Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles (22 page)

“Wait, where are you going?”

“To fetch the key!” I called, plucking my winter coat from the stand by the door.

I’d given Mr. Pettigrew the very motive I’d been searching for. All I needed was to know what it was, and I would track down the killers from there.

It wasn’t about the individuals, God rest their souls. It was about science. Intent!
Results.

“But, Cherry, you can’t—”

I closed the door on Fanny’s near-panicked hue and cry, turned and hurried for the main thoroughfare, where I would be able to hire a gondola for the duration.

Mr. Pettigrew would have my answers. I would visit earlier than his three days, but given the circumstances, he would understand.

The gondolier I fetched at the main thoroughfare looked at me as if I’d lost my mind, but at promise of double his usual fare when he returned me to my home, he closed his mouth and depressed the lever that widened the spigot in the small aether engine at the tail.

I was so close to the heart of this mystery, I could all but taste it on my tongue.

Alchemy.

Not the first time such mysteries had ever driven a St. Croix to recklessness.

I
was halfway to my destination before I realized I’d never been to Mr. Pettigrew’s without my collector’s disguise.

Much too late, now. I would have to brazen my way through; and if necessary, swear the old man into secrecy.

As the gondolier lowered us into the fog, I remembered with longing my fog-prevention goggles. As my eyes began to water and sting, I found myself considering even the delicate French protectives Compton had gifted me.

Once more, I’d gone off on a wild fit, and I would feel this sting for a while.

I instructed the gondolier to drop me at the main concourse just outside the West India Docks, and bade him return to my home for his fee.

“Are you sure, miss?” he asked, scanning the thick, daylight-swallowing fog roiling about us.

“I’m sure.”

“Daft,” he muttered when he thought I could not hear. I only smiled, waited until the shape of his gondola faded into the smoke, and hailed a hackney.

The looks I received weren’t as pointed as I’d expected. The last time I’d come below without my collector’s garb, I’d been wearing something much more somber. Today, my poplin would draw attention, but not nearly as much as if I were wearing one of my more delicate day dresses.

Yet I would not risk traveling through the districts below the drift garbed as I was. Certainly, I would not be the only woman going about my business, but I did look more like a toff now than I ever had in my own company.

I would prove an irresistible mark from some of the more unfriendly gangs, and could not stop to beg help from Ishmael Communion on the way.

He did not know my identity, either, and I preferred to keep it this way.

It took me too long to fetch a hackney, and longer still to convince him to take my fare. I had no coin upon me, and I swore he’d fetch his coin once he delivered me safely to Mr. Pettigrew.

Finally, he relented. “Get in, then,” he growled, jerking a thumb to the carriage. His horse, long since accustomed to the stench of the coal-laden miasma, nickered softly.

Within the hour, I disembarked, bade the large driver to remain waiting, and hurried across the damp cobbles to the third shop in the row. By day, a faint ambient light colored all things.

I could see where I stepped well enough, and the fog even took on a lighter hue in these early hours. Deceptively friendly, if one had no sense of trouble below the drift.

For my part, I sensed nothing. The fog dampened everything—sight, sound. Even the rustle of my shimmery poplin was swallowed into the smoke. Waving at the fog in front of my face, I reached Mr. Pettigrew’s door and knocked loudly.

There was no reply. I knocked again, coughing against the near-constant sting in my throat and echoed by the horse’s restless hoof falls on cobble.

It was day. Not that one could tell by looking, but it was decidedly working hours.

Where was the old man?

I looked back, squinted my burning eyes to barely pick out the huddled shape of my hired hackney. I couldn’t very well go back and suggest he go without his fare.

I sighed, reached for the door and found it unlatched.

The first sense of unease skittered through me.

Now
I sensed trouble. Why did I continue to follow my impulses and end up weaponless for it?

The shift in my stance was as unconscious as it was telling. Weight to the balls of my feet, odd enough in my skirts and delicate boots, I pushed open the door.

A wave of familiar warmth washed over me.

“Mr. Pettigrew?” I called, seeing nothing but the one corner of his bookshop outlined to me.

Nothing moved, not a voice or a sound.

Frowning, I stepped inside, shut the door behind me to keep the damp away from the books I knew he considered precious. My footsteps creaked along the wood floor, lacking carpeting that might collect damp. Wood floors and the occasional small rug for creature comfort; these were the things Mr. Pettigrew preferred.

At first glance, all seemed exactly as it should be. The shelves were orderly, not a book out of place, the brazier glowing merrily and giving off its dry, welcome heat.

And then I noticed the paper on the floor.

Mr. Pettigrew would not approve.

Nor, I realized as my gaze trailed to the work desk beside the stray parchment, would he care.

The man was dead.

“Oh, bollocks,” I said quietly, because it was all I could think to say as sympathy welled in a great tide and my heart twisted to think I might be responsible. Rubbing the back of my neck in abject misery, I forced myself to approach the slumped figure of old Mr. Pettigrew. My gaze darted from one side of the shop to the other, but there was nowhere for anyone to hide; I was alone.

Alone but for a body.

He had been attacked at his work table, that much was clear. His frail frame, wrapped in his beloved dressing gown, had fallen forward, forehead against the worn wood. Blood, thick and very red, matted the back of his head. A terrible cavity where there should have been none showed me bits of stained white bone.

I swallowed hard as a shudder wrenched through me.

Poor, dear Mr. Pettigrew.

As I circled his still form, I noted the crimson smears on the papers beneath his flattened face. His nose was bent crooked, as if he’d come in contact with the table too hard and too fast. His milky eyes were wide open.

Fixed, I realized in mounting curiosity and horror, upon a hole in the table.

There were no splinters, no sharp grooves as there would be if something had driven through the solid oak. Beside his outstretched hand, weathered palm turned up, a broken bit of glass glinted, but there was nothing to indicate what could have caused such damage.

Or why beside it, lined perfectly with the missing bit of table, was half a book.

“Why sever a book?” I asked of myself, unable to imagine such a reason. If all the murderer had wanted to do was make it unreadable, there was a brazier at full light just behind me.

Full light. . .

I spun, bracing myself with a gloved hand to the table, and stared at the shining brazier. Of course. It had been fed recently. I looked down at Mr. Pettigrew’s corpse, bent until I was eye-level with the terrible, gaping wound in his skull.

The blood was only just beginning to congeal, possibly slowed by the unseemly warmth of the room.

I flexed my fingers, steeling myself as I lifted my hand from the table and stripped off one glove.

If Mr. Pettigrew had been killed recently, his body would still be warm. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to touch his cheek. His throat, where I knew to find a heartbeat, if there would be any. There was none. I did not expect one.

Yet it was not the stiff resistance of a body caught in
rigor mortis
, either. The warmth of the room wasn’t enough to keep a corpse at this temperature, added to the as yet uncongealed color of his blood and the strange dampness on the table—I frowned at my fingers, pulled on my glove but saw nothing staining it—and that meant he was dead within moments of my arrival.

Mere moments.

Elation—energy, anger, a surge of righteous justice—filled me as I spun, once more scouring the shop.

Perhaps upstairs?

I left poor Mr. Pettigrew where he was, promising to send someone to care for him when I could, and took three steps to the small stairs inset into the far corner.

Creak.

It was all the warning I received, for I saw nothing at all before a great weight leapt into my back and sent me tumbling to the floor.

Chapter Sixteen

M
y knees collided with the floor much harder than I expected, sending pain licking all the way to my back.

A figure wrapped in a concealing cowl leapt over me in a fine display of adroitness, and sprinted in a flapping wake of black for the back door.

I leapt to my feet, the thrill of the chase surging through my veins like molten metal; only to fail to remember that I did not wear trousers this time, and my skirts would not allow for easy maneuverability. One foot came down on my hem, my ankle twisted and I stumbled into Mr. Pettigrew’s chair, rocking him to the ground with a terrible thud. Silently apologizing—
no time!
—I seized my skirt in one hand, wrenched it over my ankles and hurried pell-mell for that back door as it slammed shut.

I would not lose this time!

“Stop,” I called as I burst out of the door, just in time to catch a shape flapping from my right. The small alley was little more than a delivery corridor for those who brought goods to the shops, and only marginally maintained, at that. Dreading every step, I sprinted off the stoop, into the choking fog as my opponent’s footsteps slapped like echoes on the uneven cobbles.

I was not used to running in these shoes with the delicate heels, but I could not let this travesty go unanswered. Mr. Pettigrew deserved justice!

And I deserved answers.

Setting my jaw, my lungs already burning from the smoke I inhaled with every labored breath, I lowered my head, caught my skirt higher, and ran faster. Harder. Lanterns valiantly opposing the fog flickered as I passed, guttered in my wake; shapes loomed in leering silhouette from the swirling bank of mist and smoke. Here a cart, abandoned for the day, there a bit of wall crumbled from rot.

And still my quarry teased me, too far ahead to see more than the shape of the cloak that concealed him.

“Watch yerself,” snarled a man, whose poor chance had him stepping out of a door just as I passed it. I did not stop, though it nearly meant his introduction to the unforgiving ground.

We were headed for populated ground, I realized, as more figures stepped from the fog. I hurried by two children, head to toe covered in black, beaten down by the demands of a factory workday. A small knot of men flowed around the figure in surprise, only to catch me as they turned to study the runner.

“Out of my way,” I demanded, using my sharp elbows to carve a path through the suddenly swearing laborers. A hand caught in my bustle; fabric tore. I did not stop.

Ahead of me, the figure leapt a small collection of barrels; I heard a woman’s cry, another’s scream, and the figure whirled, stumbled and pushed abruptly to the right.

I rounded the pile instead. “Apologies,” I tossed at the woman staring openmouthed from her sprawled position on the ground.

“Lunatic!” she shouted back. To me or my fleeing opponent, I did not know.

We passed greater crowds, men and women headed home for supper, children darting through the smoke. We’d left the Philosopher’s Square, that much was clear, and my lungs were seizing within the grip of my corset. The distance between us grew.

I would not lose him. I would not!

Lowering my head, aware that my hairpins had long given up the fight, I summoned what strength and endurance I had left, ignored the pain in my ankle and burning in my side, and poured every last ounce of effort into my run.

Six feet.

The distance closed.

Four.

“You . . . won’t . . .” I couldn’t finish the warning.

The cowled head turned; I saw only black in my watering vision. I heard a sound, low and unrecognizable as word or curse, and the figure wrenched to the side.

Down an alley, footsteps pounding, splashing in the collected puddles.

Groaning, I caught myself on the corner before I bypassed it entirely, wrenched myself around and darted after the fleeing figure.

Only to turn a bend in the maze of back alleys and come face-to-face with a knot of men loitering around the bend.

We all froze as one.

In the sudden, shocked silence of real surprise, I recognized two things—one, I’d stepped into the territory of the Black Fish Ferrymen; and two, a discarded cloak drifted to the ground not eight paces away.

My ghost had gotten away.

I clutched at my side, my breath a labored pant in the foul alley air.

“Well, well,” drawled a man whose stature was short as mine, yet whose width would fit three of me in a line. His teeth were blackened, his eye mirroring the color from a bruise that suggested he was no stranger to a brawl.

Three of his mates flanked him, two remained behind, watching with avid interest.

I raised my chin. “Co—”
No!
I was not a collector in this guise. “Pardon me, gentlemen,” I said with a smile, as polite and charming as the very devil on holiday. “I appear to have gotten turned about. Did anyone see a figure fleeing through here?”

“Figure, eh?” This from another man, tall and lean like a blade. Holding one, I noted, flush to his wrist.

The Black Fish Ferrymen had a reputation. One well deserved. I kept clear of their territory, unless I had a specific goal.

In this case, I was too well dressed for Cat’s Crossing—that was the rooftop avenues, utilized mostly by children and cats and those too foolish to be afraid of heights.

And I had not paid attention to the territory signs in my haste.

I took a step backward, my skirts rustling. Every eye in every lean, predatory face settled on my hips.

“No one else but us,” drawled the short one, a lackadaisical tone flush with innuendo. The very way he studied me, as if I were a possession simply waiting for his claiming, sent a shudder of revulsion up my icy spine. “Stay a while, luv.” And then, before I could demur, he added in obvious command, “Cooley.”

The thin one was Cooley, then. His gap-toothed smile turned up, and he slunk forward.

Hands closed over my upper arms, and I shrieked in surprise. “Got ’er, boss,” announced a man I had not heard behind me. Like a bloody cat, he’d cut me off from the back and held to my arms so tight, I could feel the bone aching in complaint.

“You must be Cooley, then,” I corrected myself aloud, forcing my voice to be even, though my gaze didn’t leave the thin one approaching with a lanky stride.

The leader, three men with him. Two behind, one at my back.

Seven Ferrymen.

Not even on a good day could I account for more than four.

My heart hammered at my throat. I kept my chin high as a glint of a tarnished blade winked in Lanky’s dirty hand.

A grunt from behind confirmed it.

Stupid. Stupid me, I should have known my quarry would know these streets. I’d gotten careless. Again!

And now I would have the fight of my life.

“What say you and I—”

Whatever the leader intended to say stopped short as a high, lilting whistle pierced the alley. He turned, squinting—I noted with distant amusement the balding spot just beneath the rim of his frayed cap.

“Check it, lads,” he said darkly. “If it’s another foray by them Bakers, give ’em somethin’ t’smile about.”

Three of the men turned and faded into the fog, swallowed by the yellow-tinted haze.

“Gang trouble?” I asked sweetly.

“Shut yer mouth.”

Lanky stopped in front of me. The fingers at my arms squeezed. I would bruise there, I was sure of it.

“Pretty bit of dollymop like you,” continued the short, balding man with vicious glee, “oughter have ’erself a nice time, doncher think?”

Lanky didn’t touch me. He didn’t have to. His leer said it all, his watering eyes like reptilian glass in his sunken sockets.

This wasn’t the first such offer I’d received below the drift, but it was the first outside of my guise as collector.

A lady should not walk about on her own. This was exactly why.

Another whistle came at us from the growing dark. I watched the leader’s eyebrows snap over his tiny eyes. “Who goes there?” he demanded, turning again to stare into the blank wall of smoke.

“Ghosts?” I asked cheekily.

I should not have. He snapped, “Dicker,” and the man I privately called Lanky casually lifted one hand and backhanded me.

I saw stars.

The Ferrymen, I reminded myself, had earned their reputation.

Blinking hard, I missed the cue that sent the last filthy man into the fog to seek the ghostly whistler.

“She a spy, boss?” asked Cooley behind me, from a direction that suggested he was somewhat taller than his companions. Not as large as Ishmael Communion, but bigger than I.

“She’s a toff,” scoffed his boss, and flicked his fingers in dismissal.

A knife whizzed from the dark, scant inches from his hand. The leader jumped three feet back, swearing most foul as the blade sank into the wooden frame of a boarded door.

I would get no clearer opportunity.

As all the men scanned the fog, most swearing, I drove one elbow back as hard as I could, grinning fiercely when I heard Cooley’s breath exhale on a pained
whoosh
.

“
Allez, hop!
” I huffed, digging my feet into Lanky’s knee, his groin, walking up his chest so quickly that only his surprised instinct to push back kept me aloft. Cooley didn’t know what to do with me, all the more obvious as I flipped over his head in a froth of concealing skirts. He flailed, wrenching his grip open, and I landed awkwardly behind him, stumbling as the fabric of my skirt caught and tore. “I so would love to stay,” I said lightly, but hastily as the leader opened his mouth. “Simply must get on, so sorry!”

I turned, sprinted back the way I’d come as the leader screamed, “The fog! They’re in the fog, y’addle-minded twits!”

I made it halfway down the alley when a slight figure stepped out of a door and beckoned. A child? With his cap pulled low and his features smudged in black, I could discern nothing but the impatient hand.

Yet what were my options?

I darted into the doorway he once more vanished into. The door closed, leaving the room in pitch black.

I sucked in a breath, bent over myself with my hands on my knees, and tried not to catalogue in all the ways my body ached.

“Shh,” scolded a whispering voice. A hand gripped my arm. “This way.”

“I can’t see,” I protested.

“Keep your voice down,” said the young whisper, and a small hand slipped into mine. “Just walk with me.”

My eyes strained to make out something, anything in the dark, but all I could sense was the pressure of unending night. Certain I would run into something—bark my shin, fall down a hole, collide with a wall—I walked gingerly as I dared while the small hand pulled.

It felt like forever, my breath loud in my ears, the musty fragrance of disuse thick in my nose. Eventually, we stopped. “You’re two hops from a bobby shack, marm,” whispered the urchin. “Best not get caught this side of the Ferrymen again.”

To hear myself called a marm in that achingly young voice made me cringe. I was a long way from a frumpy old school mistress; and while I flirted with the future stigma of spinster, I was hardly there yet.

Yet this boy had saved me. And not for the first time, unless I missed my guess.

He let go of my hand, and I heard the screech of metal against rusted metal. A seam of light appeared before me, cracked into enough to pick out the boy’s low cap and patched jacket. His trousers were torn at the knees, his boots likely fraught with holes.

But his eyes, dark and expressive in his soot-covered face, gleamed up at me with clear mischief. I saw now the fringe of his brown hair, long enough to tangle in his lashes. My fingers itched to brush it away. And haul him in for a bath, while I was at it.

“You’re from the Menagerie,” I accused, and an accusation it certainly was.

His eyes crinkled; delighted, I think, that I recognized him. “Yes, marm.”

“Did Hawke send you?” And then, because I couldn’t help my own curiosity, “Are you a circus performer?”

He first shook his head, then nodded, pressed his body against the crack of the open door and peered outside. He rose near on his tiptoes to do it. Over his head, I recognized little enough but the ever present cloud of smoke-ridden fog.

The gas lamps were being lit, about this time. Slowly, the pea souper would earn its moniker. Above the drift, there were a handful of daylight hours left, but not here.

“Why are you here?” I hissed at his back. “Are you sent?”

He shrugged, as much an answer as I could expect from a boy his age. “Cross the street here, and make like a line for the bobbies. The Ferrymen’ll see you, maybe, but I’ll keep ’em spinning.”

“Why?”

This time, his teeth—a pale gleam in the little sliver of light—flashed over his shoulder at me. “Wait a bit,” he counseled, streetwise in the same way a rat knows his sewer, “and then take tail. Run fast.”