Tarnished

by Cooper, Karina

  I rose from my mat, taking a last breath from the pipe as I did. I held the smoke inside my chest and closed my eyes. A shoulder brushed mine, and I exhaled hard, coughing in surprise. The gruff-voiced man paused just by the door, one gloved hand on the latch, and didn’t turn as he warned, “Careful, you lot. You stick to th’ lights a’fore you fin’ yerself missin’ those same bits.” His head tilted, and I saw a shadow of an ear beneath a low seaman’s hat. “Bodies,” he repeated with chilling inflection.

  He slid out the door while I stared at him, and for a long moment, there was no sound in the den.

  Then it erupted into a frenetic whisper.

  Part of me wanted to applaud. Instead, I dropped my pipe into the lap of a decently dressed man with neatly barbered blond chops and half ran out the door.

  He’d known something. At the very least, he’d known this Woolsey bloke. I could sense it, as if a shimmering thread connected me to his mind. He’d known something, or I’d eat my hat.

  The hall was empty as I pushed into it; not even the Chinese hostess in attendance. I sprinted through the entryway, pushed out into the damp fog, and spun in a hard, tight circle.

  The details of the night screamed at me, but long practice allowed me to filter it into recognizable parcels. The fog reeked of rotting river water tonight, sewage and rubbish conspiring to undercut the rough, gritty flavor of coal smoke.

  The iron-worked gas lamps tried their best to shed light on my quarry’s trail, but the fog roiled in a miasma as thick and reflective as mirrored glass, and I saw no trace of his silhouette in the dark.

  The slick cobbles beneath my feet easily swallowed any trail, and as I spun in helpless frustration, I kicked at them.

  A clatter echoed from behind me, and I turned to scrutinize the shadowed edge of the slick, faceless building. Gritting my teeth, I sprinted toward the noise, my fingers already slipping into the top of my shirt.

  A form loomed out from the dark, and before I could find traction on the wet stone under my feet, I collided with a chest that didn’t stagger half as much I did.

  A midnight blue overcoat looked almost black in the lamplight, settling over decently wide shoulders. As I found my balance against the brownstone brick, I looked up into the rigid face of Lord Cornelius Kerrigan Compton and felt my jaw drop.

  He hesitated, the hand holding the fashionable walking stick deftly brushing at his shoulder as if he could wipe away any stain I may have left, but he did incline his head sharply. “Your pardon,” he said evenly.

  The tone suggested bone-deep propriety was all that forced the courtesy. His gaze raked over me briefly, but didn’t linger for longer than it took the words to leave his lips. He was clearly focused on whatever task brought him below the drift.

  “Er,” I managed, but he was already moving on, long before I had time to make sense of shock screaming through me.

  I watched him enter the opium den I’d only just vacated and forgot how to breathe.

  Could it be?

  Did my Lord Compton’s secrets go as far as mine?

  It took me a long moment, but eventually, I remembered how to close my mouth.

  It was as if I’d taken a draught of liquid sunshine. Running into Lord Compton, quite literally, had jostled my anger at losing the mysterious rumormonger into something frenetic and bright—glittering and full of vigor.

  I shed my street clothing as I traveled across Limehouse, leaving my collector’s garb open for all to see. I dug out my mask and goggles, needing them for the task I levied upon myself next.

  At the same alley I’d found the would-be Baker boy, I paused in the dark and adjusted my various accoutrements. My tool belt was solidly locked in place, strapped down and unlikely to flap open. My fog-prevention lenses were secure, my gloves exchanged for ones with a particular molded substance on the fingers and palms.

  Assured I was as ready as I could ever be, I spread my arms, touched both ends of the alley easily, and kicked my feet up on either wall.

  No matter what training I had as a youth, there are certain things the human muscles just aren’t willing to do. Straddling an alleyway to climb to the roof is one. With my legs split wide open, I held myself straight, splayed my arms for balance and slowly inched my way up. My legs and hips burned by the time my head cleared the roof, and I hooked my fingers into the edge with a sigh of relief.

  It would hold. I locked my grip, leveraged my weight over to one side and hung for a moment. Arms shaking ever so slightly, I bent at the waist, pulled my straightened legs up, up, up until my toes were pointed to the sky.

  “Allez, hop!” I muttered, and bent backward almost double until my feet touched the rooftop. Completing the walkover was the easy bit, and soon I was on my feet and upright again.

  My back complained. Just enough.

  I was, after all, getting a sight too old for such antics. There was a reason most circus performers were children.

  I studied the vista laid out before me, arranging the yellow lens over one eye until it sat more comfortably against my socket. The fog drifted like a living thing, pouring over the roof edge as if it could climb to the very pinnacle. The smell was somehow not as intense up on first tier of rooftops, and visibility seemed much clearer.

  Around me, as far as the fog would let me see, iron structures climbed up and up and up. They were the feet of London above, brilliant architectural foundations that supported elements deemed too valuable or necessary to leave below.

  I had heard the palace had been raised en masse, leaving only the crypts behind. I’d never looked.

  There was something about tombs, even royal ones, that I found frightfully sinister.

  I headed for Baker territory, but cautiously. They called the rooftops Cat’s Crossing. The theory being that only the city’s rampant strays were foolish, and dexterous, enough to attempt to travel by rooftop.

  Cats, I supposed, and those of us with good reason to risk it.

  I wasn’t the only enterprising sort to use the rooftops as a safer means of anything—not that the slick roofs and steep peaks could be called safe by anyone but the terminally insane—and I knew for a fact that the Bakers posted men above.

  Well, children, really. They were smaller, lighter and much more agile, as I’d mentioned. And lacked an appropriate fear of death from tall heights.

  I moved swiftly, my feet sure, sometimes scaling the pointed apexes of the buildings I used like a path, sometimes leaping between them.

  I saw the sentries before they saw me. It was one of many benefits of these goggles of mine. Dodging them proved to be as simple as waiting for them to move on, or moving around them on silent feet.

  Once in the heart of Baker territory—you knew it because of the terrible smell of rotting fish, twice as thick here than anywhere in the East End—I paused.

  Now the slower game.

  I crept to the edge of the roof I hugged, foot by booted foot, inch by inch, hand over gloved hand. I waited for what seemed like hours—I would guess only about thirty minutes. I let my mind wander.

  I lay on the edge of a yawning crevasse, and in my mind, I balanced a series of spinning plates. Light glimmered off of each one, and each bore a color. Blue for Compton, and his strange interest. Wicked serpent green for Micajah Hawke and his relentless lies.

  Zylphia was a whisper in my ear, and a disk of bloody red spun just over my head. I didn’t know what that was, but it tasted of murder and rage and I dwelled for some time on the matter as I waited.

  A mind saturated in opium works twice as fast, and yet three times as slow. Caught on the edge of a thousand thoughts, I startled when I heard the cursing pitch of a masculine voice.

  My grin was fierce. I was lucky. I could recognize Ishmael’s dark baritone from blocks away.

  I peered over the edge and saw a group of men, many in shabby dockhand clothes, a few in whatever it was they could scrape together. Some carried hafts of broken wood, others weapons I couldn’t see well in the dar
k.

  They were a short distance away, walking together, complaining, I think. Had I any skill in it, I could have summoned enough saliva to spit at Ishmael and likely tagged him from here.

  Fortunately for us both, I was not a good spitter.

  I eased the upper portion of my dark-clad body over the rooftop, hooked my feet against the ledge, and felt in my pockets for something to throw.

  I found a single pence.

  Eh, it was as good as anything else.

  Taking careful aim, I threw the coin at Ishmael’s feet. It landed with a soft whup, all but lost under the staccato argument taking place between three members of the group.

  Frowning, I watched as they walked over it. Blast, I’d have to get down to street level to—

  A large form detached itself from the group.

  Victory! I resisted the urge to punch the air with my fist, tamping down the surge of elation I felt as Ishmael Communion stepped into clearer focus.

  He was a very big, very broad man of color. His wide, flat features and pugnacious nose had always marked him as a bruiser, and if there were any doubt, his scarred knuckles would finish the tale.

  He was an ox of a man, with a head he kept free of hair or hats. He wore a kerchief around his neck, overalls like I’d seen Americans wear in some of the more mocking caricatures, and a particularly large overcoat in patched fustion.

  He stepped into my alley, not once looking up, and I heard clothing rustle.

  I narrowed my eyes, soundless and unseen just over his head. If I wanted to, I could poke the very top of his skull before he let fly the stream of urine.

  I reached out an arm to do just that, then froze as he rumbled, deep as a train car in the vast Underground, “What in God’s own are you doing, girl?”

  So he had seen me. I slowly withdrew my arm, my feet straining to hold me. “Where were you?” I hissed.

  The voices continued to rattle back and forth, insults and demands, and he glanced over his shoulder. This time, when he glanced up, I caught a glimpse of dark, dark eyes. The whites were yellowed, as if tinged permanently by the pea soup that surrounded us. “You came,” he whispered harshly, “to ask that?”

  Ishmael had an unbelievable grasp of the King’s English. I’d always wanted to ask why and how, but had never summoned the nerve.

  Instead, I frowned. “Why are you angry?”

  “If you are found—” He didn’t need to finish it. If I was caught in Baker territory, I’d be killed. If they found me to be a woman, there’d be worse.

  The Brick Street Bakery was a sweet-enough name, but there was nothing sweet about the men in it.

  “That’s why I sent a boy,” I told him, conversationally reasonable, for all I was hanging ten feet above the ground by the flexed arches of my feet.

  I didn’t have to see well to note the grimace that split his thick, fleshy lips. “Girl, that boy got strung up in his own gibbets.”

  The blood, already pushed to my head because of my angle, suddenly pounded in my skull. “What?” I gasped.

  Too loud. The voices stopped. Then, “Communion!”

  “Lay off,” my friend barked. “I’m taking a whittle.”

  I didn’t giggle. I wanted to, the part of my brain still steeped in the calming cushion of opium thought his word comical, but the rest of me was still reeling. That boy? Dead?

  “How?” I whispered.

  “You had best be scarce for a while,” Ishmael warned. “That boy—his name was Rufus. You were seen with him by several of the abram men.” In the silence that followed, I heard a stream of liquid splat against the wall.

  I grimaced as the odor reached me.

  Abram men, I knew, were thieves and beggars pretending to be so mad that they could scarcely afford to dress themselves. They begged for coin amid faux fits.

  They were also some of the keenest eyes and ears in London below.

  “I swear to you,” I said tightly, earnestly. “Ishmael, I swear on my mother’s grave, I didn’t kill your boy. Why would I? I don’t take those contracts, you know that.”

  “I know that,” Ishmael rumbled. The stream of relief continued unabated, thick and loud as it splattered. “And you know that. They don’t know that.”

  I braced my hands on the wall, swallowing hard to get the knot of pressure and anger and guilt out of my throat. “When was he found?”

  “Not long ago. Them?” He nodded vaguely toward the alley mouth. “They found him.”

  Damn it. How soon after I’d given him my coin had he been killed? And why? “I’ll get out, then,” I managed. “Just one thing.”

  “Communion!” roared a man from beyond the alley.

  “Quickly,” my friend rumbled, his gaze on the wall.

  “Do you know anything about a Professor Woolsey?”

  He thought it over as the stream of urine finally died. I thanked God I couldn’t see that well in the dark. Ishmael’s privacy was something I had no intention of ever breaching. The smell was bad enough.

  “No,” he finally said. “Try the Menagerie? Your sweets might have heard.”

  “They aren’t my sweets,” I shot back. I stiffened my body, caught one edge of the roof with the very tips of my fingers, and hesitated long enough to add, “But I’ll send your love to Zylphia.”

  Ishmael’s growl followed me over the roof. “Coming!” he intoned, impatient. “Can’t a bloke relieve himself in peace?”

  I scooted up on the roof as far as I dared, then counted slowly. I didn’t move, holding my position far longer than strictly necessary. I didn’t want to risk it, not until I was positive the men below had moved on.

  The boy could have been killed by a rival gang. There were many below the drift, each fighting for territory or wealth or recruits.

  But I remembered his fighter’s eyes, earnest and crafty. That boy had been younger than Levi, I was sure of it. Clever and cocksure, but still just flesh.

  I rubbed at my face, taking the time to let my limbs rest.

  I’d learned two things tonight. One, not a soul knew about the death of the sweets, or else that would have been all the den would have talked about. Nothing got the blood surging like murder.

  Two, the name of the professor who inconvenienced me was Woolsey.

  But I could deduce a third: according to the rumors, that professor dealt in body parts, and Zylphia said those sweets had been missing organs.

  There was nothing for it. I’d have to head home for the night and begin my investigations fresh. Without my original bounty. Without opium to sleep by.

  My mood, bolstered as it had been, plummeted.

  Chapter Eight

  I returned home, my thoughts swirling around and around. How would I locate this Woolsey? What clues did I have to go on?

  Well, nothing, of course. Just missing organs and a professor that could be committing the crime.

  How would I catch him?

  I could pose as a prostitute, I supposed, but the odds of meeting the right man at the right time were slim enough. Besides, he seemed to be targeting sweets now.

  Why?

  Perhaps Hawke or the Karakash Veil had made an enemy of him? Perhaps one of the sweets had turned him down?

  No. That seemed too simple for the brutality of the crimes. And it didn’t account for the two common doxies.

  I got ready for bed on my own, washed the lampblack from my hair and studied the cards left for me on the nightstand. I didn’t usually receive any; such markers of social interest weren’t typically tossed my way but for a specific purpose.

  There were two now.

  I recognized my Lord Compton’s seal, and I picked it up as I slid into the bed. The card rasped against my sensitive fingertips, textured as good silk was textured. The sheets were cool to the touch; I blamed that when I shivered.

  He’d left a note on the back, in simple, elegant writing.

  I humbly beg your company on this matter.

  I wondered if he’d left me the c
ards on his way below.

  As the lantern flickered beside me, I reached over and found the second card—an invite, I realized as the bold script danced beneath the flame’s illumination.

  A ball. Another ball. Lady Rutledge, I read as I skimmed the information. My eyebrows raised.

  Lady Euphemia Rutledge was renowned for her library, and often entertained foreign dignitaries from various countries. She was a brilliant woman, and I had read many of her theories as reprinted in the periodicals that didn’t shy from a woman whose mind lent more to science than fashion or other delicacies.

  I had always longed to meet her, but her society circles were so far adrift from mine.

  I had heard, however, that the marchioness had no love for the lady. But that for some unknown reason, the widow was safely out of Marchioness Northampton’s vicious reach.

  For that alone, I might consider going.

  I tapped the card against my lips as I sank back into the softness of my pillows. If Betsy were here, she’d tell me that I was being foolish. Of course I’d have to go.

  One didn’t spurn an invite from an earl.

  “Unless,” I told the card in my hand, “such an invite is only designed to leave me once more cut at my lord’s whim.”

  The thought stitched an icy knot in my stomach.

  Then again . . .

  A new thought unfurled. A mischievous thought, one trimmed in sudden sweetness of revenge. A picture of the earl rose in my mind, swathed in yellow fog and apologizing brusquely for a transgression not his. Ever so proper, my Lord Compton.

  Even stepping into an opium den below the drift.

  What would his lady mother say, I wondered?

  But as I threw the card to the table, dimmed the lantern until the wick guttered out, I knew I’d never betray that secret. Not without some foolproof method to ensure my name was never dragged in alongside his.

  A gentlemen could be excused his idiosyncrasies.

  A lady would be packed off to an asylum or cast out below the drift.

  Besides. We all had our secrets, didn’t we?