Shanghai Sparrow

by Gaie Sebold

  Beth shivered.

  “We’d best pick this lot up.” Eveline sighed. “There’s still a lot to do. I hope Liu’s all right.”

  “I’m sure he will be,” Madeleine said. “Come on, girls.”

  “’FANYONE ASKS,” EVELINE said, “We came to visit Mr Holmforth. Beth, you were coming out here to marry him.”

  “What? Me?”

  “No, all right, I was. Mama, you’re here to check he’s respectable. Anyway, he took us out for a little shooting party, right? Pheasants and such. But he heard a ruckus at that house, and sent us back to the city to be safe and he and the driver ran in, all heroic-like, to check what was happening. After that we don’t know because we was being proper ladies and doing as we was told.” Eveline realised Madeleine was looking at her with a kind of troubled wonder. “Mama... I’m...”

  “You’re so quick, Eveline. So quick and clever. I’m very proud of you,” she said fiercely. “Very proud.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will it work?” Beth said.

  “I don’t know. But apart from the buyer, shouldn’t be anyone who knew Forbes-Cresswell was coming here. If I’d had a thought in my head, I’d have asked Liu to take the...” – she glanced at her mother – “the wretch with him, but it’s too late now.”

  They took the vehicle that Forbes-Cresswell’s buyer had driven in, for fear the other would be recognised. It was at least as splendid as the Consulate’s, with seats lined in glossy red leather (which, fortunately, hid the bloodstains). Beth took the wheel, with the former driver’s cap pulled over her curls. “You know how to make this thing go?” Eveline said.

  “It’s a standard steam car,” Beth said. “Except they’ve done something clever with the boiler, and some other... oh, I’d like to take her apart, have a proper look...”

  “Not until we’re back at the hotel, all right?” Eveline said.

  By the time they reached the city, Eveline was moving in a grey fog of weariness. The noise and colour and busyness woke her up a little; she stared out of the car, watching the parade of humanity. So many faces. The swaying women with their strange little pig-trotter feet. The brilliantly gilded sedan chairs, their occupants hidden away like jewels in a case. The rickshaws with their scrawny haulers, bowed under the weight of flush-faced, button-straining European merchants or ladies like overblown bouquets in their fine linens and lace, protecting their porcelain complexions with parasols.

  It was so like London. The faces of the poor were mainly Chinese, yes... but they were at least as ragged, and as thin, as those in Limehouse. London had no rickshaws, but it had its cabbies, its crossing-sweepers, and its hostlers, easing the passage of the better-off. The backstreets of Shanghai carried the rich-sweet stench of opium, not the raw-alcohol reek of cheap gin... but they all smelled of shit and misery.

  Would the Folk actually be worse? Eveline thought, watching a rickshaw driver ducking away from the blows of a European’s heavy silver-headed cane.

  Maybe not. But the Folk you couldn’t fight, or at least, not yet.

  England

  “SO... WHAT HAPPENS now?” Beth said, as they rolled away from the aerodrome. The buyer’s automobile was a lot more comfortable than the Sacagawea. “The school?”

  “No. ’Snot safe,” Eveline said. “I reckon Forbes-Cresswell kept everything pretty quiet, but there might have been someone who knew what he was up to, who’ll come looking. And they may be looking for Mama, too. We need somewhere to hide out for a bit. We’ve got our papers, and we’ve got a bit of money.” An examination of Holmforth’s hotel room had provided their passports and some bank notes; Forbes-Cresswell’s pockets and his Consulate rooms had provided more money and, fortunately, the notes. Getting into the Consulate had been easy enough. Eveline shook her head at the memory. If she wanted to keep people out of a place, she’d do things differently.

  “What are you thinking?” Madeleine said.

  “I’m thinking that maybe a school isn’t a bad idea.”

  “A school? Eveline, you can’t be planning to set up as a school teacher, surely?”

  “Why not? There’s more’n enough girls could do with someone to teach ’em mechanics, and Etherics, and all that. There’s more and more machines, these days. Why shouldn’t women get a look in? You’re both better at it than any man I’ve known. And me, well, there’s things I can teach them, too. And maybe...” Eveline grinned to herself. “Maybe I know a couple other people would like the job.”

  “But setting up a school – where will we get the money?” Madeleine said. “And we can’t do it under our own names, surely?”

  “You leave that to me,” Eveline said. “I know people. We’ve got papers, we can easily get ones with different names on, all proper and nice. As for money...”

  “No,” Madeleine said sharply. “No thieving. Eveline, I know you’ve had to do it to survive, and that’s as much my fault as anyone’s, but I’m not having my daughter spend her life a thief.”

  “They stole from us, Mama,” Eveline said, equally sharply. “They stole your work and years of your life. They took Charlotte and they tried to take me, too. I en’t going to tell you all of what I had to see and do while you was locked up, but it wasn’t your fault, it was the fault of Uncle James and men like him and Forbes-Cresswell and Holmforth. I’ll rob them blind and never blush for it. Everything they got was stolen from some poor bugger, who drags their fat arses in a rickshaw or fills their beds or does the work they want to claim for their own.” She realised that both of them were staring at her, and said, “If it’s all the same to you, Beth Hastings, I’d thank you to keep your eyes on the road before we smash into something.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Beth said, touching two fingers to her cap, and grinning.

  “Eveline Duchen, you’ve become a Radical!” Madeleine said.

  “I don’t know about that. I’ve become something, maybe, different from what I was before – but right now I just want to find us somewhere safe.”

  Madeleine sighed. “Somewhere with an actual bed and no guns would be nice, dear.”

  “I’ll do me best.”

  EVELINE SAT BY the window, staring out at the night. They’d found a boarding house at a village not far from the Britannia School. Beth was determined to retrieve the Sacagawea.

  Eveline held the jade fox, rubbing her thumb over the little pointed muzzle and the alert ears. “Where is he?” she whispered to the fox, to the night, to the high-sailing indifferent moon. “What if she didn’t like it? What if she did something terrible to him? What if it didn’t work, Fox, and she guessed? He’s clever, right enough, he could have fooled her – but I wish he’d send me a message or summat at least. Maybe she really liked it and she’s made him Grand High Poobah and sat him on a silk cushion at her feet. I don’t care if he’s decided to stay, I just hope he’s all right.”

  “Why, Lady Sparrow, you are up very late,” came a voice from below.

  “Liu!” Eveline almost dropped the fox out of the window at the sight of him. “How’d you...” she whisper-shouted. “Oh, never mind! Wait, I’ll come down... no you can’t come up, the landlady’s a right terror, she’d throw us out if there was boys climbing in the window, stay there!”

  She threw a shawl on over her nightgown and scurried down the stairs and opened the door to Liu, all shiny-fine in a new suit that was so smartly cut it could only be from Paris, with a bag over his shoulder and a crystal-headed cane in his hand. “Well, you look sharp enough to cut a stale loaf,” she said. “Where’d you get the fancy threads?”

  “I took a little diversion. I wished to be well-dressed.”

  “You look ever so different.”

  “Do you not like it?”

  He looked so crestfallen she almost laughed, except she didn’t want to laugh, she felt it was very important, just now, that she didn’t laugh. “Oh, no, it’s very nice, I’m just more used to, you know, all that silk and that. Liu...”


  “Yes?”

  “It worked all right, then?”

  “Oh, most splendidly, and I am in a position of great favour, and Her Majesty is delighted with the ingenuity of her servant and the triumph over her rival, which creates a pleasing atmosphere for everyone.”

  “And the Dragon? The other one, I mean.”

  “He has been persuaded to view the Gift as a piece of modern, Western, ugly, noisy vulgarity that would have contaminated his court.”

  “You’re a clever bastard.”

  Liu bowed. “Both.”

  “I’m so pleased to see you.”

  “I am pleased to see you too, Lady Sparrow. But not in that shade of unflattering blue.”

  “What?” Eveline glanced down at her white nightgown and pink woollen shawl.

  “You are blue. It is too cold for standing on doorsteps in nightgowns. Will you invite me in? I promise your landlady will never know I am here.”

  “Well, considering what you’ve already got away with – all right, then. But we gotta keep quiet, I don’t want to wake Mama and Beth, either.”

  The parlour fire had long gone out, but the fringed plush cover from the ottoman served as a blanket, which Eveline tucked around her chilled feet as Liu lit the candles on the mantel. She looked up to see him smiling at her. “What?”

  “You have changed, since I saw you first.”

  For once lost for words, she looked away.

  “What do you plan, Lady Sparrow?”

  “I want to set up a school. I need some money. Mama doesn’t want me robbing, but I don’t know how else to get it. I tried to explain, but... well, I don’t want her upset. She’s been through enough.”

  “Oh, I knew I had forgotten something.” Liu handed her a small wooden box carved with leaves and running deer.

  “What’s this?”

  “It is from your sister. She thought you might want something pretty, because everything here is so ugly and cold.”

  “Charlotte? You saw her?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is she?”

  “Unsettled.” Liu held up a cautioning hand. “Not so much so that she is willing to return, but...”

  “Thank you, Liu. Pretty, eh? ’Sprobably a cobweb shawl or something...” Eveline opened the box and swore, vigorously, then clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Liu laughed. “Thank you, I think I just learned a new word.”

  The jewels glimmered, catching fire from the candle flames.

  “Liu, are they real?”

  “Oh, yes. The Folk have a liking for such things, but as with most pleasures, they become bored, and forget them or give them away. They are probably only a handful of what Aiden has given her.”

  “Did you make her do this?”

  “Make her? No. Would you be unhappy if I may have possibly suggested to her that such a Gift was appropriate? After all, you deserved something for your efforts.”

  “Unhappy? You’re joking, encha? This is just what I need! Of course, I’ll have to find a reliable fence...” She saw Liu’s expression. “Someone who deals in dodgy gear. No-one’ll think I came by ’em honest.”

  “Ah. So what do you plan?”

  “Sit down, instead of standing there like a post, and I’ll tell you.”

  He did. And when, despite the plush cover and the shawl, she began to shiver again, and he put his arm around her shoulders, she didn’t move away. “I want to make a school,” she said. “But it won’t just be a school. It’ll turn out women who know what’s what and give ’em a chance to do what they’re good at. But once they’re trained up, some of them... well. They’ll be doing a few other things, too.”

  Somewhere in England

  THE OFFICE WAS painted a cheery yellow, and adorned with colourful rugs and comfortable chairs and a number of fat, laughing Toby jugs, holding pencils, and flowers, and chalk. A generous fire crackled in the grate, and a ghost of hot sausages hung in the air.

  A girl stood on the rug, looking at the young woman behind the desk, who was perhaps a year or two older than herself, with disconcertingly sharp eyes.

  The young woman behind the desk stood up. She wasn’t very tall. Her straight, shiny black hair was bound up, and fastened with two elaborate Chinese hairpins. “How’re you finding things at the school, Melissa?”

  “I like it, Miss Sparrow.” Melissa prayed she wasn’t going to be thrown out. She was a charity case, pulled off the streets, but she was almost sixteen now. They might think it was time she earned a living.

  “Good. You bored yet?”

  “Bored? No, I...”

  “Yes, you are. You been looking for something to get your teeth into, haven’t you?”

  “Miss?”

  “We do some other lessons here. Ones that ain’t on the main timetable. See, teaching girls engineering and maths and so on, that causes us trouble enough. There’s a few other things that’d cause more of a ruckus.”

  “What sort of things, miss?”

  “Things that come in useful. Some of our graduates, they do what you might call security work. Checking out people’s gaffs, seeing where someone might get in, where the weaknesses are, that sort of thing. That brings us in some money. Because there’s nothing like a trained thief to tell you where the holes are.”

  “A trained thief, miss?”

  “Can’t stop it without knowing how it’s done, Melissa.”

  “You teach girls...”

  “How to thieve. And trick. And con. And be someone else.”

  “And all that’s used for... security work?”

  “No. Some of it’s used for other work. Work we don’t always get paid for. Work people need done, when they got no money and no power and someone with both is causing ’em trouble. So. You fancy it?”

  “Oh, yes, miss!”

  “Thought you might. You come along with me.”

  Miss Sparrow opened a door that Melissa hadn’t known was there, revealing a utilitarian corridor lined with doors.

  Miss Sparrow knocked on one of the doors, and opened it.

  In the room behind it stood several girls, a freestanding wall with a number of windows in it, and a girl halfway up a ladder and half in one of the windows, while a woman with iron-grey hair shouted, “Not like that, Ginny, you meat-brain! Have the peelers after you in a shake, that will!” She turned around. “Who’s this, then?”

  “This is Melissa,” Miss Sparrow said. “Melissa, this is Ma Pether.”

  “Well,” Ma said. “She looks likely enough. Not that looks is anything to go by. Come here and let me get a closer eye on you, girl.”

  LEAVING HER NEWEST recruit to start her further education, Miss Sparrow, once Eveline Duchen, walked over to the window and looked out at the green lawns of the Sparrow School, whose motto was: Scientia, Uti Possit. Knowledge, and the Means to Use it.

  Steam rose from the Engine Room, where Beth and Mama were at work, and the clash of sticks from Advanced Bartitsu.

  Are you bored yet?

  Not yet. There was plenty of work to be done. More than a lifetime’s worth. One might save the world now and again, but changing it, well, that was another matter. That took a lot of time.

  But one day, she might be bored. And then... well, then there was all the wealth of Faerie, and a few tricks yet to be played. Smiling to herself, Eveline closed the door behind her, and walked out into the sun.

  Acknowledgements

  To John Jarrold for patience and long-distance hand-holding. To Jonathan Oliver and David Moore at Solaris for even more patience and eagle-eyed error spotting (any remaining errors, stupidities and general stumblings are entirely mine). To family and friends (particularly my sisters and Sarah E) for listening to me whinge. And especially to Dave, who as always dealt with flailing hysterics on my part with sterling advice, comfort, and wine. Your stamina is astonishing, darling.

  About the Author

  Gaie Sebold lives in London, works for a charity, reads obsessively, gardens amate
urishly, and sometimes runs around in woods hitting people with latex weapons. She has won awards for her poetry. Born in the US, she has lived in the UK most of her life. Her Babylon Steel and Dangerous Gifts books for Solaris have won her critical and popular acclaim.

  A heroine who really gets up close and personal!

  Babylon Steel, ex-sword-for-hire, ex... other things, runs The Red Lantern, the best brothel in the city. She’s got elves using sex magic upstairs, S&M in the basement and a large green troll cooking breakfast in the kitchen, and she’d love you to visit, except...

  She’s not having a good week. The Vessels of Purity are protesting against brothels, girls are disappearing, and if she can’t pay her taxes, Babylon’s going to lose the Lantern. She’d given up the mercenary life, but when the mysterious Darask Fain pays her to fi nd a missing heiress, she has to take the job. And then her past starts to catch up with her in other, more dangerous ways.

  Witty and fresh, Sebold delivers the most exciting fantasy debut in years.

  ‘Ingenious, gripping, and full of pleasures on every level. Exceptional.’

  — Mike Carey, New York Times Bestselling author of The Unwritten

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  ‘A pacy fantasy romp... an adventure painted in primary colours.’

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