Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles (16 page)

He squatted down, all of his bulk a slow avalanche, and still he towered over me. A large hand came to rest atop my head. “I heard you were looking for me,” he said slowly, a rich dialect that was not gentlemanly but nevertheless precise.

He did not ask where I’d been, or how I was. He simply accepted my presence as he always had—and called me
girl
for it.

I almost burst into tears, but for the Bakers still watching my every move. The two guarding the door had not left. I lowered my hands and noted the five more that had come with Ishmael.

I managed a watery smile, at least. “I am so glad to see you.”

His eyes flicked to the door I’d come from, then back to me. He had always been a serious man, but the severity that weighed upon him seemed newly acquired. He let go of my head. “We changed quarters a few months back. The Lady hasn’t been full for a while.”

Relief caused a flutter in my chest. I flattened a hand against it lest my feelings come spilling out—and with them, my desperate need to embrace him and the loss of any hope of dignity for the both of us. “What happened?”

“War,” he said, a single word that rumbled.

I winced. “That? In there? That’s not war, Communion.” I called him such when in the company of his Bakers—or at least when I remembered to. Enough seemed different that I was not sure anyone would care if he befriended a twist like me.

Still, he answered to it as I answered to
girl
. He was usually a man who remained unruffled.

Yet I watched the lines of his face harden and thought him deeply ruffled. “It is,” he replied, rising to his feet once more and looming over me by sheer nature of his size. He did not offer me a hand, not in front of the others. For me, I thought, as he’d always been cognizant of what it was to be a woman in a man’s collecting game. “This is Ferrymen work.”

I stood with effort. “I suspected the assault their doing, but how could they do
this?
”

He gestured at his men, and they did not so much depart as meld into the gritty fog. Much less like the rowdy Bakers I’d come to know, and more like ghosts in the night.

Or like them what had learned the cost of failing.

I frowned at Ishmael’s back as he turned from me and began to stride along the street. “Come with me.”

My stride was much smaller, and Ish by habit hitched his so that I did not have to force myself to keep up. “Where are we going?”

“Baker business.”

I winced. “And you want me along?”

He nodded, but did not look at me. “Isn’t the first time this happened, and it’s not to be the last.”

“Does this have anything to do with the collections?”

“Don’t think so.” He sounded unsurprised by the word. “This is war. Collections are a different matter.”

I tucked my hands into my pockets, and clenched one around the rumpled notes. “Ish, have any collectors come to bother you?” He grunted, which I took as affirmation. I did not ask what happened to those collectors. No need. “What of Zylphia?”

This time, he shot me a glower from beneath thick, ridged eyebrows. “What of her?”

“Is she safe?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Why?” he demanded, halting in the midst of the road to stare at me—the look upon his face might have been suspicion. Or simple upset.

I halted, too, and faced him direct. Close enough that he could encircle my throat with one hand, if he so chose. I’d do nothing to stop it. I trusted him that much, with the whole of my heart. “Ish, we’re friends,” I said softly. “Zylphia and I too.” Well, once. Perhaps. I’d done unkind things to her in the worst of my opium cravings, and I wasn’t certain she’d feel the same.

I owed her an apology, at least.

“I want to know that you’re both safe,” I added. “I took the notices off the wall, I’m not interested in collecting either of you.”

His nose flared wide. “Heard it’s a good pot.”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “Sweet enough for most. Not nearly enough for me.”

“Hmph.” The sound almost seemed affectionate. The hand I told myself I wouldn’t evade lifted, but again, it settled atop my head, held firm and forced my gaze up enough that I could meet his eyes from under his arm. “You won’t listen if I tell you to stay out of the Veil’s way, so listen to this.”

I nodded—or tried to.

“The sweet is safer than you are, girl.” Ish squeezed my head, the whole of my skull caught in his fingers, but it was a gentle gesture. “I can handle collectors. Leave us be.”

The words stung, but Ishmael had never been one for masking his intentions. He didn’t mean that I should leave them, or consider abandoning them, but that I could leave Zylphia and his own safety to him.

That of all the things I had to worry about, I could mark them off.

It was sweet, in a way. He understood me.

I couldn’t commit to such a thing, of course, so I tugged his hand away from my head with both of mine wrapped about his wrist. “You know I’ll always do what I can for you.”

“I know it, girl.” He disengaged from my grasp with awkward care, overly aware of his size to mine, and added with grim ruthlessness, “This is what comes of going against the Veil.” I opened my mouth to ask what he knew when he held up one hand—the skin of his palm calloused and remarkably pink, even in the darkness. “Quiet.”

He was sterner, that much was certain. A little harsher with me too, though I saw no reason to take it personally. If I had lost what it looked as if he’d lost, I might be even harsher than he was.

I lapsed into silence as directed.

What I owed Ish was immeasurable, and well he knew it, but as I followed his silent guiding, I wondered what I could possibly do to help him against whatever it was that could tear a man limb from limb and walk away.

As I huddled against the biting chill of London low’s March fog, I remembered with resignation how simple everything had seemed before I’d committed to sobriety.

Chapter Thirteen

The alley was one of thousands carved in London’s by-ways and boroughs—nothing remarkable about it. Thick, viscous fog roiled from its mouth as though one degree from sewage, and it was through this that we passed.

The Bakers didn’t use lamps as a rule, for the drift reflected light badly. The only light came by way of ambient streetlamps guttering far enough away that all looked painted in shades of rotting yellow and moldering gray.

It was enough.

A half-dozen Bakers waited in various positions of rest, recuperation, and in the case of a dark-skinned boy perhaps fifteen, lingering shock. He sat with his head between his upraised knees, arms clenched about his bony legs as an older man with grizzled features sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder, and stared into the black.

Communion’s arrival caused enough of a ripple to raise one Baker to his feet.

Said feet dragged, obviously weary.

“Not a soul, Communion,” came the greeting, delivered in a rasp. Another cove I did not recognize, though signs of a sailor’s bearing were more obvious. Either one come off Her Majesty’s ships or pretending to. “The wounded’s off to the nimgimmer, but couldn’t do much fer Botter.”

“Good man, Connie.” Communion jerked a broad, flat thumb behind him. “Take the boys and swap patrols with fresher eyes.”

Connie gave me a quick once-over, but fatigue obviously dimmed what little interest he might have had. Nodding to the larger man, he whistled a sharp note and beckoned.

The Bakers shambled off the way we’d come, and the youngest leaned against his grizzled mate. A bit of rum ought to wake him, but I knew of only one trick to soften the nightmares to come.

Once the last of their footfalls died away, I looked up into Ishmael’s grim features. “What has happened? I’ve been gone a few months and it’s as if London turned over.”

“It may have,” he rumbled. His sigh was a thunderous report. “I’m calling in favors owed, girl.”

I nodded. It would do me no credit to argue, and I’d known the risk of it when I’d decided to visit Baker ground so early in my plans. “What do you need?” When his thick lips parted, paused, and then tightened, my unease grew.

After a moment of careful thought, he said, “I don’t know. None of this suits what the street taught.”

Because I knew him, as well as I had known the streets he spoke of, I finished, “You want me to see if there’s anything odd?” I couldn’t blame the hypothesis. Ishmael had been there when my father’s alchemical serum had almost killed me. He knew I’d at least played witness to the peculiar. Simple extrapolation might suggest I knew a fair sight more than most.

His chuckle, strained and dark, surprised me. “It’s odd, no mistaking. See for yourself.” He gestured with a heavy hand, and the fog shifted around it. As though it beckoned.

Unease gripped me.

“What’s the story, Ish?”

He only waved me forward.

I shook myself as a dog might, girding what courage I had to forge through muck and soot. I did not have to walk far; the tableau placed for me could not be missed.

After the terrible scene in the Fish-Eyed Lady, I’d braced for blood and bodily fluids. A bit of relief eased my mind when I saw not a wide swath of gruesome leavings but a single individual, and this one rather more whole.

In a manner of speaking.

I’d seen corpses, even before the events that pitted me against the murdering Ripper and my violent rival. Such things were inevitable. It was always sad, a little bit grim, but one inured to such things at an early age if one had no other choice.

I had long been a student of anatomy—or at least those things that my scientific reading had led me to in regards to such. Blood splatter and torn flesh did not bother me overly much when in moderation.

Yet as I studied the splayed body left twisted upon the broken cobble, something twitched at my awareness. A truth waited for my recognition. I fumbled for it.

Ishmael lumbered into ready visibility behind me. “Not a Baker.”

“Ferryman?” I asked.

His grunt of assent was all he allowed.

Squinting, I stepped gingerly through discarded refuse and what I feared might be bits of late Ferryman, cataloguing the various wounds naked to the eye. Knife wounds, a fair few. Broken bones, judging by the concave shape of his back—likely courtesy of leaden pipes and hefts of splintered wood.

The back of his head looked fair kicked in.

A standard beating, I’d wager.

So why were my instincts demanding more?

I crouched beside the body, hands carefully tucked into my lap lest I inadvertently touch the corpse. “Your crew do this?”

“Aye.” No apology came with it, and I expected none.

A survey of the immediate surroundings brought nothing unusual to mind. This was, near as I could see, a simple beating—a Ferryman caught on Baker turf, like the poor sods near the shipyards.

I was ready to say just that when the sluggish and somewhat finer intricacies of my intelligence snapped into place. With a wary cringe, I reached out with a bare hand and very cautiously plucked at the ragged edge of his shirt. The wound beneath looked rather shallow, compared to the horror still etched in my mind. As I lifted the fabric, I asked, “Why is there not more blood?”

Ishmael said nothing; he had never been given to more words than necessary.

The material I held was stained, sure enough, but it was similar in scope to that bloody lip I’d nursed earlier. A stabbing required more bleeding, and that was a fact.

A took a closer look at the ruined mass of the back of his skull, and while the whole looked appropriately bloody and pink and gray, there should have been a veritable pool of red beneath him.

“Turn him over, would you?”

He obeyed, hunkering down beside the corpse to flip him with remarkable ease.

The front of the man was much the same as the back—stabbed, broken, not bleeding nearly as much as he should. As savage the wounding was, I stared instead at the remains of his face.

Something off there, too. What was it? I tilted my head, frowned. Utilizing my thumb by way of measurement, I calculated the length of nose and brow, and compared it to the jaw that hung slack and open.

Too large. Too square, thrusting forward more than a terrible underbite might allow. One eye had burst in its socket—a solid beating would do that and more—but the sockets themselves seemed oddly shaped.

He looked more human than not, but I wondered if I imagined the beastly characteristics.

I nearly tucked the nail of my thumb into my mouth before I remembered the grime I’d dragged it through. I chewed on the small scab upon my lower lip instead, pleased when it hurt.

The small pain created a space to think through all the carnage.

“What have you seen?” I asked, looking up at Ishmael.

He shook his head. “Some are strange, some aren’t. Always at least one in a group.” That explained the three Ferrymen I’d seen cornered in the shipyards. They’d seemed normal enough. “Takes more than one to bring them down, and never without at least one of mine taken with.”

“You’ve seen them fight?”

A solemn nod, and a flex of unmistakable muscle. He’d always been big, and while some might mistakenly call him soft at a glance, I could easily tell that the months had not been kind to that softness. His build had grown harder, like a crag etched by wear. “I’ve got no words, girl. They come, death follows. What is it?”

It was tempting to give in to wild speculation, here in the damp and dark with the smell of death hovering over it all. The truth of the matter was that this could simply be an unfortunate soul cursed by terrible breeding, and whose gift for violence rivaled most.

The Menagerie claimed a circus filled with sideshow creatures, but I knew well enough that most were an act. Thumbelina and her gentle giant, the creature pulled from a lake that no soul had ever heard of, the bearded lady and the unusual twins—each were carefully crafted for the best of show. Such false performances did not preclude the Veil from retaining those with a monstrous conscience elsewhere in its ranks. One simply had to look at Osoba or Hawke for evidence.

What I was about to propose might just get me in terrible trouble.

More than I already was, anyhow.

“I’ve a request,” I said slowly.

Ishmael only looked at me, head tilted somewhat. His patience might have hardened, but it gave me some happiness that he had not given up on our friendship. He’d always been my man, and I was relieved to know he protected Zylphia where I could not.

Despite the grime, I couldn’t help myself. I rubbed at one stinging eye with the back of my hand; the less filthy portion. “Can you go stand watch at the alley mouth? None can come back here.”

Ishmael wasn’t the sort to ask unnecessary questions, but curiosity touched his flat features. “How long?”

“Until I’m done.”

A grunt, and a countered, “You’ll call if you need?”

“I will,” I said, summoning a smile that seemed rather inappropriate, given the corpse sprawled a few paces behind me. Still, it wasn’t as if either of us were new to the concept of dead men in an empty alley. A gang was bloody work, even at the basest of the abram’s calling. Beggars by trade were not immune to the dangers of the street.

He nodded, shoulders shifting like a tide, and lumbered back the way we’d come.

My insides cramped at the knowledge of what it was I intended to attempt.

The tattoos inscribed upon my soles had hurt rather more than I’d been prepared for, but the end result was well worth the pain—or would be, Ashmore assured me, once I’d learned enough of the alchemical art to make full use of them. For now, they allowed me to open myself to the aether that fueled all things. The draw upon my reserves lessened slightly due to the base formula, but only when I remained within those Trumps I had learned.

I did not plan to do so. This would be a monumental undertaking, and the consequences severe.

Fortunately, I did not have to remove my shoes to take advantage. We’d placed the tattoos there as the easiest to conceal.

My interest in standing barefoot in the cold, gritty muck of an East End alley hovered somewhere just below none. Especially when the cobbles of said alley were like as not smeared with the grisly remains of a grotesque cadaver.

I raised my chilled fingers to my mouth and blew hard upon them. The brief warmth from my breath did little to help, but the surge of anticipatory nerves uncurling throughout my limbs softened my shivers.

I’d never done this without Ashmore to help—and even then, he’d done all the metaphorical heavy lifting.

I shifted to the body’s head, looked down at the grisly remains, then stepped back until I could frame the whole of the alley in my sight. The fog settled low and heavy around me, as though tossed away in the fight that cost this bloke his life. It moved like a living thing, and I crouched within it for a moment before I thought better of it.

I was stalling, of course. I knew that what I intended would have severe repercussions, and I intended to do it anyhow.

There was a mystery afoot, and one that could prove to be too large for the Bakers—for my friend—to handle alone.

Swallowing hard, I raised a trembling hand.

Closing my eyes, I centered myself squarely upon my feet, seeking that balance that served me so well before a tumbling. Ashmore had recognized early that the core of my strength—the well, he called it—stemmed from that same place.

Draw upon that, and I could unlock the alchemical secrets of the world.

One Trump at a time.

Or, in this case, skip three steps ahead.

My fingers sketched a symbol into the thick air, the letter
E
rotated upwards on its side. I thought it would be enough, but as my mouth shaped the word, my hand swept through the sign I’d called and drew a five-pointed star. Such instincts were a dangerous benefit to the art. “
Eon
,” I said.

The word did not fall from my lips so much as fly, and as I opened my eyes, ashes of the letter I’d drawn crumbled to dust in the shadow of a brilliant blue star.

The alley no longer squatted in darkness and fog.

If the world was created of the four basic elements—water, earth, fire and air—then aether was the fifth that gave it all life. Unlike the obvious elements, quintessence, as the alchemists preferred it, hid beneath the four.

And while they were impermanent, aether was everlasting.

This trait, this peculiarity, might allow a learned alchemist to see the patterns within the world that aether formed.

True to the last time Ashmore had helped me call upon
Eon
, the whole of my sight filled with strains of color. Blue, mostly, as that seemed to be the manner in which the human mind was meant to view such matters. Farther down the alley, Ishmael’s presence burned like a star. Those that lived did so, for academic minds suggested that aether is what the soul was made from. It animated the flesh. A body without quintessence was not an ambulatory one.

The fog burned an ugly, sickly blue, and the strains of aether within my own hands gleamed in woven skeins. Within my flesh, there were other colors. Gold, violet and the faintest filaments of crimson.

The latter were most likely remnants of my mother’s scarring—or perhaps indication of the legacy I bore as her child. Before my sobriety took hold, I had dreamt of crimson threads strangling the life from me. They had been attached to Josephine St. Croix in more ways than symbolically.

I hadn’t dreamt of such things since her destruction.

Squinting in the overly bright glow assaulting my night eyes, I turned my attention away from the fascinating display and towards the body left to rot.

If the elements that created the physical body were meant to disguise the quintessence within, than the corpse splayed upon the sheened alley cobbles was clay molded by a harsh hand. The expected gleam of blue had become a muddled shade stained by copper, and a deep red that reminded me more of festering wounds than anything particularly healthy.

The bonds of aether that united all things seemed bent around the body, oddly kinked as a cable twisted too far, and stray threads vanished into nothing at all.