Devil Take Me

by Jordan L. Hawk

  “And I’m hardly early. The clock on the mantle says ten after, old boot.” Archie sauntered past Nimble and dropped down into one of the worn chairs next to the small fireplace. He held his hands out to the flames. It wasn’t ever biting cold down in Hells Below, but the constant damp made him feel the healed seams that webbed across his ribs and shoulder blade. If it came to a brawl, he wanted his joints loose and ready to move.

  “Right you are.” Nimble laughed, and it almost sounded natural. “I suppose I lost track of time, being so caught up in the joy of the moment.”

  Archie smiled inanely and watched the kitchen door. If there were Inquisitors there, he and Nimble were both of them likely to end up swinging from nooses. Sodomy had been largely decriminalized, but demonic conjury was still punishable by death. The Queen’s Inquisition might have turned a blind eye to the practices during the war, but they were years past that now. Recently they’d made a very public show of policing trade in magics as seriously as they investigated thefts and murders.

  It occurred to him that he should have turned right around and slipped away, instead of sitting his ass down. But if Inquisitors lurked behind that door, then he couldn’t leave Nimble alone to face them and their torture chambers of prayer engines. He’d take as many of them down as he could.

  Even as the thought occurred to Archie, he discounted it. Not only would Inquisitors have frowned on Nimble strangling a brother pastor in their presence, but Nimble would never have allowed one of their number so deep into his home, not unless he’d already chopped them up into pie filling.

  So that left the options of new client or a Prodigal tough attempting to strong-arm or sweet-talk Nimble into joining a crew. Archie wasn’t particularly taken with either possibility.

  “It’s all clear,” Nimble called.

  The kitchen door opened slowly. White-haired and stooped, Mrs. Mary Molly poked her deeply wrinkled face out like a shy owl. She gave Archie a craggy smile, and he offered her a friendly wave. He’d only spent a few months in her company, and that had been seven years ago, but Archie had liked her sense of humor and appreciated the small kindnesses she’d done for him while he’d still been recovering the use of his right arm.

  As far as Archie could tell, she left it to Nimble to secure the rent for her property and didn’t question his methods or means so long as he was prompt with the payments. All her energies and income went to running a charity school for orphaned Prodigals. The school taught them the manners and skills to land work as clerks, secretaries, and servants in noble houses.

  Mrs. Molly snaked her hand back and seized someone on the other side of the door. Then she yanked a gangly redheaded Prodigal boy out. He looked all of thirteen, clutched a half-eaten sausage roll in one hand, and wore the satin livery and silk stockings of a nobleman’s page. From the emblem on his jacket, Archie realized the boy hailed from Lord Umberry’s house. And from the startled expression on his gob, Archie suspected the lad was halfway to realizing where he knew Archie from.

  Archie wasn’t close with Umberry, in part because Archie’s uncle, Silas Granville, was. However, Archie had seen a good deal of the man and his household while halfheartedly courting Umberry’s glacier of a sister, Agatha Wedmoor. Archie and Lord Umberry also frequented three of the same clubs and had sat across from each other many times at card tables.

  “This is Archie. He’s a friend of mine from the army. Not a Proddie, but you can trust him.” Nimble indicated Archie with his thumb, then flicked a long forefinger in the boy’s direction as he glanced to Archie. “The lad is Thom Chax. He comes to us by way of Mrs. Molly’s Improving School. And as I understand it, two years back Reverend Eligos arranged a post for Thom with some toff. But now, I’m guessing from the pastor coming after him, there’s been tribulation that’s obliged our boy to hightail it back to Mrs. Molly’s protection. Yeah?”

  The boy nodded. His gaze shifted to Archie, but then returned almost worshipfully to Nimble. “It’s true, Mr. Nimble, sir. I’ve come into real trouble.”

  “Oh! If there’s trouble in your life, the man you need is Nimble the Knife.” Mrs. Molly said it like a proverb. “That’s what it says on your card, isn’t it, Nimble, dear?”

  “The old card, my love. Nowadays it reads ‘Reliable and Discreet. Nimble Solutions to Intractable Problems.’ Sepia ink on the prettiest cream paper. But I digress.” Nimble’s grin relaxed, and he gestured to the seats near the fire. “Why don’t you both have a sit-down?”

  “That would be a relief.” Mrs. Molly steered the boy to a footstool and took the seat nearest the bright coals herself.

  Nimble glanced to the remaining empty chairs but stayed on his feet. “I’ll bitch the tea for you all like a proper host, shall I?” he offered, and his language made the boy grin in delight. Then Nimble sauntered into the kitchen, and the three of them sat in silence. Archie pointedly kept his head down as if his mud-caked bootlaces were the most engaging sight. He considered making an excuse and taking his leave.

  But he had a bargain to keep if he wanted to retain his title and the power it gave him to have his revenge. The terms of the conjury had to be met. And—though he’d die before he admitted it aloud—he’d been anticipating and waiting for this day all the last three months. There was an ache in him like a drunkard’s hunger for gin, or an ophorium addict’s longing for the needle. The whole of his body trembled with an almost feverish anticipation. Archie clenched his hands together and scowled at his ugly boots.

  He used to resent Nimble for putting this eager need in him, but the older he’d grown, the more he’d come to recognize that it was his own nature that roused and responded to such desires. Nimble was the best and most ardent, but not the only indulgence he’d known since he’d become a viscount.

  Archie sighed and almost reached for the deck of cards lying on Nimble’s shelf. What did it say about him that he, a man who could hire the hardest steeds in the city, could sulk in his chair because the needs of an old woman and some sad little lad might delay his pleasure an hour or two?

  He’d allowed himself to get spoiled, he had. Somewhere between his racehorses and vast mansions, he’d forgotten that he’d never done a thing to deserve the easy life he now led.

  Across from him, Thom gnawed down the remains of the sausage roll while attempting to appear subtle in his uncertain study of Archie’s profile. His weirdly intent expression reminded Archie a little of himself as a lad, and he felt a pang of sympathy for the boy.

  Mrs. Molly, in the meanwhile, closed her eyes and sighed in that soft rhythm that made Archie think she was about to drift off to sleep. The stairs must have been a hard slog for her to climb at her age. Archie noted that her boots were missing a few buttons and looked recently scuffed.

  What sort of trouble had the boy gotten into, that it had inspired the reverend to send a pastor after him and made Mrs. Molly feel the need to shelter herself and the child with Nimble? What could he have possibly done?

  Or was it what he’d witnessed being done, Archie wondered suddenly.

  Umberry’s lewd humor had always left Archie feeling slightly oily after an hour of his company, but until just this moment, he’d not considered that there could be any genuine substance behind all the talk.

  Just as Archie began to formulate a way to ask the boy, Nimble returned with a brass tray and a very colorful, if eclectic, tea set. Archie decided to leave the questions to Nimble, but he found he did want to hear the answers.

  Mrs. Molly straightened in her chair and smoothed the patched fabric of her white apron and gray dress. Nimble served them what had to be the finest floor-sweepings on offer in Hells Below, and even made a little show of embarrassment over the quantity of cream he could offer and the quality of his rough brown sugar cubes.

  “I snitched white sugar from a table once,” Thom commented as he stirred a dollop of cream into his cup. “But I like the brown better. Suppose it shows my breeding. Thanks for this!”

  Nimble offered
the boy the sort of noblesse oblige nod that Archie still couldn’t pull off. Then he kicked back into a high-backed chair with his own cup.

  “Well, let’s hear your tale of woe, lad,” Nimble said. “And then we’ll have a think on what good I can do you. Aside from sending that grasping pastor packing.”

  “It’s murder. That’s what I think.” Thom added three lumps of dark sugar to his creamy tea and slugged it back like he was downing blue gin for courage. Then he launched into the meandering history of how Reverend Eligos had secured him a position as a page to Charles Wedmoor, Lord Umberry. He’d served the lord for two years now, and aside from swiping a white sugar cube and ogling his lordship’s collection of dirty postcards, he’d kept his nose so clean, it practically gleamed.

  Halfway through explaining that he’d spent more time this last year running letters all across the city for Lord Umberry’s sister than he had trailing his lordship to brothels and dogfights, Thom interrupted himself to say, “But my point is that His Lordship is a founding member of the Dee Club.” Thom cast another speculative glance at Archie. “You might have heard of it….”

  Archie wasn’t a member, but he did know of the exclusive club. It and several others like it had popped up over the last fifty years, ever since grand old Lord Foster had made a point of patronizing and keeping company with the renowned Prodigal painter B. Sykes. Some of the clubs seemed to genuinely promote equality between their Prodigal and natural members; the Grenfell Club even championed changes to the laws that relegated Prodigals to life in Crowncross City. But the majority had far more in common with kennel clubs, where the rich went to be seen with their latest exotic acquisitions. Dee Club had a particularly dangerous reputation, which ensured it attracted nearly every young blood who imagined himself to be a worldly rake.

  “Yeah…. Dee Club.” Nimble paused in thought. “That one’s set up over the south bank of the White River. A fancy jade establishment where snobs gather to watch their pet Proddies recite poems and then tear out one another’s throats, yeah.”

  “It’s Sundays that they have the fights.” Thom nodded. “I didn’t used to work Sundays, you see. So I had thought it was all just dances and recitals and—excuse my language, Mrs. Molly—frigging behind the curtains.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard of folk doing far worse behind curtains, my dear,” Mrs. Molly assured him.

  Archie stifled his laugh behind his teacup.

  Thom nodded in all seriousness and went on. “Well, eight months back I got shifted over to Sundays. The lad who’d worked at the club before me had left all sudden-like. Only now I think maybe he didn’t leave. Maybe they done him in.”

  A desolate, ill look came over Thom.

  Archie’s amusement evaporated. He remembered how he’d felt the first time he’d seen a friend’s corpse, and then how sick he’d been the first time he’d driven a bayonet into a living man’s body. The soldier had died on top of Archie, his hot blood soaking through Archie’s uniform.

  But this wasn’t the same. Thom faced only a suspicion, not the fly-infested, bloating reality.

  He shook off his uneasiness quickly and went on with his story. “So I worked Sundays at the Dee Club and got an eyeful of the fights. They were so bloody, so mean. My first night, I was sick out in the garden. But I got… used to it. I mean, as much as a soul can. I started to know some of the fighters. Then I noticed something wasn’t right.”

  Mrs. Molly gave a sour snort and mumbled under her breath, “Sounds like a lot isn’t right with that place, Thom, my dear.”

  Thom nodded and stared down at the cup in his hands.

  “But the fights alone weren’t what put the pastor after you or brought you to me, are they?” Nimble prompted.

  “No. Nancy is the reason I come here. Nancy Beelze. She is—was—one of the best of the lady fighters. And the kindest women I ever known. She brought me sweets and snuck me storybooks as well. Real pretty, and red-haired like they say my mum was. Nancy always put on a good show. The gents like to see the girls tear each other’s clothes and the like, you know. But Nancy, she’d worked on stages and in genuine theaters, so she was real clever about keeping the gents entertained without losing an eye doing it. See, she’d chat with the other girls, and they’d work it out between them, so none of them got too hurt. Of course, sometimes someone would set a dog on her or bring in some brute from the boxing circuit. Then Nancy’d have a bad night. If that happened, then Nurse Fuggas would give me her keys and send me down to the infirmary rooms to deliver medicines to Nancy and the other girls. Most times Nancy asked me to stay and chat with her till she fell asleep.”

  Thom’s expression shifted from nostalgic to troubled.

  “A month back, she had one of them bad fights. Up against some slavering wolf of a dog. Afterward, I went down. She was bloody and black and blue from head to foot, but she still wanted to chat with me. Told me all about how she’d seen a map of the whole world and how there were all kinds of cities other than this one. There are places where trees grow all the way up into the clouds, and cities where the streets are paved with gold and copper. That’s when we both realized she’d lost her lucky copper ring in the arena. So I raced back up to fetch it for her. I searched around in the sand, and it took me a little while to find. But when I took it back down, she was gone.”

  “Gone, as in… dead?” Nimble asked.

  “Just gone. Her bandages was strewn across the floor, her nightgown in a wad on the empty bed, and me standing all alone in her room, holding her copper ring.”

  Archie frowned. He’d expected something a little more dramatic than a woman walking out. He glanced to Nimble.

  “You don’t suppose she just upped and fled from the whole business?” Nimble asked.

  “She couldn’t have,” Thom replied. “The infirmary room doors lock up tight when they close. It’s so as none of the gents could come down and take advantage while the girls were too beat up or dazed to fend them off. Most of them got draughts that helped them sleep. And I’d made sure that the door locked tight behind me when I went out.”

  “But surely the lock wasn’t made to keep Nancy from opening it from within the room?” Archie asked.

  “But they are, mister. They’re supposed to keep patients from wandering off and falling in the river after they’d had a hard knock on the head or after a dose of ophorium for their pain.”

  Thom sounded like he believed the excuse, but it struck Archie as deeply disturbing. A place could be called a sanatorium, a nursery, or an infirmary, but if the person within didn’t have the freedom to leave, then it was a prison.

  “When I realized Nancy was gone, I raced upstairs and told Nurse Fuggas. She’s the one that mixes their draughts and does the surgeries. She sat me down in her office with a cup of warm milk and then fetched Lady Umberry—”

  “You don’t mean Lord Umberry’s wife?” That Archie couldn’t imagine. Not only did the willowy blonde deem the slightest argument as an opportunity to succumb to vapors, but Charles went to noticeable lengths to distance her from his more indecorous interests and affairs.

  “His sister.” Thom pulled the pained face of a young man who’d felt the bite of the lady’s riding crop across his knuckles. Archie didn’t have nearly as much trouble picturing the marble-faced Agatha Wedmoor coolly looking on while any number of men or women scrapped for pennies.

  “Lady Umberry serves as hostess in her brother’s club. Even Sundays,” Thom explained. “She marched right down told me not to be a little ninny and claimed Nancy had been moved to a more comfortable room. But when I asked to see Nancy so I could return her lucky charm to her, Lady Umberry held out her hand and said she’d give it to Nancy. She looked at me with them cold blue eyes of hers, like I was a rat she was about to set her dog on. And I knew right then that she wasn’t being straight with me.”

  Having courted Agatha, Archie recalled exactly the expression Thom described. He’d once made the mistake of laughing at a comment that had
not amused Lady Umberry in the slightest. Later in the evening, she’d accidentally driven her fork into the back of his hand.

  “So, instead of giving her Nancy’s ring, I turned over my own lucky penny. Then Lady Umberry and the nurse sent me off. The next day, I asked if Nancy had got her lucky charm, and Lady Umberry assured me that Nancy had been very happy to have it back. Then I was told I wouldn’t be required to work Sundays at the club.”

  “You were sacked?” Nimble asked.

  “No. That would have been Lord Umberry’s prerogative, since I was his page. As far as I could tell, Lady Umberry didn’t snitch to him that I’d gotten suspicious. She just wanted me away from the club. And she treated me nice enough the weeks after. Had me deliver letters just like before. And I started to think maybe I had been a ninny. Maybe Nancy had changed rooms. Maybe she thought I hadn’t been able to find her ring and that I’d handed over my penny instead. I started hoping I’d got it all wrong that night, but then I was scared that I hadn’t.”

  Thom dropped his gaze down into the pale hollow of his empty teacup. “I figured that if I could just see Nancy for myself one time, then I could stop worrying and be able to sleep easy at night again. So this last Sunday evening, I snuck out to the club….”

  Archie thought he could see a glassy gleam welling up in the boy’s yellow eyes.

  “But she wasn’t there?” Nimble guessed.

  Thom nodded and wiped at his tears. Nimble handed the boy one of his bright red kerchiefs. They waited as the boy pulled himself back together and then miserably stuffed Nimble’s sodden kerchief into his coat pocket.

  “One of the other girls told me that she hadn’t been back since that last night I’d seen her. More than that, Nancy’s beast of a husband—Doug the Dog, they call him—had come around looking for her and gotten beaten down and driven off by the Inquisition for annoying the fine gents and making a nuisance of himself during one of their poetry recitals. After I heard that, I knew for certain that I’d been right that night. They’d done something to Nancy, and she wasn’t coming back, not ever.”