Moseh's Staff

by A. W. Exley

  “What exactly happened to Dalkeith?” Cara asked Nate, her attention fixed on the crowd. The mood reminded her of the walk up Tower Hill when Hatshepsut’s Collar drove Victoria insane. A mob was a powder keg waiting for a match and anything could set this group off. Would they swarm the castle walls and demand the queen raise the ambient air temperature? Would the rumours of Victoria’s possible illegitimacy resurface as a reason for the weather? After they silenced Dalkeith, would the citizens pull her from the throne anyway?

  “I believe he suffered a terrible accident while awaiting trial,” Nate answered from across the carriage, his attention fixed on the newspaper.

  Fraser’s case against the man had no substance without Nero’s Fiddle as its centrepiece. Not that any magistrate would believe a mystical object burrowed into the man’s mind and directed his anger and envy. With limited options, Fraser charged the former valet with murder by an unknown incendiary device and his case had more holes than a sieve. Then Dalkeith died before ever seeing the inside of the courtroom.

  “I heard he was stabbed.” Cara turned her gaze inward to smile at her husband. He protected her family as fiercely as he protected her. Dalkeith tried to murder her grandmother and paid the ultimate price.

  “Fell on a knife, yes, terrible.” His face remained smooth, not a quirk betraying his handsome features.

  “Repeatedly.” She drew out each syllable. The newspapers reported the man’s body had three stab wounds. Given he suffered a broken leg and took a bullet to one shoulder the night of his capture, it seemed his streak of incredible bad luck continued for him to then fall on a blade multiple times.

  One black eyebrow arched and he folded up the paper. “What annoys you more, that he died or that I took care of it?”

  “Sometimes I feel impotent next to your reach; you have so many invisible networks for your hand to play.” Truth was, the man infuriated her. Like a master puppeteer, he made things happen and she could never see the supporting strings. Never a whisper of culpability made its way back to his door. No wonder he drove Inspector Fraser crazy. If she didn’t love him so completely, it would send her to Bedlam trying to discern the true extent of his actions.

  He crossed over to her seat and wrapped her in a tight embrace. “I act to protect our family. You are not impotent, rather you are the very impetus of my actions.”

  Directing the puppet master? Yes, she liked the sound of that. She yawned and nestled into him. The nightmare came again last night and dragged her down to a world where she struggled to escape. She fought against Nate in her terror until his soothing tone calmed her. As a consequence, he slept even less than she.

  “I don’t see his face anymore,” she murmured as she closed her eyes.

  “Whose face?”

  “Clayton’s. I defeated him, and he no longer haunts me. It’s a different man in my nightmares now.” She needed to tell him, to make him understand that her past was bound to current events.

  “Who is it, cara mia?” he whispered against her hair.

  “The Curator, young and old. He is both men who pull me from the corner. He wants me and will stop at nothing until he has me.” She screwed her eyes tight but the words were out.

  He stroked her hair but remained silent. He closed their bond lest his dark thoughts leak through to her.

  For once, she would happily stay ignorant while he took care of a particular problem. She tried to rouse from her tired lethargy. “When are we going to Russia? Siberia would be preferable to London at the moment.” If she ran far enough, would she leave the nightmares behind? A part of her whispered, no, the demons’ claws were too deep in her psyche now to ever let her free. Events had to play out to their ultimate end.

  Someone threw a tomato at the carriage and she opened her eyes to watch it tumble down the glass in a red smear. “Well, that is wasteful.”

  “Worried about more vegetables staining the paint?”

  “No, I want to know where they found tomatoes at this time of year.” Pushing aside thoughts of salads and nightmares, she watched the restless crowd. Then, the few stragglers on the pavement stopped as one and changed direction, to flow back the other way as though obeying an invisible signal. Cara frowned and pressed her nose to the glass. In the distance, a thick smudge rose above the buildings. “Smoke. There must be a fire,” she said.

  People streamed across the road. The mechanical horses held their path, but the driver slowed them to a steady walk to avoid ploughing anyone down.

  “Let’s find out what is going on.” Nate rapped on the roof for the carriage to stop and leapt down once it halted.

  Cara stayed bundled in a fur-lined blanket. Within moments, the carriage dipped to one side as he climbed in and gave the signal to move off. “There’s a riot in Seven Dials. The mob has torched a building and the Enforcers have responded.”

  She sucked in a breath, so close to the Rookery, his territory. “Will it spill over to the Rookery?”

  “Doubtful, but I want to see Liam and check none of our people are involved. I don’t want Fraser thinking I am behind this.” A brief smile touched his face. The Inspector was keen to find any crime to lay at Nate’s feet.

  The horses moved up a gear and changed direction to head to the slum known as the Rookery, although Nate’s hard work made it a slum no more. Cara laid a hand on the cool glass of the window. “Every day the mood grows worse, if we don’t find what has London in its grip soon, this won’t be the last riot.”

  “I thought you wanted to escape to Siberia and leave all this behind?”

  The carriage drove straight up New Oxford Street and into the very heart of St Giles Rookery. Nate jumped down as soon as they halted and Cara was close behind.

  Liam stood on the street, surrounded by a dozen young men. He strode toward Nate and shook his hand.

  “Lady Lyons.” He took her gloved hand and kissed the back. “A pleasure as always.”

  “Liam.” She couldn’t help but smile, the man oozed charm much like Loki, and what woman could resist that accent?

  She glanced down the street to the invisible line that marked the boundary between Nate’s territory and the Seven Dials. Hulking Enforcer exoskeletons made a metal wall to hold back the crowd throwing all sorts of missiles. The cries and shouts cut above the hiss and roar of the mechanical soldiers. Smoke rose from the burning structure that fortunately did not ignite anything else due to the heavy blanket of snow.

  “Will they break through?” Cara asked.

  “Let’s talk inside, where it’s warmer,” Liam said and ushered them off the street and into a nearby home. The wash of noise pierced through the timbers and became a dull rumble. “I very much doubt they will head this way. Our boys are posted behind the Enforcer perimeter, just in case. It’s just a few unhappy street dwellers throwing rotten vegetables around a bonfire.”

  Nate listened as his mayor outlined the situation while Cara stood at the window, expecting to see an angry mob running down the main street.

  “There’s so many of them though, and scared people could overwhelm the Enforcers,” she said. Just like a rat might be tiny on its own, but enough of them could swamp a person and pull them to the ground.

  “We’ll hold,” Liam said in his soft Irish lilt. “Those out there feel abandoned by God and Victoria, they’re cold and have nothing in their bellies. Plus, empty minds are vessels to be filled by those with their own agendas. Every street corner has some madman spouting his theory about the blasted winter.”

  Cara turned to Nate, who fixed her with a look and shut down her train of thought before it ran away with her. “We protect our own, Cara, and that means the thousands who call the Rookery home. But we cannot feed everybody. If we tried, we would have less to go around, and children would go hungry once more.”

  She glared at him. Perhaps he should have gone into politics, where he could have made changes on a national level. Why change the lives of a few thousand when he could have done it for millions
?

  “Any more signs of Brandt?” Nate asked Liam.

  “He and his men sneak in and whisper in the pubs at night. Nostalgic for the old days when children died on the streets and women were raped in the alleys.” A sneer tugged his upper lip for a brief moment. “He’s all piss and wind.”

  Nate nodded. “Good. Let me know if he reaches too far.”

  “What of the children?” Cara had grown fond of the brood she gathered in the Rookery, in particular Rachel, the serious little girl who didn’t let only having one arm hold her back. She hoped none were out on the street in striking distance of the mob and uniforms.

  “All safe.” Liam’s gaze rested on Cara. “I believe wee Rachel is using the opportunity to work on a special story for you. She tries ever so hard with her letters that one.”

  That child had wormed her way into her heart with her sharp mind and large eyes. Her parents severed her arm to make her a better beggar and Cara longed to give her, and others like her, a better chance in life.

  “I’ll go visit them while you two talk.”

  At a signal from Liam, three men detached from the walls and shadowed her every step.

  Back in her office a few days later, Cara sat with her chin nestled on her hands and stared out her frosted window, watching sparrows flit around a lump of lard coated in seed and hanging from a skeletal tree. With their red chests, the birds were bright blobs of colour against the grey day. A loud tap sounded at her door and she looked over her shoulder as Brick entered, clutching a fat folder.

  “That information you wanted.” He waved the file and dropped it onto her empty leather blotter. Today he wore a tweed suit with a subtle green stripe, a subdued sage waistcoat with sharp points, and the most outlandish orange silk tie she had ever laid eyes on.

  She pointed at the monstrosity around his neck. “If I had a hangover, that would skewer my brain.”

  “You wait and see; all the bucks will be wearing them by the end of the week.” He winked. “Any plans for the next couple of hours?”

  She sighed and dragged her attention back inside the room. To compliment his clothing, he emitted a chipper mood, which probably meant he was sorting out his fledgling relationship with Clarence, Lord Dennington. The two men made a striking couple, and she hoped the lord took care of her shadow’s heart, otherwise she would torch his extensive wardrobe and shave his head. And that would only be her opening gambit.

  The file roused her curiosity and she laid a hand on top as if to absorb through the paper fibres what the bundle had to tell her. “I want to go through this. If you fill the coffee pot, I won’t need you again until after lunch. You’ll be free for whatever assignation you have planned.”

  “Done.” He snatched up the silver pot with the sinuous elephant trunk spout and left the room whistling a cheerful tune.

  Before her sat the life of Inspector Hamish Fraser. As she sipped her coffee, she followed his childhood at Eton through to his Cambridge years and his stint in the British Army. Nate’s work as spy showed in every carefully gathered piece of intelligence about his nemesis. Not just the dry dates and facts but the small titbits that revealed character. The beating he took at Eton for defending another boy who cried nightly after being newly separated from his parents. The paper he wrote at Cambridge about the effectiveness of restorative justice. His insistence that wounded enemy soldiers be given proper medical treatment and not left to fester and die in the filth. All revealed the nature of the man but nothing told her why he was so fixated on Nate.

  It wasn’t until Fraser took up his position as an inspector in Her Majesty’s Enforcers that Cara unearthed the detail she sought, the particulars of his personal life. Scraps of paper from his tail told of dates and times he slipped through the shadows down an alleyway. Always the same bobtail. Faith Andrews. A woman with a voluptuous figure, hair the colour of midnight, and lips bright as cherries.

  The inspector showed loyalty to the prostitute and never visited another. As weeks turned into months, he slipped from assignations in dark alleyways to something almost resembling a family life as she was seen entering and leaving his terrace house. Then she stopped visiting. The next entries in Fraser’s file were a series of newspaper clippings as he pursued the killer known as the Grinder. Cara’s hand paused over the last article with a stark photograph of the murderer’s fleshy countenance. After the man was hanged for his crimes, the reporter summarised the case and detailed the names of the fifteen known victims. Down the bottom of the list, the very last street girl he killed, was Faith Andrews.

  She let out a breath. “Knew that case was personal,” she muttered as her hand reached for her coffee cup. Was the relationship between Enforcer and prostitute only physical or did he care for her? For her to have spent so much time at his home, surely there was something deeper. Did he love her? And why did he blame Nate?

  Fraser made no secret that he intended to bring Nate to justice for when he took over the Rookery. Was there a connection between that night and the Grinder? An itch akin to one she’d develop near a potent artifact told her she trod the right path, so close to understanding.

  As she gathered up the scattered papers, a flash of blue caught her eye. She pulled it free and sucked in another breath. This detailed another series of assignations, this time with a local pharmacist. A regular appointment and each time a small vial was handed over. Someone in Nate’s extensive network had looked over the chemist’s shoulder as he filled the bottle. Notations revealed Fraser’s escalating laudanum addiction. His monthly visit became fortnightly and in the last couple of months—weekly. Flicking back to the newspaper article, she compared dates. The inspector seemed to have returned from the army with that particular vice, but his usage grew after the death of Faith.

  raser’s fingers caressed the little vial in his pocket. He ran a digit over the vertical ridges in the glass. Murmurs of yes whispered over his skin as he pulled the object out and placed it on the desk. Sunlight from behind hit the purple bottle and refracted deep amethyst beams around his office.

  He remembered his one trip to China on his way home from serving in India. Connor had dogged his footsteps and complained about the detour just to see some bloody plants. He made a pilgrimage to the opium farms where expansive poppy fields stretched as far as the eye could see. Nodding blooms marched into the distance. Their fat seed heads were sliced with razor blades and left to bleed. Each morning, the sap was scraped up and distilled to make the elixir now taunting him. It amazed him that acres of glorious frilly flowers could be concentrated into such a small bottle. Assisted by the tincture to enhance the drug, his mind would soar over those fields and bask in the dry heat rising from the plains.

  The everyday world pressed on his brain and he sunk into darkness under the weight. Only the laudanum could relieve the pressure and lift him out of the mire. Although catching Lyons and seeing him rot in Newgate prison would also improve his mood. When Lyons murdered Saul Brandt and his lieutenants to wrest control of the Rookery, he drove out the last of Brandt’s men. They slunk away to dark corners of hidden London. There they festered and became the contagion on the streets holding no allegiance to anyone. Their actions were unpredictable and unrestrained, like rabid dogs. One such evicted man became known as the Grinder. The killer who took his Faith. She would be alive today if not for Lyons. The Grinder’s deviance would have been fed and restrained in the Rookery but Lyons set him free to prey on the streets of London.

  Avenging Faith’s death gave him a purpose for crawling out of bed every morning. He removed scum from the streets so women could ply their trade and earn a few coins without fear of a madman slitting their throats. It wasn’t enough that he saw the Grinder take the long drop after a cursory trial. That monster would never have roamed the streets in the first place if not for Lyons’ grip on the St Giles Rookery. Nathaniel Trent, Viscount Lyons, needed to swing next to his creation. Only then could he lie down and sleep without seeing the scattered remains of Faith o
n Doc’s autopsy table.

  The bottle bounced in his field of vision, clattered back to the desk blotter, and brought him back to the present. The door swung open, pushed by a beefy blue shoulder. He sighed, palmed the laudanum, and slipped it back into his jacket pocket.

  “Do you ever just open a door?” he asked his sergeant.

  The genial man looked at his laden arms and frowned. “I did just open it.” He carried the requisite mug of hot tea and a stack of papers and files.

  Fraser rubbed his hands over his face while Connor fussed with the placement of the morning’s mail. He made an excellent housemaid, however futile his efforts to install order in the chaos of Fraser’s office.

  “You look like shit,” Connor said, as he moved the mug within easy reach.

  “Did you use that silver tongue to woo your wife?” Fraser asked from between the fingers covering his eyes.

  Connor huffed in laughter. “She wooed me. You know that and don’t change the subject; you still look like shit.” He picked up the overcoat from the vacant chair and hung the garment on the rack behind the door. Then he tidied off the pile of files and stacked them by the cabinets before pulling the chair closer to the desk. The legs gave a squeak of protest as he settled his bulk on the slender object.

  He stared at his inspector, once his captain on a more dangerous field. “Have you slept recently? And I mean proper sleep, not chasing the dragon-muddled haze.”

  Fraser dropped his hands to stare into the worried face of his sergeant. The man served him in Her Majesty’s army and followed him into civilian life. Blood, pain, and deprivation bonded men in ways a normal life could not. They witnessed the genesis of their personal demons and secrets that bloomed once home.