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.
Bloody bells and damn. Tripped up in my own propriety.
I’d have to walk, and quickly. I kept to the shadows as much as I could, my head down as if I were in a hurry. It took far too long, with far too many of the working classes passed along the way, but eventually the cobbles paving the pedestrian crossings changed abruptly underfoot. They curved in shape, familiar as I traversed the boundary into London’s West End.
I lived in Chelsea, a neighborhood known for its wilder ways and all-too-Bohemian residents. The district catered to the artists, the wastrels, those of lighter thought and consequence. I’m told that when my mother chose the house, it had been a neighborhood more suited to scholars and thinkers, but such things change.
The pink sky tinted the pale path in shades of mauve and shadowed purple, and I followed it at a brisk clip. The Cheyne Walk residence that served as my home was not mine. Not yet. In the strictest of terms, it was one of three that belonged to my father—by all accounts, a doctor touched by more than a hint of genius. Or madness, to hear the talk. This townhome was one property, the second was an isolated estate in the countryside. They say my father refused to step foot in it after his own father’s death.
Common drivel claimed it haunted.
The third, a marvelous castle in isolated Scotland, had been engulfed in a terrible fire. This was the inferno that took my father’s life. My mother, Josephine, had the unfortunate luck of perishing beside him. I don’t remember her at all, though gossip suggests I look like her. I have her infuriating shade of deep, ruby-tinted auburn hair, they say—one of my many disadvantages, they typically add in the same breath—and my features are similarly highbrow. Though I lack her height and stature. And, of course, her grace, wit, charm, and talent on the pianoforte.
With both my mother and father burned to death, I was left in the arms of a Glasgow orphanage already too full to worry about the origins of a mildly singed child. I only vaguely recall my time there, and this in snatches of memory and impressions. Generally, I get the feeling that it was overwhelmingly depressing. This may in part be due to the cordial given all the children to keep us sedated and out of trouble.
My whereabouts were unknown for years, and the whole of Mad St. Croix’s estate was left to his executor, and my current guardian. I only have the vaguest impressions of Mr. Oliver Ashmore, but I can assure you with the utmost of earnestness that I don’t like him. Not only is he never about—a circumstance I view as a favor—but he terrifies me.
I’d only ever met him once in all my seven years under his tenure, and I’ve never gotten over it. However, I’ve been told that he scoured heaven and earth to find me, and I think that he might have succeeded sooner were it not for Monsieur Marceaux’s talent scouts.
This is not a point in Mr. Ashmore’s favor. While I don’t remember the orphanage very clearly, I do remember what life was like in Marceaux’s traveling circus rings.
Frightening. Difficult.
And, if one played one’s game very well, a child could live as free as a Gypsy in those colorful tents. But it required time, effort and clever instinct. Although the details of my childhood are terribly unclear, I know that I served as acrobat at times. A pickpocket among the crowds at others. I could climb just about anything, had never learned to be afraid of heights, and with patience, I was taught how to contort my way through nearly anything.
In short, Monsieur Marceaux turned me into the perfect thief. And as long as I continued to bring in goods and crowds, I was worth more as a performer than I was as another girl in the auction rings.
I was thirteen and a cunning little criminal when Mr. Ashmore’s barristers finally located me. God only knew how. The damage had long since been done. I was a thief and a pickpocket, and already dependent on opium to keep nightmares at bay.
I understand it took some effort to wean me from the noxious concoction foisted upon me, both by the orphanage and the circus. Godfrey’s cordial, it’s called—an old trick of opium and treacle often utilized by orphanages, nurses and impatient governesses. To compound matters, Marceaux, no gentleman by any stretch of the word, liked to keep his children supplied with raw opium.
As a tool for good behavior, there’s little better. Because of this, my first months in London were terrible. Fraught with nightmares and with illness.
Yet, in London I remained.
I slipped through the decorative grate separating the property from that of Lord William Pennington beside it. The man didn’t live there—what upstanding gentleman in his right mind would choose to reside in a neighborhood teeming with Bohemian wastrels and dreamers?—but his lady wife’s mother had no such complaints. She enjoyed the privacy of thick, towering shrubs, which worked especially in my favor. How many times had I come through the property? Dozens. Hundreds.
I made it six steps into the side yard when a familiar whistle caught my attention. I looked up.
Betsy braced her hands on the windowsill two stories above, her round face set in disapproving lines. “There you are,” she hissed. She’d been watching for me, then, and that meant I was dangerously late.
Elizabeth Phillips had been my maid from the moment I was too old for a nanny and too much a handful for one governess. As mischievous as I was, Betsy was often complicit with my many schemes; perhaps not the sort of helpmeet a concerned lord and master should have chosen for his young charge.
Betsy threw a twisted rope ladder out of the second-story window, and I caught it easily in both hands. I had smuggled the ladder into my room ages ago, and had used it more times than I could count as I flitted between lives.
“Quickly,” Betsy urged, and withdrew back into the room. Concealed by Lord Pennington’s looming shrubbery, I seized the twisted rope. Scaling it was the work of moments, and Betsy caught my hand as I eased over the sill.
“Allez, hop,” I said cheerfully as I leapt lightly down. “Am I terribly late?”
“You’re cutting it dangerously close,” Betsy said, rebuke clear on her apple-cheeked features. “Let’s get you clean a’fore you stain the pillows.”
“Just the hair,”
I began, and froze as I caught a glimpse at myself in the mirror. “Bloody bells!”
Betsy gasped. But unlike her, who glared reproachfully at my adaption of the lower class’s uncivil crudeness, I was more appalled by the state of my appearance.
As I feared, the lampblack I coated through my hair had smudged over my forehead and cheeks, leaving sooty fingerprints across my dirty face. Only the circular seal of my fog-prevention goggles had kept the pale skin around my eyes clean, giving me a wide-eyed, startled effect. Even my mouth, unfortunately full by nature, bore a black smudge across the lower edge, which gave every impression of losing a fight with a brick wall.
“I have to find a way to change my hair,” I said fervently. “It smears like ink at the first sign of damp.”
“It’s always damp. And you need a bath, first,” she corrected sternly, and plucked the rope from my hands. “Quickly.”
“A bath, then,” I agreed. I shed my belt, draping the pouch across an elegant rose-patterned chair, and carefully assured it wouldn’t slide to the floor. I didn’t have the components to fix either my goggles or my respirator should they break.
Betsy spun me around. “Did you get your man, miss?” Her quick fingers loosened my stays, and I took a deep breath as the constricting panels fell away. Idly curving one hand around my aching breast, I rubbed at the pained curve as she helped me out of my collecting uniform. Buckled corset and accompanying knives, same color shirt, the camisole I wore beneath. Trousers, worn leather boots and underthings were all separated into two piles. One for her to wash and mend at her own home, and one for the less suspicious items to be washed with the rest of my things.
I grimaced. “More or less,” I said, but kept my tone to a hush. Through the soles of my now bare feet, I could feel the fine tremors as the household staff prepared for the day.
I’d sleep through most of it, and as Betsy helped me into the now lukewarm bath, I sighed with pleasure. My eyes eased closed. “Lovely.”
“So you were paid, then?”
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