Even the people in this place seemed the offspring of a different, meaner god. Gone was the irrepressible cockney spirit, and in its place the hacking cough or the threatening leer. The inhabitants moved with a peculiar shuffling gait, shoulders hunched and elbows tight to their sides, protecting themselves as much as possible.
Chevie could not keep the shock from her voice. “This is . . . It’s like hell on earth.”
Riley hung on to her elbow. “We need to get ourselves inside. Put some solid planks between us and Old Nichol before nightfall. I must get my head down.”
A slovenly woman stood, elbows on a half-door, staring vacantly into the street.
Riley approached her, ignoring the filthy urchins nudging his knees like cleaner fish.
“Any spare digs, ma’am? We are requiring a lurk for the night.”
The woman eyed them suspiciously from underneath a fuzz of curls.
“Chink?”
Riley nodded tightly, hiding his nausea. “At the ready. We have firearms, too, but only shot enough for the bluebottles.”
Firearms was a bit of an exaggeration. They had Barnum’s revolver and six shots only.
The woman barked with laughter, and there was sour gin on her breath. “Bluebottles? I ain’t seen the law in here since ninety-two, when they tried to take in the traitor Giles. What a morning that was. There was enough blue blood in the gutters to wash out the cholera.”
“Have you got a room or not?” Riley insisted.
“I gots the loft spare. Cove gave up the ghost on Wednesday. Someone took him to the heap, I think.”
“How much?”
A crafty light sparked in the stinking woman’s eye. “I would take a sov.”
“I’ll wager you would, if I would be sap enough to fork one over. I have a shiny shilling here, which you can take or not. If it’s not, then we’ll be moving along down the street for ourselves.”
The woman rubbed a finger along a sparsely populated bottom gum. “I shall be taking that shiny shilling, young gent.”
Riley handed it across. “And warn any likely lads about the firearms,” he said. “I hate to waste shots on fellow killers, but if anyone tries to crack our drum, I will make an exception. Also, my companion here is a black-magic witch, and she will set fire ants a-crawling in yer brain.”
The woman flicked the coin with her yellowed thumbnail and listened to it sing.
“Fire ants,” says she, unimpressed. “I’ve had those bleeders inside me head for years.”
• • •
Riley and Chevie picked their way down a hallway where the floor could have been removed from a salt-warped shipwreck: the boards jostled with each other for space and rose or fell like the ends of a seesaw, depending on the point of pressure. The passage was lined with young criminals—a collection of snakesmen, smashers, palmers, hoisters, and prowlers the likes of which would rarely be seen this side of Newgate’s watchtower. These boys smoked what they could find, which seemed to be mostly rolled-up strips of wallpaper that burned out after a drag or two and covered the lungs with paste, which made running from the coppers more troublesome than it should have been for a group of young feller-me-lads.
Every one of those boys gave Riley the evil eye on his way past, but they did not know what to make of Chevie, with her shining hair and white teeth.
“You are like an angel to these poor coves,” Riley whispered to her on the stairs. “Seeing as they do not know you like I do.”
One of the urchins had the bottle to clear his throat, calling from the upper landing, “Here, miss. Is you the Injun princess what humbled them Rams?”
Riley stepped forth, trying to appear more energetic and aggressive than he felt. “Aye, this is the very specimen. She ain’t got none of the Queen’s English, so I does her talking. She’s high-strung, too, so you gotta approach her careful and always frontwise.”
“My name is Bob Winkle,” said the boy, who could have been any color under the dirt that encrusted his skin, and who had about as much fat on his bones as a tinker’s ferret. He was no taller than a ten-year-old, but his voice and face were older. “You need any’fing? Booze, bread, or contraband? Bob runs a clean service. Robs to order, too, whatever you like.”
Riley reckoned that young Winkle’s service was about as clean as his face.
“If we have need, we will rap on the floor. But if you come up, no arm waving, or the Injun princess is like to rip yer throat clean out.”
The boys covered their throats and cleared a path, waving Chevie through like royalty.
They mounted the stairs toward their rented loft, steeling their hearts against the glazed eyes of the residents they encountered on the climb. Young girls brawled, dragging clumps out of each other’s matted hair. Grandfathers sat wedged in corners, sucking on empty pipes and swearing into space, and everywhere the clamor of despair rose through the house, funneled skyward by the stairwell like a cry to heaven.
Three flights up, they arrived at a door at the end of an uncommonly rickety set of steps. Riley twisted the wooden knob and was not surprised to find their room unlocked. A heavy brick stood against the wall inside, to be used as a stopper if the occupants required some privacy; but what would be the point when the walls of the loft were pocked with sledgehammer holes?
Chevie hurried in and hefted the brick.
“Come on,” she urged Riley. “Let’s get this secured.”
Riley obliged with some reluctance. “I never dreamed these poor people could sink so low.”
The brick scraped across the floor as Chevie wedged it against the door. “You’ve never been here?”
“Never. I fled to Saint Giles once and thought that a proper slum, but I’ve seen nothing like this before. I understand now why Garrick vowed never to return.”
Chevie tore brown paper from one corner of the small window to let some air into the rank chamber, though it was hardly worth the effort.
Riley wrapped his arms around himself, sinking to the rotting wooden floor. “We are between the workhouse and the grave here,” he said quietly. “Londoners fear Old Nichol because it awaits us, each and every one.” He shuddered. “I should not have brought you here, Chevie, and you a lady.”
Chevie draped her arm around his shoulder, moving close for warmth. “No. We had to come.” Chevie remembered the question she had been meaning to ask Riley for the past few hours. “Tell me something, Riley. Did you knock over the Farspeak on purpose?”
Riley stopped himself from shivering long enough to answer. “Yes. Charismo handed us the rope to hang him.”
“Yes,” agreed Chevie. “That guy talked too much.”
“He had my poor mum killed,” said Riley, sniffing. “And my dad—he was one of your lot.”
“I know,” said Chevie. “Special Agent William Riley. I read his file. He was quite a boxer. Before he disappeared, he was known for having fast hands.”
“I have fast hands. Garrick said he never seen hands faster.”
“We will need your hands, and your wits, if we are to defeat Garrick.”
Riley huddled close for warmth and so that his nose would register Chevie’s healthy odors rather than his rank surroundings.
“But what do we have to work with? Everything’s gone. Even the Timekey.”
“Sharp’s key is gone,” admitted Chevie. “But I have another one.”
She reached down the leg of her riding boot and tugged out a Timekey by the lanyard.
“Charismo’s,” guessed Riley. “You took it when you lifted his ring?”
“I did take it, but it’s not Charismo’s.”
Riley’s eyes widened. “My dad’s. Bill Riley’s key.”
“That’s right,” said Chevie, passing the key to Riley. “Your dad is still watching over you.”
This notion seemed to give Riley comfort and determination.
“We must use our time in this dreadful place to plot. We cannot take Garrick in a straight brawl.”
Chevie grunted, staring straight ahead. “Maybe not, but there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
“Shhh,” warned Riley. “Else people will believe that there’s a cat in here; then we will have dinner guests.”
Chevie groaned. “Cats? People here eat cats?”
Riley nodded. “If you let them, they would eat your boots.” “We have so got to get out of here.”
“We will,” said Riley. “You saved me in your world. Now I will save you in mine.”
This was not simply idle babble. Riley clasped his own father’s Timekey to his chest and judged it a good omen. Now they had hope. Now they had something to build a plan around.
You taught me well, Albert Garrick, thought Riley, seeing the assassin’s face in his mind’s eye. Now we must see if your own lessons can be turned against you.