The Paradox

by Charlie Fletcher

  Coram explained that he was coming to warn Mountfellon, as instructed, of Issachar’s plans regarding The Oversight. When these were explained, the voice behind the light interjected:

  “The plan is their complete eradication, you say?”

  “Root and branch, bag and baggage, burnt out,” said Coram. “I thought ’is Lordship should know.”

  There was a silence from the other side of the light. The Citizen was weighing up his inclinations against his host’s instructions, his high-handed instructions about not destroying the contents of the Red Library. Mountfellon would, he knew, have objected in the strongest fashion.

  “Thank you,” said the voice. “We approve. What time will the unfortunate accident occur?”

  “Eleven o’clock sharp tomorrow morning,” said Coram. “Timed so the day shift is at their tea-break, so as to avoid unnecessary casualties.”

  “Very commendable, very humane,” said the voice. “Thank you for your information. Eleven o’clock. Very good. We are obliged.”

  CHAPTER 44

  AMERICAY

  Lady of Nantasket had berthed in the Pool of London for two days before the message of its arrival came to the Safe House, the result of the dockmaster who had undertaken to alert them having been indisposed and so not on station when she dropped anchor. So it was with some dispatch that Caitlin set out to find Captain Tittensor and his wife and set about retrieving the Factor’s baby.

  As had become habitual, Lucy went with her, and since no opportunity to learn on the job was to be squandered, they were set the task of getting there without being seen by Charlie or Hodge who would not only be shadowing them, but had the goal of getting wherever they were going first, while being able to tell Cook what route the two girls had taken when they all returned for a late tea.

  Cait had let Lucy choose the route but had made it clear she wanted no long detours since the main object was to retrieve the baby before the Lady of Nantasket refilled her cargo-hold and set off back to America.

  They made good time, and Lucy was sure they had also evaded their shadowers.

  So it was a bit galling to find Jed wagging his tail at the dock gates, while Charlie and Hodge leant against the fortress-like wall looming high above them, annoyingly innocent smiles on their faces. Hodge was puffing on a pipe and Charlie was coolly twining a piece of yellow ribbon round and round his fingers, as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

  “Nearly lost us the second time you crossed Ratcliffe,” said Charlie.

  “Business now, gloating later, Charlie boy,” said Cait. “Come on, Lucy. You keep a bit away from me as if we don’t know each other and watch the conversation, see if you pick up anything that might be useful, or I might miss.”

  She put a hand on Lucy’s arm and walked her under the forbidding gate. Lucy knew she had done this to spare her Charlie’s teasing, and to give her something to do that didn’t really need doing since the prospect of Cait missing anything was unlikely.

  Hodge–via Jed–watched the girls disappear into the boiling mass of dockworkers, stevedores, porters and sailors milling within the dockyard. Then he relit his pipe and looked at Charlie, who was also trying to keep track of them in the multitude.

  “The ribbon,” said Hodge.

  Charlie had again forgotten that Hodge shared Jed’s eyes and could see what the dog, sitting at Charlie’s feet and innocently wagging his tail, could see. He stuffed it back in his pocket self-consciously.

  “It’s nothing,” he said.

  “Not Lucy Harker’s ribbon, I’d say,” said Hodge.

  “No,” said Charlie after a bit.

  “Good,” said Hodge.

  “Why?” said Charlie.

  “Dunno,” said Hodge. “None of my business, really.”

  “But,” said Charlie.

  “But she’d got an edge to her, that one,” said Hodge, “and The Smith ain’t got it figured yet.”

  “Well, I don’t much care what The Smith makes of her,” said Charlie defensively. “She’s my friend, and she’s brave and she’s all right.”

  He surprised himself at his vehemence.

  “Sure that’s not her ribbon, are you?” said Hodge, the edge of his mouth twitching upwards in a particularly irksome smile.

  “Yes,” said Charlie. “It’s nobody’s ribbon. I got given it.”

  “Wouldn’t have thought yellow’s your colour no more than it’s Lucy’s,” said Hodge. His smile was really annoying now.

  “I was just given it by someone. At the fair,” said Charlie. “Don’t know why it’s still in my pocket. Stupid really.”

  And suddenly his whole life before London seemed a million miles away. His childhood friend Georgiana Eagle had given it to him. But she had given scores of them to other people, men and women, on the day of her father’s humiliation, as if wearing the yellow was like showing support for the Eagle family. It had been a vain, silly thing to do. He didn’t know why he still kept it. It wasn’t like he was going to use it for anything. He looked down to see Jed was looking at him strangely, his head cocked to one side.

  “Love ain’t stupid,” said Hodge. “Inconvenient and embarrassing often enough, but not stupid.”

  Charlie felt defensive. The gentle voice which Hodge spoke in, quieter than his normal gruff rasp, was unexpected and a little unnerving.

  “Never apologise for who you love, Charlie,” he said. “Because it’s not who you love that matters anyway. Having love in your heart and not being true to it, that’s the crime. That’s worth apologising for. But don’t apologise for loving someone who isn’t what you think others might see as… appropriate.”

  “It’s not that,” said Charlie. “It’s stupid because I know she’s not quite…”

  He trailed off, unable to put words to it.

  “Interested?” said Hodge. “Available?”

  “Kind,” said Charlie. “She’s lovely. But I’m not sure she’s kind. Or quite… good. I mean she’s not bad. But she’s somewhere in between.”

  “Amoral?” said Hodge.

  “Don’t know what that means,” said Charlie.

  “Means her conscience works for her, but not for other people.”

  “That’s it,” grinned Charlie.

  “Ah,” said Hodge as if that explained everything. “A heartbreaker.”

  “Yeah,” said Charlie. “Yeah, I think she will be.”

  “And seeing that clearly, you’re still holding onto her ribbon,” said Hodge.

  Charlie nodded. “Told you it was stupid.”

  “Love is a bugger,” said Hodge, slapping him on the shoulder. “And a sight more complicated than ratcatching.”

  He nodded across the road to a food stall.

  “Let’s have us a whelk.”

  Cait found her way to the Lady of Nantasket by asking directions and then threading her way through the crowded dockyard beneath the jungle of masts and spars that overlooked it without needing to ask twice, which was, thought Lucy as she trailed after her, no mean achievement. She also thought the docks were the biggest thing she had ever seen, other than London itself. It was a vast teeming machine and it felt dangerous, not through malice but because everybody knew what they were doing except her: unloading, loading, carrying huge loads or swaying nets of cargo in and out of the waiting boats with little regard for anyone who did not know precisely where they should be. The risks of getting knocked over, squashed, mangled or accidentally tipped off a quay and drowned seemed very real.

  But eventually Cait found the clipper in question, a handsome tall-masted ship besieged by workers trying to cram as much cargo aboard as possible, and by any means necessary. Lines of stevedores proceeded up and down the two gangplanks with teeteringly improbable loads on their backs or heads, while two cranes worked in a kind of competitive ballet, lofting bulging nets of goods off the dock and down into the bowels of the cargo-hold.

  And overlooking all this was a tall man with a spade beard, a captain’s hat and
a salt-stained pea-jacket.

  Cait approached him directly, while Lucy observed from a distance, hoping she could remain unnoticed and unsquashed while she did so.

  “Captain Tittensor?” she said.

  He turned and looked her up and down and, as with most men who met her full smile and clear green eyes, clearly both approved of what he saw and was more than a little pleased to be engaged in conversation by such a bracingly attractive young woman.

  “You have the advantage of me, ma’am,” he said, bowing a little, his hand unconsciously smoothing his beard as he did so, “but it is a pleasure nonetheless to make your acquaintance…”

  Her eyes glittered with an engaging flash of mirth as she bobbed her head in response to his gallantry. Lucy could see that it was in this combination of refreshing wholesomeness with just a hint of playful mischief, as of a joke shared but never voiced, that a great deal of Caitlin Sean ná Gaolaire’s power over men lay. Lucy saw this, and felt an hook of something disconcertingly like jealousy tug at her.

  “I have a message for your wife,” said Cait.

  “Ah.” He smiled. “Well, you’d as like be better giving it to me, for she’s far away back in Boston.”

  “With your daughter?” said Cait.

  His eyebrows raised in surprise.

  “Yes, ma’am –” Lucy saw Cait take the unwelcome news without any visible sign of frustration. If anything her smile increased in intensity. “–but you really do seem to have the advantage, since you know about my family and I still don’t know your name,” he said.

  “Arrah, now there’s me with my country manners,” she smiled. “I am Caitlin Sean ná Gaolaire, and the pleasure of meeting is mine, I’m sure.”

  “And you have a message for my Prudence,” he said, “which, if it is in written form, I would be happy to take back for you.”

  “No,” said Cait, ducking as a bale of cargo swung over their heads onto the Nantasket. “No, no, it is the young lady from whom you adopted your baby—”

  “Emelia,” he said, and his eyes stuttered a little.

  “Emelia, sure and isn’t that a pretty name for a beautiful girl,” said Cait. “Well, I’m sorry indeed to be the bringer of unwelcome news, but the young lady sends her apologies and fears she must disappoint you both in the matter of providing a sibling for little Emelia—”

  “Thank God,” he said, his eyes steadying in unexpected relief.

  And now Lucy saw surprise pass over Cait’s features.

  “Thank God, sir?” she said. “Why, pardon my surprise, but you’re taking it powerful well, for I thought I was in for a sticky conversation here and no mistake!”

  He grinned at her.

  “Emelia has not only brought us the joy of parenthood, it seems she has unblocked the well of my wife’s fecundity.”

  “She’s having a baby?” said Cait.

  “My Prudence is with child,” he smiled. “Eight years without a hope, and then the moment we adopt—”

  “Well, I’ve heard it can go like that,” said Cait. “And joy of it to you both, ’tis a miracle, so it is. And in Boston too…”

  The musing way she said it caught a nerve in the momentarily happy sea-captain, and he bristled a little.

  “Our fine city of Boston is no less likely a spot for miracles than anywhere else, Miss ná Gaolaire—”

  Cait reached out and put a hand on his arm, with all the air of an unconscious gesture of apology.

  “No, no, no, Captain Tittensor, I know you’re right about that, for don’t I have family there myself–no, I was saying that because it’s to Boston that I was hoping for passage.”

  His feathers visibly unruffled as he felt the reassuringly warm pressure of her hand on the salt-stained pilot cloth of his pea-jacket and found himself rather pleasantly drowning in the clear green water of her eyes.

  “Well, we’re not the most comfortable of vessels for a passenger, but I’m sure we could—” he began.

  “Sure now and don’t you think I’d be the loveliest nurse to help your dear Prudence with the babies… and don’t you think it’d be the nicest thing to find room for me on the long passage back across the cold grey sea? Why, you could let me work my way by helping your sea-cook with some cooking of my own, maybe some washing and mending and who knows what other comforts of home on the long evenings…”

  She dropped her hand from his arm. He sneezed twice and looked at her as if momentarily confused.

  “I’m sorry, Miss ná Gaolaire. I, er—”

  “I was just wondering when you are sailing and if you might have a space for an enterprising and diligent girl such as myself to work her passage, if that’s not too bold,” she said. “Or failing that, I was interested in the fare you might be—”

  His face lit, as if a wonderful idea had just arrived out of nowhere.

  “No, no, no. If you are truly bound for Boston, I have a proposal for you—”

  And that simply, without the good captain ever thinking he’d been worked on, the deal was done. The Lady of Nantasket was to heave anchor and leave the Pool of London on the turn of the tide at noon the next day, and if Miss ná Gaolaire would be on board by ten at the latest, she might work her passage in the mildest and least demanding of ways. Hands were shaken, leave was taken and moments later Lucy had joined her as they walked back out of the dock gates.

  “See, the poor captain and his wife have money and a fine boat and a good life, but the wanting of the one thing they didn’t and couldn’t have made them vulnerable to the changeling filth,” said Cait. “Remember that, and take it as my last bit of a lesson to you: wanting is always a weakness. It lets others put handles on you and try and run you off your own path. But if you can make do with less, you travel lighter and freer, so you do.”

  Lucy was, for some reason, offended by the spring in her companion’s step.

  “Well now, that’s me off to Americay,” Cait said, “and there’s a sight more travel and time in this job than I’d anticipated, I’ll tell you that for nothing. Still, the captain’s wife is with child and that’s a big bonus, for I won’t feel half so bad reclaiming the Factor’s baby, knowing they have their own flesh and blood for consolation. He seems like a nice enough feller, and I’m sure his Prudence is a good sort.”

  “You’re really going?” said Lucy.

  “Turn of the tide tomorrow, on board by ten in the morning,” said Cait.

  “You’re leaving us,” said Lucy. She knew she sounded stupid. She said it anyway. It filled a hole opening up inside her.

  “I was always going to be leaving you,” said Cait. “There was no secret there.”

  She looked questioningly at her as they approached Charlie and Hodge who were leaning on a wall beside a whelk stall. Jed sat at their feet looking uncharacteristically self-conscious. Someone had tied a yellow ribbon around his neck.

  “Don’t look so glum. You’ll be safe here with your Oversight, while I’ll be far and away over the deep water, where I’ll probably be sold into slavery or have all my lovely red hair scalped off me by some wild Red Indian brave—”

  “America,” said Lucy glumly. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Me neither, girlie,” grinned Cait, quickening her pace towards the others. “And that’s what’ll make it such an adventure.”

  CHAPTER 45

  ON THE RAILS

  Late at night, The Smith walks the streets of London as Emmet watches over the girl on the Isle of Dogs. The Smith has walked these streets since they were fields and woods, and he has seen many strange things. Some of them he has stopped. Some he has laughed at. Some he has taken part in.

  Strange is not something The Smith is unused to.

  What he is unfamiliar with is the large block of ice that seems to appear just behind his breastbone, stopping his breath when he sees what is in front of him as he crosses the East London Railway tracks in the moonlight.

  It just stands there and grins, as if waiting for him.


  Its laugh cuts through the clean quiet of the night like a dirty knife.

  And then it stoops, and for a moment The Smith wonders if it is bowing, performing some obscene, mocking kow-tow of abasement to him. And then he realises the Sluagh (for it is impossibly a Sluagh that is standing on top of the iron rails without a qualm or quaver) is licking the metal.

  The Sluagh then stands and puts its hat on its matted hair.

  It is Fore-and-Aft, the one who berated him on Hackney Marsh.

  “I had always wondered what the cursed iron tasted like, Smith.” He smiled, a savage ruin of a grin, teeth rotted and akimbo. “It tastes like blood.”

  He waved a derisory farewell.

  “No wonder you like it so very much. Sleep well.”

  It takes a long time for that block of ice to melt enough for The Smith to breath properly again and turn back to the Isle of Dogs. He begins to walk faster and faster, breaking into a jog. The three advantages he had told the others they could rely on even at this lowest ebb in their fortunes–the fact they were still a Hand, the power of the Wildfire and the unshakeable protection of the Iron Law–are crumbling around him as he moves. The one thought giving him strength as he absorbs the new rules of his world, and the reduction of his paltry trio of strengths to a mere pair is that the Isle is surrounded by running water. Whatever else he has done wrong, whatever else The Oversight has overlooked, that is one thing he got right. The Isle is safe ground.

  Sleeping London is a whole other thing.

  CHAPTER 46

  SHIPS IN THE NIGHT

  Sharp and Sara had emerged from a grating in the shadow of a tall city wall. The surrounding streets were filling with snow, and the pedestrians hurrying home were too concerned with not slipping to make much of the two people emerging from the depths. The first person Sharp accosted affirmed that yes, this was Paris, the Montparnasse district specifically and, more than that, they had emerged in a square appropriately known as the Place d’Enfer.