Using the cab as a shield from the eyes of neighbors or patroling bobbies, Malarkey directed the group toward the steps of the only house on the north side that looked like a war had been waged on its façade. The portico had been completely obliterated, except for the stubs of two pillars that stood like elephant’s feet on the top step. Not a pane of glass remained in the windows, boarded against the London rain—which fell hard as nails in February—and the masonry was pockmarked with shrapnel gouges that sprayed outward from a shiny new front door, painted a lurid purple. The upper facade was wreathed in painters’ drop cloths, supported by a rigging of wooden scaffolding.
Riley poked his head forward from Malarkey’s armpit and caught Chevie’s eye.
“Charismo’s gaff. The militia blew it to smithereens, remember?”
Chevie did remember. In her current timeline—or lifespan, or whatever—they had been held captive at Tibor Charismo’s house—this house—mere months ago, in the summer of 1898. She wondered briefly whether it was more likely that she was lying in a psycho ward somewhere and all of this was an elaborate hallucination, or that she was a time-traveling federal agent partnered with a kid magician.
It doesn’t matter. I have to play the cards in front of me the best I can.
What else could she do besides lie down and die?
Tempting.
She suddenly remembered her father, who had raised her in their little house on the Malibu bluffs.
Whatta ya gonna do, squirt? Give up? There ain’t many Shawnee left, and we need someone to protect us.
That was when she’d been on the point of throwing in her judo lessons after a botched match cost her a tournament.
The memory gave Chevie strength and focus. She put her back into her task and hefted Otto to the top step.
“Come on, kid,” she said. “Someone’s gotta protect the Shawnee.”
There were no spare hands in the group for tugging on a bell pull, so Otto kicked the lurid door several times until it was whipped open by a horrified little man, buttoned up tight from his polished boots to the collar of his glaring white shirt.
“Excuse me!” said the diminutive fellow, voice shrill, face florid. “This is a spanking brand-new door, so it is. Commodore Pierce will have your foot for an ashtray if you do not immediately desist with your infernal drumming and remove your pestilential selves from this respectable threshold. Where do you think you are? A dockside gin hovel?”
The little man was one of those singular individuals who inspire a degree of contentment wherever they appear, in spite of the caustic nature of their verbiage. Had there been such a thing as a happiness meter, the beleaguered gang at the doorstep would have seen their collective mercury rise at the sight of this ruddy-jowled five-footer. A skinnier specimen would be difficult to find outside of the bone shop. He wore a narrow suit of gray tweed with creases sharper than his own scythe of a nose. The man’s eyebrows curled imperiously, if such an attitude is possible for mere eyebrows. But these eyebrows were not mere—they were splendid and quivering. The face was a handsome miniature; child-sized man features, which confused a body on first look. And the hands that flapped at Malarkey and Co. were disproportionately large and articulate, seeming to play an invisible piano as he spoke.
“You are idiots, is that it?” continued the furious little man. “The idiot complement of three villages, congregated to set about people’s fine new front doors. Well, you have idioted at the wrong door, idiots. Commodore Pierce may be a denizen of the square, but he is a son of the United States navy, and he will trounce you soundly, so he will.”
The so he will tagged on to the little man’s sentence revealed him to be a native of the Emerald Isle, so not just a little man, but a little Irish man.
Leprechaun, thought Chevie, and immediately felt guilty. As a Shawnee Native American, she had been on the receiving end of stereotyping often enough not to engage in it.
“Figary,” said King Otto wearily.
“Don’t you name my name, you scoundrel,” said Figary, fingers tapping a polka in the air. “Commodore Pierce will…” He paused before the threat materialized and actually looked at Malarkey.
“Commodore? Is it yourself? Or some ghastly doppelganger recently dragged through a tart’s dressing room? The latter, please say the latter! And I see you brought the tart with you. Or perhaps this lady is some class of circus performer?”
Malarkey coughed. “Enough chatter, you tater muncher. I be…I mean, I am bleeding, Michael Figary. Help us inside and fetch the maggots.”
Figary displayed not one feather of deference. “Maggot fetching, is it? For this, Mick Figary left his mammy’s knee. And where is your beautiful Boston brogue, Commodore? You sound like an English back-alley scoundrel with a dirk in his boot and a shadow of ill deeds stretched out behind him, so you do.” Figary’s eyebrows rose to new heights and arched like the wings of a bird in flight. “It is your house, sir, so of course you may enter, but try not to daub blood on the walls. They are fresh painted, so they are.”
Figary ushered them inside with a bow that reeked of insincerity.
Riley grunt-chuckled. “I ain’t never seen such a sarcastic bow.”
“I like him,” said Chevie. “He’s funny.”
“He referred to you as a circus tart,” Malarkey reminded her.
“A simple case of mistaken identity,” said Chevie. “Like when he called you Commodore.”
“Not a commodore, then,” said Figary. “And probably not many more things besides.” And with a disappointed cluck, the Irishman disappeared down the scullery stairs, his hard shoes clacking a jig rhythm on the steps.
They carried Malarkey into the kitchen—the same kitchen where Chevie and Riley had almost been dismembered barely six months previously, to ease their passage into a furnace. Riley remembered nothing of the incident, as he had been up to the gills in poisonous narcotics at the time. Chevron Savano’s recently resurfaced memories, however, were crystal clear, and she felt a pall of unease as soon as she set a booted foot in the room. It had not been a pleasant afternoon for the pair, and this one was not shaping up to be a gallon of giggles either.
They heaved Otto onto a wooden worktop and peeled the tattered vestiges of his opera shirt from his back.
“Silk,” moaned Otto. “The finest silk. I had it imported.”
Figary tip-tapped into the room just in time to hear this last comment.
“Imported, is it?” he said, depositing two jars in the porcelain sink. “From where? The Isle of Delusions, perhaps? Or the Peacock Peninsula?”
Malarkey groaned. “Michael Figary. I swear, you’re even more insolent than usual. Are you drunk?”
Figary opened the first quart jar, which was teeming with fat white maggots. “Of course I am drunk. It is evening, is it not? You would have me apply maggots to your repulsive back-flesh in full possession of my wits?”
“You damned brandy shunter,” said Malarkey weakly. “Belay that sauce and be about your business.”
Figary soaked a cloth in alcohol from the second jar and began to expertly clean King Otto’s back.
“Yes, Commodore. I am currently swabbing your wounds. Swabbing being a nautical term, much like belay. But no need to expound on seafaring lingo to your good self, you being a commodore, and all.”
Malarkey gritted his teeth. “Etherize me, you niminy-piminy Paddy. I can’t suffer no more of yer lip.”
Figary rolled up his sleeves, then plunged his arm into the maggot jar, scooping up a handful, which he molded into a poultice and then applied to one of his employer’s gaping wounds.
“It seems barbaric, does it not?” Michael Figary commented to the disgusted newcomers. “Smearing maggots on the lacerations? But these little blighters will devour the necrotic tissue and sterilize the healthy. The trick is to get them out before they colonize our commodore’
s flesh; that would not do at all, for though his title would appear to be bogus, his coin is genuine and pays for Missus Figary’s son’s brandy. And for that I would patch up all the copper captains in London town, so I would.”
“I thank thee for thy loyalty,” said Malarkey, wincing as another maggot dumpling plopped onto his back. “And I will shed light on this bizarre vignette upon regaining consciousness, as I intend to swoon dead away and think on my poor murdered brother.” And without another word, Malarkey closed his eyes and descended from the torture of his consciousness to the pain of his dreams.
Figary worked silently and efficiently while his master slumbered, sealing each crevice with maggots, then mummifying the broad back with linen bandages.
“Murdered brother,” he said at last, liberally dousing his own hands with disinfectant. “It would appear that the commodore and his juvenile japesters have passed a lively afternoon, so it does.”
Riley stepped forward. “Perhaps I can explain, sir.”
Figary halted his flow with a raised hand. “Oh, in the name of heaven, please forbear. Explanations from children invariably fail to explain, and as I will doubtless be forced to endure the commodore’s version of the day’s happenings when he awakens, I prefer to pass the intervening moments in blissful ignorance, perhaps fortified by a nip of the craythur.”
Riley felt that Figary’s statement could sacrifice half a dozen words without any loss of meaning.
“I understand, sir,” he said, which was not entirely true. “Perhaps we could also fortify ourselves?”
Figary pointed vaguely. “Larder,” he said. “Washroom. Wardrobe. Have at them, youngsters.” He glared pointedly at Chevie. “Most especially the wardrobe for you, mademoiselle. You appear to have neglected to don outerwear. I shall never think on the letters F-B-I from this moment forth without a shudder.” And to illustrate, Michael Figary shuddered as though a dram of tar water had slithered down his gullet, then he left Malarkey’s guests to their own devices.
“I still like him,” said Chevie. “Are you hungry?”
“I was,” replied Riley. “But then I thought on the squirming piles of maggots feasting on Otto’s rancid flesh. You?”
“I was,” said Chevie. “Then I remembered being stuffed into that dumbwaiter the last time I was here, listening to a murdering goon named Barnum talk lovingly to the knife he planned to dismember me with.”
Riley grimaced. “Maybe we could shift ourselves to the drawing room. Perhaps have a medicinal drop of the craythur or two for our nerves and a catch-up until Otto comes back to the land of the living?”
Chevie draped her arm around her only real friend. “A catch-up, at least. I like your cloak. The Great Savano, eh?”
“Do you approve of the moniker?”
“I am flattered, kid.”
“I was considering a savage Injun costume.”
“I am less flattered.”
“One gin?”
“No.”
“Fine. Beer it is.”
“No drinking, Riley. We need to be sharp for Moley and GooGoo.”
This stopped Riley in his tracks. “Moley and GooGoo? You have not previously mentioned this pair.”
Chevie steered him to the door. “Oh, a person needs to be sitting down in a bright room before I fill them in on Moley and GooGoo.”
“No time like the present.”
This casual remark set Chevie laughing until the tears coursed down her sallow cheeks.
Centuries before these events took place, in 1306, King Ned so detested the impenetrable fogs that regularly settled over the low-lying city that he banned coal fires entirely. It was the interaction of smoke with haze from London’s myriad rivers and streams that formed the infamous pea-soupers that held river commerce for ransom more effectively than any army of buccaneers could ever hope to.
But Ned’s mortality tripped him the following year, and his decree sailed down the river with no return ticket, and with it the city’s brief respite from the damp grip of its indigenous fog, which descended vengefully. Charles Dickens described it like a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.
Clover Vallicose and Lunka Witmeyer were fogbound now, as they grimly trudged to return Anton Farley to their savior and spiritual leader: the blessed Clayton Box, who planned on saving the world from the sins of man.
Vallicose had risen joyfully to this new challenge. Indeed, the Thundercat could not remember ever feeling so utterly righteous in the execution of her duty. The vapors of all niggly concerns and confusions were burned away to reveal the instrument of steel purpose that she had become. It was nothing short of a metamorphosis. The past did not matter, and neither did the future. All that mattered was purpose. Clover barely considered herself human anymore.
I am truly an angel for Box. Plucked from my universe to serve Him.
Because she was worthy. That was the only possible reason she had been chosen.
Vallicose carried Farley on one shoulder, easily bearing his weight—joyfully bearing it, in fact. Hoping for discomfort, so that she could offer it up as a personal sacrifice.
Witmeyer forged their path, ranging ahead through the mist that seemed to paw at her face and hands; and where it settled, she swore it hissed and burned like acid. In one respect she had been glad of the fog, for it reduced all persons to ghostly shapes. Everyone loomed and lurched and seemed a monster; therefore there were no monsters, and a couple of Thundercats could move as freely as any other unfortunate with no other choice than to traverse the city on such a befuddled evening. But she quickly forgot this boon and began to resent the sulfurous miasma that reeked of river sewage and coated the tongue and nostrils with bitter resin.
Lunka’s faith was not as strong as that of Clover Vallicose. She had always believed that there had indeed been a Colonel Box, who rallied an army to the oldest banner on earth—holy war—and who conquered far-off lands in much the same way the Crusaders had centuries before. Good luck to him, Lunka had thought, and all who sailed with him. Some men sleep better with a cause as their pillow. But Witmeyer’s cause had always been her personal well-being, and her credo was as short as it was simple: Be on the winning side.
And all her life she had performed enthusiastically for that side, exceeding her masters’ expectations, willing to stamp on any who would topple her chosen regime. To the ends of the earth Witmeyer had traveled, wearing the Box symbol on her lapel, indistinguishable from her evangelical teammates on the outside. But behind the splashback visor, Witmeyer liked to think that her eyes were open. She saw the truth. She saw them all for the animals they were.
Be on the winning side.
But here, now, in this time, the winning side had not yet won.
Could their being here change the ordained outcome?
Was it ordained anymore?
It seemed to her now that Cadet Savano’s babblings were visions of an alternate future.
Could it be that here, in this brave old world, there was something different to be found? Something actually worth fighting for?
“Which way?” Witmeyer called back, twisting her mouth to avoid turning her head, though what difference did sight really make down in the dregs of the pea soup?
Vallicose repeated the question to Farley, who was somewhat conscious, and eventually she deciphered his mumblings and passed them forward.
“Keep west. Follow the canal.”
The same instructions for the past hour. Simple enough, one might think; but with the early winter night and a wash of gray fog on the banks, following the canal was accomplished more through sound and smell than sight, for nothing could be seen but the dull hulks of barges and narrow boats that could have been sea monsters if not for the glow of fog lights slung from mast and gunwale. The water itse
lf stank like a field latrine, and what cobbles there were squelched in their housings when trod on, as though the entire basin had become an open sewer.
Follow the canal? Follow the stench is more like it.
There were many things about this version of London that already irritated Witmeyer, but the stink, which ranged in notes from rank to odious, was top of the list.
These are not the glorious beginnings we read about in the academy.
Witmeyer stepped on something that first squeaked and then splattered; and though she had been in worse situations on many occasions, Lunka sensed that she was very close to the end of her tether.
It is the lack of control, she realized. I have always understood my situation until now. But here, in this malodorous world, I am as ignorant and helpless as a newborn.
How was a simple soldier supposed to know whom to kill in all this damned fog?
Onward along the canal bank they inched, Witmeyer with her gun arm rigid before her, and Vallicose behind, who had shifted Farley so that she tenderly cradled him in her arms like a babe. They had been walking for hours, first down the alley behind the Orient Theatre and then north away from Holborn, sticking to the alleyways and tumbledown brick mazes off the main avenues, avoiding any unnecessary contact with the locals, though they seemed a dull bunch and difficult to inspire into any sort of action beyond a leer or malformed insult. There was no prettifying on this side of the Great Oven. Goods were not displayed in shop windows but laid out on boards or slabs. The lanes were not washed cobblestone but packed earth with a river of sludge running down the center of each walkway. Men did not sport top hats and tails but flat caps and sackcloth and a mouthful of raw gums or blackened tooth stumps. And the women were not society ladies in buttoned-up bodices and blooming skirts but fishwives with veined forearms and matted nests of hair that would never smell of anything but mackerel.
Night was already dropping down to meet the rising fog, so the Thundercats did not attract as much attention as they might have, but even so, Witmeyer was forced into a fight with a couple of drunks on a fishing jetty. Though perhaps Lunka Witmeyer was not forced, perhaps she was glad of the diversion. Certainly the crash of the second man into a tower of crates made her smile for the first time since their jaunt through Smart’s tunnel.