Shanghai Sparrow (31 page)

“So what’s the poor lady supposed to do? Live in the stables?”

“I was thinking a boarding house somewhere near, but then I won’t be able to see her. It’ll have to be the rooms in the East Wing. I had a look. A couple of them are all right.”

“You don’t give up, do you?”

“The only time to give up is when going on will lose you more than it’ll get you.”

“And you’re so sure it won’t.”

“No. No, I ain’t. But it’s my
mother
, Beth. She’s been in that place for all these years, like being sent to prison when she ain’t even done nothing wrong, just because that bastard Uncle James wanted her out the way. I got to
try,
at least.”

Beth was quiet for a long time, turning a spanner over and over in her hands. “That could have been me,” she said at last. “Couldn’t it?”

“I didn’t think. I suppose.”

“I was inconvenient, and a nuisance, and if I hadn’t come here, that’s where I’d be, or somewhere like it. At least here I get a chance to learn something. If I’d been sent to Bedlam, I don’t know what sort of state I’d be in. Your poor mama. I wonder how she’s managed.”

“Oh, Mama always could make a lot with a little,” Eveline said. “If it hadn’t been for Uncle James... she’ll have managed, she always did.” Eveline smiled and leaned against the wall in the sun, imagining how Mama would open her arms and pick Evvie up and hug her, and Evvie would do whatever it was Holmforth wanted, for however long it was. She would have somewhere for Mama to stay, an apartment and an allowance, and she could look after Mama and keep her safe. And one day there would be that pension, and she would make damn sure it didn’t disappear like Papa’s had.

Charlotte. The smile dropped away, the sun chilled. How would she ever tell Mama about what had happened to Charlotte? What would she say?

“
N
IHAO
, L
ADY
S
PARROW
.”

She eyed Liu. He was a trickster like her, she felt it in her bones. So why did she also feel in her bones that she could trust him? It didn’t make sense, and she knew it. Still...

“Thank you,” she said. “I never asked for the hat, though.”

“It will suit you a great deal better than it suited Ma Pether.”

“’Sif I’d ever dare wear it. What if she saw me?”

“Perhaps you can wear it somewhere other than London? There are other cities in the world.”

“Yes, I know. I’m going to one.”

“Really?” he said, but she got the feeling he already knew.

“Wish you’d tell me what’s going on.”

“I am. I have. You interest me. I think, perhaps, we are not unalike, Lady Sparrow. Scavengers at the edges, both, yes?”

“I don’t know what a scavenger is.”

“Collectors of crumbs, and other interesting and useful items discarded by the careless. You need another task performed.”

“Maybe.”

“Come, let us be honest with each other.” He whisked his feet, shod in soft black shoes, up underneath him and sat neatly perched on the desk, with his legs crossed, propped his elbows on his thighs and looked at her over his linked hands. “You are testing me.”

“And if I am?”

“Then I admire both your caution – and your daring. What is it you want?”

“Can you get to London?”

“Oh, you would be surprised at the places I can get to.”

“Then I need something organised. Someone got out of the way.”

His narrow slanted brows drew up, and his mouth down. “I see,” he said. “How has this unfortunate person offended you?”

“What? I don’t mean got rid of! What sort of girl do you think I am?”

“I am glad to find that you are
not
that sort of girl.”

“Would you do it?” she said. “If I asked?”

He shook his head at her, not as though he were saying no, but as though he were disappointed.

“I’m not gonna ask,” she said.

“Making statements like that is risky,” he said.

“Who’s listening?”

“Well,
I
am.”

She felt as though he were dancing with her, somehow, and while it was interesting, it wasn’t getting her anywhere. “Are you going to help me or not?”

“And my reward?”

Now she felt on more familiar ground. “That depends on what you want.”

“Wouldn’t money be usual?”

“Yes. But I en’t got any – well, not much – and you’re not usual.”

He grinned, pleased. “A favour, then. A favour of equal worth and equal risk, no more.”

Eveline chewed her lip, looking at him. “What’s risk to me ain’t the same as what’s risk to you,” she said. “If I get chucked out of here, I can’t walk into a good-paying job like you can.”

“Are you sure?” He said. “Very well. I am a good evaluator of risk, and of fairness. But if you think what I ask of you is unfairly balanced with what you ask of me, then I will withdraw it. Fair?”

“Fair.”

Eveline left the room still smiling. Something about dealing with Liu was like a sharp breeze. He made her feel more awake.

E
VELINE CLUTCHED THE
edges of her cloak so hard her fingers cramped, waiting for Holmforth’s coach to appear.

She wore a dress of black silk with a modest crinoline, which, while uncomfortable and inconvenient, provided a remarkable amount of storage, so long as one arranged things properly. Miss Cairngrim had provided it, with many frowning reminders that it did not belong to her, but to the school. Eveline, thinking of Ma Pether and her store of costumes, wondered what it would be like to have smart clothes that were actually her own.

She had also been provided with a Gladstone bag that smelled of damp. It held food for the journey, a change of under-things and, under a false bottom that she had installed, some things that were too delicate to risk hanging under the crinoline.

The carriage clopped and crunched up the drive, and Holmforth stepped out. He tipped his hat to Miss Cairngrim, who was standing on the steps, took Eveline’s bag and handed her into the carriage.

She sat herself opposite him, arranging her skirts carefully, and watched as he opened the bag and examined the contents, presumably checking to see if she’d packed enough to run away with. She considered making a remark about gentlemen who showed so much interest in ladies’ underwear, but didn’t. She needed to seem as compliant as possible today.

“I think we can do rather better for luncheon than – let me see – what appears to be a rather stale currant bun and an apple that has been badly stored. Were you afraid I wouldn’t feed you?”

“I’ve spent most of my life hungry, Mr Holmforth. Plenty of times that would have seemed like manna from heaven, that bun.”

“Yes, I’m sure. Well, if you do not do anything foolish, you will find yourself adequately provided for and will not need to hoard like a little squirrel afraid of the winter.”

Afraid?
Eveline thought. Squirrels weren’t afraid of the winter – they were sensible. If they didn’t store food, they died. Those were the words of a man who’d never been nose-to-nose with starvation.

Trees meandered past the windows, eventually giving way to stretches of farmland, the harvest long gathered, the fields now brown and empty under the grey sky. Eveline found herself mentally comparing the carriage with the
Sacagawea.
It might be more comfortable, but it was so much slower!

She sneaked glances at Holmforth, who was reading a small book bound in black hide. Now she knew what to look for, his heritage was clear – in his face, in his narrow, long-fingered hands and faintly iridescent nails (which he kept so short the skin around them looked raw), in his skin.

Well, well. Whether or not it was a lever remained to be seen. So far as she could tell, he made no effort to hide it, and it couldn’t have done him much harm; he was well dressed, well-educated and worked for the government.

It probably didn’t mean much at all, then. Except to remind her to be wary, as though she needed that.

I
T SEEMED TO
take forever to get to London, and even longer once they were in the mess of streets.

London seemed, in her absence, to have become busier and noisier, to have been packed full with people and vehicles thrown all together and scrambling about, like a bucket of crabs. Even Watford had not been so loud, or so crowded, or so thick with smoke. The sky was nearer brown than grey, and a yellow pall lay over everything. The air tasted heavy and bitter.

But still Eveline felt a surge of pleasure at being back. This was her territory, the place she’d made her own, where she’d been Evvie the Sparrow, little unnoticeable Evvie who could get in anywhere and nip away with the prize before anyone had a chance to notice it was gone.

And there were no Folk in London. Apart from Holmforth, of course; and maybe other half-Folk like him. There were people in London of every other shape and size, after all.

“Here,” he said, as the carriage drew to a halt. “This is the hotel.”

It was a small, discreet place with a green-painted door. It smelled faintly of polish and carbolic soap. Eveline, out of habit, assessed the paintings in the lobby – not bad, though not fashionable – and the pen-set on the desk. Two crystal inkwells in a rosewood stand with a pair of silver pens, worth a few bob, together or separate.

Holmforth spoke a few murmured words with the man seated behind the pen-set.

There was no porter. They stepped into the lift, Holmforth pulled the brass gates closed behind them, and they rattled and creaked their way to the top floor.

Eveline’s room was, by her standards, luxurious, with a thick quilt on the bed and a fire already lit. She stretched her hands to it, closing her eyes with pleasure as heat tingled through her fingers. Then she removed her few things from the top layer of the Gladstone bag, dropped them on the bed, put her cloak back on and was waiting when Holmforth knocked on her door.

“Are you sure you need that with you?” he said, looking at the bag.

“I thought I should have something to carry things in. You going to carry it for me, squire?”

“Don’t be impertinent.”

Eveline hid a smile as he marched ahead of her down the stairs.
Full of yerself, aren’t you, Mr Holmforth? Well, you don’t know as much as you think you do.

As they left, a shadow detached itself from the mouth of a nearby alleyway and followed them.

T
HE STREET THEY
eventually came to was lined with small shops. From the workshops behind them came the sounds of battering hammers, clangs and thuds and the hiss of white heat meeting water; the reek of sweat and the bitter tang of hot metal.

“You should find what you need here, if anywhere,” Holmforth said. “I need not remind you to be sensible, and not to attempt to run away?”

“I’m not planning on going anywhere, Mr Holmforth.”

“Go on, then.”

Eveline made for the first of the shops, and looked at the window for a long time. There were tools and bits of pipe and things she had no names for on display. She made as if to go in, and shook her head, and went to the next shop.

She had seen enough mediums and mentalists to know that you didn’t make it look too easy. You had to show that you were
working
at this mysterious thing that the audience couldn’t understand, that it took effort, and couldn’t just be plucked out of thin air.

The next shop contained a display of cogwheels in two dozen sizes, from one bigger than her head to one smaller than her smallest fingernail, laid out on black velvet as though they were fine jewels. The next, bits that looked similar to some of the things she had seen Beth using, wheels and levers that must belong to steam-cars and such.

She hesitated at the cog shop. She was aware of Holmforth watching her, like someone waiting for a dog to learn a trick.

She went in, and Holmforth followed. After whispered consultation, she picked out two cogs about the size of her palm and one tiny one.

Without discussion or argument, he paid.

They went back to the other shop, the one full of levers and tubes and dials. Eveline forced herself to focus. Spent minutes staring at a case full of dials, frowned, and finally picked one – mainly because the hands were finely tooled and the numbers very smartly painted in black and gold. She touched nothing herself, only told Holmforth which one she wanted, in a whisper.

She became aware that the shopkeeper perched on a stool behind the counter, a small grey wrinkled man with a long nose, who put her in mind of an elderly rat, was regarding them over half-moon glasses with a scowl of suspicion.

He beckoned his assistant, a lanky young man with very red hair and a fancy waistcoat, muttered to him and pointed in their direction.

The young man began to walk towards them.

Eveline felt a ripple of anxiety creep up from her ankles. What had set him off? They both looked respectable enough, surely? It couldn’t be Holmforth. Was she losing her touch? Had her time at the school rubbed the sheen off her ability to fade into the wallpaper until she wanted to be noticed?