They saw the monolithic jumble of King’s Cross and St. Pancras, with the streams of hansom cabs seemingly crawling from their brickwork like ants, and they heard the hellish chaos where the city’s coaches and chairs butted bumpers and the steam trains chud-chudded into northern and southern terminals, more than five hundred engines each day. Then through the railroad yards they skulked like criminals, past the spider’s web of tracks all leading into the shed for old locomotives, to the banks of Regent’s Canal, where the air once rang with the music of industry as the engineers worked their locks or wall cranes, but now were home only to the most tenacious of that industry who managed to eke out a subsistence in spite of crushing competition from the railway. Entire families living in a tea cabin, working for a single wage.
West then, to Camden, feeling the cold travel by piggyback on tendrils of fog, worming underneath their greatcoats and down the legs of their high boots. Witmeyer began to forget about more ethereal problems, such as her own loss of control and general dissatisfaction with her faith, and worry instead about freezing to death. She had never felt cold like this in London. The entire setup reminded her of a winter she had spent reeducating radicals in St. Petersburg, with its freezing fog and steam engines.
“To hell with this,” she said, stopping level with the ice-frosted cover of a canal boat. “I need a drink or a fight. Or something!”
The morphed shapes of Vallicose and Farley solidified beside her.
“What impedes us, Sister?” asked Clover.
Witmeyer swallowed a scowl. Clover had been here for five minutes, and already she was using words like impede. She was loving this. Loving it.
“Impedes us, Sister?” snapped Witmeyer. “Impedes us? Oh, a couple of things. The century we’re in, for one thing. Our mission, for another. What happened to eliminating Savano? That order came from on high, after all.”
Usually Vallicose had little patience for questions when her single-mindedness was focused on a task, but now she bore her partner’s moodiness with a beatific smile, which only served to further enrage Witmeyer.
“This is not a laughing matter, Sister. We are out on the end of a very long limb here. Yes, we have weapons, but not so many bullets. And anyway, my fingers are so cold and swollen, I don’t know if I could pull the trigger. And I don’t feel well, Clove. Seriously. Since that unholy time tunnel, my insides feel wrong. I think that machine reacted with our bulking steroids.”
Vallicose shifted Farley’s weight gently. “Don’t you see, Lunka? This is the Hangman, before he ascends to that glory. Before the Hangman’s Revolution. We have been chosen to stand at his right hand. At the right hand of the Blessed Colonel himself. All other missions are subject to that honor. Where, or indeed when, we are does not matter. All that matters is our holy mission, which is to take the Hangman to the colonel, and he is in the Camden Catacombs—every schoolchild knows this. We are so close.”
Witmeyer had long known that there was no point in trying to actually communicate with her partner about anything in an honest fashion. Vallicose was simply incapable of thinking outside the party lines. In order to achieve any sort of dialogue, Lunka Witmeyer knew she would have to construct an argument that her partner could understand.
“Of course, Sister. We are honored by this new mission—blessed—but the Holy Hangman is injured and freezing. We must seek food and shelter or we may forever be remembered as the Thundercats who allowed Anton Farley to die of exposure. Perhaps our mission is to simply save his life.”
This had to be considered, and Vallicose found her gaze drifting to the cottages on the canal’s far bank, their windows aglow with warm, welcoming light. A fire would indeed be a blessing. Even a brief stop would serve to fortify them all.
Vallicose looked down upon the Hangman, Farley, hanging limply in her arms.
Duty is so difficult, she thought. So many opportunities to make mistakes.
She wished that Farley would perk up so she could question him as to their exact orders.
Perhaps I am being tested. This is my personal valley of darkness.
As though he felt her gaze upon his brow, Farley’s eyes fluttered open.
“Awup,” he mumbled. “Haawuup.”
“He speaks,” said Vallicose. “My Lord Hangman speaks.”
“What does My Lord Hangman say?” asked Witmeyer, knowing that the sarcasm would not even register with her partner.
Vallicose cradled Farley’s skull gently in one massive hand and drew him close to her ear.
“Yes, Major Farley. Give us your instructions. We exist to serve.”
Farley spoke his order, a simple command that Vallicose had uttered herself countless times.
“Well?” said Witmeyer, the single word sending a cloud of iced breath puffing from her lips. “What is the good news?”
Vallicose half-smiled, perplexed. “He says, that is, my Lord Hangman says: Hands up.”
Witmeyer did not return the smile, but was instantly on her guard, sweeping her weapon around the canal. She found herself in the gunsight of a sentry standing in what she had thought was a covered punt but she now realized was a rigid inflatable boat with an outboard motor strapped to the stern. The man himself was rendered indistinct by his black uniform and shroud of fog, but the rifle barrel poking from the gloom was perfectly clear.
“Hands up, princess,” said the man. “And drop the weapon.”
Witmeyer bared her teeth. Now here was a situation she understood.
“What did you call me, little man?”
A clack echoed across the flat expanse of water as the man racked the slide on his weapon. “Hands up, that’s all you need to worry about.”
Witmeyer moved laterally away from her partner, making them separate targets. “Are you ready, Sister?” she called to Vallicose. “Remember what I said about conserving bullets.”
But her partner stood stock-still and said to the Hangman, “Put your hands around my neck, my Lord.”
When he’d done so, Vallicose raised her hands as ordered. Witmeyer could not remember ever having seen her partner in this position, and in spite of all she had experienced on this most eventful day, it was the sight of Clover Vallicose posed with such supplication that drove home to her that her partner had set them firmly on the road to ruin.
“Now you,” said the sentry, and Witmeyer had no choice but to comply, allowing her pistol to dangle by the trigger guard.
The man’s teeth must have been exceptionally white, because Witmeyer could have sworn they flashed from the gloom.
“See, princess? That wasn’t so hard.”
Witmeyer felt fury build like a physical pressure behind her eyes.
Unless that man is the colonel himself, she thought, I am going to injure him before this is all over.
They boarded the rigid inflatable—which should not have existed for another half-century—and the sentry pulled a couple of hoods from under the seat.
Farley saw the hoods and shook his head.
Why bother? the gesture said, and Witmeyer understood the implications. They were to be taken to the nerve center of operations, at which point they would join the revolution effort or they would be executed. Either way, hoods would not be necessary.
I have a dog, lovely little guy, eyes like chocolate buttons. Anyway, this dog, Justin, sits looking at me, nodding his little head, and you’d swear that he understands every word I say. Pretty much exactly like you people now.
—Professor Charles Smart
The Camden Catacombs were catacombs in name only, as there were no cobwebbed crypts under their vaulted ceilings. These so-called catacombs had been excavated not as a place of eternal rest for the souls of the departed, but as a crucible of labor for the living. Camden Lock Market had long been a center of commerce, and the arrival of the railway only increased the bustle of man and beast. So much