Tarnished (2 page)

As I reached the West India docks, I paused in the shadow of the alley. My hair, usually tightly pinned, released tendrils to stick to my forehead and cheeks around the goggles. Given the dampness lingering in tonight’s gritty miasma, I likely had soot and probably worse smudged across my face.

No ferryman in his right mind would give the likes of me a lift above the drift. No ferryman, that is, but the caustic captain of the
Scarlet Philosopher
.

A rather pretentious name for a rotting canoe.

Captain Abercott was a man who had never set foot in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, despite his claimed designation. Nor would he, I imagined, unless it were for a gallows in his honor. But he was also a greedy man with a working sky ferry, so he suited my purposes nicely.

I stripped off the protective goggles and attached respirator, blinking furiously as the stench stung my eyes, and jammed them into the tooled leather pouch hanging from my hip. I had brought no change of clothes, intending to return home much earlier than five of the clock.

If I were careful, and as long as I kept to the quiet paths, I might get mistaken for a manservant in the dark.

Around me, I could all but feel London coming to life. The shop owners would soon be setting out stalls and goods, and the workers would be trudging to the factories. I needed to hurry, and as I stepped out of the shadows and strode for the
Scarlet Philosopher
, I hoped that God was feeling kind this morning.

Once upon a time, the West India docks had been the stopping point for ships sailing the Thames. Mostly merchant vessels, slave vessels and the occasional secretive pleasure barge, each owing a tithe or employed by the East India Trading Company.

I had never seen the docks as they were then. I only knew them as they were now: mostly empty at this time of morning, the water lapping thick and befouled against the wooden supports. Slowly, the dockworkers would begin to gather; the poor and destitute eager for the threepence earned for an hour’s worth of work.

A docker could garner sixpence for an hour above the drift, plus extra if they worked fast, but the unfortunate men below couldn’t find a way up as long as they remained poor. The divide was horridly real, and fodder for rumors of strike.

A tragic conundrum all the way around, but not, at the moment, my concern.

On higher ground, well out of the reach of the black tides, the ferries rested on iron frames, flat bottoms nestled securely in place. Lines held them as they would any other boat, but they were more for show and I suspect a bit of nautical pride than real necessity. Even the sails and rigging flown proudly from a few of the more ostentatious boats were superfluous.

The boats were entirely mechanical in nature, designed to rise as coal burned in the furnace to produce steam. Enough steam would have to build up to power the mechanism that made the ship’s innards churn. They would sink again as the steam was released; a less complex and yet more unstable version of the aether engines that powered the ships in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.

They were air vessels, albeit ponderous things that traveled no faster than the speed of a horse and carriage on promenade. And only up or down. But they were one of only two methods to travel between London above the drift and the miserable London below.

The other involved attempting to scale the enormous mechanical stilts that lifted London proper above the fog banks, and this often ended in little more than a long scream and red mess. I’d only ever met one man who’d
almost
done it. His amputated legs told a fable more grisly than any penny dreadful.

Lucky for me, that meant a greedy bloke like Captain Abercott would man a barely sky-worthy boat and accept whatever extra coin at whatever cost. He’d expected an early morning, and his stack was one of three already blowing a wisp of white steam into the cool air.

No sign of him, however. I frowned.

“Hello?” I called. My raspy voice flitted through the heavy fog, wrapped in cobwebs and swallowed. “Are you there, Captain?”

“ ’Oo be you?” I heard, barely a guttural growl from somewhere beyond the railing.

“Your usual fare.” I had to swallow hard, clearing my throat as it prickled uncomfortably. Damn this fog. One could always tell an upsider from the constant throat-clearing.

“We ain’t ready t’leave,” returned the disembodied voice, sour and dismissive.

I shook my head. I wouldn’t play this game; not tonight. Today, rather. Blast it.

“I’ve coin for you,” I said, my customary greeting as I traversed the narrow gangplank without permission. Wasn’t it bad luck to step on board a ship without it? Maybe, but I didn’t care. “And more,” I added meaningfully, “if you keep quiet and move quicker than this.”

Although I wasn’t sure he could. I stopped at the top of the plank, gloved hands braced on the railing, and stared at the mess in front of me. Rope lay in chaotic coils across the small deck; sails had been left slung haphazardly across timbers I wasn’t sure weren’t needed for some function of the ferry.

A clatter to my left drew my eyes, and I narrowed an accusing gaze at the tattered man oozing out of the narrow door that led to belowdecks.

Captain Abercott was not a thin man, given more to portly indulgences. Nevertheless, the man was unusually spry. He lacked any hair at the top of his head, but made up its loss by a fine tuft of dingy white fringe that stuck out like a drooping wreath from beneath a jaunty sailor’s cap. His winter overcoat was patched, his fustian breeches tucked into boots more suited to the life of a pirate than a ferryman. And the flask in his hand winked as he raised it in my direction. His version of recognition.

“You are drunk,” I observed. Wryly, too. It wasn’t the first time, but I always hoped it’d be the last. Drink kept his memory fuzzy, but it did nothing for the steadiness of his boat. Or my innards.

Red-rimmed eyes glanced up to the sky, though not a trace of it could be seen through the fog, and he smiled. He had, much to my dismay, four teeth missing. Just two nights ago, it had only been three. “An’ painless, thank y’fer askin’,” he slurred.

I stepped onto the deck, well away from chapped, grasping hands. My un-bustled backside had been fondled one too many times already, thank you, and the good captain had made a lasting impression once. “So I see. Can you fly?”

“Sure as a chicken,” he assured me, puffing his barrel chest out. Though I noted that he had to seize the door frame to do so.

I cleared my throat. “Chickens most assuredly can
not
fly.”

“Ah,” he said, staggering across the deck. “Ah. But ’as anyone tol’ em that?”

“Dear God in heaven.”

My options were few. As Abercott made his stumbling away across the deck of the small boat, I thought it over. Try another ferryman, one possibly less soused? But also more likely to flap his gums at any passenger with a bit of gossip to tell.

Or?

I tucked my fingers into the front of my special-made corset. Fabricated of waxed canvas, it was slatted with the thinnest metal I could possibly find and of the same color as my plain woolen shirt. A long, thin blade could be inset into the plating at the front and the back. My modest design had protected me from some of the unfortunate injuries I could have received while pursuing meaner quarry, and caught more than one particularly vile ruffian off guard.

And it was a gem for hidden pockets. The smallest of them just by my hip gave way, releasing my small brass pocket watch. The engraving had long since worn away, but the gears inside ticked faithfully as I opened the facing.

Twenty minutes after Big Ben’s last bell. I would barely make it home as it was.

I seized my courage in both hands and prayed to all the gods of modern science that the ferry, uncomplicated even by my standards, would fly itself. “Then please,” I said as I sidled to one of a half dozen seats nestled along the rail. “Take us up, Mr. Ab—”

He turned on me so suddenly, black-grimed shovel held in one filthy hand and reddened eyes wild, that I startled, tripped over the trailing edge of a loose rope, and sprawled across the thinly padded bench.

I may have delivered Cummings with my hide intact, but my dignity would take a beating now. Laughter bubbled to my lips, and I sucked in a burning breath, felt my ribs tighten beneath the corset stays. Now was not the time to show my amusement at the bloated sot threatening me.

I could send him headfirst over his own bloody railing, but I wouldn’t. Because he was, despite appearances, kinder than I had any right to expect, and it was
his
ferry, after all.

“Captain,” I corrected myself. “Of course I meant Captain. Your pardon, sir.”

“Hmph.” Abercott turned again to his shoveling, and the flames leapt in wild orange and searing blue. The trickle of steam from the stack slowly became a banner, and the old man spryly ambled over the deck debris to throw off the unnecessary lines.

I held my breath when I could, turning my face to the heat given off from the furnace, and muffled my coughing against my gloved hands when I thought Abercott wasn’t paying attention. I could have easily just put on my respirator, but such things invited attention. Speculation.

In the five years I’d played the role of collector, I’d learned a most interesting fact. To wit, those average folk who lived below the drift treated collectors as just another facet of an already dangerous life.

Above the drift, collectors were something else entirely. Generally speaking, those gentlemen who claimed a collector’s occupation—I thought of them as Society collectors, gents who dabbled for the fun of it—were considered only
fashionably
dangerous. Popular, and certainly exciting. Invited to all the soirees for that certain element of mystery.

Nobody wanted a collector on business in their home, so the Society collectors rarely seemed to work. Merchants, traders and the occasional respectable ferry captain were their targets; folk not powerful enough to threaten a well-to-do lifestyle. There were, as far as I was aware, no
real
collectors among them. Except for myself, of course, and certainly no one knew that.

The ferry shuddered, and I gripped the edge of the seat as it lurched like a drunken cat. Whether it was the reliability of a well-oiled ship or whatever angels I had entertained, the ride up was as uninteresting as I could have hoped. The ferry rose slowly, steam hissing in caustic chorus from an array of tarnished copper tubes as Captain Abercott worked the multitude of brass and copper levers at the wheel.

As the ferry broke through the fog drift, I groaned. The typically cloudy sky had lightened, streaked with pink and wicked purple as the sun rose above the horizon. Blinking hard against the sudden surge of light, almost painful after the noxious shadows below, I inhaled the clearer air gratefully while the sotted captain navigated his floating brick into place at the upper docks.

I could not exit the ship fast enough.

Several shillings lighter, to say nothing of the indent I’m sure my white-knuckled grip left on the rail, I hurried away from the curious eyes of the dockworkers already well into their labor. Several sky ships had come in while I’d been below.

Nothing I could pry into now.

I stopped on the edge of the wharf district and surveyed the road ahead of me. London above the drift was vastly different from London below. Picturesque, even, with its staggered silhouette framed in the dawn’s rosy hue.

Decades ago, the Queen’s Parliament had gathered to address ongoing complaints from the peerage forced to endure the black smoke pouring from the factory districts. It was the very beginning of Her Majesty’s reign, and the Queen had definite
ideas
. At the end of the debate, Parliament chose not to move London or force the factories to relocate. Instead, the municipal decision to raise London above the fog brought the finest minds from all across the world to bid on the project.

It was a minor German baron and his son who’d won the right. Almost four years after the bidding ended, the plans were completed and construction finally began. London was set on its collective ear as whole districts were cleared for construction. Refugees flocked to the river banks.

Baron Irwin Von Ronne went mad before the first stilts were finished, but his brilliant son took over the project and completed it rather more quickly than anyone had expected. The end result was the cleaving of London’s well-to-do from its poor, its immigrants and those who couldn’t maintain appearances. Historical buildings and those belonging to the peerage were raised by mighty steel stilts, cranked high by accordion girders and leaving channels between districts spanned by attractive walking bridges.

It was as if select bits of London now hovered like mountain peaks amidst a sea of fog. I could run, keeping to the bridges. It would garner suspicion, of course. No one would recognize the raven-haired servant dashing madly across the cobbles, but they
would
talk if that servant slipped into the home of the mad doctor’s unmarried daughter.

Alternately, I could flag down a gondolier; those men who guided the smaller sky boats along the fog canals. This would involve speaking with another thinking person, and no matter how respectable the gondolier, I knew for a fact that many of them gathered for drinks and worse. I didn’t need the gossip from that angle, either.