by Ginn Hale
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.”
Thom pulled out the kerchief again and spent a few moments with his face buried in the damp red cloth. Mrs. Molly leaned forward from her chair and put her arms around the boy, and he leaned into her. His breathing grew steadier as she whispered kindnesses into his curly red hair.
“What was it that got the reverend and his pastors involved?” Nimble addressed the question to Mrs. Molly.
“Thom went to him and told him the whole story. But I don’t know that he exactly believed Thom—”
“He believed me all right!” Thom straightened up. “He didn’t look surprised or nothing when I told him that I thought them gents were making magic potions from the corpses of murdered Proddies. Just like I read about in my penny blood books. The reverend knew just what I meant! But them gents have bought him off. Because instead of telling me that we should press charges and warn off other Proddies, he slaps me upside the head and calls me a liar. He tells me that he’ll turn me over to the Inquisition for extortion if I mention this to anyone again! Then he takes hold of me by the hair to hand me over to Lord Umberry! So I put a knee to his bollocks and pelted straight to Mrs. Molly.”
“Kneed him. No wonder the reverend couldn’t come running after you himself, eh?” Nimble grinned at the boy, but then he shifted his gaze to Mrs. Molly. “Will Eligos cause you trouble if the lad stays with you?”
“Oh, I doubt the pious old miser cares a fart so long as Thom doesn’t show up in his church spouting accusations.” Mrs. Molly shrugged. “It’s his own reputation he’s worried about, not the facts of the matter one way or the other.”
“I ain’t stepping foot in his church ever again!” Thom declared. “He ain’t getting half a penny more of my pay in his collection boxes.”
“Ah, a lad after your own heart there.” Nimble winked at Archie and then added for Thom’s benefit, “If you ever make the mistake of dragging our Archie to a sermon, you’ll hear him muttering words that’ll blister your ears, and he’ll even sing filthy ditties to the tune of the hymns.”
Thom gazed at Archie with an expression somewhere between horror and awe. Like the vast majority of Prodigals, the boy had no doubt been brought up on a constant diet of piety and deference to church authority. Even Nimble, for all his impropriety and conjuring, still carried a wooden cross as a pocket fob. Archie, on the other hand, had been born a bastard in a noble house and witnessed firsthand who truly benefited from church doctrine. He’d lost his last shred of faith in the goodness of God while watching his brother slowly die that last week on fucking Sollum Hill.
“Can we leave it with you, then?” Mrs. Molly lifted her amused gaze from the boy to Nimble, and her expression turned grim. “You know the Inquisition won’t take this disappearance any more serious than the last ones.”
Last ones? Archie raised his brows.
“Yeah. I’ll take it on.” Nimble offered Mrs. Molly a half smile. “It can’t pay worse than the last job you brought me.”
“Oh, it only took you a minute to get the cat up from that ash pit,” Mrs. Molly responded.
“Nearly lost an eye in that minute, though.” Nimble turned to Archie. “Claws like a lion’s on that fat little kitten. And not so much as a two-penny for thanks from—”
“I’ll pay you, Nimble! Just don’t let them get away with what they done to Nancy.” Thom shot to his feet. “I ain’t got money, but I got a strong body and a baptized s
oul. I know you conjurers trade in souls—”
“Don’t—” Mrs. Molly cried out, but it was already too late.
Archie’s horror probably showed as plainly as Mrs. Molly’s. He knew damn well what such a bargain entailed, and it revolted him to think of a child Thom’s age entering into such a pact. But the words had been spoken aloud and of the boy’s own volition, same as Archie himself had blurted them out to Nimble so many years ago. They couldn’t be retracted, only answered—just as they had been in the ages before when Nimble’s ancestors answered from their kingdoms in hell.
Mrs. Molly shook her head in a silent plea, and Archie glowered at Nimble. But Nimble didn’t pay either of them any mind. Instead he crouched down in front of Thom and studied him with a hard, intent expression.
Revulsion snaked through Archie. This was an aspect of Nimble’s trade that he had never before witnessed and had deluded himself into thinking was something rare and somehow special between the two of them. He’d not wanted to know if Nimble took other men, much less boys, but if he witnessed it with his own eyes, he didn’t know if he could stand it—if he could forgive it.
“Nah. That’s too bright a light burning in you, Thom. You’d blind me, you would.” Nimble stood, though he still held Thom’s gaze. “I tell you what, lad. Why don’t we strike this bargain. I’ll look into what was done to your Nancy and see that justice is got for her, one way or another. In return, you’ll apply yourself to finding good work somewhere solid. When the occasion arises that I need to be let in the back door of your swank establishment, or if I need to know a few names or addresses, well, you’ll be in a position to do me the favor.”
Mrs. Molly melted back against the cushions of her chair, her benevolent smile rising like cream through milk. Archie, too, felt relieved but then slightly confused as well. He realized that as much as he’d been horrified by the thought, he’d also expected Nimble would snatch up the child’s soul—wouldn’t be able to resist doing so.
“You just want me to find a posh job?” Thom appeared rightly skeptical, Archie thought.