Tarnished

by Cooper, Karina

  It didn’t often come to fruition, and sadly, clues could so easily be manufactured. I should know, I’d done it enough times myself in the course of my youthful mischief.

  The other, much more common method, was pure dumb luck.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d had to go fishing for leads. I knew just where to do it; there were all manner of establishments where tongues wagged and gossip flowed as easily as drink, opium, or both.

  I took a direct route, one that led me through populated streets. Some were more active than others, even at night. As I walked, I scanned the faces of prostitutes and street rats alike. Many were filthy beyond repair. Some deformed. My eyes skated away from a young girl as she passed, head down and feet trudging through the muck.

  The raw, open lesion eating at half her face stayed with me. They called it phossy jaw, a common ailment that plagued the girls what worked in the match factories. That girl could expect either surgical removal of her jaw, or death.

  It was a hard life, anyway. Being poor only made it worse.

  I rubbed the back of my neck as I walked, unhappily aware that my respirator and goggles were drawing more attention than I necessarily wanted. I braced myself for confrontation, but none came. Odds are, I was an uncertain mystery in the lamplight. Diminutive, sure, but there was an adage about small folk on the streets. More often than not, they fought the hardest. Would shiv you as soon as fight fair.

  I wouldn’t do either. But no one needed to know that. Still, the back of my neck prickled uncomfortably as I walked.

  Finding no one I thought would be useful, I sidestepped into an alley I knew as one of the many paths that led to the Brick Street Bakery—an alliterative name for one of the many territories claimed by a gang by the same name—and surprised a boy preparing to urinate on a wall.

  “Bugger!” he squeaked as I clapped a hand into his collar. Fierce brown eyes lifted to stare at my goggles and mask, fighter’s eyes, for all he was certainly younger than Levi. He thrashed in my grip, hands and feet hammering. “Lemme go!”

  I shook him hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Be still, you little rat.”

  “I’ll take yer eyes out!”

  “Do,” I shot back, warding away his blows simply by holding him at arm’s length. “I’ll laugh to hear your pleading when Ishmael Communion comes a-calling.”

  He froze. All at once, the fight drained from his eyes, his body, and he hung limp as a starved puppy in my grasp. “You know Communion?”

  “We’re friends, he and I.” I narrowed my eyes at him, for all he couldn’t see them through the lenses. “If I set you on your feet, you won’t run?”

  I watched the notion sneak into his face, easily read despite the entire city’s worth of dirt covering it. “Won’t,” he lied.

  Poor blighter. I knew his language, and I used it now. “There’s a shilling in it if you don’t,” I said, and watched his eyes widen. “And another if you deliver a message for me.”

  “Wot, really?”

  “Really.” I set him down, let him go and stepped back.

  His little body tensed, taut as a bowstring as his instinct fought with greed. All but vibrating in place, he flipped me a look under stringy, unkempt hair and held out a dirty palm.

  I delved into my pocket and produced a grimy shilling. I’d long since learned to dirty up my coin when I spent it below the drift. I held it between two fingers, where he could see it. “Good lad,” I said, and tucked another beside it. “Where is Communion?”

  “Somewhere,” the lad chirped. “Can’t tell.” He tapped his nose. “Bakers only.”

  He didn’t mean the sort who made bread. I frowned at him. “You’re a Brick Street Baker?”

  “Uh-uh,” he replied. “Not yet. But I’ll be soon.”

  So young, too. I refrained from the lecture welling behind my teeth—in the background of my thoughts, Fanny’s voice was filling my head—and focused on the matter at hand. “Tell Communion to meet me at the corner of Emmett and Park. In one hour.”

  He watched the shillings as I held them just over his head. “Aye!”

  “What is the message?” I knew this lesson well, too.

  “Meetcha at th’ corner of Park ’n’ Emmett. One hour,” he repeated dutifully.

  “Good lad.” I flipped him both coins with a flick of my fingers. He caught them deftly, one in each quick hand, turned and fled down the alley. I watched him almost vanish into the dark, pause, turn and look at me.

  “Hey,” he called. “Woss yer name?”

  I smiled. “Tell him that it’s collector business,” I replied. “He’ll know.”

  He stared at me for a moment. Finally, just loud enough that the alley fed the sound to me, he sneered. “Nutter.”

  Then he ran.

  My smile widened as I left the alley. This time, I bypassed the busy street entirely. I took my time, knowing it’d take the rat at least half as long to locate Communion, and threaded my way through side alleys and inner lanes.

  This time, I didn’t feel quite so scrutinized. Was I overworried? I thought so. I’d never agreed to collect a murderer before, even alive. And it’s not as if it were an official bounty posted, so there was no reason for me to worry about other collectors jumping on my back in the dark.

  Of course, anyone else looking for a collector might luck out on my trail, but certainly no one would be dumb enough to try.

  Unless it were the mysterious assailant outside the druggist’s shop.

  As the thought occurred to me, I damned my stupidity to perdition and melded back into the shadows. Of course, the chances of being located twice by the same man were slim at best, especially if he were just a footpad looking for coin, but I didn’t need to risk it. I still felt overly anxious.

  I hurried to my chosen destination and remained as hidden as I could.

  I waited at the corner of Emmett and Park for over an hour before I gave up. Ishmael either hadn’t gotten my message—I made a mental note to hunt down the little sewer rat—or he’d other business to attend to.

  That made this evening’s plans that much more dangerous.

  Not that it’d stop me, of course. I’d go in alone.

  I chose the poorer opium dens in Limehouse for my evening’s snooping. Not only were they likely connected to the Karakash Veil’s far-reaching influence, but they often catered to the lower classes more than the upper.

  I didn’t need to know what the gossip was above the drift. I was well aware, thank you.

  Although it pained me to do it, I put away my fog-prevention goggles and respirator. They were remarkable things, and easily recognizable. Any working rat, as I was passing myself off to be, would have no such thing.

  My eyes stinging and my nose filled with acrid smoke and fog, I hurried across the district and to a den I knew still plied its foreign trade. I’d spend the last of my money here, sadly, but all in pursuit of a greater bounty.

  The distinctive smell assaulted me as I stepped inside its plain doors. One part spicy, mostly medicinal in flavor as it hit the back of the tongue. Blinking quickly, half blinded by the dimmed lamps, I looked around the entry hall of an unassuming brownstone.

  There was nobody there. The furniture was shabby, the paper peeling from the walls. Beneath my feet, the carpet was worn thin, showing patches of grimy, scuffed wood beneath.

  Same as it ever had been.

  As if by some unseen signal, a small Chinese woman stepped out from behind a door. She was dressed in an unusual amalgam of Eastern and English attire, with a small bustle offset by the strange, wide sash her kind wore as belts or corsets. I wasn’t sure. Her hair was a graying knot at the base of her neck, her rouge too thick, and her features wizened.

  She said nothing, only gave me a quick once-over with beady black-eyed greed. I knew the steps of this dance, although I kept myself from knowing why. I recognize now what I hadn’t yet admitted to then, and my familiarity with the subject has only grown threefold in the interim.
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  Producing a small purse, I tossed it to her as I’d seen so many other men do.

  She caught it, lightning quick.

  Not as aged as she’d like me to believe, then.

  With brief gestures, she escorted me to another door, opened it with the creak and groan of damp-rotted wood, and pointed me inside.

  The patrons of an opium den are not usually the raucous sort. Conversation flows when a man or woman is just settling in, and as the opium is heating in the long, slender pipes. Then, as the resulting smoke is inhaled and begins to creep warmly, deliciously, to the mind, conversation ebbs. The better to follow the spidery trails of liquid gold; the warmth of it as it fills every nerve and sensation and paints the mind in shades of glorious awareness.

  Once fully absorbed, conversation may start again, but it’s not the rough, unrefined sound it was. It becomes something melodic and fascinating, and many things are said if only just to hear the sound of it.

  Small lamps glittered in the hazy air, the devices by which the opium pipes could be heated. I inhaled deeply, holding the smoky remnants of used opium in my lungs for a moment.

  I knew this smell.

  Strolling in as if I belonged, I kept my stride easy but not polished. Like a man, or at least more like the boy I resembled. Men and women alike sprawled around the cramped room. Some on the floor in indolent repose, others in chairs or laid back in chaise lounges. Some slept, rocked into a gentle rest by the opium’s lullaby.

  All were poor. All worn and bedraggled and so at ease, it was as if the hard day didn’t matter anymore.

  And it didn’t. That was opium’s blessing.

  The light glinted off of the pipes clutched in hands, passed from person to person, and I took one as it was offered to me in passing.

  I didn’t say thank you, though it sprang to my lips. This wasn’t the place for such niceties. Instead, clasping the pipe to my side, I found a bit of unclaimed territory against a wall where I could watch all the goings-on.

  The murmurs around me continued unabated as I sank to the dirty floor. I tried to listen, but I found my hands running over the pipe instead. I had to light the opium and take some, of course. In a gathering like this, anyone who didn’t partake would be seen as an interloper, or worse, a spy. Maybe a policeman in disguise.

  It was as good an excuse as any.

  I inspected the pipe swiftly. It was a lengthy bit of metal, copper but for the grime from so many fingers, and inlaid with jade too mottled to be the high-quality stones they likely reserved for finer dens. Everything touched by the Karakash Veil sported something of jade. A bit of an in-joke, maybe, or a calling card.

  A bulbous sphere at one end was divided by a small basket, into which the brown glob of opium remained trapped.

  I sank back into the woven mat beneath me, leaned fully against the wall, and supported the long pipe in both hands. The lamp beside me flickered as I held the sphere over the small chimney built over the lamp flame.

  The end shook. Just enough that I set my jaw, firmed my grip. It wouldn’t take long.

  The chimney funneled the heat to the sphere at the end of the pipe. Inside, the pea-size pill of opium grew warm, then hot, barely retaining its shape as it turned to a vapor that could be drawn in through the pipe stem.

  Around me, voices half whispered. Laughter crept in, but I watched the chimney. Watched the vapors trickle from the tiny seam.

  When I had waited long enough, I fit my mouth around the hollow tube and inhaled deeply.

  The vapors slipped into my mouth, my throat, my lungs and I could have danced for joy. Instead, my muscles relaxed, as if I’d been holding on to some unknown tension for too long. I closed my eyes, inhaling again before the vapors built too much.

  My skin prickled. Ordinarily, this would cause me to look about, searching for the eyes that watched me, but I didn’t bother. This was different. This was warmth and magic and energy all rolled into a small copper tube. This was raw aether, if aether could be taken into the lungs.

  This was the means by which I’d track down my killer.

  My killer?

  I frowned, opening my eyes. Of course I meant my bounty.

  I blinked.

  Though I had no recollection of it, my arms had settled, the pipe drifting to my lap, and the flame in the lamp beside me had burned low. I sat up, languid with the lazy heat swirling under my skin, and it was as if every detail etched itself indelibly into my mind.

  I saw the small knots of people around me. Twos, threes, even four and more. They leaned against one another, laughing, some even dozing. I saw missing teeth and pock-scarred skin; glittering eyes feverishly bright in the golden light.

  And the rumors. Oh, the words that slipped through my ears to dance a heavenly waltz in gutter-worn shoes through my awareness. They sang choruses about the goings-on below. The adulterers and the thieves. The cracking cases, robberies and pox-less doxies. Sky ships seen hovering too close to the drift and the steamboats gliding through black water beyond the river banks.

  And the Menagerie, I realized, as an aimless thread floated to my ears. These poor people, they didn’t attend every night like many of the more well-to-do could afford. But when they did—a flush scorched a fiery path all the way to my ears as details of debauchery colored the tale.

  I almost curled into the corner and caught myself, instead adopting one of Teddy’s more leisurely poses—as a man would, I thought, and smothered a giggle.

  Behind me, two men spoke of the growing tensions at the docks, both above and below the drift. “Me cousin,” said one, “ ’e works th’ above docks, but ’e sez ain’t no better there ’n down ’ere.”

  “What, an’ ’im makin’ more?” demanded a woman.

  “Threepence more, an’ starvin’ already, too,” the man added.

  I thought about this for a long time, drifting away on a scarlet wave of imagery and speculation. If the dockers were starving above and below the drift, why not pay them enough to feed them well? After all, they worked hard unloading the goods brought into port. And the airships that came in would be stocked with such lovely goods as silks and fine linens and crystal things from faraway kingdoms.

  My fluid thoughts slid to the Menagerie once more, and Hawke rose in my idle thoughts like a specter, a haunting ghost without sound or form. His eyes, that damned blue streak aflame, laughed at me, even as his mouth curved up into a sensual line. Beckoning. Tempting me to step into the humid air of the ampitheater—

  “I didn’t ’spect this place to have any o’ this,” said a gruff, masculine voice in the lazy crowd. “Went lookin’ for a few grains and most ev’ry shop’s done out.”

  I blinked hard, straightening. Shaking my head, I looked down to find someone had taken the pipe from my hand, but restocked the flame in the lamp.

  A fresh opium pipe, this one unmarred by the grasp of dirty hands, lay beside it.

  My fingers itched.

  “Me, too!”

  “All over Blackwall,” chimed a woman whose voice grated like shattered glass. In it, I heard the tinkle of a thousand shards, each like diamonds as they scattered across the filthy floor.

  I felt as if I could take a deep breath and taste the world.

  “All over th’ East End,” corrected another man, sounding not so much put out as mildly accepting of the fact. Opium made getting angry difficult, at best, and not worth the effort at any rate.

  I smiled, reaching for the pipe.

  “Think these foreign Chinese—”

  “Shhh,” hissed a younger female voice. “Rude.”

  The man snorted. “Jes’ askin’. They make their own, right?”

  The first voice rumbled through them all, not loud. Just noticeable. Raspy enough to make me think he’d inhaled more than his fair share over the years, for his tone now put me in mind of the smoke that hung low around us all. “Heard it was a professor.”

  “What, the professor?”

  “That’s th’ one,” m
urmured another. “But th’ bugger’s good and crazy, innit?”

  A moment of speculative thought followed this, and my smile faded. So a professor had been involved. It figured. God only knew what a man of science would be doing with that much opium.

  Deucedly interesting things, I was sure.

  I pitched my voice low and asked, “What professor?”

  Laughter met my inquiry. “Boy don’t know,” one woman said, giggling. I studied the room, searching for the woman and found her sprawled half up against a settee, her calves and worn stockings bared to the lazy eyes who admired them.

  Beside her, a man in patched, fraying fustion took the pipe from her slack fingers and held it over the lamp. “Nobody knows,” he explained, but with the inherently theatrical implications such a phrase always demanded. His bushy gray chops were wild as he bent to inhale the fumes.

  “ ’e’s a ghost,” said another woman, but frightfully. She drew her knees up, hiding behind her skirts and displaying her knickers by doing so.

  I blinked again. Yet couldn’t find it in myself to say anything. She’d figure it out, I was sure. “A ghost,” I repeated doubtfully.

  “Bollocks,” said the first gruff voice. Yet I couldn’t make him out, shrouded in smoke and set apart from the others. “ ’e’s no ghost. Woolsey’s ’is name. They say ’e collects bodies.”

  “Bodies!” squealed the fearful girl.

  I rolled my eyes. “A caretaker?”

  “Worse,” said the voice, and it lowered. The man’s shoulders rounded in his overcoat. “A scientist.”

  Oh, bollocks. Unlike the faceless man, I didn’t say it aloud, but I turned back and picked up the pipe I’d forgotten about. Holding it over the flame, I let them bandy the rumors about more, and held on to the thread binding them all: there was a professor. It was a small community, the academia of London. It was something, anyway.

  “They say any man—”

  “Or woman!” piped up another, much more distinguished, voice, loudly.

  “Anyone,” the man amended, “bold or brave enough t’ go wand’rin’ about at night is ripe for pickin’. Whole bodies.” He paused. “In bits.”

  The crowd gasped, almost as one, and I smothered a smile. Whoever the man was, he had a decent sense of performance and timing. All but eating out of his hand, this lot.