Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles (15 page)

I had hoped to keep him out of the Menagerie matters entirely—to prolong that time before he might call my attention to the debt I owed him—but the crumpled notes in my pocket forced my hand. However long the Veil had been placing bounties, I needed to ask him what he knew—and warn him, if he didn’t know already.

It said much of my esteem for him that I did not think that he might be dead. The very moment I caught myself mired in such effortless arrogance, a chill stole over me.

I had not made myself readily available since returning. Would the Bakers know to tell me if their leader had fallen?

Biting back a few harsh words, I forged into the dark streets, my aim for Baker ground.

Chapter Twelve

Crossing London low without benefit of a hackney, carriage or well-paid gondola hired from above took more time than I could strictly afford.

By the time I’d prowled my way around the border of Limehouse—the better to avoid the bulk of any Ferrymen—and through Poplar, I was convinced that Ashmore was going to murder me outright when he finally located my whereabouts.

The months I’d spent in my mother’s rural estate might have been necessary for my well-being, but it lost me much of my connection with the people I’d relied upon as a collector. Every district I walked through seemed different—the smell, the sound, even the texture of the air carried with it a burden of sharp anticipation.

Much had changed, that much was obvious, but how far did it reach?

Poplar was Baker ground, the northern end. The dodgy end, the Isle of Dogs, thrust into the Thames and tended to smell of rotting fish. In the middle was where I’d find the bulk of the Bakers—Blackwall, where Communion often met his crew and divvied up the duties of a gang.

They were not few. From the lowest abram men to the meanest rufflers, each rank in a crew had a duty to dispense, and quotas to achieve.

Unlike the Ferrymen, the Bakers did not turn to peddling flesh—but they were no innocent party. More than a few fair victims had lost their lives and their coin to a mug-hunter wearing Baker best.

I had no ground upon which to stand and judge, for I’d committed my share of crimes in the name of coin.

Walking through Poplar in the dark was a lesson in intuition. The same pall that clung to the rest of the East End hovered heavily here, and even the catcalls of the doxies that claimed way stations along the streets—all with the Baker’s protection, if the fee was good—seemed to me to be sparse and intermittent.

Poplar was not known for its gaming hells or its brothels, which meant them what lived in the night here did so for other means.

Half through Poplar, the eerie stillness of the whole reinforced my certainty that I was right to come. Not a sight nor sound of Baker presence revealed itself, and I crossed the boundary into Blackwall without a single carrier to ferry word of intruder to them what watched for such things.

Whatever had happened, it had spread like cholera through fog and flesh. A disease of the spirit, perhaps; something that felt too much like fear.

In the distance, hounds bayed; an uncanny sound that should have been muted by the fog and instead seemed to soar above it. Others barked, some close enough to hear the staccato echo of it.

I scrubbed at the back of my neck as the fine hairs lifted.

When a figure darted from a back alley, I jumped within my flesh, bones rattling. The gas lamps lit along the road did not bathe the whole in light so much as reflect off the coal-choked wall surrounding us, but I glimpsed the hurried hand flicked out to others in the smoke and a brief flash of a grim face. None I recognized, but as three more slipped in his wake and vanished into the fog, I followed unseen.

Where there were dodgy figures in Baker ground, there would be a fight.

Voices did not carry so well in the peasouper; one might as well attempt to shout underwater. For this reason, I could not rely entirely upon my sense of sound to lead me in the right direction. I did not hear the brawl until I was near upon it.

I was close enough to the shipyards to smell the pong of the filthy Thames, chock-full of waste and run-off from the factories farther up river. The bulk of shipping industries had moved above the drift, which bore the unfortunate consequence of thinning out river-side work.

Of course, for the Bakers, this made for excellent stomping ground.

And brawling ground.

The men I’d followed spilled out of the cramped lane and darted across the open lot. They fanned like men accustomed to open-air brawls, where it came down to numbers over cunning.

Numbers the Bakers had.

It said something that I did not push farther into the lot. Instead of charging off into the fray, ready to swing a cosh and a fist, I halted just outside the lane, squinting against the bite in the air, and watched seven Bakers gang up on three Ferrymen.

They were indistinguishable by all but their own recognition, yet it didn’t take much to figure that the three men thrown together in the middle of the grouping were the skivers dancing on enemy ground.

I liked to think of myself as something of a skilled fighter—the sort of arts necessary to a shorter, often smaller body who needed to take on larger as a matter of rote. In contrast, the Bakers in my view were all taller, meaner, and didn’t much care for art when a brick in hand would do as well. They lit into the Ferrymen with abandon.

The screams tearing through the night pleaded for mercy.

A hand came down on my shoulder.

Without so much as a breath in between, I seized it, twisted out from under, and rammed the cove it belonged to into the wall beside us. His arm strained in my grip, pinned higher up on his back than strictly feasible, and his laughter carried more than a few harsh curses.

In the stark light of the lantern he carried, now rattling in its brass fixtures, I saw a man with golden hair slicked back, cheek to the brick facing, with a freshly pink scar twisting his lip into a false smirk.

“All right, all right,” he rasped when I tucked his wrist just a bit higher. “I’m sorry, all right?”

I knew the fellow, though his name escaped me. One of Ishmael’s blokes, who had been present at another brawl between Bakers and Ferrymen. He’d helped distract them while I led Maddie Ruth to safety—the start of my many struggles regarding that girl.

I let him go. “Don’t ever sneak up on me,” I said sternly.

He rotated his wrist and arm, a wry smile further twisting the scar at his lip. “Didn’t think t’see
you
again.” It was not so much an apology for the lark—and lark it most certainly was to seize a collector from behind—but I accepted it as my victory. He thought to startle me; I’d startled him instead.

Grimacing, I looked out over the lot. The beating had not abated. One of the intruders now lay prone, flat on his face, and blood looked like pitch in the dreary fog. “Ferrymen, am I right?”

“Aye.” The scarred Baker came to stand beside me, his lantern once more firm in his relatively uninjured hand. “Where you been, missy?”

“Elsewhere,” I replied, all the answer I intended to give. “Will your blokes beat them to death?”

He scratched idly at his nose, smeared with a bit of dirt. “Let’s see, then. That’s Davvy and Jam in the front, there. Both lost a mate to the Ferrymen a fortnight ago. Then Locket, there, he got his jaw busted by a knot of ’em ’round Christmas.”

I cupped my hands, breathing into them to bring a little warmth back into my chilled palms. “So,” I said slowly, “the answer is yes.”

“Prob’ly.”

I didn’t like it, but I had no call to put a foot in it now. This was Baker business, not mine, and if the men out there were as bent on revenge as it seemed, I’d only get hurt in the process.

With a twinge of conscience, I turned my back on the fracas. “Where’s Communion?”

The man looked down at me, his permanent smirk slanting higher. “Who wants to know?”

“Collector business,” I said by rote, and added sharply, “No games, mate, I’ve a message for him.”

“I’ll carry it.”

“No,” I said, returning my hands once more to my pockets. “You won’t.”

He whistled, a little sailing shanty that made me wonder if he’d once manned a ship. His overalls and woolen coat were no more distinguishable from the rest, and a thick knit undershirt hid any sailor tattoos he might have shown.

The Bakers came from all sorts. Or pretended to, depending on the coin.

“Well,” he finally said, “Communion ain’t here.”

“Yes, I see that.”

“Come on, then.” He swung the lantern to his other hand, and patted his leg as though I were a dog to bring to heel. “I’ll show you why he ain’t here.” He strode off without waiting for a word, probably content with the casual insult delivered.

I sighed, hunching my shoulders as a man’s harsh scream ended abruptly. The sour sound of metal grating against gravel thunked in echoed refrain.

With little other recourse, and no desire to see the remains of men caught on the wrong side of a border, I followed the scarred Baker deeper into Blackwall.

The Fish-Eyed Lady wasn’t one of them fancy pubs, and rare was the man or woman who visited without Baker business to tend to. Run by a father of one of the members who saw easy coin and comfort in being the Bakers’ primary pub, it served as a point of operations.

I’d spent many an hour here myself, and recognized the way to it.

My companion wasn’t the sort to fill the time with blather, and so it was we came to the Fish-Eyed Lady in silence. Two men stood outside the door, and they gave the bloke beside me a nod.

There was something decidedly grim about both, whether in rigid stance or severity of feature. They behaved as men waiting for a rude awakening at any moment, shifty as the wary were and tense for it.

I earned a passing glance, a bit of surprise from one I didn’t recognize, and a queried, “What’s the cross patch for?”

“Never you mind,” replied the Baker I followed. He waved one away from the door. “In you go, birdy. See for yourself.”

I had forgotten what it was to be challenged at every turn.

Squaring my shoulders, I ignored the men watching me closely and pushed my way into the worn pub.

The smell of death is one that I found difficult to get accustomed to. It tended to overwhelm one’s senses, to carve for itself a terrible niche within the olfactory core of the brain.

This fragrance, a malodorous combination of soiling and rot, washed over me the very moment I crossed the threshold.

I nearly gagged but for the certainty that I was watched. I bit down upon my tongue and forced myself to still; to stand motionless and inhale, again and again until the contents of my belly settled and the internal voice screaming at me quieted.

I did not want to see what lay beyond the corner wall that shrouded my view.

The door opened again, disgorged the scarred Baker, and I seized my courage in both hands before he could say anything at all.

I strode around that corner. This time, I could not bite back a startled sound of disgust as one boot came down on a fleshy surface.

The hand in the back of my borrowed coat was all that saved me from a tumble into gruesome remains.

The urge to gag welled up once more. “My God,” I croaked.

The Baker, apparently already familiar with the sight, smiled grimly as he came to stand beside me. “Recognize anyone?”

How could I?

The pub had never been one for decoration, relying on sturdy tables and chairs and the occasional trophy collected by its clientele. Whoever or whatever had done this seemed to take offense with such limited décor.

Oh, dear God in heaven, was that the point of this display?

Was Ishmael among the dead?

My breath, what little I could attain, clogged in my chest as my head spun in lightheaded dread. Everything in my sight turned to shades of vicious red and rotted brown, and I began to shake.

A heavy hand came down upon my shoulder. “Have a good look, then,” said the scarred man, all but forcing me to remain upright—though pride paled in the face of such butchery.

Blood painted the walls in ghastly spray, limbs were left to lie where they had been wrenched free. My gaze strayed over the carnage, straining to make sense of the jumbled remains, but there was no pattern to it.

The twisted arm congealing upon the bar’s surface did not match the body shredded and abandoned beside it. Intestines erupted from a torso seemed to have nothing in common with the bloody remains they spilled over.

Bits of cloth here and there, canvas and wool and more, had become nothing more than oozing red fibers, skin turned into a bloody mess, features twisted and mangled into a crimson stain.

Blood, rot, carnage.

I shuddered, fists closing under my chin, and took a breath that filled my lungs with putrescence and nearly took the last of my strength with it.

“Bakers, all of ‘em,” the scarred man added, as though I had not already assumed it.

Bakers. Men I had known, no doubt. Torn apart like things; left behind like broken toys. Was Ishmael one?

Why couldn’t I see?

Why couldn’t I pick out his body?

Tears choked me, blinded me. I turned away because I had no choice.

The Ferrymen. What did they possess that allowed them such monstrosity of ability? Why Communion?

The questions flitted about me, but I could not seize upon any. Loss gripped me, overwhelmed me.

How many more was I to lose?

The Veil has marked every person...

The sound I made through my closing throat was guttural. Suddenly, I found myself before the door, struggling to master the too-complicated latch as my vision narrowed in on a long black tunnel. Out. I needed out, I needed air.

I needed to
know
.

Who else had died for me? Who had died like
this?

“Sodding—” I sobbed the curse at the resistant latch.

The door opened without my doing, spilling me into the cold air. I collided with a wall of muscle and bone, sucked in ragged air and barely noticed when large hands closed over my shoulders. “Breathe, girl.”

The dark, thunderous quality of that voice did for me what the rotten fish smell of Blackwall air did not.

I shook my head hard enough to rattle my own senses about my skull, my stare wide as my vision cleared upon a face no sober soul would ever call handsome. Eyes near black in color set in whites turned yellow, as if the acrid fog he lived in had stained them forever. Fleshy lips beneath a pugnacious nose and teeth that gleamed against midnight skin as he bared them at the Baker who followed me out seemed to me the most beloved of faces. “Get back to your post,” he ordered.

The scarred man made good his escape.

I allowed my knees to fold, dropping me to the stairs leading up to the Fish-Eyed Lady and the carnage within. “Ish,” I breathed. I covered my face. “Ish, my God, you’re here. You’re all right.”