Unraveled (39 page)

“I owe the knowledge to Robbie Barnstable.” Smite scrubbed his hand over his face. “I owe him a debt of thanks, it appears.”

“Why?” A glum sigh came from the other side of the room. “We don’t have a hairpin.”

Smite’s hand slid to his waistcoat pocket. He cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said. “I do.”

“You use hairpins?” The disbelief was apparent in Dalrymple’s voice.

Smite pulled the piece of metal out. “Of course not. This one belongs to Miss Darling.”

He stood and shuffled forward, finding the wall with his hands.

“You have Miss Darling’s hairpin in your pocket? What an astonishingly fortuitous coincidence.”

Smite continued his search for the door in the dark. “As it turns out, I’ve been carrying it for two days.”

“Two days? How does that happen?”

Smite sighed and looked up at the dark ceiling. “Little fairies hide it on my person when I’m not looking,” he snapped.

“Um. Truly?”

“Of course not.” He found the edge of the door. Felt for the handle, the keyhole. It seemed a staggeringly small thing upon which to rest his hopes. But he straightened the pin. “I have it on me because I put it in my pocket this morning,” he said.

He slid the metal into the lock and felt around gently. There were supposed to be…pins. Or tumblers. Something like that. He prodded about.

“But
why
do you put it in your pocket?” Dalrymple persisted.

“Pure sentimentality, I’m afraid.” He felt a resistance against the metal in his hand. He pushed gently, and then a tiny click sounded. A shot of jubilation ran through him. So that was what Robbie had meant by pins.

“Sentimentality? You?” Dalrymple sounded surprised.

Smite maneuvered the pin in the lock, and heard a depressing clunk as the pin he’d moved fell back into place. “Damn.”

“Truly,” Dalrymple persisted behind him. “That’s…downright romantic. I’m astonished.”

“Why?” Smite prodded the lock and found the ridge of the pins once more—one, two, three, four of them. This was going to be harder than he’d thought. “I’m human, same as you.”

The first pin slipped before he could get the second one down. Smite scowled at the door and ignored Dalrymple’s latest sally in favor of the lock. There was nothing but the metal, the hunch of his back as he leaned against the door. He moved one pin, and then another. He was working on the third when—

“You admit that you’re human?”

Clunk-clunk
. The pins slipped once more. Smite rested his head against the wall, gritting his teeth in frustration. “Winnie,” he said, “really. Shut up.”

“Oh. Am I distracting you?”

“No, but it’s convenient to lay the blame at your door.” Smite bent down to the lock once more. He had no sense of the passage of time in that dark room. It took long enough that his hands cramped. His back ached from stooping. The pins slipped again and again. Finally, he managed to trigger them all together. The lock clicked, and Smite let out a breath and opened the door.

A faint, pearly gray light filtered ahead of him. He turned to Dalrymple. The man was looking at him, his head cocked to one side.

“What the devil are you looking at?”

Dalrymple gestured at the hairpin in Smite’s hand. Smite followed his gaze. In the faint light, Smite could make out the two metal prongs, one bent now, both held together by a bit of wrought metal.

“You’re carrying a flowered hair pin,” Dalrymple whispered. “It’s like you’re positively replete with sentiment. I can’t make you out.”

“Can’t you?” Smite slipped the bent object back into his pocket. “I wouldn’t need a sentimentality quota if I had no sentiment to begin with.”

“You just like appearing omniscient.” Dalrymple stumbled forward.

Smite followed him. They found themselves in another, larger room. The faint light they had detected trickled out in a thin line in front of them. Smite fumbled forward. “There’s another door,” he reported. “It’s locked, too.”

“Damn it.” Then, louder: “Damn me. Turner, there’s someone else in here.”

Smite could hear the sound of breathing now that Dalrymple mentioned it. He’d been trying not to think of sounds; when he did, he noticed that added to the murmured noise of water rising was the soft patter of falling raindrops. He felt faintly uneasy.

“You there. Are you awake?” Dalrymple spoke loudly.

There was a long pause. The breathing hitched.

“Turner, who is he? Why isn’t he answering us?”

Smite tamped down his uneasiness. “We come across a strange person on a ship I’ve never set foot upon. It’s too dark to see a hand’s breadth beyond my face. You must really believe in my omniscience to direct such a question to me.”

Dalrymple let out an exasperated sigh. “Did you ever consider saying ‘I don’t know’ in response, or would that have been too polite?”

“It would have been untruthful,” Smite said. “I
do
know who this is. This is George Patten.”

A gasp escaped the man, and Smite knew that he’d guessed aright.

I
T TOOK
M
IRANDA FAR
too long to travel across town to Smite’s home, and more valuable minutes trying to pick the lock to his house. After a few haphazard tries, Jeremy pushed Miranda aside and managed it with a little too much finesse.

Ghost greeted them at the door. If he had been a proper sort of watchdog, he would have barked his head off and bitten them. Instead, he was delighted to see Miranda, whom he knew quite well—and equally happy to see Jeremy, whom he had never met. Miranda found his lead and took him outside. Together, they walked quickly to the alley where she had last seen Smite waiting with Dalrymple. Ghost snuffled around happily. Getting the scent, Miranda supposed, although the behavior seemed indistinguishable from anything else she had ever seen him do before.

“Find him,” Miranda commanded Ghost. “Find your master.”

It seemed like a good idea. He’d done it before, hadn’t he?

“Are you serious?” Jeremy demanded.

“Completely.”

As if to utterly undermine her claim to authority, Ghost raised his leg against a building. If this had been a story, Miranda thought, Ghost would have sensed their worry. His doggy ears would have perked up. And his paws would have eaten the pavement as he unerringly tracked down Smite.

But it wasn’t a story, and Ghost wasn’t that dog. Instead, the animal led them on a roundabout path from the alley, stopping to sniff here and there—and once to snag some unknown treat, which he crunched noisily between his jaws. He brought them down alleys, behind buildings, and went twice around one great square, before trotting off down a street.

“Are you sure he knows what he’s doing?” Jeremy asked.

She frowned. “He’s done it before.” He seemed to be doing it, however, on his own schedule. “Ghost, do you know what you’re doing?”

The dog’s ears flicked back. It might have been a yes. It might have been a no. She sighed. It was probably the doggy equivalent of “I don’t speak English.”

“Lord.” Jeremy gave a disapproving shake of his head. “Relying on a dog.”

Still, they moved slowly toward the Floating Harbour, and then over the Prince Street Bridge. Ghost snuffled his way around one of the dry docks, happily—obliviously—bounding along while Miranda’s worry ate at her insides. She could sense the minutes slipping past. Every quarter-hour was a risk. Every time she heard clock-bells strike in the distance, the possibility that she might not see Smite alive again grew. How long would it take Parford to raise a militia?

For Ghost, it was nothing but a game. Surely he would sense if his master was hurt. Surely, through some sort of canine magic…

But no. This was Ghost. He didn’t have canine magic. Right now, he was more interested in leaving his mark on a lamppost along the water’s edge.

“Go,” Miranda said, a lot more forcefully this time.

Ghost ignored her. He sniffed once, and then turned in a lazy circle to face the other direction.

The dog was looking straight at the docks, so fixedly that Miranda was certain she would see a squirrel scampering along the stone walls that bordered the harbor. But no. There was only a ship that seemed all too familiar. The
Great Britain
loomed before them.

It was at that moment that it began to rain. It had been cold before, but the rain brought with it a chill from on high. Every drop felt like ice against her skin.

Ghost whined and lowered himself to the ground, where he gave a lazy yawn.

Miranda exhaled. Angry, frustrated tears threatened to well out. The wind whipped around her, driving cold droplets of rain into her face. She balled her fists. It
couldn’t
end like this.

Jeremy tapped her shoulder.

“What?” The word snapped out more harshly than she intended.

He set his finger to his lips lightly and then pointed. High on the deck of the
Great Britain,
a dark figure paced to the edge and looked over.

“A night watchman,” she said.

He shook his head. “Not with that lantern.”

“What lantern?”

“Precisely. That hood hides it, except when you see it directly on. Watch, and you’ll see the flash when he turns. A night watchman wants to be seen. He doesn’t.”

“But why would there be someone on the…ooh.” The answer was too obvious. If she needed to keep someone in private, where would she go? People in the slums were too close-packed; the Patron could never keep the location secret. Too many people would have known they were about. But where could one hide a prisoner?

Aboard a ship that was abandoned because it was too large to fit out of the locks.

“What do we do now?” Miranda asked.

“What do you think? I march on board and act like I know what I’m doing.” Jeremy strode forward.

Miranda followed. A rope ladder had been cast over the side of the ship. Jeremy caught one end and scampered up. Miranda climbed after him more slowly. When she reached the top, instead of starting down the middle of the deck as Jeremy did, she crouched off to the side.

The deck of the ship was punctuated by six great masts. In the middle, the dark, silent chimney of the funnel rose. And all around them were…were those things called hatches on a ship? Robbie would have known. Miranda shook her head.

There were two men on board, not just the one she’d seen earlier. Their burly forms huddled together; they watched Jeremy’s approach in tense anticipation.

Jeremy had a confident swagger to his step, and a commanding, cheerful ring to his voice.

“You’ve been expecting me, I imagine.”

“Sir.”

“Where are they, then?”

A murmured answer, too indistinct for Miranda to make out. Then Jeremy’s response floated back to her. “No. No need for any of that. Leave me the keys and get on with you. I’ll take it from here.”

Miranda held her breath and shrank back into the darkness on the edge of the ship. The men glanced at one another. Surely they had to hear the beating of her heart. But Jeremy betrayed not the slightest uneasiness. He held out his hand.

“The keys,” he said. “And the lantern. You know the Patron’s always intended to let them go. There will be riots if we don’t.”

Slowly the man extended his arm. Miranda heard a jingle of metal.

“Now away with you. You don’t want Lord Justice seeing your faces. He has a memory like a steel trap. He’ll never forget you.”

The watchman shook his head hastily, and the men decamped. Jeremy stood in the center of the ship, waiting, tossing the keys in the air. After the other men had disappeared, Miranda crept out to join him. The rain had turned to freezing slush. She could scarcely feel her hands through her gloves.

“Come on,” Jeremy said. “We haven’t much time.”

Chapter Twenty-four

T
HE SECOND LOCK AT
the end of the room where Smite had found Patten proved harder to undo. The dim hint of light that filtered under the doorway made it all the more difficult. It made Smite want to rely on his eyes, when all he could see was shadow. Trapped with water nearby—he was glad to have something to do, just to distract himself.

He’d bent, crouching at the door, for the better part of half an hour. But it wasn’t the sound of pins falling into place that made him straighten and swear under his breath. It was the soft rhythmic tread of footfalls.