A Study in Darkness (41 page)

“What more can you tell us that you haven’t already said?” Nick asked. “What can you have to gain by running now?”

“Bloody Baskervilles!” Bingham cursed.

Baskervilles? That was the code name the Schoolmaster had used. Was that what the Schoolmaster had meant by his network?
Now there’s a fascinating tidbit
.

“I’ve told you everything!” The man’s voice was little more than a croak.

Nick let the cold steel linger against Bingham’s jaw, rasping a week’s worth of beard. “Confess.”

“It came from the Gold King.”

Bloody hell
. He remembered Mycroft Holmes’s words about Elias Jones.
He went to work for the Blue King, and ended up serving the Gold
. This was the same. “And did you tell the Gold King all about the Blue King’s army?”

“No!” Bingham squirmed despite Nick’s blade.

“Keeping a bit of insurance?”

“God help me, I wanted to protect my skin. I needed to hold something back, something on both of them. Just like no one else knows about the device in the Saracen’s Head.”

Nick almost laughed. “So the Gold King knows nothing of the army, and King Coal has no idea you have clockwork spies in his backyard, and yet you work for both men?”

“I’m not the worst snake in either of their camps!”

“Such a false friend you are. It’s enough to make a man pity those poor steam barons.”

“Give me half a chance to prove myself. I’ll work for you.”

Nick craned his neck to look at the Schoolmaster. There was no surprise in the young man’s eyes. “I think not, Mr. Bingham,” said the Schoolmaster. “If you would let our guest up, Captain Niccolo, we can get on with our meeting. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble coming to a decision about this gentleman’s fate.”

Striker gave an unpleasant laugh.

“We could always return him to the Blue King. Or the Gold.” The Schoolmaster gave one of his trademark grins. “I’m fond of making a neighborly gesture, and I understand Their Majesties have a wicked taste for traitors.”

“
HE WAS A
nice enough gentleman,” Gareth said, mangling the word to “genlmun.” “A straightforward enough piece o’ work to send him home happy, but no one ever wants him hanging about. He has this dog that looks like a hedgehog.”

Evelina was striding briskly down Commercial Street, Gareth loping alongside. She gave him a sideways look. “Is
that another one of those code phrases the girls at Miss Hyacinth’s use?”

“What?” He gave her a lopsided grin.

“The hedgehog thing,” she answered, her cheeks heating. She knew a lot of slang, but sometimes Gareth came out with expressions that were as rude as they were perplexing.

“Ha! You’re seeing corruption around every corner, you are. It was a dog. Some French thing with hair like a shoe shine brush, and he kept it on a long blue ribbon. It yapped the whole time he was with Miss Lucy. Until Mr. O’Neill sat on it, and it bit the old bugger in the arse.”

A flower cart rumbled by, drowning out whatever punch line came next. The street was busy as usual, so crammed with vehicles and pedestrians Evelina had to work to stay at Gareth’s side. She was getting good at jabbing people with her elbows.

A young man was rushing toward them, a bundle under one arm, his head down. Evelina stepped to the side just quickly enough to avoid a collision, but when she caught sight of his profile, she gasped.

Gareth looked from one to the other with lively interest in his violet eyes. “Who’s this, then?”

Panic exploded in Evelina’s chest, drying her mouth and sending her stomach plunging to her knees.
Dear God, I’ve been caught!
But she turned and walked quickly, doing her best to dissolve into the crowd.

Gareth trotted after her. “Who’s that?”

“Mr. Penner,” she said automatically. “Someone I used to know.”

Gareth walked backward a few steps, looking curiously at Bucky. “You think he doesn’t want to know you now? Or is it you who doesn’t want to know him?”

“Maybe both,” she said. “I’m sure there are a few people curious to know what I’m doing.” Evelina cast a quick glance over her shoulder, trying to collect herself. Visions of Crowleyton snagged in her mind like burrs, making it hard to see the crowd around her. Four whole days had passed since she’d missed the Gold King’s deadline of Tobias’s wedding day. She had only four days counting today to find
the name of the Blue King’s maker, and she hadn’t found anything new. There was a clock ticking inside her head, and every swing of the pendulum pronounced the consequences of failure:
safety, future, safety, future
. Her uncle’s safety. Her reputation. Her safety. His future. And on through every combination of punishment Keating could devise.

Every instinct said her target was Magnus—the very fact of the Magnetorium, with its automatons and clever sets, proclaimed the maker’s talents Magnus possessed but shrugged off. And yet, she had no proof—and she was getting desperate for any kind of a lead. So she was going to get out of the place for an afternoon and look for other makers. If King Coal had an army, surely someone had to know about it. After all, not even Magnus could build one single-handed.

“Are you all right?” Gareth asked.

“Yes, absolutely,” she said, her voice awkward. Now that the first shock of seeing Bucky had faded, she allowed her pace to slacken back to normal.

“So why can’t you go home?”

Home
. The word conjured visions of sitting in her fine lawn morning dress, reading the paper and drinking tea. Not the thin stuff she got here, brewed thrice over from leaves already used and dried out for resale to the poor. But necessity had driven her here, and that hadn’t changed. “I can’t,” she replied.

“Why not?”

She debated a moment wondering whether he’d give up sooner if she said nothing, or if she gave him a smidgen of information. One look at Gareth’s face said he wasn’t going to be easily brushed off. She glanced around, then leaned in to speak softly in his ear. “It’s not safe for me, or for people I care about.”

Gareth fidgeted, his face lined with concern. “What did you do, then?”

Plunged in thought, Evelina didn’t answer. She was trying to think of the last time she’d felt truly safe. Perhaps in the instant before the bomb went off in her uncle’s study? Or was it earlier than that, even, at Wollaston Academy? Or
earlier yet, when she was that child with Nick holding her hand, sure no one was going to call her names or steal her things because he was there to take care of her? Or maybe it was much more recent, when Magnus had given her a taste of real power, and put it within her grasp. There was something to be said for controlling one’s own destiny.

“Miss Cooper?” Gareth asked.

Evelina snapped out of her reverie. “No need to worry. I’ve landed on my feet, right?”

Gareth brightened, glad the cloud had passed. “Right. And I’ve got to get to Miss Hyacinth’s.”

He ran off with a wave. Evelina carried on in the direction where she thought Posy Street lay among a tangle of byways to the west. Her mission—should Magnus think to ask where she’d been—was that Casimir still needed some of those brass screws so tiny that she used tweezers to pick them up. She had counted on being able to buy them at the Saracen’s Head but, of course, that sale had never happened. She’d meant to get some at Brownlee’s on the way home that night, but she’d forgotten. Mind you, after seeing Nick, after kissing him, it was a wonder she’d remembered her own name.

“
WHAT DO YOU
make of all that?” Nick asked Striker an hour after the trial of Mr. Bingham.

“I don’t see how they can send our prisoner back to the Blue King. He knows who we are.”

They were walking toward the makers’ booths, where a fortune in metals could be bought or traded if you knew whom to ask. Their boots moved almost in unison, kicking up tufts of dust. He caught a young girl looking, and she turned away with a blush. For an instant, he hated himself for being so unworthy of that innocence. But then Striker’s question sunk home, and he forgot all about it.

“They already know most of us. But Hughes is going to take him to join Elias Jones anyway.”

“How do you know that?”

“Hughes said. The Schoolmaster was just winding Bingham up.”

“That’s nasty,” Striker said with approval.

“He’s quite the bastard for such a pleasant fellow,” Nick agreed. The Schoolmaster had gone up in his estimation that afternoon. He respected the fact that the young man had won the admiration of someone like Hughes and yet still had come down hard on a rat like Bingham. Fair but tough was good in a leader. Not that Nick was ready to follow, but he didn’t mind working beside such a man.

“Should’ve been a pirate.”

They stopped near the back of the market. Nick looked around for his men. Poole was somewhere at the fair, Digby probably back at the Saracen’s Head. The others were with the
Red Jack
, idling while Nick struck bargains to sell their haul. There were one or two dealers Nick still wanted to see, and they would likely be at the market that day.

He saw one dark female head, then another. Then he realized he was looking for Evelina and frowned. Striker caught the look, and Nick did his best to wipe his face clear of expression. He didn’t want to answer more questions about his history with Evie right now. Or ever.

To his right, there was a table under a makeshift awning, and three men sat under it. One was the jeweler who had been in the tent earlier. Another was a weasel-faced man Nick recognized as a pawnbroker who catered to the wealthy, the third a tall, lanky friend of the Schoolmaster named Michael Edgerton. They were near enough that Nick could hear their conversation.

“Bancroft?” Edgerton was saying in a low voice. “I don’t believe it. I know the man.”

That caught Nick’s interest. Edgerton was a toff, well dressed and well spoken, but hated the steam barons who had put his father’s foundries out of business over the last few months. He’d thrown in with the Schoolmaster and quickly become his right-hand man because he was a maker and as shrewd as they came. And if Nick had his facts straight, Edgerton had been friends with Tobias Roth—
though that friendship had ended when Roth went to work for the Gold King.

“He did,” said the weasel-faced man. “My lord has always responded when he could. He knows very well that any enterprise costs money, especially one so far-reaching as this.”

The man put a black velvet bag on the table, and the jeweler picked it up, opening the drawstring with the efficiency of long practice. Nick watched without appearing to watch as the man poured a river of emerald jewelry into his palm. Nick was no expert, but the fire of quality stones was unmistakable. The sight only lasted an instant before the others huddled around, blocking all sight of the gems.

“Very nice,” the jeweler commented, peering through an eyepiece.

“A generous gift,” Edgerton said a little breathlessly. “That will keep our makers working for some time to come.”

“All for the cause,” said weasel-face unctuously.

The Baskerville cause?
Nick wondered. He’d kept his ears open since coming back to London, and he’d heard rumors that the rich were growing as unhappy with the Steam Council as the poor. He understood why Edgerton was involved—his family had lost everything to the barons—but Bancroft?

“And what does your lord wish in return?” Edgerton asked, echoing Nick’s thoughts.

“He wishes to be remembered when the time is right,” came the reply.

Striker had been listening, too, and leaned over. “Bancroft’s betting on the dark horse, eh?”

Nick frowned. “But just who is our dark horse? Does anyone even know the Schoolmaster’s real name?”

Striker shook his head. “He does seem to be the bloke in charge, though. Quite a feat for a skinny little lad, so someone has to be backing him up.” He jerked his head toward the tent selling beer. “Come on.”

Knowing better than to come between a man and his pint, Nick followed. He waited while Striker bought two tankards of ale, leaning up against a fence and listening to the sparrows chatter.

That was my crumb
.

No it was mine. No it was mine
.

Oh, now look! Someone stepped on it! And he’s been by the horses
.

You can keep your stupid crumb
.

Look, there’s another one!

When Striker returned, Nick was more than ready for the beer. His second in command moved to lean next to him on the fence. Striker watched Nick with the same narrow-eyed consideration with which he regarded a malfunctioning engine. His dark-eyed gaze was a palpable weight that made Nick twitch. It reminded him of the stare Gran Cooper used to give him when she’d caught him in a lie—a probing combination of scientific curiosity and acute disappointment.

“What?” Nick finally asked, taking a slurp of the beer and frowning. It was on the sour side.

Striker put on an innocent face, and it wasn’t a good fit. Somewhere he’d found a pair of green-lensed goggles and was wearing them perched on his head, the brass and leather contraption almost lost amid his spiky hedgehog hair.

“What?” Nick repeated, his temper starting to slip.

“I spoke to her, you know.” No need to say who
she
was.

“I know. You told me about Magnus.”

“We talked about you.”

Nick straightened, ready to end this conversation before it began. “You don’t talk about that kind of thing. You’d rather chew rusty springs.”

“She was sad.” The man’s dark eyes flashed. “And we blew up a sorcerer for her sake.”

“So we did. Too bad it didn’t take.”

Striker rolled his massive shoulders, making the folds of his coat scrape together, metal against metal. “Yeah, a lot of trouble for nothing all around.”

He left the statement hanging there like bait. Nick ignored it, stomach churning while the blood mounted to his head.

“It was fun, though,” Striker said philosophically. “I’d been wanting to test that weapon.”

They lapsed into silence again, Nick clenching his jaw.

Striker heaved a sigh. “So what the fardlin’ hell is she doing here? And why aren’t you taking care of business?”