The Hangman's Revolution (21 page)

“Oh,” said Malarkey brightly. “I clean forgot to mention the creepy-crawlies what seem to flourish in this sepulchral stinkhole.”

Riley felt the morbs settle on his brow. “Please, Your Majesty. I got enough on my plate.”

“Well, you won’t want nuffink on your plate when you gets an earhole full of these nasties.”

Riley did not object further, as it was obvious the particulars of these creatures were coming his way.

“Of course you’ve got your regular insectoids, only magnified by a nourishing diet of dung, which is like caviar and champagne to cock-a-roaches and beetles. I seen a beetle down here one time take on a rat, and the rat would’ve bested a dog.”

This was so ridiculous that Riley relaxed a little.

“That’s awful,” said Riley, but he must have somehow, in a slump of his shoulders perhaps, revealed a slight lessening in anxiety, which spurred His Majesty to describe greater horrors.

“And you may perhaps notice a glow betimes in a dark corner.”

“Please, King Otto, tell me not.”

“Scorpions,” continued Malarkey, relishing the word. “Luminous scorpions. They got acid in their sting. Melt a man down in a minute or three. I seen a cow once done in by sewer scorpions. Nothing left but horns and a tail.”

Riley swallowed. Surely that was the worst of it. Surely.

“But the absolute worst is the…” Malarkey said sotto voce, “…crigs.”

“Crigs!” exclaimed Riley, earning himself a cuff around the ear from his regent.

“Never say it aloud….Crigs…is like the devil. Speaking their name aloud summons ’em.”

Riley mouthed the cursed creatures’ moniker, followed by: “What are they?”

Malarkey took great delight in telling him. “They is a godless creature, half crab, half pig.”

Ten feet up, Riley would have slapped his knee and scoffed.
Crab-pigs? That ain’t even bordering on possible.

But down here.

In a tunnel.

Riley had seen strange things in a tunnel, things that would make these crigs seem like the very epitome of everyday.

There was an important question that needed asking. “These…creatures. Are they pig size or crab size?”

“Pony-sized,” said Malarkey. “At the very least.”

Malarkey navigated the turns with confidence, and as they neared Regent’s Canal, the flow rose to Riley’s knees, and he had to pick his steps carefully to avoid a dunking. Malarkey caught him by the collar once when a brick shifted under his weight.

“Whoops there, Ramlet,” he said. “This is one place where a small drop leads to the big drop, so to speak. If you do happen to submerge, shut yer gob and snort air out yer nose till you finds yer feet, to keep the cholera at bay.”

“Is that an effective preventative?” Riley asked.

“Dunno rightly,” admitted Otto. “Sounds logical, dunnit?” He glanced sharply at Riley. “I ain’t a doctor, you know. Here I is, saving your life and whatnot, and all I get for me troubles is sauce. Quit with yer questions, boy, and keep yer mind on yer feet.” Malarkey kicked one foot out in front of him, raising a scythe of water in the pool of light. “Now, look—you made me forget me grammars. Listen to me, spouting
yer
in the stead of
your.
That was three
yers
in a single breath. Figary would have a fit.”

“So he would,” said Riley, daring to insert a joke at this juncture. It was a risk that paid off, and the two of them shared a chuckle as far as the next junction, which brought them to a wide stone abutment, built not from brick but a pale molded stone, reinforced with steel rods.

“I would feel reasonably confident that we have arrived at our destination,” said Malarkey, as he rapped the dam. “Reinforced concrete supporting the arch. Sets underwater, you know. Ingenious. For most coves it would be a shame to destroy something like this, but luckily for us I have always taken a perverse pleasure in tearing down structures what have been meticulously erected by others. Some call it a character failing, I call it a leadership quality, for what were Alexander the Great or Richard the Lionheart but mighty destroyers?” He held out a hand toward Riley. “Chisel and mallet, if you please. I shall take the first crack at this barricade.”

Riley found the chisel in his satchel, beside the detonators, which were sealed in waxed paper.

“Your High Rammity,” he said, passing them over with some ceremony, which pleased Malarkey.

Malarkey smiled, stretching his door-knocker beard and mustache. “Thank you, loyal subject. Very soon the throne will be mine once more.” His gaze drifted for a moment, doubtless thinking about the very same fleece-draped throne, then he was back to business. He set the lantern down on a half-crumbled plinth, dislodging a curious rat, then instructed Riley to set out their stock of candles.

“Not in a pentagram, mind,” he warned. “We got enough odds against us as things stand.”

Riley found nooks for his candles, careful not to graze his skin on the sweating bricks, and while he cupped matchsticks against the tunnel draft, Malarkey plied the concrete wall with his chisel, which he had covered with a cloth both to avoid sparks and keep the noise down as much as possible.

“Barnabus!” he grunted as he worked. “Barnabus.”

It struck Riley that Malarkey had volunteered for first crack. That implied that second crack would be his.

And there ain’t no magic trick I can employ to pulverize concrete that I have not had the opportunity to tamper with.

“A light, a light!” shouted Malarkey. “My kingdom for a light. Shine it here, Ramlet.”

Riley grabbed the lantern and elevated it to the limit of his reach. Already Malarkey had cleared a potato-sized hole.

“This wall ain’t so very tough,” he said. “In fact, it’s rotted to putty in some spots. Milady Sewer can have that effect on even the stoniest heart. Methinks this entire construction would bust into clay on its lonesome in a few flushes’ time.”

“Wonderful!” cried Riley. “A couple of jiffies and you will be clean through, and we can climb us a nice ladder back to the sun.”

“Barnabus!” said Malarkey in a strange grunt-speak combination.

But not as strange a combination as the accursed crigs, thought Riley, keeping his eyes peeled for creatures that he would swear to not believing in.

Malarkey made such good progress with his assault on the concrete, and so intent was he on the job, that he did indeed break through the wall in a jiffy or two. Ten at the most.

Otto threw the mallet and chisel from him. “What say thee now, Master Wall? Come between Malarkey and his vengeance, shall thee?”

That is quite the bundle of
thees
, thought Riley. Would Missus Figary’s son approve of this verbal jaunt into the past? And following this, he thought: Those tools may rest where they lie, for never will my hand scrabble around on this fetid riverbed.

Malarkey rested palms on knees for a moment, then spat.

“Your turn, lad.”

Though he was the junior, Riley was entrusted with the explosives work. After all he was a magician, trained by the West End’s best, well-versed in the handling and manipulation of potions and volatiles, powder bombs, flash bangs, and other such delicates. What Chevie had given him from Farley’s bag was ahead of its time viz its effectiveness, but the principles were the same. She had gone through the contents with them earlier that day.

Plug the hole with the plastic, screw in a detonator, and then get far away. When the time comes we will set her off by radio.

A radio bomb, thought Riley. That probably ain’t what Mr. Marconi had in mind when he created all that fuss a while back with his radio Morse code.

Riley put down the lamp and reached into his bag for the small block of plastic explosive.

More powerful than a barrel of dynamite and safer to tote around than nitroglycerin.

He rolled the
plastique
between his palms until he had a sausage of destruction roughly the same size as the hole in the wall.

The Sausage of Destruction.
A good name for a penny dreadful.

Riley’s eye was good, and the sausage fit neatly into Malarkey’s groove, blending in perfectly with the concrete. With a jot of fortune, it would not be noticed on the other side.

“Presto!” he said, but Malarkey was not impressed.

“It don’t look like no great caboodle,” he sniffed. “A single cigar for all that wall? Don’t seem possible.”

“You saw what old man Farley did with a future gun,” argued Riley.

“Hmmm,” hmmmed Malarkey. “I seen something, right enough, but I ain’t swallowing that future twaddle without a good chew.”

“The proof is in the sausage, King Otto,” said Riley, pleased with his little joke.

Otto liked that one too, and his laughter echoed down the tunnel, fading as it turned the corner. But another noise was riding the tunnel, a series of regular splashings.

Footsteps.

“Crigs!” shouted Riley.

“Or sewer cannibals,” said Malarkey.

“Sewer cannibals!” hissed Riley. “You never mentioned those previous.”

“I reckoned you had enough on yer plate with the crigs.”

They stood still as statues, both hoping the splashes would take another turning and pass them by, but the exact opposite occurred. The splashes grew louder and more numerous.

“Six troops,” judged Malarkey. “And they knows where they is going.”

Again, thought Riley. How do they find us? Does the colonel have powers like they say?

“Well,” said Otto, “we ain’t gonna just illuminate ourselves all polite. Candles, boy.”

Candles. Of course. Riley stepped as quietly as he could through the murky water, tipping each candle from its perch. They landed in the sewage with a plop and hiss. Malarkey closed the shutters on the lantern.

“Now, boy, hold on to my belt and wade, I tell you. Do not lift those feet unless we are eyeballed.”

Riley did as he was told, wrapping his fingers around Otto’s belt and following his regent, both dredging their boots through the mud, feeling the slow slush of sewage around their ankles, and the soft knock of semisolids against their shins. And even though their lives were in danger, he found a small space in his mind to be disgusted.

I will never smell right again, he thought.

He must have shivered, for Malarkey whispered back to him.

“You is probably fretting over your hair. Don’t be. The fetid air is surprisingly nourishing for a cove’s locks.”

“Excellent news,” Riley whispered back. “I am much comforted.”

Riley felt Malarkey tense, and reckoned his sarcasm had been detected.

“I will box your ears later,” said King Otto.

Riley almost looked forward to it, for getting his ears boxed would mean surviving their sewer jaunt, which at the moment was far from a sure bet.

Malarkey steered them with the flow downstream, a mite from the great concrete abutment and into a bricked nook with a lower vaulted ceiling that brushed Riley’s crown as he followed Malarkey in. They huddled together inside the pitch-black corner, a whirlpool of filth swirling down a minor sinkhole between their feet.

Malarkey was forced to bend low so his door-knocker beard brushed Riley’s ear.

“I wants you to know, lad,” he whispered, “as you’ve been a decent cove to me recently, that there will be no surrendering should it come to it. Otto Malarkey ain’t fleeing
tail out
for the pleasure of a bullet to the brain pan. If we are rumbled, then I is going to bestow the Order of the Boot on these future coves, if that’s what they be. You blend in with the larger floaters and make yer way clear.”

Riley could not help but be a little indignant at the very notion that he could blend with the larger floaters.

“What?”

“Sorry,” said Malarkey contritely. “I meant to say, make
your
way clear. Don’t squeal to Figary.”

“But…”

“Shhh, now, lad. We are as the dead.”

Darkness hung over them like a blanket and in consequence, sounds appeared amplified. They heard with crystal clarity the gurgle and hiss of water flowing past their hiding place. They heard the occasional distant cluster of squeaks as a huddle of rats clicked past on their claws. And they heard the inexorable approach of trained men. There were no shouts or barging splashes, just slight rhythmic sluicing of the underground river of waste.

They are approaching from both ends of the tunnel, thought Riley. A pincer movement.

As they huddled in their corner, slowly the light revealed itself, brightening by a single shade the darkness upstream. Perhaps there was a breach in the arches, or perhaps a manhole had been left open. Either way, Riley was glad of the light, as it had come to symbolize life to him, even though he realized that they would be visible to their pursuers should they think to search the niche.

The waiting was almost unbearable. More than once the notion popped into Riley’s mind that it would be better to abandon all caution and run hell for leather to their manhole. At least then the cursed wait would be over.

I had thought that never again in this life would I be as afraid as I was with Garrick, but now that familiar dread has returned to my gut.

And then a peculiar thing happened in that dank hellhole: Riley’s fear evaporated.

I cannot possibly survive yet another brush with old Jack the Reaper, he realized. Soon I will be at the Pearlies, with my dear mum waiting there for me.

This notion made him smile, a smile he quickly extinguished in case his teeth might glow.

Just because a fellow doesn’t fear the big drop no more, doesn’t mean he welcomes it.

Now, instead of fear ruling his thoughts, Riley’s natural intelligence rose to the surface.

I will not be blending with the larger floaters, he thought. I will be fighting beside my king.

And these soldiers might be surprised at how well he could fight; after all, Riley had been trained in the martial arts by his erstwhile master: Albert Garrick.

Otto Malarkey will realize my worth before I go, he vowed silently.

The men drew nearer from both sides, until they congregated in a dark huddle directly in front of the niche. Malarkey and Riley held their breaths, tensing themselves for battle, but black as the tunnel was, their nook was blacker. Shadows upon shadows, folded in velvet layers. Even a bat would pass them by. They could not be seen from beyond spitting distance, and the first one to venture inside that radius would pay the price for it.