“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked, somehow sensing a new presence without looking up. She’d seen him a few times growing up. Save for more gray in his hair, he looked the same: tall and square, broken-nosed, pale-skinned. Had his name been Smith? Smitty? She didn’t remember.
“Pint of beer,” she said, letting her voice slip back home, and slid a few pence over the bar. “An’ a bit of talk.” She added a few more. The bartender grunted but took them. Then he turned away.
Mina leaned on the bar—there wasn’t a seat to be had, though fortunately her neighbors all seemed to be immersed in loud discussion—and waited. In a few minutes, a glass arrived in front of her, complete with a thunk and an inch of liquid sloshing over the side. She picked it up and sipped.
The bartender looked at her without recognition. Mina had hoped for as much. Her time in pubs like this one had mostly involved dragging George out of them so he could clean up for dinner, and talking with a few friends who served the drinks. It was enough that she knew the ways of the place, and hopefully not enough that anyone would spot her.
“What sort o’ talk did you ’ave in mind?”
She shrugged. “Fred says as how you know ways a body can get work sometimes. ’Igh-toned men as are likely to want things done.” She rolled her eyes as the bartender—Williams? William?—began to leer. “Not that sort of thing, thanks. A girl don’t need directions to that kind of work. But Fred—”
“Fred runs his mouth considerable, don’t he?”
“Just to me,” said Mina and simpered, or tried to. She hadn’t had much practice at it.
“Then why didn’t you ask him?”
“Maybe I want work as doesn’t go through him,” Mina said. “A bit for myself. He said you know a bloke—”
The bartender’s eyes narrowed, but his mouth worked thoughtfully. He took himself off briefly to pass on more beer and then returned. “Could be,” he said.
“Well, ’as he got anything needs doing now?”
“Now? Nah.”
Mina took another, larger drink. “Is there a name about ’im?”
“John Smith,” said the bartender, and smirked. “Why do you want to know, anyhow?”
“Let’s say I do,” said Mina, with an inward sigh. “’E just comes in and asks for people?”
“Something like that.”
“And how do you tell ’im when you’ve found ’em? You must have some way of getting the word out quick.”
“You seem like you’ve got somethin’ in mind.”
She shrugged one shoulder, trying to look casual. “I might ’ave an offer a man might pay for,” she said. “If ’e was the sort of man who’d got ambition. But I want to put it to ’im myself. Saves misunderstanding.”
“Saves money, too.”
Mina dug a few more coins out of her purse and held them meaningfully in front of the bartender. “A couple shillings ain’t my concern, is it? I’ll mention your name to ’im if you like, and you can take your commission up with the gentleman.”
She put the coins on the table but kept her hand over them. The bartender stared at her for a long moment. She glared back.
“Fine,” he said eventually. “Like I said, the name’s John Smith. Thirty-nine ’Unter Street. I send a note when someone useful turns up. ’E comes in after an’ pays me. And is overdue, I don’t mind telling you.”
“Thirty-nine ’Unter,” Mina repeated. “And if ’e comes back looking, can you let me know?”
Another shrug. “If you come back afore someone else asks. If you’re done with the questions, I got customers.” When Mina didn’t answer, the man moved off.
It was good enough. Mina finished her beer, left the glass on the bar, and pushed her way out of the pub.
A short ways down Cable Street, she heard footsteps behind her. She knew it was probably Stephen, but she took a step away anyhow as she turned to face the new arrival, and she kept a tight hold on her purse. You never knew.
“It’s only me,” said Stephen, appearing out of the fog and once again confirming what Mina had told him. Wet-haired and dressed in his plainest, oldest clothes, he still didn’t fit in. He carried himself wrong: shoulders too straight and frame too easy at the same time.
Then again, Mina didn’t think she’d ever seen Stephen in a place where he did blend, just as she’d never seen him in clothing that didn’t look like a costume.
Perhaps he looked most natural in his…natural state.
Perhaps she had no call to start wondering about that.
Still, she took the arm that he offered and let herself be glad of the closeness and warmth of his large body.
“You’ve got no gloves,” said Stephen, looking down.
“Too new,” Mina said. “We’re looking for Hunter Street. Thirty-nine.” She shut her eyes for a second, calling geography to mind. “It’s not too near, but a hansom should be able to get us there quick enough.”
“Ah—” Stephen began.
It had been a long evening already, and was going to be a longer one from the look of it. Mina had no patience for chivalry. “I suppose you can drop me back at your house first,” she said, being even more careful than usual with her h’s as she spoke, “but I’d have thought you’d want to go as quick as you can. Before people start asking any questions. And I think two are probably better than one unless he’s got a job lot of men there, honestly, but you’re in charge.”
“Oh, am I now?”
“You’ve got the money, anyway.”
“Ah, well,” Stephen said and passed a gloved hand over his mouth. “That’s actually what I’d been coming around to telling you. The situation changed a bit while you were in the pub.”
Mina looked from his hair—damper than the fog would explain, now that she was close to him—to the embarrassed look on his face. She tried not to grin. “Lose your wallet?”
“Aye.”
“About twelve, was she? Big eyes, a bit tearful? Lost her mum in the dark?”
“Her grandmother,” Stephen said and cast a baleful glance behind him. “Fast wee thing she was, too. Her and her friends.”
“It helps to know the streets,” said Mina. She patted Stephen’s arm, the fabric of his coat soft and thick beneath her gloveless hand. “Don’t feel bad. You’re hardly the first, and I can probably get us a cab.”
Sixteen
Thirty-nine Hunter Street was a squat and unwelcoming place: sturdy, square brick walls, white shutters, and the general impression of dour respectability. The woman who answered the door was as dour as the house itself, and gave Stephen and Mina a squinting, suspicious look.
“We only rent single rooms here,” she began, a prune-like cast to her mouth, and added, “sir,” as if it was more of an insult.
“I’m not here to rent,” said Stephen. He tried to ignore the implication, but it did make him more aware of Mina’s presence at his side. She’d turned toward him slightly, probably to put him between her and the wind. He wanted to put an arm around her and hold her against his chest—his people’s abnormal warmth should serve some purpose—but this wasn’t the time or the place. He wasn’t sure either one existed. “I’m inquiring after one of your lodgers. A Mister Smith.”
“What’s your business with him?”
“It’s a private matter. He does stay here?”
“He might,” said the landlady, “and then he might not. It’s a bit late to be paying a call.”
“I’m not here for social reasons,” Stephen began.
Then Mina put her hand on his arm. “It’s all right,” she said, when Stephen peered down at her. “I’ll tell her.”
“Tell me what?” asked the landlady, thrusting her chin forward.
As Stephen tried not to look as if he’d no idea what was going on, Mina looked down at her feet, gulped, and then looked back up into the landlady’s eyes. “He’s my brother. He’s…he’s in trouble”—her voice fell, implying all sorts of elements to the trouble that no decent girl w
ould say aloud—“and…well, I don’t want to go up there myself. He’d never forgive me if I saw—”
The landlady’s face softened, a transformation almost as incredible as any Stephen had been through. “Well, well—” she began and cleared her throat. “Who’s your friend, then?”
“Mister Smith served with me in the army,” Stephen said, “some years ago. In happier days,” he added, with a moment of pride for thinking of the phrase. “He spoke to me often of his sister, and any service I can do her—”
The landlady deflated the rest of the way. “All right, then,” she said. “You can go on up. It’s the second door on the right. And you’ll come inside, miss. It’s no weather to be out in.”
Victorious, if dishonest, Stephen followed Mina into the boardinghouse’s front hall, then climbed a narrow, white-painted staircase, dimly lit and smelling faintly of cabbage. The stairs creaked beneath him on every step; so did half of the boards in the upstairs hall, despite its runners of fabric.
Light came from underneath the second door on the right. All the others were dark. The other boarders either slept early, stayed out late, or didn’t exist.
Stephen walked as lightly as he could to the lit door, grasped the doorknob, then broke the lock with one swift, brutal motion. He shoved the door open, removing his revolver from his coat pocket before he stepped inside.
The lamp inside illuminated a sparse, scrubbed room with a narrow bed, no belongings that Stephen could see, and a man in gray cotton sitting on the edge of the bed. He looked up when the door opened, saw the revolver, and froze. There was no panic about him, neither in motion nor in expression. Something had happened. That was all.
“This is my room,” he said without passion. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re John Smith?”
Stephen held the revolver steady and considered the picture before him. The man wasn’t Ward. He was too short, his hair was almost colorless, and the structure of his face was too even, too round. Also, he looked up at Stephen with neither alarm nor hate.
“I am John Smith,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Have you been hiring men down at the Dog and Moon?”
Smith blinked once. “No.”
It was the wrong question, Stephen realized. The men he’d spoken to had described Ward, or someone like him. In truth, he wouldn’t trust Smith to hire anyone himself.
“Do you receive the messages the barman sends?” he asked. That was the right question, if there was a right question.
Indeed, Smith nodded. Something about him shifted, too. Stephen wasn’t sure what. He couldn’t have placed it in the man’s stance, or even in his eyes. The difference was like the faint smell of smoke on the wind or a sudden chill in the air. It roused the hunting instinct in his blood, the primitive awareness that the moment for action was fast approaching.
“What happens to the letters?” he asked, concentrating on his aim.
“I inform my master of their arrival,” said Smith, as if stating the answer to a mathematical problem. “I take them to our meeting place.”
Master, he’d said. Not employer, not commander. Master. On the back of Stephen’s neck, every hair stood on end.
“How long have you been at this?”
“Forty-eight days.”
Now there was a smell. Faint but sharp, it stung the inside of Stephen’s nose. “What’s that?”
Smith gave him a truly blank look.
Then, a sound. Sizzling. It came from somewhere near Smith’s boots. Stephen took a hasty step backwards. “What in the world is wrong with you, man?”
“Nothing,” said Smith. The sizzling sound was louder now, and the smell was stronger. “I am functioning exactly as designed. Good-bye.”
Stephen lunged toward Smith just before he shattered.
There was no explosion, no grotesque rain of flesh. Instead, cracks ran up and down Smith’s body, covering his hands and face within seconds. Another second widened them. Then there was no more Smith, only a small pile of bits that looked like a thicker eggshell—and a burning cloud of orange gas.
Stephen’s free hand closed around one of the bits of shell. He stuffed it into his coat pocket without thinking, then bolted for the window. The butt of his revolver broke through the glass easily, and cold air rushed inside.
The window was small, though. The wall it faced was high, and the wind coming in blew the gas toward the open door. With every inhalation, the orange cloud poured into Stephen’s lungs, scorching them like no fire ever had. As he ran forward, hand over his face, he felt blood begin pouring from his nose.
Even he wouldn’t survive very long in the building. A mortal man would have been dead already.
Mina was downstairs.
“Fire!” Stephen yelled, and his throat screamed raw agony with the word. He drew a painful breath and shouted again. “Get out of the house!”
None of the doors along the hallway opened; no light came on underneath them. Stephen ran down the hall anyhow, trying one knob after another and getting no answer.
Then, from the bottom of the stairs, he heard Mina calling his name.
He turned from the final door and ran for the stairs. The mist was hazier now, diluted with the extra space. Still reeling from the initial cloud, he wasn’t sure how deadly it remained. Halfway down the stairs, he had to stop and hold on to the banister while he coughed.
“Stephen!” He looked up through the mist to see Mina, holding a handkerchief over her face and ascending the stairs toward him.
“No!” The word came out bloody. Stephen reached forward, half-blind, and grabbed Mina by the shoulder. “You’ll die. Get out.”
“You too,” she said, and now she’d grabbed him, her hand tight on his wrist. Without so much as a by-your-leave, she turned and began pulling him down the stairs. “Mrs. Grant’s next door. She’s called the police.”
“Anyone else?” he managed.
“No. Move.”
Mina dragged him, with considerably more strength than he’d have thought she had, and Stephen aided her as much as his pain-wracked body would allow. Keeping his eyes on her made it easier to stumble onward. He watched the strands of hair that hung down her back and the determined set of her shoulders, and he almost forgot how much effort it took just to put one foot in front of the other.
Then the doorway was in front of them; then Mina was through it, and Stephen staggered through after her, just sensible enough to slam the door shut behind him. He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall.
“My God,” someone said, “what’s happened to him?”
“Was it a fight?” another voice asked.
And then Mina, blessedly calm and steady and close at hand. “Can’t I take you anywhere?”
***
They got back home. Stephen wasn’t entirely sure how. Most of his attention was focused on drawing breath into lungs that felt lined with broken glass.
The voices swirled around his head, exclaiming and questioning. Mina’s rose above them. They faded. Mina spoke again, sharply but unsteadily, with tears in her voice. Stephen tightened his arm around her, squeezing her shoulder with one hand. She was shaking. No wonder. He should do something, he thought. He should at least say something, but the coughing took over again.
“…get a doctor,” said Mina.
Stephen shook his head. “Won’t help. I’ll be all right. Home.”
He saw the carriage as a large, almost formless black shape. He thought briefly and uneasily of legends—the black coach on the Royal Mile, foretelling death or taking souls to Hell—but the elderly dapple-gray horse and the talkative cab driver dispelled that impression quickly enough. Inside, the seats were cracked and badly sprung. Stephen let himself fall back into his as if it had been a featherbed.
Slowly, he stopped coughing and his vision cleared. He saw Mina sitting opposite him. Her lips were a thin line, her eyes fixed on his face. Stephen lifted a hand and felt dried blood on his mouth.
“Sorry, lass,” he said.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Mina. She passed him her handkerchief, cold and wet and smelling of tea. “And don’t talk.”
“I can talk,” said Stephen, doing the best he could for his face. Now he could feel the scalded tissues of his throat repairing themselves—a gift from his heritage. “Quietly. Shouldn’t move too much, either. Hope we have no more visitors.”
“Right. Or I’ll have to learn how to use a sword.”
“I’d have to teach you,” said Stephen. The idea had some appeal—guiding her hands on the hilt of a blade, seeing her figure in athletic costume—but his body was not in any state to follow through on it. Absently, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the bit of shell.
Up close, it looked like any bit of pottery. It was about the size of his palm, and one side was mostly flesh-colored. The other glimmered with a shifting green-and-red pattern.
“What’s that?”
“John Smith,” said Stephen, “or part of him.”
Mina grimaced. “He wasn’t human, then.”
“No. I’m not sure what. I’ve heard a rumor or two. Constructed beings. Never anything concrete. As it were.” He laughed, which made him cough. When he’d finished, and Mina was glaring at him, he went on. “This one had a trap inside.”
“I’d say it did. Who could do that?” Mina wrapped her arms around her body. “Make a fake person with a cloud of poison inside? How do you figure that out?”
“Most people don’t,” said Stephen. “We can use that.”
Seventeen
Stephen claimed he was recovering without help. He claimed he could talk. He might have been right. Mina didn’t know much about either poison gas or dragons.
She did know that he was pale, even by the dim light through the cab window, and that he talked at half his normal speed, with frequent pauses to cough. She wanted to sit by him, or at least to keep a hand on his arm and give him what reassurance human touch could provide, but she hung back. Too much attention could just irritate an ill person, and she didn’t want to be one of the fluttering women her brothers had both complained about.
Legend Of The Highland Dragon Page 11