‘Where did you get them?’
‘I made them.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You say that as if juggling and practical optometry were an odd combination.’
‘Well, not so much odd as unexpected.’
She waved that away. ‘Now, is there anything else you wanted to know?’
‘There is indeed something else I wanted to know.’ He crossed his arms and settled them on his chest. ‘Where did you learn to juggle?’
Evadne put a hand over her mouth, then burst out laughing. ‘Oh, well played, sir,’ she said, ‘well played.’
‘Thank you.’ Kingsley felt as if he’d passed another test. ‘But I’m genuinely interested in an answer.’
Evadne touched the chain at her neck. ‘You can imagine that I’ve grown accustomed to being an object of attention.’
‘For your juggling.’
She peered over the top of her spectacles. ‘Now you’re almost being tiresome.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You need to understand that I’ve been called a freak,’ she said, ‘and worse, so I’ve developed a number of ways of coping with people. Anticipating their reactions is one of them.’
‘And I confounded you when I asked about your juggling instead of your albinism? I apologise.’
‘Don’t. I enjoy being confounded. It happens so seldom, after all.’ She grinned. It was a totally unaffected expression of impish delight. She had excellent teeth, Kingsley noted. ‘I learned juggling from my uncle Frederick, who must never be mentioned.’
‘Anywhere, or just in your family home?’
‘You’ve heard of families having black sheep? Uncle Frederick is the sort of black sheep that black sheep shun.’
‘He sounds like a useful uncle to have.’
‘He is. Once he taught me juggling, to my parents’ horror, he went to sea and I didn’t see him for years so I had to find help wherever I could.’
‘It was the same with my magic.’
‘My uncle Frederick taught you magic? I knew he’d been around, but I never . . .’ She took out a pocket watch, a handsome gold repeater. A man’s watch, if Kingsley was any judge, but he’d already come to understand that Evadne Stephens was anything but conventional.
He sat back, easing into the rhythm of the train as it clicketty-clacked towards London, and he tried not to worry about his foster father. Kingsley had always feared for his foster father’s safety, despite his reassurances that the scrapes he’d encountered and the disreputable characters he dealt with presented no real danger. The letter from his foster father’s valet had echoed Kingsley’s misgivings, and thus amplified them.
What had the old man found himself in this time?
Jabez Soames was not a bad man. He told himself so every morning when he rose from his bed and slipped the nightcap from a head that was far more balding than he wished. It was simply a fact of existence that unpleasant things needed to be done, at times. Since unpleasant things needed to be done, Jabez Soames was dedicated to doing them as efficiently as possible.
It was irrelevant that Jabez Soames enjoyed his work and had for all forty years of his working life. He especially enjoyed it when it offered him the prospect of riches. It added a certain piquancy to whatever needed doing.
These were profitable days for Soames. The Franco-British Exhibition had brought many foreigners to London and the Olympic Games promised more. Soames loved foreigners of all sorts. So unfamiliar with British ways, so far from home . . .
On the way to his office, he made a mental note to see about outlaying some money on the Marathon race the papers were full of. He was sure he could make arrangements to have the event favour his wager. Perhaps administering something to the favoured runner?
Jabez, Jabez, Jabez, he thought, you are a veritable ferment of ideas!
He smiled to himself.
Even this late at night Soames was warm in his overcoat, as the weather had improved considerably since the rain of the previous few days. Being of a practical mind, however, he still had his umbrella. He glanced at the lift operator. ‘Have you killed anyone lately, Higgs?’
The night operator, one hand on the brass control lever, was dapper in his red and blue uniform. He had the knack of moving his eyes while the rest of his face stayed impassive. ‘Depends on what you mean by “lately”, Mr Soames, sir.’
‘What about in the last week?’
‘No, sir.’ Higgs was a small man who always reminded Soames of one of the mustelidae family. A ferret, or something less domesticated? ‘Definitely no-one in the last seven days. Not much call for it at the moment, what with the grippe and all laying ’em low.’
‘You have my commiserations. What’s the world coming to when a lift operator can’t supplement his income with a little pre-emptive body snatching?’
‘Wouldn’t know, sir, and here’s your floor.’
‘Wonderful.’
The lift operator dragged back the gate. Once again, Soames stepped onto the floor that existed between the fourth and nominal fifth of the unobtrusive office building in Lambeth. Soames was cheered by setting foot on its utilitarian linoleum and he was heartened by the single corridor, dark and windowless, with a dozen or so doors opening onto it, because as soon as he did he was entering the Demimonde.
Striding towards his office, Soames whispered the word to himself, savouring its outlandishness and marvelling how it described, so perfectly, the place in which he spent much of his life.
The Demimonde, the half-world, the realm on the edges of civilised society. The world of the dispossessed and the fugitive, of outlaws, thieves and cutthroats, of the lost and abandoned, of the strange and uncanny. It was the world of forgotten heroes, of neglected villains, of conspiracies, calamities and chimaeras. Lost legends stalked the Demimonde, fortunes were made in the Demimonde and people lost their souls in the Demimonde – sometimes more than once.
The Demimonde was an irresistible source of opportunity, provided one had very few scruples. Soames had a joke – just the one – about how he once had scruples, but he’d sold them a long time ago. He repeated it whenever he could, but those hearing it were rarely in a position to enjoy the humour, more’s the pity.
Soames barely registered the signs on the doors of the other offices. Some were familiar, having been there ever since he’d become a tenant – the ‘Red-Headed League’ and the ‘Eldorado Exploring Expedition’, for instance – but others came and went. As he slipped the key into his door, his gaze lit on the office next to his that had been, until recently, ‘Capt. Benjamin Briggs’ but now read ‘Tunguska Enterprises’. He made another mental note to make some enquiries about the firm.
Soames paused for a moment on the threshold of his office. He was at home here in the Demimonde. Some people confused it with the underworld, the domain of criminals, but this would never do. The underworld intersected with the Demimonde and some rogues were definitely part of it, but the Demimonde was altogether larger, richer, both more wonderful and more sordid, than merely being the haunt of those outside the law.
Of course, the laws of the mundane world did not apply in the Demimonde, which suited Jabez Soames perfectly.
He was almost tempted to whistle as he stepped into his office and closed the door behind him. The floor on which his office was situated was, in reality, the fifth floor but special arrangements had been made decades ago to make it part of the Demimonde, as many other places throughout the city had been: lanes, whole buildings, underground tunnels and byways, those places less frequented by the ordinary folk. Theatres had a special status. Theatre people were almost always welcome in the Demimonde; they respected its nature and understood the way that appearances were not always a true representation of what lay beneath. Two years ago, Soames had enjoyed an extremely lucrative v
enture with a theatre troupe who had marched into a village in Surrey, claiming to be government health inspectors. Soames had heard hints that some of the actors were still about, in far-off lands, having left the world of the theatre to enjoy the fruits of their labour.
That reminded him. Devant’s new show was opening at the Egyptian Hall soon. He would need to get tickets. The thought of missing the famous magician’s new illusions made him quite ill.
After hanging his hat and coat on the rack by the door – and making sure they were neatly arranged – Soames went to the window. His office had a fine view towards the river and the lights of Westminster. Soames had plans in that direction and he enjoyed taking a moment to contemplate them. Oh, the world would be a different place when Jabez Soames had his way!
Jabez, he thought, there would be no better man for the job!
A rambling bank of pigeonholes took up an entire wall of Soames’s office and it was to this he now addressed himself. Slips of paper poked out of most of them, paper of the most confounding variety of hues and textures. Some appeared have been torn from books, others could have come from the stationery belonging to an earl. Soames kept a network of informants throughout the city, both the mundane world and the Demimonde. His day clerk had taken delivery of all of these snippets and deposited them in the correct slots, ready for Soames to peruse.
One of them alerted him to activity among the Neanderthals. He went to his desk and found the ledger he devoted to his dealings with what he’d once considered sub-humans, but had quickly been convinced were just as intelligent as regular humanity. Their particular aptitude lay with mechanical devices, which led to a need for certain materials that Jabez Soames was only too happy to supply. At a price, of course.
After his first contact with them, so many years ago, he’d been startled to learn that they’d carved out a sanctuary deep beneath the city, a retreat that was difficult to find and impossible to enter, if you weren’t one of them. The sophistication of their building hadn’t jibed with his conception of the creatures at all, so he’d undertaken some research and found that the current thinking was that the brutes were cousins of modern humans, supposedly long extinct, and fine tool-users, to judge from artefacts recently unearthed. Extinct everywhere but the Demimonde, Soames now knew.
How they hated him! He saw it in their eyes every time they dealt with him, shipping in foodstuffs and other necessities. He didn’t take it personally, though. They hated all regular humans. Invaders, they called them, the people who had come and taken their lands, hunted their game, driven them to the margins of the world.
He ran his eye down the columns of figures. The Neanderthals had been excellent customers for years, and if they were becoming even more industrious, it was a marvellous thing. Jabez Soames could forgive them their brutishness and coarseness, because they paid their debts promptly. Not the world’s greatest conversationalists, which was a shame for Jabez Soames enjoyed a chat. They spoke English well enough, that wasn’t the problem, but the Neanderthals preferred actions to words, he gathered. He also had a feeling that they hated using the language of their dominant cousins and regretted adopting it centuries ago. Idly, he’d wondered what had happened to their own language. Gone, as the snows of yesterday?
The thought made him smile. Progress was inevitable. Away with the old, bring on the new.
Soames gathered the notes into an irregular bundle, pursing his lips at some, chuckling at others, drawing his mouth into a tight line at a few. He was about to take his place at his desk when his gaze fell on the envelope on his blotter.
Everything about it was wrong in a horribly familiar way. If pressed, however, Soames would have had difficulty pointing out exactly why it was so unsettling. Was it because it was almost, but not quite, rectangular, with the corners subtly not meeting at right angles? Was it that the paper was a shade that spoke of pallid, slinking creatures that never saw the light of day? He knew, even without touching it, that the paper had a slightly greasy feel. Soames, no stranger to handling distasteful objects, wanted to don gloves before handling it.
He cursed when the only gloves he could find were the ones he’d worn in to the office, a brand new pair that he’d just purchased from Turnbull & Asser. He’d have to discard them once he touched the letter. This irked him decidedly.
Settle, Jabez, he told himself. Bring your renowned sangfroid to the fore! Opportunity, opportunity, opportunity!
He read the letter and it was as he feared: the Immortals were back from India, and they wanted to see him.
Light flared at the back of the control compartment. Damona tore away the steel cover plate too late.
The machine exploded.
Later. Damona on her back, looking up. Pain. She choked on the smoke. She rolled, stood, coughed, winced at the pain in her hip. Her hair had come undone. It hung over her face. She heard shouting.
A draught. The smoke began to move. Damona grunted. Someone had opened the steel doors at either end of the workshop. Good thinking.
The smoke cleared. She squinted, batted it away. She peered up past the gantry crane and its rails to the ventilator shaft. She swore. The screw turbine had shattered. No more air from above until it was fixed. She shuddered. Metal shards must have sprayed through the whole workshop. She’d been lucky.
She grunted again. Death wasn’t for her. Not yet.
The smoke had gone. She screwed up her nose at the smell of charred insulation. She laced both hands in the middle of her lower back. The old hip injury was flaring, too. She felt every one of her two hundred years. She growled and studied the remains of the machine she’d been working on.
It was a wreck.
She plucked a screwdriver from the bench as she passed. Then: careful stalking towards the wreck. Big steps over casing panels that had been blown aside.
She prodded at the steel and brass machine. What had she been doing just before the explosion? After months of work, what had gone wrong? The principles were right. She knew it. Implementation was at fault.
Was she becoming less dextrous? Age catching up with her?
She stood back, hands flexing, taking stock. The original lines of the extractor were still there. She’d avoided straight lines and corners. The flanks of the wagon-sized machine curved like wave-worn rock. Both sides rolled around to grip the control panel at the end. She shook her head. The control panel that was now a mess of melted glass and metal. The top third of the extractor had been sheared off by the explosion. The contours she’d been so satisfied with were no more.
She stood on tiptoe and nearly cried. Inside, the machine was ruined. She tried to remember where she’d left the plans, her notes, her grand scheme.
‘Hurt?’
Damona didn’t look around. Could she salvage that thermal bridge? ‘No, Gustave.’
‘What happened?’
‘Phlogiston uptake error.’
‘Dangerous, that.’
Damona almost laughed. Phlogiston was more than dangerous. It was treacherous. But without it, their existence would be even more precarious than it was. ‘Sometimes dangers are necessary.’
‘Put dangers aside. Be at ease. Stop your work.’
She turned, then. Gustave was stocky, even for a True Person. A youngster, broad in the shoulders, thick of limb. He had heavy khaki overalls and steel-tipped boots of his own design. He wore his coarse red hair and beard long.
Damona sighed. She’d have to wait for the remains to cool down before she’d be able to investigate properly. ‘How can I save the True People if I stop working?’
‘An honourable goal, eldest.’ Gustave coughed. He shifted, uneasily.
‘What is it?’
He didn’t look at her. ‘An Assembly has been called. You have been summoned.’
Damona sat on the dais at the front of the assembly chamber. S
he rested her chin in her hand, waited for the rest of the True People to file in. They were old. So few younglings.
She knuckled her brow. Even fewer after Signe died.
It had been a year since her only great-granddaughter had passed. She still mourned.
The Assembly was a shock. She hadn’t heard a thing. No-one had dropped a hint. No-one had muttered a warning in her ear.
I’m getting old, too. She ran her gaze over the crowd. The chamber was filling up, past the fourth set of pillars. Or distracted. Or both.
A distant rumbling. She cocked her head. She took out her pocket watch. It was a sturdy steel model she’d made years ago. She nodded. The noise above was the Circle line train on its way to Cannon Street Station. Right on time.
The assembly chamber was four hundred years old. It was the first large space carved by the True People when they’d congregated under London. It was now at the heart of a complex that had grown into a maze. Families had added chambers, corridors and extensions wherever they were needed. When the Invaders had been digging tunnels for their underground railway it had been a worrying time, but the spaces the True People had opened out were deep. Far deeper than the puny delvings of the Invaders. Their efforts were scratchings and finished far overhead. Noise of the trains reminded the True People that their enemy was close. Damona thought this was a good thing. She didn’t mind the closeness of the Invaders. It meant that none of the True People would forget what they had done.
She climbed to her feet, ignored the twinge from her back. The three hundred True People, the last Neanderthals in the world, hushed.
‘I am Damona,’ she said. Ritual demanded no less. ‘As Eldest, I am your leader. An Assembly has been called. Speak, those who will.’
It was Gustave who stood. Nervous, he was pushed forward by others. He would not meet Damona’s eyes.
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