She stood in a narrow alley between two buildings—no, they were like a child’s drawing of buildings, outlined with strong black strokes of ink, windows sketched roughly into their faces. They extended high above her head until they disappeared into clouds far too low to be real. She looked to either side; the alley became immaterial only a few feet from her in both directions, and when she turned around to face the drawing behind her, it went immaterial too. So, only one of these constructions mattered.
She turned to face the first edifice again and took a step back to see it better. The whole thing wavered as if she were seeing it through water and had just flung a stone at the pool. She held still, afraid it might dissolve entirely, but it settled back into immobility, and she had the feeling that the shimmering motion was part of what she needed from this Dream. So she took another step back, and then another, and with each step the wavering grew more intense, but also shrank until it was centered on a fat barrel beside the door.
Sophia steadied herself and drew on that barrel, bringing it into focus, and as she did so her view tilted and swayed dizzyingly until she was looking at one of the upper windows. It wavered, then went from being a child’s drawing to a real window, framed in wood that had once been painted white and was now scratched and peeled. One pane was missing, and Sophia looked inside and saw it would be easy to reach the latch through that missing pane. She examined it more closely; she would fit through the window opening without much trouble. So—alley, barrel, window. Very likely it would be more difficult than the Dream suggested, but she was confident she could overcome any difficulties she encountered.
She let the Dream go and rubbed her eyes. One more, as a precaution, she thought, and found a Dream thronged with faces. She entered it and found herself at the end of an alley, looking at the carriage pulled up to the edge of the street nearby. Faceless people walked past in both directions, none of them looking her way, far more than she imagined ever came down this street in the waking world.
She watched, and waited, and presently the crowd thinned until there was only one person, whose face shivered into clarity as she watched. His footsteps slowed, then he turned toward her and raised his arm, and a heavy stick appeared at the end of it. Sophia made him freeze and walked around him, examining him, then rose out of Dream and breathed slowly and deeply until the dizziness passed.
She had probably spent too much time in Dream tonight, and she would pay for it in the morning, but no one said she had to rise early, and she had nothing planned for the day until attending the Duke of Lenshire’s party tomorrow evening. She could certainly be excused a little extra sleep to fortify her for an evening of dancing and conversation—oh, and she was committed to having a Vision for the Duchess. Why she had agreed to do it so publicly… but she had, and there was no sense regretting what she had no way of changing.
That was something Mr. Rutledge had said—what had they been discussing? She couldn’t remember, but he had said it in response to some comment she had made, and it had made her feel guilty, as if he had been talking about her expulsion from the War Office and somehow knew her secret campaign to expose Lord Endicott and reclaim her reputation. He had an uncanny knack for seeing to the heart of whatever she was saying and responding in a way that increased her understanding of her own opinions. He was—
—actually, she thought about him quite often, didn’t she? And she looked forward to seeing him, and she felt that rush of pleasure when he was near… Sophia, you are falling in love with him, aren’t you?
The idea made her face flush. True, he was quite a bit older than she, but that was not so remarkable; Lord and Lady Montclair, for example, were quite happy despite the difference in their ages. And Mr. Rutledge was clever, and shared her interests, and was handsome despite his unfashionable attire… why should she not feel an attraction to him? Perhaps the way he always sought her out meant that he, too, felt something more for her than friendship.
She blushed again. How embarrassing, after having declared frequently and decidedly that she did not intend to marry again, to consider—well, she could bear Cecy’s teasing, and there was no one in society save perhaps Lady Daveril who would criticize her for falling in love with him. Just the thought was enough to send her heart racing.
She pressed her gloved hands to her hot cheeks. Be sensible. It probably did not matter. Despite how often he sought out her company, he had never given her any indication that he felt anything but friendship for her, and no doubt he would be embarrassed if he knew the ridiculous turn her thoughts were taking. No, he was a friend, and he would stay a friend, and both of them would be happier that way. One of them would be, anyway.
She leaned against the fabric of the hood to cool her cheeks and saw they were approaching the intersections she had seen in Dream and nearing Wharf End Lane. She leaned forward and said, “Keep going to the end of the street, and turn.” Cold air brushed her face, raising a chill along her arms and cheeks, and she clenched her hands in their red silk gloves together in her lap. Now nothing would stop her from learning the truth.
In which Sophia takes up a career as a burglar
harf End Lane was narrow, wide enough only for one carriage to pass at a time. Sophia hoped it was a through street and not a dead end, hoped even more fervently that they would not meet anyone coming the other way. With no householders to maintain lights along the street, it was dark and foreboding, as if it knew Sophia’s purpose in coming here and was drawing in on itself for protection against her incursion.
The wooden structures lining both sides of the street sagged as if depressed, and though they did not seem as run-down as they would if they were abandoned, the weathered grey doors made it impossible to imagine they had ever been new. Few signs indicated the shops’ purposes; presumably if you knew enough to find the way there, you knew which building you wanted.
The street was as empty as she’d hoped. She had only been in this part of London once, familiarizing herself with landmarks, and that had been at two o’clock in the afternoon, not nearly midnight, and she had only been able to guess at what it might look like now. The carriage passed a few men, hunched up against the cold, who walked on without showing any interest in them. Another man, walking alone, glanced up at her, and she reflexively shrank back where she could not be seen, uncertain what she was afraid of.
A bundle of rags tucked into an alley between two of the closely-packed structures moved, revealing a man curled in on himself so he would fit into the small space. Sophia realized she was still clenching her fists and forced herself to relax. She had Seen far worse things happen to men in the war, and yet the sight of that man wedged between the buildings made her feel sick and horrified in a completely different way.
She sat up and watched carefully until she saw the sheep’s head sign, the name illegible in the dim moonlight. Aside from that, it looked no different from its brothers, except that its doorknob was brass instead of iron. Sophia had no idea if that was significant or not. Then they were past, and Peter was turning at the end of the street and coming to a halt. “Ma’am, what you want to do now?” he said.
“Wait a moment.” The front of Witters had not resembled the “building” she had seen in Dream, which suggested there was a back way in. Sophia got out of the carriage and walked a short distance up the new street. It was colder here, so close to the Thames, and a breeze had come up that blew the smell of the river away. There were no lamps along this street, nothing but the light of the full moon soon to be covered by storm clouds, but not too soon—it would not interfere with Sophia’s plans. She had plenty of time.
She paced down the street until she could see past the buildings of Wharf End Lane—what a grand-sounding name for such an ordinary, tired-looking street—and into a narrow alley that seemed to run parallel to it, behind the buildings, for most, if not all, of its length.
“Wait here,” she told Peter. “A man will try to attack you in a little while, but if you are alert, and sho
w him your pistol, I believe he will run. He is the sort of person who will attack weakness and flee from strength.”
She retrieved her lantern from the carriage and held it out for him to light. By its flickering glow, Peter looked extremely nervous, but said nothing as she entered the alley with her lantern held as close to her chest as she dared. It cast odd shadows on the walls she passed and made the windows in the upper stories, those with glass panes, flicker like ghosts keeping her company as she walked. There were no windows at ground level, and no sign that there ever had been. The blank walls were like a narrow canyon that made her feel suffocated. She hugged herself briefly, rubbing her arms against the cold, and continued on.
The alley was full of rubbish: battered crates and broken bottles and the half-frozen waste of dogs or cats. She stepped around a heap of cloth she fervently hoped did not conceal a person and reminded herself of why she was here, trying to maintain the calm she always felt in Dream. From this perspective, here at the bottom of the alley, the buildings really did seem to extend all the way to the sky, and Sophia kept her gaze firmly ahead.
It was unnerving to be in a place so like, and so very unlike, what she had seen in Dream, and that was when she realized she had no idea whether she would recognize the rear of Witters. She had not bothered to count how many doors lay between the end of the street and her goal, and she would have to retrace her steps all the way back to the street and face those dour, sinister men whose disinterest might not persist when they saw she was a lone, defenseless woman.
She stopped for a moment, lowering her lantern, and nearly gave in to despair. This was the most ridiculous idea she had ever had, and she should be home now, safe in her bed, not wandering through a filthy alley on a futile errand that no doubt would teach her nothing.
Something moved behind her, and she whirled, holding out her lantern like a talisman. A dog so painfully thin she could see its ribs even at ten feet’s distance skulked out from between two of the buildings and whined at her. Sophia brandished the lantern. “Shoo!” she said, waving the light a little, praying it would move on. She had read of wild dogs attacking people, and although this one looked peaceful enough, its appearance could be a ruse.
The dog whined at her again, then limped away down the alley toward where Peter waited with the carriage and his reassuring pistol. Sophia relaxed and lowered the lamp, turned around, then looked more closely at the battered wooden wall next to her. It reminded her of what she had seen in Dream, though the weathered gray boards bore little resemblance to the stark black and white construction her Dreaming mind had conjured. She looked up and saw, well above her head, a window that reflected the scant light in a strange pattern, as if some of the glass were missing. This had to be the right building; she refused to consider the alternative.
She looked around at the refuse clogging the alley and saw an empty barrel canted atop a pile of bricks. Strange, to find bricks in this place built mainly of lumber, but she didn’t care enough to speculate on their presence. She took hold of the barrel and, with some rocking, managed to pull it off the heap and onto its side, then roll it to a spot directly under the window. It was not difficult to upend it, and it seemed sturdy enough to support her weight, so she set her lantern on the ground and climbed atop the barrel.
She stretched out her fingers and was able to grip the window ledge, curling her fingers through the space where the pane was missing—and that was all. She reached up with her other hand and fitted it through the same space, but even with both hands together she could barely find purchase on the sill, never mind pull herself up. She let go and stood balanced on the barrel for a moment. Just a few more inches…
She climbed off the barrel and went back to the refuse heap. There were the bricks, of course, and a few lengths of rope too small to be of use to anyone, and two or three boards perhaps three feet long and the width of her two hands. She pulled at one of them and it slid easily from the pile. The board alone would not give her enough height, but it might still be of use.
She dragged one of the boards to her barrel and laid it on top, then began hauling bricks to it, stacking them neatly on the board until she had a pillar six bricks square and four high. She laid another of the boards across the pillar for stability, then carefully climbed atop her makeshift stool. It teetered beneath her, but did not fall apart, and now she was chest-high to the window and able to reach inside and open the latch easily. She climbed back down for the lantern, which she carefully set on the floor inside the room, then awkwardly hauled herself through the opening. With a final scramble to keep from falling on her face, she was inside.
Sophia straightened her clothes, tugged at her gloves, and looked around. The room looked smaller than it probably was by the lantern’s flickering light, containing only a few small crates and an empty bookshelf. She took a deep breath and smelled only old wood and dust. If this office sold anything, her nose detected none of it. She adjusted her gloves again, then exited the room through a flimsy door that stuck in its frame.
She found herself at one end of a short hallway that terminated at the far end in a staircase that ascended and descended out of Sophia’s sight. Two more doors lay between her and the staircase. Faint blue moonlight shone from beneath them, giving them a sinister look, as if something evil were going on behind them. Sophia sternly told her imagination to be silent and went forward through the open doorway directly opposite her, into a room lit more brightly by the glow of the full moon.
Most of the front wall was taken up by a window with dozens of thick, palm-sized square glass panes that made it impossible to see anything outside clearly. It looked as if the window itself were the source of the blue light, and Sophia had the momentary impression that she was back in Dream, where impossible things like glowing glass happened as a matter of course.
She shook her head to dispel the illusion and turned around to examine the room. It appeared to be where most of Witters’ business was transacted. There was a clerk’s desk in one corner, and a counter filled most of one side of the room, with the detritus of business covering it—an inkstand or two, a discarded pen, a pair of ledgers. Behind the counter were some cubbyholes, some of them containing folded or rolled papers. Whatever trade Witters engaged in, it was not the sort that invited thievery, and no doubt everyone in the neighborhood knew it.
She went down the hall toward the stairs and tried the doors. Both were locked. She considered falling into a Dream to see if they were important, but chose not to worry about it until she had exhausted the possibilities of the staircase. It was dark in both directions, and silent, and extended beyond her lantern’s light, giving no indication which way her Dream might intend her to go. After a moment’s consideration, she determined to go up first.
The stairs creaked under her weight like a symphony scored for rusty nails and dry wood, making her nervous. She told herself they were not going to collapse, and there was no one to hear her in any case, and moved on.
The stairs ended at another hallway, this one lined with doors on both sides. Five of the six doors matched the rest of the building, grey and depressed-looking, with tarnished doorknobs. The sixth, however, was sanded and painted and bore a shining brass knob. Sophia stood and regarded it for a while, because it looked completely out of place in this decrepit building where nothing had been painted for at least ten years. Then she opened the door and went inside.
It was a bedroom. No, not just a bedroom: a room in a lodging house. The bed frame was shabby, but its brass was polished. The blanket on the bed was worn soft, but not threadbare, from much washing. The porcelain bowl and pitcher on the cupboard with its three drawers had a few chips, but were otherwise intact. A lamp stood on the cupboard, waiting to illuminate the room for its occupant. Even the chintz curtains were free of dust and would no doubt give the room a cheery, homey look when they were drawn back to allow sunlight to enter.
Sophia realized her mouth was agape and shut it. Someone had gone to a gr
eat deal of trouble to make this room look like lodgings for someone. Then her brain caught up with the rest of her senses, and she became furious. They had tricked her. Lord Endicott had done this on purpose to make her look unreliable. That… that bastard.
She had been too confident, and she had underestimated him, and he had made her look the fool. And now Bow Street would not take her seriously, leaving her to fight him with only her own resources. He had a Seer, he had all the power, and she had… what? Determination? That was all very well, but in wartime determination needed to be backed up by military strength to be useful, and this was most certainly a war.
Wood creaked, somewhere nearby, and Sophia went very still, listening. Nothing. Then, again, a creak from the symphonic stair as someone took a step, then another.
Sophia extinguished her lantern and looked around for a place to hide. Under the bed was something that only worked in books, since it depended on your pursuer being an idiot. She rushed to the window and began prying at it with her fingers, but it was not made to open, or had been painted closed, and she gave up. She could not scale the side of the building in any case, so exiting by that route was pointless.
She snatched up her lantern and went to stand behind the door, where she would be concealed oh-so-briefly when whoever it was entered. She would smash the lantern on his head, then run, and hope not to trip and fall to the bottom of the stairs in the darkness. She gripped the lantern in both hands and swallowed to rid herself of the dry, panicked feeling in her mouth.
The person drew nearer, making the creaky music crescendo. She raised her makeshift weapon above her head, and waited.
A man much bigger than she entered the room, moving quietly. He took a few steps further into the room, and Sophia stepped forward and brought the lantern down toward his head. The man turned with incredible speed for someone so large and caught the lantern with one hand as it descended. With the other he grabbed Sophia’s arm and twisted it behind her back. She gasped in pain and struggled to escape, but the man’s grip was like a raptor’s claw. “Let me go,” she said, panting with fear.
Wondering Sight (The Extraordinaries Book 2) Page 12