by Trish Telep
Silka edged toward him and snatched the pie out of his hand.
She sat back on her heels and bit into the pie. She chewed thoughtfully.
"Well?" Toby asked.
"Somewhat bland," said Silka. "But pleasant enough in its way." She eyed him. "What is a Thames Mudlark?"
Toby grinned a wide, rascally grin. "We're the lowest of the low, the outcasts of the gutters, the sewer rats, pickpockets, cutthroats and thieves. And I'm one of the best, I am. The fat old Beadle of Bow has been after me for years, but he's never caught me yet. And he never will." He cocked his head like a curious bird. "And what's your story, Silka MacAlindon? Who ever told you the streets of London were paved with gold?"
"My father did, the big liar," said Silka.
"You should pay him back for putting such falsehoods into your head!"
"I already have."
"I see," said Toby, and he sounded as if he entirely understood what she meant. "And what about your true love? Does he have a name?"
She frowned at him. "What do you mean?"
"What is the name of the man you love? Surely he has a name?"
"You're talking nonsense," snapped Silka. "My true love is not a person. Why would you think that?"
"If not a man, then what?" Toby asked.
Silka lowered her head. "I don't know," she said.
"Ahhh," said Toby, very quietly. "Ahhh ..."
* * *
The two young outcasts sat silently at opposite ends of the small shabby attic as the light of dawn began to filter down through the skylight. There were no windows, and the angles of the roof pressed the walls in. A small door crouched under the sloping ceiling.
Silka and Toby eyed each other with wary interest, sensing some affinity between them--understanding instinctively that they both walked a dangerous and dark path. Then Toby pocketed his knife and Silka switched off her teslight and let herself relax a little.
"So," Toby began. "I have an important question for you, Silka MacAlindon."
"And what is that?"
"Are you intending to eat me?"
"Not while you smell the way you do," Silka replied.
"Then I'd best not wash!" he replied, quick as a whip.
Unbidden, a laugh burst out of Silka at the way in which Toby had responded, half in earnest and half in jest.
He started back, his wide eyes fixed on the teeth that her laughter had revealed.
"Well now," he said breathlessly. "You're something different, I must say."
Annoyed with herself, she pressed her lips together, throwing one hand up over her mouth.
He looked solemnly at her and shook his head, lifting his hand to wag an admonishing finger. "Never be ashamed of who you are, Silka. That's the only true rule of this life."
"My teeth repel people," she mumbled.
"My smell revolts people," laughed Toby. "What of it?" He tilted his head and regarded her thoughtfully. "You are not repellent to me, Silka MacAlindon. For three years I earned my crust as a roustabout with Monsewer Pierre Gris and his Caravan of Marvels." His eyes sparkled. "It was a travelling freak show. I'd be with them still if the dratted Beadle hadn't felt my collar at an inappropriate moment." He spread his hands. "So you see, Silka, you're nothing strange to me. I've broken bread and supped porter with people stranger by far than you could ever imagine."
She smiled again, and for the first time she didn't care that her dreadful teeth showed.
"From what I have read in the newspapers about your dietary habits," Toby continued, "do you not like men very much, then?"
Silka felt strangely at ease with this malodorous Mudlark. "I like them well enough," she replied. "I like them fine, smoked for a few days over a fire of beech wood and cut into strips."
There was a long silence between them. Toby was the first to speak. "Eating people is beyond the pale, Silka. It's not done, you know?"
"Then someone should have told me so," said Silka. "I have lived a very sheltered life. I do not know the rules you people live by."
Toby gave her an incredulous look. "It did not occur to you that killing and eating human beings might be a bad thing to do?" he asked.
Silka grinned sheepishly at him. "I did wonder about it," she admitted. "But I only ate unkind men who had evil intent." She gave him a guilty look. "At least, that was how it was at the beginning. The last few men I ate did me no actual harm, but ..." Her voice trailed away.
"... but they might have done, yes?" Toby finished her sentence for her. "Men have treated you badly in the past," he added, and it was a statement not a question. "I can see you have consorted with quite the wrong sort of person, Silka. You want to learn the rules we live by? Fine--I'll teach them to you. But you have to stop eating people--beginning with me."
Silka smiled again, her teeth gleaming like a hundred slender knives in the growing daylight. "I will try," she said. "I will try especially hard when it comes to you."
"You must have eaten other things," Toby said. "What else do you like?"
"I like kippered herrings," said Silka.
"Kippered herrings are good," agreed Toby. "How about jellied eels?"
"I don't know."
"You'll like them, for sure. And whelks and cockles and oysters, if we can get them. I'll find good food for you, Silka. Don't worry, I won't let you go hungry. We will be quite the team, you and I. And we'll run rings around the fat Beadle and all of London Town will be our playground." He grinned a wide grin. "What do you say, Silka? Shall we be friends?"
Silka smiled again for joy and nodded and wondered whether in the end at least some of the things her father had told her of London Town might be true. And as she thought of her old life in the cottage on the cliffs, her hand moved to her throat and her fingers reached inside her collar to touch her mother's periwinkle shell necklace.
But the necklace was gone.
She gave a cry as she remembered that the string had snapped as she had attacked her last victim and she had thrust the necklace into the pocket of her frock coat, meaning to mend it later. But then the Beadle's Runners had come and she had fled--leaving the frock coat in a heap on the floor with the precious necklace still in the pocket.
"What's wrong?" asked Toby.
"I left my necklace behind," Silka wailed. "I must go back and get it."
"Go back where?"
"To my room ... with the fire and the curing meat," Silka said, getting up and heading for the door.
Toby leaped to his feet, snatching at her arm. "Whoa there!" he cried. "Silka--you can't do that. The Beadle has the place staked out. They're waiting for you to go back. They'll nab you for sure."
"I don't care, I must have my necklace," said Silka, tugging at Toby's grip.
"No!"
"Yes!"
He looked at her with big, anxious eyes. "Are you cunning, Silka?" he asked. "Are you sly and sneaky and slick and perfidious? Can you arrive like a shadow and leave like a draught of air? Could you pluck the gold teeth from a man's mouth at noon and not have him know they were gone till supper time?" She stared unblinkingly at him. "Are you larcenous, crooked, piratical, and plunderous?" His voice became even more urgent. "In short, Silka MacAlindon, are you a natural-born sticky-fingered thief?"
"I should not imagine so," Silka replied.
"Well, I am," Toby said. "If you are determined to get into your old smokehouse under the beery noses of the Beadle's Bluebottles, and to escape undetected with your mother's necklace, then you need a well-seasoned crook with you." He released her and gave a low, sweeping bow. "I am that malefactor, Silka, and I will help you get your necklace."
She frowned. "Why would you do that?" she asked.
He smiled. "Say it's because I'm a whimsical rapscallion who revels in perilous adventure," he replied. "Or, say it's because I like you. Or, if you prefer, say it's because I want to get one over on the fat Beadle. Take your pick."
She eyed him. "You are a strange fellow," she said. There was a pause and then a wi
de, crooked grin. "Agreed." she said. "Let's bamboozle the Beadle."
Toby laughed and caught her hand. "Yes," he said. "Let's do exactly that."
* * *
Much against her instincts, Silka allowed Toby to convince her to lie low in the abandoned attic all through the long hours of daylight. Given her way, she would have stormed her old smokehouse and used her murderous teeth to retrieve her necklace. But Toby thought otherwise. Stealth by night was his preferred option, and to be fair, she could see the sense in that.
Making her promise to stay put, he disappeared around mid-morning and returned with his pockets full of swag. It was mostly sausage, cheese, and bread. She quite liked the sausage, and devoured it in great hunks, but the cheese tasted to her like something that had gone bad, and the bread tasted of nothing at all.
They chatted amiably through the afternoon of this and that, and to his astonishment, Toby learned of Silka's part in the Great St. Pancras Road Train Disaster of the early summer. Silka also learned several wonderful and astounding things about her pungent new friend, but as they do not come into this story, and as this yarn is long enough already, I'll leave those revelations for another time.
Often, through the day, they would hear the crackling beat of ornithopter wings above the rooftops, or the steady low hum and whir of a passing dirigible, but apart from that, their little room was oddly quiet, considering that it stood in the heart of the teeming metropolis, and that the people of London Town swarmed all around them like distracted ants.
Dusk came drifting over the city like the ghost of night. As the day died, Silka switched on the teslight she had stolen from her first victim, but its power was running down and it only gave a thin light. Toby kept them there till the sky was as dark as pitch. Then he led Silka out through the small door and down many a winding stair until they came out into a narrow alley.
He turned to her. "Take me to your old home," he said. "And when we get there, trust me to get us in and out safely, and do exactly as I say."
"I will," Silka agreed.
"I will procure for us a length of rope, and then we'll be off."With a grin and a wink and a roguish upturned flip of his collar, Toby slipped away along the cobbled alley with Silka following close behind.
* * *
Silka had never seen the rooftops of London Town by night before. There was a kind of stark beauty to it, she thought, as their thin figures stole, silent as cats, along a high slate ridge and came to rest up against a tall brick-built chimney stack.
The sky was white with low clouds, their plump rounded bellies reflecting the city's light downwards with a soft sheen. And there were many lights, scattered like jewels over the hard-edged silhouettes of the city. A thousand lights. At least a thousand. There was rosy firelight through windows, bright gas lamps on the streets, Teslagraph arms whirling on towers and hilltops. And slow and majestic above all were the bright coloured lights of the airships that cruised the night sky like fluorescent slugs against the cloud-wrack.
Toby crawled to the edge of the roof. Far below, he saw two men standing in deep shadow. Two men in Bluebottle helmets with vorpal lances at the ready. Smiling, he made his way to the other side of the roof. There was another of the Beadle's men down there, thinking himself so very smart as he lurked in a doorway assuming he could not be seen.
In all, Toby counted seven Bluebottles on watch around the building. And he guessed there would be others inside. He rubbed his hands together and went back to where Silka was waiting for him.
He had already chosen their method of entry. Time and wind and bad weather had prodded a hole in the slate roof. He went to it and used his pocketknife to loosen a few more slates, handing them to Silka as he leaned into the hole with the teslight in his fist. The weak blue beam showed a landing, some twelve feet below his perch.
"Hold my belt," he instructed Silka, and she did so while he leaned further into the opening and secured one end of his rope to a handy beam. He let the rope down and slipped feet-first into the hole, catching the rope between the instep of one shoe and the side of the other. Lowering himself, he signalled Silka to climb down behind him.
They stood together on the landing. Toby brought his lips close to her ear. "Which room?" he whispered.
She pointed along a dark corridor. There was a closed door at the far end.
Again, the lips at her ear and the warm breath on her neck. "Keep close to me and be as quiet as you can."
They padded down the corridor by spectral beam of the teslight. The silence was so intense that Silka's head felt full of thunder. Toby halted and pressed his ear to the door panels. He remained immobile for so long that Silka was about to give him a prod to see that he hadn't dropped dead on his feet, when he turned his face to her and winked. "I hear nothing," he whispered. "Let's go."
He turned the handle. There was creaking and grinding as he pushed the door open. The acrid smell of cold old smoke wafted from the black pit of the room. Along with it came the more pleasant aroma of cured meat, faint now, but still sweet enough to make Silka's mouth water.
No! Bad Silka. Toby says you're not to eat people anymore. Be content with kippers and sausage.
Following close on Toby's heels, Silka entered her old lair.
"The coat," Toby hissed. "Where is it?"
Silka ran to where she remembered dropping the coat. Toby trained the blue light on the floor. There it was, a bundle of black on the carious boards. She hunkered down and rummaged and in a few moments she had the precious necklace in her hand.
She turned, holding it up, seeing with joy how the periwinkle shells shone and sparkled in the teslight beam.
"I have it!" she declared, thrusting it into a pocket.
"Good. Now, let's get out of here before we get caught."
"I think not," boomed a fruity voice.
The door slammed shut like a bomb going off. A blinding teslight beam raked across the room, sending shadows flying. And from every direction, Silka saw the Beadle's Runners closing in on them.
Toby gave a wild yell and threw himself toward the door. Silka twisted and turned, crouching, hissing, and showing her teeth.
She saw Toby disappear under several Runners. More came for her. She sprang at the first one and her teeth met in his throat before the others could get to her. Then she saw lashes of blue-white light, whipping toward her through the air. She felt the burning agony of the vorpal lances. With a scream, she arched backwards into darkness and knew no more.
* * *
Silka awoke, hurting in every bone and with a headache that was ripping her brain apart inside her skull. She was lying down, tied hand and foot, and the floor was vibrating under her and the air was humming in her ears She opened her eyes a crack.
It took her a moment or two to focus, the light being so dim and grainy. Toby was lying next to her, his eyes open, looking into her face.
"I am so sorry," he whispered. "I should have known."
She screwed her eyes closed and opened them again, seeing more clearly now. "Where are we?" she asked.
"In the Beadle's Flying Black Maria," murmured Toby. "On our way to the Bow Street Lockups. And from there it's but a short step to the Bailey, and for the likes of you and me, the only road out of there leads to the hangman's noose or the Floating Hulks." He gave a sad, rueful grin. "Neither of them delightful prospects."
Silka lifted her head. They were in some kind of metal pit or trough with a ceiling of latticed iron. Dull light filtered down from above, and she could hear distant muffled voices over the steady humming noise.
"We ought to escape, then," she said.
"I agree. Do you have any thoughts on the matter?"
"Turn over and bring your hands up to my mouth," Silka said.
Toby squirmed onto his back and then onto his other side in the confined space. It was difficult and it took a while for him to wriggle and writhe so that the ropes binding his wrists were close enough to Silka's mouth for her to gnaw at them. But on
ce her teeth got going, the ropes quickly frayed and unwound and came loose.
Toby untied his ankles then worked swiftly and silently to let Silka free.
They crouched together in their prison hole, backs bent under the iron grille. "It will be held shut with a simple bolt," whispered Toby. "But escaping from this coffin is only the start of it. We're in an airship, Silka--the only way off is to jump. I have many skills, but flying isn't one of them."
"Shall we tie ourselves up again then, and await our fate?" Silka asked.
"I'm not saying that," Toby replied. "I was simply pointing out ..."
"Hush!" said Silka. "Let's try our luck." She squeezed her long thin hand out through the grille. Feeling blindly with her nimble fingers, she discovered the iron bolt and quietly and slowly eased it back.
Inch by stealthy inch they lifted the heavy grating. Silka's eyes emerged at floor level. They were in a long, narrow, gloomy iron cabin with curved walls and a ceiling made from riveted metal plates. Round portholes punctuated the sides, revealing discs of dark cloud.
There were no guards down there, but an iron stairway led to an open hatch in the ceiling.
Silent as mice, Silka and Toby slid out of their pit and lowered the grid.
Silka could hear the boasting and laughing voices of the Runners filtering down through the hatch.
"We're in the prison hold," Toby said, stretching and arching his back. He cocked his head upwards. "Can you hear them up there--congratulating themselves on capturing two of London's most desperate felons?"
"They'll be less cheery with my teeth in their wretched necks," growled Silka.
"No, no," warned Toby. "There will be far too many of them. Stealth is our best ally in this fix." He tugged at her sleeve. She turned and saw that he was pointing to a round hatchway set in the rear of the cabin. A way out, it seemed, so long as they learned the art of flight between the airship and the ground.
"We may as well gauge the level of the challenge facing us," said Toby, moving to the doorway. He twisted the handle and a moment later the hatch swung open and a blast of cold night air was beating into Silka's face, sending her hair flying.