Sixty-One Nails

by Mike Shevdon

  "Is she swearing revenge?" Blackbird asked. "Who wants to know?" he countered.

  "I do." My voice interrupted their haggling. "I would like to know." If Carris wanted revenge for her partner's death then I thought I should be informed. "And what's it to you?" he asked me. "He killed him," Blackbird announced.

  I glanced at Blackbird and she shrugged her shoulders. "You might as well show him the whole thing. I'll wait outside."

  "What?" I asked her.

  "Show me what?" asked Marshdock, leaning forward in the chair and putting his hands on the desk. "Show him," she instructed. "Or you'll have Carris and half the market on your trail. Make it good." She caught my arm and pulled me from the doorway further into the room, leaning momentarily close, whispering, "Show him some strength now and it'll save a lot of trouble later."

  She slipped past me into the doorway. "Oh, and don't forget to ask him about the way down to the river." There was a short pause and I heard the door to the street thump shut.

  "What is it you're going to show me?" asked Marshdock, suspicion entering his voice.

  I wondered how to play this. Show some strength, she'd said. As I hesitated, Marshdock snatched the paper knife and vaulted spryly up onto the desk, holding the knife low, ready to strike.

  I raised my hand to ward him off and there was a pulse of power as the darkness within me reacted. Fire whooshed out of the grate, scattering ashes across the floor and for a second it went pitch black. Then pale light rippled out across the walls, making the room swim in moonlight. Marshdock was caught, hand still raised ready to strike, balanced on the edge of the desk. We stood, momentarily frozen, my own uncertainty mirrored by the sudden halt in his assault.

  "F'shit, you're Untainted. I'm dead." His voice had lost all its arrogance.

  Caught between launching at me with the knife and retreating back behind the desk, he wavered, the blade in his hand glinting in the milky light. I lifted my hand, meaning to warn him back. The action brought a pulse of brightness that rippled away from my fingers. He turned away, wincing in expectation.

  His reaction helped me realise I had the upper hand. He thought I would kill him the same way I had killed Fenlock. I had no intention of killing anyone if I could help it, but it would give me the opening I needed. "I did kill Fenlock, but he attacked me first," I told him. "I defended myself."

  Marshdock backed slowly across onto the far side of the desk and climbed down, warily retreating and making a show of placing the knife back down where I could see it. "It was self-defence," he agreed, rather too readily.

  "If he had not attacked me, I would not have harmed him."

  "So you say. I'll be sure to mention that to Carris." He climbed down, moving around the back of the chair, putting its high back between him and me. "Is she swearing revenge against me?"

  "She's not dumb enough to ask a blood-price until she knows who killed him. I would imagine her desire for revenge will be dampened somewhat when I tell her what became of him. You'll let me explain that to her, will you?"

  "Tell her she should not make the same mistake he did."

  "I'll tell her, I will." The relief in his voice was tempered by the white knuckle hold he had on the back of the chair.

  "And now I have given you something you didn't know before, perhaps you would tell me where the way down to the river is, the one that runs below the Royal Courts of Justice. "

  "Do you know where the Devereux is? "

  "The what? "

  "I'll draw you a map."

  He edged forward until he could reach a scrap of paper and a pencil.

  "Here look, this is the Strand, and these are the Inns of Court. Past the Devereux Inn, see?" He quickly scribbled a map onto a scrap of paper and slid it across the desk towards me.

  I reached forward to collect the scrap and he snatched his hand back, retreating behind the chair again. The lines on the paper were unreadable in the wavering light. "Will Blackbird know where this is?"

  "Sure, sure. Near that pool, look. It's a black door. You'll find it."

  "Then I thank you for your help, Marshdock. You'll explain things to Carris?"

  "I will, truly. Just as you said."

  "Then I will take my leave."

  I backed out into the passage, letting the gallowfyre dwindle and fade, turning to leave by the door to the street. Blackbird was waiting in the half-light of the corridor, her fingers pressed to her lips in an expression of secrecy. She opened the street door and we exited. The door swung shut behind me with a heavy sound. "You did very well," she told me.

  Her comment was accompanied by the sound of bolts thudding home in the door behind me.

  "He was much more cooperative once I'd summoned the gallowfyre."

  "You'll have less trouble now they know what you are, and believe me, by sunset most of the country will know. That information will buy Marshdock favours from now until year's-end. You've done him a favour. "

  "Then he owes, me, doesn't he?"

  She smiled up at me. "Yes," she said, "he owes you." She took the scrap of paper from me and studied it. "This shouldn't be too hard to find. It's not far." She led the way back through the passage and waited for me so we could walk back towards the Strand together. "And what kind of Fey is Marshdock?" I asked her. "He is of the luchorpán."

  I stopped. "Did you just say leprechaun?"

  She stopped and turned to face me. "No, I didn't. I said luchorpán, but that's where your word comes from. The luchorpán are makers. They have clever hands and a way of getting into the nature of a thing, giving them properties beyond the norm."

  "I've just met a real leprechaun in the middle of London. Aren't they supposed to live in Ireland? "

  "Don't get confused, Rabbit. Leprechauns are what you get in stories. The luchorpán are as dangerous as any of the Feyre and you should treat them with respect."

  She stopped outside a hardware store. "Wait here a moment."

  She went into the shop and emerged a few minutes later with two small metal torches and some batteries. She had me hold onto one torch while she put batteries in the other and then we swapped. Then she set off again at a pace, torch in hand.

  I set my pace by hers and walked along beside her. "Why are you always so touchy when I ask what the Feyre are like?"

  She didn't slow down at all, but I could tell she'd heard me. After a while she sighed as if letting go of a weight and drew to a halt.

  "I am of the Fey'ree."

  "You are?"

  "That's the question you really want the answer to, isn't it? What am I? What do I look like? Am I an ogre with four-inch tusks or a nymph with green hair and suckers on the ends of my fingers? Are you happy now?"

  "Alex had faeries, lots of them. Little figures dressed in gauze with flowers for hats and–"

  "I said Fey'ree, not fairy."

  "You have to admit it's pretty close. At one point Alex wouldn't leave the house without wearing her wings. This is bizarre. "

  "So you say." I was detecting a measure of hostility.

  "Blackbird, why is this such an issue for you? I'm just telling you what she did. She was in love with fairies, they were everywhere, in the posters on her wall, on her windowsill. You even said you had a fairy mirror yourself."

  She crossed her arms. "I'm sorry I told you that now. "

  "Oh, Blackbird, please don't be offended. You know I don't know what a Fey'ree or a luchorpán looks like, so I'm not in a position to make the sort of judgements you seem to think I'm making. I just want to learn more about the people that I am newly part of. Is that so wrong?"

  She sighed again. "It's just that the Feyre used to inspire humanity with feelings of wonder, or dread, or panic. Not cutesy images of mushroom houses, fishing rods and flower petal hats."

  "You're worried I think you have a mushroom house and a petal hat."

  "Yes. Well, not that exactly, but that kind of thing. "

  "Well I don't think that. I'm a little worried that I still don't
know what you really look like, but that's more from uncertainty than the idea that you might live in a mushroom. I would like to know what you're really like, but I recognise that it's not my right to know and you'll show me as and when you wish to. I reserve the right to be shocked, inspired or terrified then." It was a bald statement of truth, which I knew she would hear in my words, though it just came out like that. I had wanted to be honest, and now I was worried I had gone too far.

  "Oh, Rabbit. You say the nicest things." She stepped forward and kissed my cheek and then walked off down the pavement, leaving me more baffled than ever. I shrugged and followed, turning down a side alley that wound past the Devereux Inn and between the backs of buildings into an open courtyard with a fountain. When I caught up with her, she was standing at an inconspicuous doorway. "Is this it?"

  "According to Marshdock there should be a way down through here." She pressed her hand against the flaky paint on the heavy wooden door and pushed. The door swung open and there was a stairway down into darkness.

  Blackbird led the way down and I followed. I turned on my torch as the door swung shut with a solid thunk behind us.

  It was easier walking down the stairway in the torchlight than in my own flickering glow. It wasn't that the torchlight was better illumination, but it didn't shift and sway of its own accord. We descended a little way then turned back on ourselves, with the sound of water getting stronger as we went down. Another flight down we turned back again and I could clearly hear the water now.

  We came out onto a walkway made of bricks that stretched out in either direction into darkness. In front of us was a weir with teeth of rusted metal sticking up out of the water, combing the larger detritus from the flow. It was about fifteen feet wide and the water falling the three feet to the next level almost drowned out our voices.

  "Which way?" Blackbird shone her torch up and down the tunnel.

  "Upstream, I guess. We want to go back towards where Australia House and the Royal Courts of Justice are."

  She set off ahead, her torch swinging around the vaulted ceiling. I had a moment's thought for what would happen if there was a sudden downpour and then went after her.

  The narrowness of the walkway meant it was easier to walk near the water, but it was also where the footing was slimier and I constantly found myself having to negotiate past nameless rubbish washed up in the last flood. We made our way slowly upstream, bending around away from the noise of the weir to find another weir in front of us. Bottles and rubbish were caught in the teeth for now, but that would soon change if it rained. I wondered where it washed out and then realised I knew. I had seen the iron grid of the outflow in my vision where it emptied out into the Thames. We curved around again and the noise changed tone. It became deeper and reverberant. The tunnel ended suddenly and I knew where we were. "Here. It's here," I called to her.

  The space opened out into a vaulted cavern. At the far end from us was a waterfall, some eight or ten feet tall with ladders either side providing access to the upper level. There was a metal gantry over the waterfall. The ceiling went up straight fifteen feet or so from there then curved into a vaulted brick roof. I swung my torch around and dropped the beam so I could see the island. It was in the centre of the pool of water fed by the waterfall. Now I could inspect it I could see that it was man-made and brick-sided. The top was shelved with outward sloping layers and in the centre of it I could see what we had come to find.

  I didn't need to see it to know it was there. It sang to me in a low discordant hum that set my teeth on edge and made my stomach sour. The anvil sat on its plinth, malevolent and dark, streamers of nameless filth caught on it. Nor did I need to touch it to know what it would do to me if I did.

  "It's just like you said," shouted Blackbird over the constant thunder of water, she walked forward level with the island.

  "There should be a door in the wall, over there." I swung the torch around across the wall on the other side, finding vaulted alcoves built into the walls. There was a darker outline, rectangular in the wall opposite. I couldn't see it clearly in the torchlight, but I knew it was there. The only way I could see of getting across was to climb the waterfall and then cross the gantry down on to the other side.

  "We'll go over at the gantry," I shouted to Blackbird and pointed my torch.

  "No need," she shouted back. She took a step or two backward and then skipped forward and launched herself off the walkway ending up on the island, ten feet away, with an easy grace. She edged her way around the plinth with the anvil on it and readied herself to jump across to the far bank. There was no way I was attempting that.

  "I'm going the long way around," I shouted over to her. Apart from the difficulty of jumping across, I did not want to get that close to the anvil. I made my way to the gantry ladder. It was stained and smeared with slime, like everything else, but it looked sound enough. I could have done with some protective gloves, but I would just have to settle for washing my hands thoroughly when we got back to the surface.

  I put my hand on a rung at chest level and rattled it, making sure it was secure. It held firm, so I tucked my torch in my pocket and put my foot on the rungs and started climbing. I reached the top without incident and hoisted myself up onto the gantry. This was above flood level, so although it wasn't pristine it wasn't smeared with slime like the ladder. I used the handrail to walk across, pulling my torch to take a look at the anvil from this higher viewpoint.

  From this new perspective, it was clear what it was. The shape of it, with the horn sticking out at one end, was quite distinctive. It was only the streamers of flotsam and filth that disguised its true nature.

  I switched off the torch and replaced it in my pocket so I could have both hands free for the climb down. I could see that Blackbird had leapt nimbly across to the other side and was investigating the wall. I knelt down, reversing towards the ladder and feeling with my feet for the rungs below me.

  It was tricky to balance on the edge and move backwards onto the ladder. Concentrating on that, I didn't notice the light growing in the distance down the long tunnel in front of me until I had my hands on the rungs and was climbing down the ladder, about to drop below eye-level.

  What caught my attention was not the way the arch of the tunnel was illuminated. It was the way the light flickered, sending shifting milky beams across the domed ceiling as if it was reflecting off the water.

  Except it wasn't the water that was causing it to flicker.

  Thirteen

  I had to look twice before my brain caught up with my eyes. Then I looked at my hands and, no, it wasn't me creating that shifting luminescence. That meant only one thing.

  My scramble down the ladder may have been ungainly and noisy, but the clatter was easily drowned out by the thundering waterfall, which also meant my attempts to attract Blackbird's attention went unheard. I had to make sure that the light from Blackbird's torch did not give us away.

  I made it to the bottom and then had to fumble in my pocket for my torch. The ledge was narrow and it was still pitch dark. The torch tangled in my pocket and I wrenched at it to pull it free. My fingers were slimy from the ladder and as it came free it slipped out of my fingers and bounced on the bricks at my feet then skidded over the edge and vanished into the dark water below. I swore.

  There was no time to see where it had gone. I used my hands to feel my way along the clammy wall, stepping sideways towards Blackbird. I could see the glimmer now on the tunnel ceiling over the gantry. It was getting stronger.

  I shuffled towards the place where Blackbird was examining the wall with her torch. I daren't go any faster for fear of losing my footing. I finally reached her and tugged at her coat. "Blackbird, we have to get out of here!"

  "What's the matter? Where's your torch?"

  "I dropped it."

  "Already?"

  "Turn yours off. There's someone coming."

  She turned off the torch. "Where did you drop it? "

  "Never mind.
Look." I pointed upwards to the glow building above the gantry.

  "Why didn't you say?" She started shifting along the ledge.

  "I was trying to. You were more interested in the torch." The light was growing over the gantry and starting to illuminate the vaulted ceiling.

  "There's no time. In here." Blackbird dragged me into one of the alcoves created by the vaulting. The alcove was shallow and we crammed into the limited shadows created by the supporting pillar.

  The light grew brighter and then spilled out over the water. I pressed in alongside Blackbird.

  I leaned forward. There were two figures standing on the gantry. One of them was a blank silhouette against the dark, a wraithkin like me. I pressed myself in again. "How many?" Blackbird whispered against my chest. "There are two, a wraithkin and one other. The other looks normal enough. "