Sparrow Falling

by Gaie Sebold

  Panic was no good. Panic threw you off, made you do stupid things. Panic was one of the things that got you caught.

  Stug knew something, that was obvious enough. The fact that her name was still floating around in government circles, however little actual information might be attached to it, that was unpleasant, though hardly surprising. But the name Fordyce meant nothing. She’d made it up on the spot, trying to catch him out... and it had worked. Whatever Stug knew about that business, it wasn’t much. He was trying the flimflam artist trick of making it seem like he knew everything about you, and failing.

  Someone knew something, though. And the other name he’d mentioned... Simms. Bloody Bartholomew Simms. She’d bet a horse and carriage that Simms was the one who’d peached on her. He’d always been a nasty piece of work and it looked as though he’d decided to throw her to the wolves – though why, she wasn’t sure. She’d done her best to stay out of his way, while she was at Ma’s... she would have to ask Ma.

  The memory of that last argument dropped into her stomach on top of the sausage. Dammit, Ma! After all the years they’d spent together... she’d been too thrown to react properly. She shouldn’t have to play-act with Ma. All right, maybe she should have told her – Ma hated not knowing things, information was her guiding light, she loved it like some people loved gin or opium.

  And like them, she got real narky if she was deprived of it.

  Now what? She could not – would not – burden her mother with this, not now she was looking so much better, and besides – Mama knew about as much of the underside of the world as a newborn babe, despite what her brother had put her through. It was all his fault, horrible man, if he hadn’t come into their lives...

  Never mind. That was of no matter now. What mattered was what she was going to do.

  And the first thing was to find out what Stug was really after. He was no more government than she was a dancer at the opera, she was convinced of it. But he was involved in something underhand and nasty. Those children... that little battered shoe... it’s children. Always the children, Juicy Peg had said... the devil’s red right hand...

  Bowler-hat. “Oh, Eveline, you numbskull.”

  It was Simms. Mr Stug’s bowler-hatted companion, the one who laid the heavy on the tenants, that was Bartholomew Simms sure as eggs.

  And he must have seen her. Why he’d peached on her to Stug she didn’t know. But Simms knew what Stug was up to.

  So what could it be, and could she use Simms to find out?

  Simms was dangerous. More dangerous than Stug, that she was sure of. Simms didn’t have a front to keep up. Stug, with his charity pen-set, his certificates, his carefully arranged office that jarred so with the room upstairs, would only do what he could keep at arm’s length. Simms would cheerfully murder and go for a pint of porter with the blood fresh on him, knowing that in the places he drank, it would only act as a warning that Simms was a born thatchgallows, a thoroughgoing villain, and you didn’t mess in his business.

  Not Simms, then, unless she had to. Stug. She had to find out what Stug was really up to, otherwise she’d have no leverage at all. Knowledge, and the means to use it. Ma was right about that, whatever else she might be wrong about.

  IT’S GOTTA BE you, Evvie Duchen, Evvie the Sparrow. Lady Sparrow, Liu calls you. Don’t think of Liu, it hurts. You gotta do it all, because when it comes down to it, you’re the only person... not the only person you got, that’s not fair to Mama or to Beth. But the only person you got a right to ask it of.

  If only Liu was here.

  But Liu wasn’t here, and it was down to Eveline. She took a deep breath. There was a bit from a play she’d heard, working pockets at the theatre. She’d liked the plays and almost let herself be distracted. Some fella in shiny armour, saying, “Once more unto the breach,” and lots of stuff about it piling up with dead. Of course, him being the king, he wasn’t that likely to get dead – kings on the battlefield didn’t, so far as she could tell. It was the poor buggers without the fancy armour that got dead.

  “Once more unto the breeches, eh, Eveline,” she said, tugging on her working trousers, and managing a small, lonely snort of laughter at her own joke.

  Hair pulled back, pinned, tucked under the cap. Boots that looked too big but actually fitted well – Evvie, having done without decent footwear for so long, loved her various boots with a fierce passion. These were padded, flexible, and soft-soled, excellent for night-time work but scruffy looking to go with her starveling appearance.

  Belgravia

  STUG’S HOUSE WAS exactly the sort of place Ma Pether would once have sent her scouting out. All pillars and polish at the front, and even the servants’ entrance down the area scrubbed within an inch of its life and decorated with a pair of brutally clipped miniature trees in ugly pink and yellow pots. Eveline assessed the pots as at least Chinese though not as old as they were pretending to be, worth a few bob to the right fence but heavy and clumsy to move.

  A maid in black-and-white with a frilly apron and fancy beribboned cap opened the door, looked Eveline over and said, “What is it?”

  A masculine voice behind her said, “Is that the chimney-boy? Let him in, Ella, there’s a love – Herself’s been complaining about the dining-room fire again.”

  “Rat boy, miss.”

  “Rat boy? Oh, good.” The maid stood back. “The dining-room? I thought it was the windows in the drawing-room had her going.”

  “Smoke had her Ladyship’s guests coughing like a bunch of consumptives, she says.” The man who was speaking was dressed in tight black trousers and a brocaded waistcoat over a gleaming white shirt, and looked Eveline over with a grin. “Here, Ella, get the boy a slice of that pie, he’s half-starved.”

  “That’s very kind, sir, but I’d better get on.”

  “We’ll keep it for you, then. Watch yourself around the place, you get a speck on anything there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “Oh hush,” the maid said. “You’ll have us both thrown out.”

  Evvie became aware of a chiming sound, quiet, but exactly the kind of noise that if it went on too long would grate on one’s nerves as badly as something much louder. There was a board on the wall of the kitchen with a series of what looked like the lids of fancy pots, delicately painted with flowers, bearing two arrows like the hands of a clock, and surrounded with small labels, saying ‘Tea,’ ‘Cleaning,’ ‘Consultation,’ ‘Tobacco,’ ‘Coffee,’ ‘Whiskey,’ ‘Brandy,’ ‘Drinks, Alcoholic, Assorted,’ ‘Further Instruction.’ Beneath each one was a china label with, in fancy script, White Drawing Room, Smoking Room, Master Bedroom... Evvie counted twelve rooms in all. One of the pot-lids was slowly revolving, and from this came the chiming sound. One of its arrows pointed, quivering, to ‘Tea.’ The label below it said: Blue Drawing Room.

  “Oh there we go,” said the man in the waistcoat. “You’re on, Ella.”

  “I hate that thing,” Ella said. “It’s not natural.”

  “Coo,” Eveline said. “What is it?”

  “It’s the latest in ‘Service Engineering,’ they call it,” said Waistcoat. “Saves them all the time of having to tell you what they want, then you go get it, then you bring it to ’em. Ever so fatiguing for ’em, don’t you know. I don’t s’pose you can read, can you? See that label, third around the dial? That says, ‘Consultation.’ Means you’re in for a ticking off from Her Nibs. Might as well say ‘Out on yer Ear,’ half the time. You want a job as a boot boy? We just lost one, due to him cheeking Herself, only he was mim as a mouse and that nervous he barely managed a word a day. So I dunno how he got so bold all of a sudden.”

  “You don’t half go on, Ned,” Ella said, pouring hot water into a teapot.

  “Cor, what’s that smell?” Ned said. “It’s a bit rank, innit?”

  “It’s the latest thing she’s trying,” Ella said, wrinkling her nose at the steam. “It’s not as bad as the last one. That was enough to turn you green. And she’s still taking enough of
that Pinkham’s Tonic to float a navy, I don’t think it’s right.”

  “Everything she tries, she should have enough nippers to fill St Paul’s by now.” Waistcoat – Ned – grinned. It wasn’t a very nice grin. “I reckon it’s him. Too busy making lucre to give her a good...”

  “Ned! Little pitchers!” the maid said, waving frantically at Eveline.

  “I ’spect he’s heard worse, eh, boy?”

  Eveline rubbed her toe on the very clean kitchen tiles. “Ummm.”

  “Now stoppit, Ned, and let the poor boy get on.” Ella lifted the tray.

  THE ROOM WAS so full of fancy stuff that Eveline could barely haul the large bag to the corner without knocking over a potted plant on a stand or a vase or a candlestick. Her sleeve brushed a leaflet onto the floor, whereon was printed a woman apparently asleep in a chair and a smartly-dressed man standing over her with what appeared to be threads or wires extending from his fingers towards her. ‘The latest in Mesmeric Techniques’ the leaflet declared. ‘W. Davey, Practical Mesmerist. The Most Recalcitrant Cases Cured.’

  “Oh!”

  Eveline jumped up, fixing her face into an expression of cringing politeness. “Sorry, ma’am. Rat boy, ma’am.”

  The woman standing in the doorway, her hands clasped at her breastbone, put Eveline in mind of a giant doll. Her hair was elaborately piled on her head, her dress in what Eveline had to assume was the very latest fashion. Crinolines might be on their way out but this garment was so laden with ribbon, frills, lace and bows that it was barely any smaller than the vast tented skirts that were now fading from favour.

  “Rat boy?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Here to deal with the rats, ma’am.”

  “We have rats?” She made a scuttering movement with her feet, picking up first one, and then the other, as though trying not to touch the floor at all, and glancing around with wide, horrified eyes.

  “Not for long, ma’am,” Evvie said cheerily.

  “Do you have to catch them? I hope it doesn’t make a mess!”

  “You’ll never even see ’em,” Evvie said, with some truth. “S’a new method, using Etherics. Drives ’em right out, it does. Don’t you worry, ma’am.”

  “Etherics? What are those?”

  “Science o’noise and vibration, ma’am. Very modern. Practically miraculous, what it can do.”

  “Etherics. Can it be used for... well, other things?”

  “S’coming in for all sorts, ma’am. Health and hygiene, all that. Better than mesmerism or any such.”

  “Really? For matters of... health?”

  “So they say, ma’am. I just turns the machines on, ma’am.” Evvie kept her eyes on the mechanism she was unpacking. She was working on the fly, conscious of a rising excitement, that heart-speeding, brain-fizzing sense of dancing, turning need and desire to your advantage, playing the odds, playing the mark.

  “I don’t suppose you have some sort of visiting card?”

  “No, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”

  “Well if I wanted to find out more about Etherics, who should I get in touch with?”

  Evvie’s brain raced. Mama wanted her machines used for people’s health, but if she was right, what this woman wanted was beyond what even Mama could do.

  And putting Mrs Stug in touch with her would be far too risky.

  “I’ll ask them to send you a leaflet, ma’am,” she said, feeling deflated.

  “Please do.”

  “Certainly, ma’am.”

  “I have a card...” She got one from the small beflowered pot on the mantel. Eveline tucked it away, with thanks, forbearing to point out that she already knew the address, being as she was in the place at the time.

  “So how does it work?”

  “I don’t rightly know, ma’am. Like I says, I just turns ’em on.” Evvie moved a lever and the machine began to chime, gently, a much more pleasant noise than the one that summoned the staff from the kitchen.

  “Now if you was a rat, ma’am, that’d be like chalk squeaking on a slate, that would.”

  Cora Stug clapped her hands. There was something oddly childlike about her, or perhaps unused, as though this doll had been kept in tissue paper in a box, unwrapped only for display to visitors, and never properly played with.

  “How terribly clever! Do, please, get your master to contact me. As soon as possible. You won’t forget?”

  “No, ma’am, I’ll speak to him the second I get back to headquarters,” Evvie said.

  “Please do.”

  Evvie sat back on her heels, wiping her brow and scowling at the mechanism, which was something she’d had Beth knock together, without Mama’s knowledge. It made a pretty enough noise but was no more Etheric than the clock on the mantel.

  She felt slightly mean, but after all, she hadn’t done the woman any harm. What would she do if she ever got an actual baby, in any case, one that cried and stank and couldn’t be made all modern and convenient? And that wasn’t Evvie’s problem.

  Her problem was still Stug, and what he was up to. She might have some idea what he wanted, but what was the business with the children?

  She stared at the mechanism, the grooved brass disc on the top spinning hypnotically. Whoom, chime, whoom, chime...

  A wood. A cold wet wood and Charlotte, tired and hungry and with wet feet, getting colder and colder, close to death. Why was she thinking of Charlotte and her little wet shoes?

  She nearly died. You thought she had died, but she’d been taken. Aiden took her away and left a changeling in her place, a sad cold thing that didn’t even last the night, that you buried thinking it was Charlotte. The thought still caught her throat, even though she knew Charlotte was alive. She had never been able to forgive Aiden. The Folk didn’t think like people, but that didn’t make it all right, that he had taken her sister and let Evvie think she was dead.

  You gotta give something to get something.

  A little battered shoe. Juicy Peg and her tales.

  Stug’s stealing children for the Folk. He’s giving them to the Folk, to get a child in exchange, one of his own.

  He’s raving.

  Mrs Stug might have her own madness, with her teas and her mesmerists, but the things she was trying could only fail.

  Mr Stug thought he could get a straight bargain from the Folk. Eveline’s dealings with them had been limited since she was a small child, and, apart from Liu (who, whatever she said to him, she hardly thought of as Folk anyway) she was happy to go her way and let them go theirs. But thinking that they’d give a straight exchange? That there wouldn’t be such a twist in any bargain that you’d end up wishing like hell you’d never made it?

  He must be mad. No-one who wasn’t mad, or desperate, or utterly cork-brained, would think such a thing. What sort of a child did he think he’d end up with? Not what the Folk would give him, Evvie was sure of that.

  The Sparrow School

  “EVELINE?”

  “Yes, Mama?” Evvie was frowning over the account book, only half-seeing it, working out in her head what she would need for the embassy that night. She was still hoping that something would occur to her. Something – anything – that would prevent the need for this insane scheme. Could she get the attention of the ambassador? Tell him what was going on? But... he was government, foreign or no, and Eveline’s distrust of all things government was strongly rooted. She needed a trick, a scheme, a con. She trusted cons. She understood them. Government, so far as her experience went, was a dangerous mystery, run by people with exactly the same motives as a con artist, but a deal more power.

  “Come here, dear. I need to speak with you.”

  There was something in her mother’s tones that pricked Eveline’s ears and straightened her back. Something was going on, and she didn’t like the feeling.

  “Mama, I can’t, I need to take a class and then...”

  “Yes, then what, Eveline?”

  “I don’t understand, Mama.”

  “My dear, I think yo
u do.” Mama’s look was stern. “I have not completely forgotten my duties as a mother, Eveline. You are planning something, and I should like to know what it is.”

  “I’m trying to do the accounts, Mama, nothing more.”

  “Eveline...”

  Evvie sighed and shut the book. It wasn’t as though staring at them would make the figures change.

  “Sorry, Mama. I am planning something, it’s to do with this work I told you about. Checking security. I have to go out tonight, in fact.”

  “Why must you do it at night?”

  “Because that’s when a lot of robbery happens, Mama.” Not the sort she’d done, generally – broad daylight and cheeky with it was more her style – but she couldn’t tell Mama that.

  “Well I hope you’re not going alone.”

  “I have to, Mama.”

  “No. I will not have my daughter wandering the streets at night, alone. Eveline...” For a moment Eveline thought she would sit in the chair on the opposite side of the desk – the one intended for staff being interviewed or girls getting a scolding – but she came around to Eveline’s side and stroked her daughter’s hair. “I know... I know you haven’t told me so many things, to spare me. I know I have been away from the world a long time, but I am not a complete fool. I do have some idea of what can happen to young girls, out on their own. I think some of it already happened to you, and that’s why you took up with that woman. But I’m here now, and you have the school, and your friends. There’s no need for you to risk yourself so.”

  “Mama, we have no money. And I need this work.”

  “But why must you go alone?”

  “Who would you say I should take, Mama?”

  “Oh, I wish there was a man about the place I could send with you... where’s young Liu? I haven’t seen him for days.”