Chapter 1

They first came to me before I was old enough to speak. She was a red heat from beneath my crib; He,
a scratching from the shadow beneath my windowsill. They spoke to me not in words, but in intentions
and desires that my terrified infant mind could not comprehend. I cried out and hid from Them beneath
my blankets. My mother rocked me and soothed me and told me They were imaginary. How could she
have known, I wonder, when I was not old enough to tell her what I saw?
—I. xi
Bailey was not surprised when the doctor’s first incision drew up something darker than blood.
The patient writhed and struggled in the bed, fighting a pain that distorted his features into something less
than human. He was a comrade named Tor Kyrre, though Bailey could barely recognise him. Spikes of
iron had sprouted from his bald pate and his bare chest was riddled with gears and bulbs of all types of
metals, the tips of much larger growths festering beneath the skin. As the doctor made his second cut,
lateral and shallow, across the base of the rib cage, black oil welled up, slipping down Tor’s flanks and
staining the sheets and blankets.
The doctors called the disease themorbus imperceptus incrementum . Other folk called it the “clacks.”
Tor spasmed and groaned, the pain of whatever was eating him inside proving too much for even the
powerful whiskey the doctor had fed him.
Bailey sucked on his cigar, inhaling the smoke right down to the base of his lungs, where it burned in tiny
bursts of heat. It was wrong that a man should die this way, that he should be so robbed of his dignity in
his final hours.
Bailey bit back an impulse to ask Dr. Chestle to cease the surgery and let his patient pass on.
No more! Not one more life will I surrender to this horrid city.Chestle, though he looked frail and of
weak nerves, was as skilled as any two of his peers, and Tor had the fortitude of a bear. If this blasted
machine-disease insisted on taking him it would have a fight on its hands.
He was about to slip away into the hall when Chestle cried out. The doctor jumped back from his
patient, wildly flailing his left hand. Something black toppled to the floor, flinging oil and bits of foulness all
across the floorboards.
Chestle backed into the corner, holding his scalpel in front of him like a weapon.
The object twisted and gyrated, slashing at the floor with shapeless, pointed appendages. Bailey took
three steps towards it, swept up a stool, and crushed the object under the stool’s foot, bearing down on
it with the weight of his knee. A screech and a crunch followed, and the thing went still.
Bailey lifted the stool to reveal a twisted mass of metal gears and articulated fingers.
“Was this the source?”
Paler than his patient, the doctor nodded.
“Then you’re finished. Sew him up.”
The look of blank terror lingered on Chestle’s face as he again bent over Tor and went to work. Fifteen
minutes later, with Tor’s chest sealed and covered in gauze and bandages, Chestle nodded at the door.
Bailey opened it, admitting Tor’s wife, who went directly to her husband’s side and conferred with the
doctor in her broken English. Bailey extinguished his cigar now that a lady was present.
Chestle mopped the oil off his hands with a towel and tried without success to look encouraging. “Please
keep the bandages fresh, Mrs. Kyrre. He should be given only thin soup for now. I shall call tomorrow to
see how he is doing.”
“Thank, thank,” she said.
Bailey took out his handkerchief and gathered the remains of the foul object on the floor before Mrs.
Kyrre had a chance to see it.
The housekeeper brought in a bowl of heated water and soap. The doctor washed the gore and oil from
his hands and surgical instruments, the sweat from his thin moustache, and packed his tools into a leather
handbag. Bailey snatched up a candlestick and led him out into the hall.
Bailey shut the door quietly behind them. He unwrapped the crushed object and laid it in the palm of his
open hand, bringing the candle close to examine it.
“What is it?”
Chestle shook his head slowly, facing away from it, as if unwilling to even speculate. His voice shook
with repressed fright as he spoke. “I’m afraid I don’t have an answer, Winfred.”
“But you have seen it before.”
The doctor smoothed his small moustache and faltered over a few words before speaking further. His
slim figure looked skeletal in the candlelight, his close-cut hair thin and loose. “This is the fourth such case
I have treated since Sunday. I had one young woman die of it.” He straightened with obvious effort. “The
growths have always been common, particularly in the poorer towers, but up until now they have not
been…harmful.”
Bailey pocketed the object and they headed towards the stair at the hall’s far end. Seeing the hesitation
on Chestle’s face, Bailey motioned for him to continue.
“The people I have seen with this condition…,” the doctor said, “they were, the prior week, free from
any trouble. The onset is sudden, the damage at once rapid and extensive. If this were to happen to all
those who were infected…My God, Winfred, the loss of life…”
Bailey nodded that he understood, to save the man the expression of his horror. Chestle’s fingers
absently rubbed the brass bulbs on the back of his own hand.
“What is the cause of it?” Bailey asked.
“Something in the air? Something in the food?” The doctor swallowed hard. “If it were any but you, my
friend, I would not even speculate, but…since the gods…since the changes that…”
“Out with it, George.”
“I think that it is Whitechapel,” Chestle said. “Not the air or the food or the conditions, but the city
itself.”
They descended the stairs, passing into a foyer and to the front door of the dwelling before Chestle
spoke again, and when he did it was with great care.
“And it is not my opinion that it can be cured.”
“It can be.”
“Winfred, with all honesty, I—”
“Itwill be,” said Bailey. “Once we cast down Grandfather Clock and Mama Engine—once the baron
and all the rest of their servants lie burning in hell and Whitechapel belongs to England once more—then
you will have your cure.”
Chestle nodded and donned his felt bowler hat.
He moved to leave, and Bailey stopped him with a polite hand on the arm.
“Be ready. The battle may begin anytime now.”
“You need merely call on me. I…believe I will pray tonight.”
They shook hands firmly, and the doctor departed.
Bailey stood a long minute with the door open, staring out. His gaze was drawn upwards, past the
rotting rooftops of the neighbourhood, past the gleaming Cathedral Tower, where those most loyal to the
baron lived with the luxuries of health and security. He felt his jaw tighten as his eyes came to rest on the
top of the looming iron mountain barely visible through the blackened air: the Stack, home to the gods
and to the man who had betrayed his country and his kin to serve them.
Yes, things would happen quickly, one way or the other. If all went well, the means to reclaim
Whitechapel might be in Bailey’s hands by dawn. If all did not go well, he and all the agents of the crown
might soon be lying in oily graves.
Aaron had gone tonight to steal a weapon.
He was two hours overdue.
“You know what the real problem is, Ollie?”
Fighting his irritation, Oliver pulled his eyes off the street and glanced over his shoulder. Tommy
crouched behind him in the filthy alley, a madcap grin flowering on his rectangular face.
Then Tommy stabbed himself in the heart with a knife. “People don’t properly die in this town,” he said
with a smirk. Oil welled up around the blade, staining his shirt.
Oliver scowled. “We’re on mission, Tom.”
“I never tire of the look on your face, Chief,” Tom said, and yanked the knife out with a flourish. He
licked it clean. “Tastes like honey and brown sugar.”
“Vile,” Oliver said, turning back to the street. “Absolutely vile.”
“I swear it isn’t so. You want a taste?”
“I need your attention on the mission, Tom,” Oliver said, eyes darting about the street.
“Always the responsible leader, eh?” said Tommy. “A regular John Bull, if you’re a cove.”
Oliver couldn’t help but smirk. “And yet I still thump you at Heckler’s card game.”
“Ah, but you do it soseriously …”
“Quiet.”
A crowd poured out of the pub three buildings down towards Aldgate Common: a group of
middle-aged men fancied up in bowler hats and suits, carrying canes they couldn’t possibly need and all
of them three sheets to the wind. Traitors. Collaborators. The baron’s business partners and secular
employees, selling out their fellows for a few shillings and the privileges of good food and running water.
Oliver’s eyes jumped from face to face, until they settled on a handlebar moustache to rival the worst
American aristocrat.
Oliver stiffened. “That’s him. Get ready.”
With a grunt and no small manner of squealing from his joints, Tommy lifted himself to his full height. He
always seemed to be fighting his weight; he lurched like a rhinoceros trying to stand on its hind legs.
Tom took a few clanking steps forward. Oliver glanced back, teeth clenched and a grimace on his face.
“I doubt anyone will notice the difference,” said Tommy. He gestured vaguely upward at the ceiling,
where, beyond the steel crossbeams and braces that supported the next floor, some unseen factory or
mechanism chunked and chugged away. The noise echoed everywhere through the concourse.
Oliver grunted, but couldn’t argue.
Tommy noisily hunkered down behind him, peering over Oliver’s shoulder at their comrade across the
street.
An instant before, Missy had been another invisible passerby, clad in drab grey and camouflaged against
the soot-stained streets and thick air, but her pale skin popped to life as she stepped into the lamplight.
With one subtle manipulation of her arms, her short coat fell open at the shoulders, revealing a blouse
slightly too large for her frame. It hung just low enough to reveal a scintillating hint of neck, while looking
for all the world like an innocent mistake of the wardrobe; a fault of the shirt, somehow.
Tommy whistled behind him. “Good Lord, she is a peach.”
Her lips came together, pursed in a perfect, pinched look of utter disdain, a shock of red in a world of
greys and gaslight.
She’s a professional.
Missy cast one glance towards their hiding place, her lips cracking into the barest hint of a smile. She
adjusted the silk ribbons on her hat and smoothed her skirt, fingered her sandy hair where wisps of it
crept down over her ears. Then the distant look returned and she whirled pointedly towards her quarry.
She’s even working us,Oliver marveled.
“Get ready,” he whispered over his shoulder.
Tommy shifted uncomfortably. “But I want to watch.”
“Do your moving before they get here,” Oliver snapped.
“Fine.” Tommy creaked as he rose, then clanked with every step as he retreated to a doorjamb that
barely contained his shoulders.
Oliver’s eyes followed Missy’s approach to the crowd. She walked as if she had somewhere very
important to be. The men all halted and doffed their hats to her as she passed. She gave them each the
barest nod of acknowledgement, fixing each, Oliver knew, though he couldn’t see it, with her lingering
gaze, punctuated by a twitch of the eyebrow, an ever-subtle quickening of the breath. Some stepped
forward to introduce themselves even as she dismissed them with a blink and shifted to the next. This left
a gaggle of befuddled men in her wake, all looking terribly unmanned.
Oliver held his breath.
Missy slowed as she passed the man with the handlebar moustache, a falter in her step, then a pause, the
same interested look.
The target stepped up like a dog to a strip of bacon.
The noise of the factory above prevented any eavesdropping from this distance, but Oliver knew how it
went. The man was extending his hand, offering to walk her home because it was frightfully improper for
a lovely lady like herself to be wandering these streets without a gentleman escort; not the kind of place a
lady would be safe, no sir. And yes, she would quite fancy an escort. Oh! Did she use the word fancy?
Quite improper. A slip of the tongue.
Inside a minute she had the gentleman hanging on her arm. The rest strode off, engaging in excited
conversation over the grand fortune of their comrade and puffing themselves all around as if they’d had
some hand in it.
“Next time, I want to be the lookout,” Tommy said. Oliver could almost picture him stamping his foot
like a boy of five.
Oliver glanced back. “When you put some grease on those joints of yours, I may consider it.”
Tommy’s face contorted in a deep frown. “A right miser, you are. A hoarder.”
“The lion’s share, Tommy. Perks of being a regular John Bull.” He turned back to the street.
To find it empty.
He cast his eyes back and forth. The street was entirely vacant but for the remainder of the pub goers
vanishing into the smog, and the wanderings of one stray dog.
“Something up, mate?” Tommy asked.
The fizzling of the gaslight and the constant smog obscured most of the street. Oliver stuck his head
around the corner, risking detection, and peered into those shadows along the near side of the street,
where Missy was supposed to bring the fox. Nothing. Her white neck, at least, should be visible.
“We’ve lost her, then?” Tommy said.
“She’s run off.” He squinted hard to see into the alleys she would have passed walking that way.
“Maybe she wants a quick peck before we do our thing,” Tommy suggested.
Oliver felt himself flash angry. “Not when we’re on business, surely.”
“She might do it just to get your goat, Chief,” said Tommy.
“At the least, she would signal us before getting out of sight,” Oliver said.
“One would think.”
Oliver scanned the buildings lining the street, apartments stretching the entire five storeys to the roof of
the concourse. Some even went higher, tangling themselves in the braces of the next level: five storeys of
twinkling lights and their attendant residents, any one of which could bring the cloaks crashing down on
them.
There was nowhere to hide once they left the alley. The lampposts shed dim and inconsistent light, but
such was their frequency and the genius of their placement that there was no route down the sidewalk
that would not risk detection. They could not pass for locals anyway, with Oliver’s shabby clothes and
Tommy’s angular bulk sure to arouse suspicion.
“She may have ducked off too early,” Oliver thought aloud. “Do you see a way around to the next
alley?”
“Didn’t notice one,” said Tommy. “Unless you’re game to see where this door goes.”
Oliver retreated from the street into the alley’s darkness. He found Tommy leaning easily on the door
frame, arms crossed. The man’s shoulders stuck out like knife-points under his coat. His iron hand
glinted in the half-light as he tapped his fingers on the door.
Oliver looked past him. The alley ended at the rear wall of another apartment, which provided no
entrance but a blackened window. The manhole they’d come up through led to such a maze that he
balked at the time required to navigate it, especially if Missy was in trouble.
“Can you do itquietly ?” Oliver asked.
Tommy grinned toothily and put a finger to his lips. Oliver gave him a nod.
The big man placed his iron hand flat against the door at the approximate height where a locking bolt
would sit, then leaned in with his shoulder and hip. One sharp push later, the bolt clattered to the floor on
the inside and the door swung open on squealing hinges.
Oliver grimaced. Tommy just shrugged.
From the slip of light bleeding into the room, Oliver surmised it to be a storage room or pantry, of
sufficient size to service the whole building. He set a cautious foot upon the floor within and tested it with
increasing weight. The boards did not squeak. He entered and pattered swiftly across. Tommy followed,
placing each step with great deliberation to avoid clanking, with moderate success.
Oliver felt his way to a door, then scuffed his foot to guide Tommy over to him. In absolute silence
Oliver tried the latch, only to find it locked.
In the dark, no less.He knelt, drew a set of lock picks from his vest pocket and set to work.Probably
did duck for a peck, damnable woman.
In thirty heartbeats the lock ticked. Oliver replaced his lock picks and tried the latch. This time it opened
smoothly.
Oliver pulled the door open an inch and peeked through. Beyond stood a spiral staircase with a thick
oak banister that circled up to the higher floors. A candle flashed upon the stairs: a watchman.
Oliver slid back from the door. He heard the watchman take a few hesitant steps down to the main
floor.
Oliver shrank back against a shelf, wrapping himself in shadow and the scent of cabbage. A few more
steps sounded from beyond. Oliver heard the door handle jiggle.
The door shrieked again as it swung open. A candle poked into the room, followed by an extended
hand holding a billy. Oliver realised with horror that he could clearly see the shine of his own boots in the
candlelight.
A pointy nose appeared, followed by a set of shrewd eyes flicking their gaze about the edges of the
candlelight. Oliver balled his fists and tensed for a quick leap.
The eyes turned his way. Just as they began to widen, and the billy to rise, a monstrous shadow a full
head taller than the watchman materialised behind him.
Tommy popped the man sharply across the back of his head. Oliver darted forth and caught the man as
he collapsed. Burning wax splattered across his hand as he wrested the candle away. The billy clattered
to the floor.
They set him down comfortably, then wasted no time crossing into the hall beyond. They found a series
of dormant pumps and machines in the room across the hall. Oliver led Tommy through to a door on the
far wall. The bolt slid clear easily and the door opened in silence.
They found themselves on a narrow side street devoid of residents and streetlights. Directly across, a
lamplight flickered in the window of a countinghouse. Through the diagonal crosshatch of the glass, Oliver
could see a familiar statuesque figure.
He dashed across the street and silently pulled the door open. He stepped through and Missy nearly put
a knife through his eye.
Oliver clamped his fingers on Missy’s wrist before she could finish her thrust. “For Jesus’ sake!
Michelle, it’s us!”
She wrenched her hand away. “Well, had you announced yourselves like gentlemen, I might have been
more accommodating, but that is a fair amount to expect from you.”
Tommy followed through the doorway, chuckling. “No claim to be gentlemen, miss.”
Missy’s petite upturned nose wrinkled. “You did at one time claim to be part of ateam, did you not?”
She shook the knife at them. “Was it your intention to leave me to my frail, feminine self or were you
simply dawdling?”
“We were in thenext alley, Michelle,” Oliver said, hands still raised in defence, “where you were supposed to bring in the fox.”
She folded up the knife and shoved it into her handbag. “And I suppose it would have been far too much
trouble to cover two alleys.”
“There should have been no need,” Oliver said. He noted ominous blots of colour around Missy’s
fingernails. “Are you all right?”
Missy wiped her hands off on her skirt, leaving dark smears behind. “All right? There’s a plumb joke.”
Oliver’s chest tightened as he spotted a clock hanging on the wall behind her.
“Youwanted his documents,” Missy continued, “and he was lecherous enough to divulge their location.
Do not begrudge a girl a little initiative.”
Oliver saw something dark pass over Missy’s eyes, saw her jaw tighten. Tommy let out a low, buzzing
whistle that knotted up Oliver’s insides.
Dare I?“What is it, Tom?”
“A stinking pile of shit trouble, Chief.”
With clenched teeth, Oliver turned his head. The little office held two desks of black mahogany and a
tidy bookshelf of ledgers and records below the wall clock. Their target lay sprawled in a sea of
scattered papers against the far wall. Dark stains peppered his coat across the chest and stomach, and he
was perfectly still.
Oliver shut his eyes and rubbed them, trying to erase what he’d just seen.
“Thoroughly done” was Tommy’s comment. Oliver opened his eyes again to see Missy fold her arms
tight against her abdomen and stick her nose in the air.
“He overstepped the bounds of propriety,” she said.
Oliver stood aghast, looking back and forth between Missy and the dead man. Missy stared coolly at
the corpse, eyes sunken and dark.
Oliver shook his finger at her. “I’ve gone five years withoutthis, Michelle. This was all you could think
to—” He stopped himself, swallowing his reprimand for a more appropriate time.
“We’ll have words,” he warned.
Missy scowled at him. “I hardly think words are our most pressing concern, Mr. Sumner.”
“Right.” Oliver snatched the dead man’s hat and hung it over the face of the wall clock. If Grandfather
Clock had been looking through it, his gold cloaks would already be on the way. He shared an earnest
look with Tom, then spoke to Missy.
“Where are his documents?”
Missy gestured stiffly at a small steel safe in the corner.
“Tom.”
The big man raised a quizzical eyebrow.
Oliver pointed to the safe. “We can’t make less of a spectacle than we have, I think.”
Tom shrugged, then bent down and hammered the safe door in with a quick blow of his iron knuckles.
He pried it out and tossed it on a desk.
Oliver reached in and retrieved a sheaf of papers bound with string. He flipped through it.
“This is it,” he said. “Back we go.”
They slipped across the street and back through the machine room in the apartment, Oliver in the lead
and Tommy in the rear. The hall and stair beyond were vacant. Oliver led the way across, feeling ahead
of him in what was almost complete darkness. Through vague touches, the pantry door revealed itself.
Oliver grasped the handle and lifted the door slightly before opening it, which served to dull the noise to a
whimper. He waved the others forward and entered the room.
He saw a flash of movement in the shadows and ducked low. Boxes and tins from the shelf behind
rained down on him as the watchman’s next blow swept high. A warm body came in close against him,
and he tilted his shoulder and ploughed into it. He caught his foot on a tin and stumbled, but not before
propelling his assailant away. He lost track of the other man in the crash of more falling tins.
Oliver scrambled back to his feet and tried to raise his hand in front of his face. Something moved in
front of him, hidden by the darkness. He heard a few clanks, then a few wet crunches.
Tommy’s voice drifted out of the dark. “Let’s get on.”
Suddenly thankful for the dark, Oliver led the way to the door and out into the alley. Missy was next out
the door, stepping down from the stoop, the picture of poise and ladyship. Tommy shambled after,
wiping his iron hand with a white handkerchief. Oliver picked up a pry bar from where he’d hidden it and
levered the sewer hole open. Instead of escaping, Missy produced a cloth sack from beneath her skirt
and handed it to Tommy, who accepted it without comment.
Oliver stepped onto the first rung of the ladder within the manhole. The stench of sewage and grease
floated up to greet him.
Missy peeled off her tweed short coat and stuffed it in the bag.
Oliver waited a moment to be acknowledged, but Missy remained oblivious. She added her hat to the
bag, then began on her skirt.
“Surely you can do that once we get to safety.”
“I will not,” said Missy, jaw and neck tight as cords, “allow my good clothing to traverse your vile sewer
exit unprotected.”
“Aldgate hastelephones ,” Oliver stressed. “If anyone in the building heard us, they’ll be bringing the
cloaks right down on us.”
Missy made no reply. She stepped out of the grey tweed skirt and added it to the sack. Beneath she
wore a smaller skirt of worn and stained wool, a match in quality to the poorer attire Oliver and Tommy
wore.
“Be a dear and carry that for me, would you?” she asked. Tommy shrugged and nodded.
Still not gracing Oliver with a look, Missy proceeded to the manhole, shouldered him aside, and swiftly
lowered herself in.
Tommy stepped up. “You’re in for it now, mate,” he said, shooting Oliver a wink. He tucked the bag
under his arm and slipped down into the underground.
“You’ve no idea.”
These papers are probably the only thing that will keep Bailey from shooting me.
Instead of capturing their fox, they’d left him stiff and cold, and been spotted on top of it. Oliver had not
presided over so botched an operation since the Uprising. He clutched the papers tight in his hands and
forced that particular set of memories into the dark.
He placed his feet on the ladder and started his descent. As he pulled the manhole cover back into
place, he heard the clear report of approaching feet running in perfect time.
He dropped the cover down, and his world became dark and silence and stink.