knocking his body into Sara, who saw his mouth gaping wide, bloodied teeth gasping for a breath that wouldn’t come—
Aah—
He spasmed against her.
Aah—
“Amos!” she cried.
Ah …
The world went away from him, just like that: no fanfare, no goodbye, just a heavy black cleaver brutally cutting him off from the light and the noise.
“Amos, come. Push with your legs!”
Sara, unaware that he had gone, was trying to drag him back to the scanty cover of the ruined jetty, but her eyes were on Sharp. He was moving now. He was alive. She didn’t hear another ragged volley from the ramparts above them, but she felt a dull blow in her leg which knocked her away from Amos’s unmoving body and tumbled her into the water.
A glimpse, before her head went under, of Sharp.
Snarling.
Blades in both hands.
Going fast-but-slow.
Charging straight towards the guns, fury moving him so fast that his wound left a thin ribbon of blood-spray hanging smeared across the air as he went.
Her ears were full of water, so the sound of the next volley was muffled. She saw gravel and mud kick up all around Sharp, who stopped abruptly as if punched by a giant invisible hand, arms wide, blades flying left and right from his lifeless hands, flashing as they spun in the thin evening sunlight—
—and then another streak of movement as Charlie Pyefinch blistered across the width of the cut, small stones spitting from beneath his feet, tearing in to try and rescue the fallen Sharp, slowing as he slid to a halt and bent to lift the body.
A single shot cracked out from the high warehouse window and again an invisible fist seemed to just cuff the boy sideways into the filth beside Sharp’s unmoving body, now lying next to him face down in the ooze.
“A lovely shot, my beauty,” said Issachar, an exultant laugh in his voice.
The Remnant Page 36
