Sparrow Falling

by Gaie Sebold

  “Yes, yes, I’m sure it is, but I thought I saw... never mind. I’ll see them in the main room. And Jacobs.”

  “Sir?”

  “Don’t correct me again.”

  Jacobs twitched and ducked his head. “Yes, sir. I mean no, sir.”

  STUG SEATED HIMSELF behind the immense leather-topped desk, propped his elbows on it and fixed his face in an intimidating glower. It came naturally – he was one of those men who look as though they were put together from drying clay by an angry child; thickset, bristle-browed and jowly. His looks did not trouble him, since they had never prevented him from getting what he wanted.

  When Jacobs ushered the slight figure through the door he felt another, momentary jolt. It was indeed the woman he had seen from the window. His glower deepened. Barely even a woman – a mere girl, who was looking at him with far too direct an expression.

  “Mr Stug?” she said.

  “And who might you be?”

  “I’m the representative from Sparrow’s Nest Security, Mr Stug.”

  “Oh, now really. Why in the world would they send you? Is this their idea of a sensible approach?”

  “It’s the only approach we have, Mr Stug.”

  “Hmph.” He leaned back and waved a hand at her. “Well, go on, since you’re here, but be quick about it, I don’t have the whole morning to waste.”

  “This is a very fine office you have, Mr Stug.”

  “I know that.”

  “I understand you are looking to increase your security.”

  “Well I assume that’s why you’re here. Do you intend to set yourself up as a guard, perhaps? Stand in the doorway and ward off all comers?” He smiled at the ridiculousness of the thought.

  “Oh, no, Mr Stug,” she said with irritating calm. “We would simply advise you on how to best improve your building to prevent intrusion, thievery, and disruption to your business.”

  “I suppose you have some new invention or miraculous device that will do the thing?”

  “Not at all. I noticed that the windows on the lower floor are easily reached from the street, however.”

  “They are locked every night.”

  “Windows can be broken.”

  “A police officer patrols this street regularly, he’d soon notice the sound of glass breaking, I assure you.”

  “Windows can be broken silently, Mr Stug.”

  “Then the intruder would also have to deal silently with a pair of large, bad-tempered dogs.”

  “Dogs can also be dealt with. Silently.”

  “And how would you know all this?”

  “We have advisers, Mr Stug, who have expertise in this area.”

  “Turned-off coppers thrown out for a fondness for the bottle, no doubt. No, I really don’t think so, Miss... whoever. I would advise your employers to seek someone more appropriate to plead their cause. And as for you... I suggest you apply to be a governess, you have just that sort of niminy-piminy way about you. Good day to you. Jacobs will show you out.”

  The brown eyes under the smart straw hat regarded him steadily, and he felt a little jab of irritation. She should have been flustered, any decent female would have been. “Thank you for your time, Mr Stug,” she said, rose, and left the room.

  What a piece of nonsense! He picked up one of the papers on his desk. Those tenants in the house off Elsted Street were behind with their rent again. He leaned back in his chair. Elsted Street, Elsted Street – oh, yes. The Huntridge family. The husband a dockworker, no doubt out of work again, the wife took in sewing – and they had a gaggle of children.

  Maybe something could be got out of this morning after all.

  EVELINE LEANED AGAINST the closed door of the office with a cold dropping-away in her stomach, then realised she was being watched. “Excuse me, do you have a...” For a moment the polite word escaped her, but the tall young man in the stiff collar and the cheap suit was looking at her sympathetically. He was sandy-haired and long-nosed. Almost handsome, in a shivering-greyhound sort of a way, but had a stretched-out look, as though there hadn’t been quite enough material for all of him.

  “Yes, miss. Just through there, miss,” he gestured, with an ink-stained hand.

  You’re used to people needing the jakes after seeing your boss, ain’t you? She thought. And you look like a rabbit in a snare yourself. She didn’t like Mr Stug, not one bit – but she already felt sorry for his secretary.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Jacobs!” Stug shouted.

  She saw how he jumped. “You’d better go,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll see myself out.”

  “Yes, miss.” He looked as though he wanted to say something else, but didn’t – instead he scurried into the office.

  Eveline straightened up. Now what? She looked around.

  Next to the door of the water closet was the tiny room the secretary Jacobs was caged in, and the staircase leading down, away from humiliation and failure. But next to it was a staircase leading up: bare boards, stained black, a wooden handrail worn down so the knots in the wood stood out like islands.

  She glanced back at the office door. Then she bent, unlaced her boots, shoved them in her bag, and darted up the stairs.

  There were three doors at the top. One opened on a closet containing a balding broom and several grumpy spiders. The other two were locked.

  Eveline never travelled without her picks. These were a rather splendid new set she’d bought from Tall Jimmy in Longacre with some of the money from Charlotte’s jewels. She’d told herself they were an investment against everything going wrong, but as a matter of fact, she just liked having them.

  She looked at the two doors. Both had round brass handles – one of which was tarnished to a dull brown. The other, though it wasn’t polished up like the nameplate outside, had a faint sheen of use.

  That was the one she chose.

  The room beyond was dim, with heavy curtains drawn over the windows, but there was enough light to make out the edges of furniture. Eveline stood still until her eyes adjusted a little. A heavy table, one leg propped with a book. Another book – an old, thick one by the look of it – on the table-top. Not a ledger, something else. Candlesticks and the sort of thick-glassed lantern sailors used. A shelf of buff files bound with red lawyers’ ribbon. Bunches of herbs strung here and there. Ornaments and oddments. A curtained alcove.

  She nodded, backed out, locked the door, slipped down the stairs past the sound of hectoring from the office, and out of the front door.

  Ao Guang’s Palace

  THE PALACE OF the Dragon King Ao Guang of the East China Sea was, of course, magnificent. It was also under water, but in the way of magical structures, this caused no difficulty for visitors like Liu.

  The palace was of white jade, tiled in pearl, and shimmered like a mirage in the shifting sea-light. It was surrounded by a forest of branching corals twenty feet high, shading from palest flush to deepest blood-red.

  Great glossy seaweeds, jade green and purplish-red, curved elegantly about the tiered roofs like silk shawls. Vast jellyfish, bigger than a man, like huge pale mushrooms, dozens of webby tendrils trailing behind them, swooped overhead. Shoals of fish swirled, glinting, and scattered abruptly before the slow cruising shadow of a shark.

  Liu looked down at his robes. Traditional, but not excessive. He had, after all, been summoned. Too much flamboyance might count against him. He wore his human shape but let his fox-tail hang outside his clothes. Had he been true Folk, he would have had, like his father, several tails to show. He would not attempt to hide what he was – which would be useless – and would not give anyone the excuse to think he was ashamed of it.

  Shame was not an emotion he had much time for.

  Perhaps he should have told Eveline where he was going.

  No. She would undoubtedly quarrel with him. She seemed to have become quarrelsome lately. And besides... he looked up at the towering palace.

  Eveline was sharp, and clever, a
nd altogether quite his favourite human. But despite everything, despite what he had told her about the Folk, despite her own experience (which after all had been more a case of carelessness and lack of human feeling on the part of the Folk than actual threat), he wasn’t convinced she understood how dangerous his father’s people really were.

  Safer that she was kept well away from any involvement at all.

  By his very nature, of course, he linked her to this world, and these beings that given sufficient excuse and an attention span of more than a moment’s duration could destroy her in a thousand imaginatively appalling ways.

  He tried not to think about that. He did not see the point of dwelling on unpleasant things any more than he saw the point of shame, though these days, avoiding either seemed to be annoyingly difficult.

  A summons to the Court was quite unpleasant enough, and potentially a very bad sign. He had not been able to get in touch with any of his usual contacts, and suspected they were avoiding him – also a bad sign.

  But he had been in worse situations, and had talked, charmed, stolen and tricked his way out of them all. He fluffed his tail, set his face in an engaging expression of open, slightly stupid innocence, and started towards the gates and their guardians; great Shi lions, ten feet high at the shoulder, who had not yet decided whether to notice one small fox-spirit approaching their gates.

  “SO, YOU’RE BACK,” the Shi lioness said. She glanced across at her mate. “He’s back.”

  “He carries the stink of the biaozi on him,” said the lion, rolling the embroidered sphere below his foot back and forth.

  “So he does. He should wash, or he will offend the court,” the lioness said. The cub curled beside her opened his eyes, blinked at Liu, yawned, and closed them again.

  “Perhaps he should be washed.” The lion bared his teeth, and curled his tongue. “Come here and let me wash you, Little Fox. I will remove the stink of the creature who calls herself a Queen.”

  “I thank you for your generosity,” Liu said. “But I fear I am not worthy of such a gift.”

  “No, indeed you are not. I suppose you wish to enter?”

  “I must enter, or disobey.” Liu held out the scroll on which his summons had been written, in letters of purple edged with gold. Matching silk ribbons trailed from it, each an inch wide and at least two feet longer than necessary. Really, his former master had no subtlety. That was one thing you could say for the Queen – she was as subtle as the edge of a razor.

  The lion leaned down and sniffed at the scroll, shook his curly mane, and sat back. “It is as he says, our master has ordered it, we must let him enter.”

  “I do not trust him,” said the lioness, “and it is my place to guard those within.”

  “Do you wish to disobey our great lord?” the lion growled. “That,” he jerked his head at Liu, “might be in the habit of disobedience. We are not.”

  “I disobey no-one. I fulfil my duty. If he is to come in then I should be the one to say it.”

  “You are disputatious and wearisome.”

  “I ask only to be allowed to fulfil my function as duty requires of me!”

  The lion snarled with exasperation, and waved his claw. “Go, go!”

  The great gates of red lacquer, carved with peonies, peaches, and dragons, opened with ponderous gravity, revealing a long walk lined with huabaio pillars of green jade, carved with more dragons, twining sinuously and raising their translucent heads to stare at Liu as he walked, head high and tail up, along the path.

  Behind him the Shi were still arguing.

  Liu heard the jade dragons whispering to each other as he passed. Some were snickering.

  Belgravia

  STUG OPENED HIS front door and immediately Cora was there, all ringlets and perfume, her pale hands fluttering like trapped birds. “Oh, there you are, Joshua. Such a day I’ve had, you wouldn’t believe!”

  “Really, dear?”

  “Yes, that maid that Eliza found for me, oh, quite the most dreadful creature you know, really, so insolent, I had to turn her out.”

  “I thought she seemed quite proficient.”

  “Well, yes, she was to start with, but then I realised how she was sneaking about, you know, the way these girls do, poking her nose into things and asking questions, and oh, gossiping, I caught her gossiping with cook just at the most inconvenient time, going on about her family and so forth, really not at all... in any case, I shan’t ask Eliza for another recommendation.”

  “I’m sure you know best, Cora.”

  “Well, at least now I won’t have to worry.” She took his coat from his shoulders and hung it on the stand in the hall. “Oh,” she said, leading the way into the drawing room, “there’s a tea, tomorrow, at the Sithwaites’. I know you won’t mind if I go, though I know they’re not quite the thing, but...”

  “I didn’t think they were your type of people,” he said, sitting in one of the red plush chairs that stood in a rigidly maintained order about the blue-and-red Turkey rug. In a glass-fronted cabinet of wood as dark and shiny as treacle stood ranks of crystal glasses, soldiers ready to sally forth on the field of social battle. On the black marble mantle photographs in heavy, bedizened silver frames jostled Chinoiserie vases and cut-crystal candlesticks.

  The curtains were open, but the setting sun just managed to miss this window; sun never quite found its way into this room. All the rich and precious things gleamed in corners like the eyes of animals hiding in burrows, and despite the constant ever-changing flow of maids and skivvies dust gathered in nooks and cast a patina over the crystal, the silver, the polished wood; the chandelier dulled with it, the curtains grew a bloom like mould.

  Stug lifted his chin to stop the collar – heavily starched, and still only slightly wilted at the end of a long day – from digging into the flesh of his neck. “Cora?”

  “Well, no,” she said, shifting one of the picture-frames a little to the left, then pushing it back again. “They’re rather tiresome. But she’s heard of a mesmerist – a most remarkable man, apparently – she thinks he might be able to... well. You know, dear.”

  Stug felt a shudder clench his innards. “Cora. I hope you have not been mentioning our personal affairs to these people?”

  “I hardly needed to,” she said. “She’s in an interesting condition. Again. This will be her fifth.” Cora looked at him, briefly, her face ghostly in the gloom. Even her ringlets seemed drifted with dust; his pretty young wife for a moment a lost, dead thing, like some spirit-photograph set among the frozen pictures on the mantel. “So many children, the littlest is the dearest thing. I don’t know if I can bear it.”

  “Then don’t go,” Stug said, suddenly unable to bear it himself. “If it upsets you so, stay away from them. I don’t approve of this nonsense in any case. Mesmerism! Sheer flummery and fraud. I hear disturbing things about it, Cora, I forbid you to meddle with such stuff. Even if it is harmless, and I’m not convinced of any such thing, it carries the aroma of the sideshow. I don’t want my wife running about with such people.”

  “But Josh...”

  “No, absolutely not. No mesmerism, Cora.”

  She turned away, her shoulders drooping. Stug heaved himself out of the chair and made for the stairs. “I hope cook, at least, is still performing satisfactorily,” he said. “And that she is not going to inflict mutton on us again.”

  “No,” Cora said. “I believe it is a ham, tonight.” Her voice was chilly. No doubt there would be a bill from some obscenely extravagant dressmaker soon. He would pay it, and Cora would not go to a mesmerist.

  He stumped up the stairs to his dressing room, wrenched off the wretched collar and flung it on the floor. He hoped there would be enough maids left to keep the place in order, at least.

  As he changed, he took his watch from his pocket and laid it next to his shaving things. It ticked softly, a sound that should have been reassuring – but it was only another reminder. Time clawed at him with every tick, with the way his h
air crept from his scalp, with the loosening of his jowls and the deepening lines beside his mouth. When he shaved, it was harder now, because the skin had loosened and slackened, the stubble hiding in the soft flesh, escaping the razor’s edge. He was not, he considered, a vain man – but he had no desire to look like a thug.

  The watch glowed in the gloom. It was a fat, smooth, glossy thing; Presented to J Stug Esq curled in extravagant letters over the cover, entwined with grape-laden vines. It was a fine watch.

  It should be his son’s. It would be his son’s. He would not permit anything to stand in the way of that.

  Perhaps he should let Cora have her mesmerist – what harm could it do, so long as she took a chaperone? Not that ghastly Sithwaite woman, though, with her immense brood.

  His hands curled into fists, crushing the collar. Sometimes life was simply, unbearably unjust. Look at the Huntridge family – living like rats, feckless, hopeless scum, yet popping out brats like peas from a pod. The red-headed girl, though – all the rest of them were pallid, listless little things, or grubby and caterwauling – she had a bloom on her, and a smile.

  Cora would probably find her ‘a dear little thing.’ Stug had no particular liking for children, though he had no doubt he would develop a fondness for his own, if... but a man needed a son. Who would inherit what he had worked so hard for, if not his own boy? Someone he could show the ways of the world to... though not everything. There would be no need for the boy to know everything.

  Ao Guang’s Palace

  “CHEN LIU.”

  “Your Imperial Majesty.”

  Liu found it hard, as ever, not to stare at the imperial yellow silks which draped the walls near the throne. They were embroidered with scarlet phoenixes and peonies, and in among them, tiny human warriors.

  The embroidery moved constantly. The warriors battled each other, spears thrusting, swords slashing. Tiny limbs fell to the ground. Embroidered scarlet blood spilled down the yellow silk. There were no screams, only a constant whisper as the silk threads shifted.