terça-feira, 31 de agosto de 2010

Chapter 2

The whole of Her garden will grow from a single iron nail, which I will plant between the cobbles in a
back alley of Pelham Street. There, a man lies dying of consumption. His will be but the first of the souls
She will need, for Her fires grow hungrier by the day. To make great things, much heat is needed; and for
much heat, much coal.
—II. ix
The prisoner struggled. Bergen yanked on the chains and the man toppled to his face.
“That was unpleasant,” Bergen said. “Do not make me do it again.”
Muffled curses escaped from the canvas bag covering the prisoner’s head. Bergen delivered a kick to
the man’s ribs. The prisoner groaned and rolled onto his side.
“Behave yourself,” Bergen said. “Now, on your feet.”
The prisoner fought to get onto his knees and wobbled to his feet. The man’s arms had been tied
together behind his back with piano wire, which had sliced his skin in a few places. Five chains led up
under the canvas hood, attaching in some unseen way to the prisoner’s head. Bergen gave them a light
tug.
“Walk.”
The prisoner obeyed.
Bergen led the man through corridors of warped wooden floorboards and ragged plaster walls. At
uneven intervals, oil lamps hung from hooks in the ceiling, yellowing everything with their sickly light. They
passed through dozens of intersections of identical corridors and through several wooden doors, some
hanging off their hinges and splattered with castoff plaster.
Bergen frowned at the sloppy workmanship.Probably done by some urchins, hired for a pittance and
then cast off the tower to die in the streets.
Only by long habit did he know which corridors to follow and which doors to open. A wrong turn would
place him in the path of a trip wire–triggered rifle or a door that opened onto a wall of protruding
poisoned needles. It was a place to rattle a dead man’s bones.
Was it duty that kept him coming back to this tomb? Or was he so callous now that he could no longer
find fault with its madness?
He found the door he sought. Rather than reaching for the knob, he probed the topmost hinge with a
single finger until he found the trigger buried in the oak door frame. With a click, the latch sounded, and
the door swung open from the hinged side. A complex series of pulleys and gears, all fabricated of wood,
slid the door aside just enough for a man to step through.
The room beyond was as black as night, lit only by a few candles in the far corner. A quaking voice
floated out. “Tick, tick, tick, tick…”
“I know you heard me,” Bergen said. “I have the thief.”
“Ah, by all means, bring him in.”
Bergen roughly shoved the prisoner ahead. Bergen stepped in after him, turning to the corner farthest
from the candles.
“Bringing your barking iron in here?” said the voice.
Bergen laid a casual hand on the heavy Gasser revolver hanging at his hip. “This is my fist and my voice,”
he said. “Would I ask you to set aside such things?”
The corner cackled like a nervous schoolboy.
“Cautious. Heh. A good sign, that. Take note, my little grubbers. Take note.”
The corner shuffled, and John Scared slunk silently into the candles’ light. The sixteen-year-old mute that
John called “Pennyedge” emerged as well, stepping into the light from a different corner. The boy stood
loose, long-limbed, and long-fingered, waiting as always to execute Scared’s merest whim.
In his customary black long coat and top hat of beaver fur, John Scared seemed little more than a
pock-scarred face and two knobbly hands. Grinning toothily, John grasped the small table that held the
candles and moved it closer to the room’s centre.
John beckoned into the dark. “Come out, come out, my grubbers. Don’t you want to see your uncle at
work?”
Two wide-eyed, emaciated children shuffled out of the dark, dressed in naught but rags and grime. Their
eyes flittered fearfully over Bergen’s person, and they shuffled away towards Pennyedge, giving the
groaning prisoner a wide berth. They settled themselves behind Penny’s legs, peering around. The mute
kept his arms crossed, the fingers of his right hand fiddling with his sleeve. His eyes never left Bergen’s.
Do you think I cannot see that knife, boy? Do you think you can get to me before I can draw?Bergen
deliberately broke eye contact.
“Let’s get him comfortable,” John prompted.
Bergen hauled the prisoner to his feet by the collar of his vest and shoved him roughly into the oak chair.
“Tell me,” said John, placing the table to the right of the chair. The candlelight lit his chalky skin in
dancing colours. “He was one of three?”
“One of them fell from the tower. The other was taken by the Boiler Men. Hobbyhorse found this one
wandering lost in the bottom of Aldgate. He is one of them; I am certain.”
John’s eyebrows squirmed. “The Boiler Men? Tick, tick. Foul news. He’ll have to be retrieved.” He
locked iron rings around the prisoner’s legs and another around his neck. “I’ll get Boxer to handle it.
Close the door, if you would.”
Bergen reached back and tugged a small cord that hung from the door’s pulley system. A catch released
and the door slid back into place with a quiet sound. Pennyedge’s unfaltering stare began to grate on his
nerves. It was a constant reminder that he was an outsider, an employee, rather than a member of the
family. If any of John’s wretches could shoot half as well as he could, Pennyedge would have slit his
throat long ago.
The room seemed to grow hotter the instant the door closed. There was a smell as well, an organic rot
that Bergen was wary of trying to identify.
John loosened the drawstring of the bag covering the prisoner’s head. He gestured to the two small
children, flashing his yellowed and blackened teeth. “Step up, little pups. Don’t be afraid.”
They cautiously moved around to stand in front of Pennyedge, but went no closer.
Satisfied, John turned back and with a grand flourish whipped the bag off the prisoner’s head.
“Gott in Himmel!”Bergen swore. The two children screamed and fled back into the darkened corner.
Pennyedge did not react.
“My hunchback is quite a craftsman, isn’t he?” John said. He reached up with his gnarled hands and
caressed the iron bands that encircled the prisoner’s head, held there by thick nails punched into his skull.
The chains dangled from rivets in his jaw and cheeks.
“Not even much blood, considering,” John said. “Marvelous work. Don’t you think so, grubbers?”
The two children gasped unseen in the corner. Pennyedge simply nodded and returned his gaze to
Bergen.
“How dare you do this to children?” Bergen growled.
John’s eyes twinkled. “You’d prefer I left them to starve or be hauled off by the Chimney gangs, then?
Besides, I’ve done much, much worse. And so have you, I might add.”
Bergen’s hand twitched towards his gun. Duty was all that kept him from putting a bullet through the
man’s forehead.
He spat on the floorboards. “I do only what is necessary, Scared. You are an abomination.”
“Quite. And I wouldn’t trust your sanity,mein freund , if you held any other opinion.” John reached up
and unscrewed the lock holding the man’s jaw shut tight. “Now let’s hear what this one has to say, eh?”
The man spat up blood and bile as soon as he could open his mouth. He said nothing. John examined
him for some long moments, looking for a weakness.
Bergen had seen this before. John was exceptional at reading a man’s faults. Bergen, on the other hand,
was exceptional at hiding such faults. Perhaps that was why John hadn’t killed him yet—he hadn’tsolved
him as he might a chess problem or a mathematical equation.
John leaned back on his heels. “Penny, my boy, cut a piece of the fellow’s ear off, would you? The
gauze is under the chair.”
Bergen crossed his arms. “Must I witness this?”
John perked up. “The great hunter squeamish? The German Terror of Africa unmanned?”
“I was not the one burgled today,” Bergen said levelly.
John’s eyes narrowed. “Shrewd. Heh. I like that too.”
Pennyedge had retrieved the roll of gauze. He tore off a small slip of it, then held the prisoner’s head still
with one hand and drew his knife with the other. John shuffled over to Bergen. Bergen’s nose wrinkled at
the onion stench of the man.
“Our little secret is in the hands of the man who fell,” John said.
“Or in the hands of the Boiler Men.”
John shook a finger. “No, no. If that was the case, we’d already be dead, don’t you think?”
“It is your secret, Scared.”
“Ah, but I would, of course, with much hesitation and under great duress, tell them it was your idea.”
Bergen shrugged. The prisoner screamed through clenched teeth as Penny did his work.
“So it needs to be retrieved.”
“Smart. Heh.”
Bergen rubbed his fingers through his chin stubble and tried to ignore the prisoner’s moaning. “I want
Mulls and Hobbyhorse.”
“Mulls is a brute. He’s yours.” John turned briefly and assessed the prisoner. The man’s face was awash
with blood and sweat, eyes clenched and teeth locked together. Pennyedge stood behind the man,
pressing the bloodstained gauze against the man’s ear.
“Another bit, if you would, my boy,” John said. “He’s not quite ready.”
He turned back to Bergen as Penny bent to his task. John waved one yellow-nailed finger in Bergen’s
face. “Hobby will go with Boxer. You get Penny.”
Bergen glanced over at the boy’s face. It hung slack and expressionless even as he sawed away with his
knife. Bergen was about to protest that the boy was too young, but thought better of it.He may have
already killed more men than I have.
“I cannot use him,” Bergen said. “He cannot be made a scout on account of his silence, and he’s not
nearly a good enough shot.”
John knitted his fingers together. “You’ll find his talents more than make up for his little deficiency, I
think.”
John’s smile grew wider and wider.
Bergen nodded slowly, realising.Penny is along to murder me if I try to go to the baron.
John smiled, his message understood. “Lots of beasties to hunt in the downstreets, too. Like your old
grounds, eh?”
“Africa is a land of beauty,” Bergen said. “Your Whitechapel is aHö
¨ lle auf Welt.”
“It’s notmy Whitechapel,” John said, then added with a twinkle, “Yet.”
It’s the queen’s Whitechapel, you traitor.Bergen buried the thought, hoping John hadn’t read it on his
face.
He indicated Penny, who stood impassive, holding fresh gauze over the ruins of the prisoner’s ear. “The
child will need arms. Have him meet me in the warehouse when you are done with him.”
“It won’t be long” was the reply. John returned his attention to the two children still huddled down in the
shadows of a far corner.
“Come forth, come forth, my beautiful, innocent little sons,” he said, beckoning with his skeletal hands.
“This will be your trade someday. Best learn.”
Bergen’s stomach turned. He yanked the cord that rolled the door to the side and strode out.
Bergen walked into the workshop to find Mulls shouting and bashing his fist on a table.
“What do you mean it’s not done, you rotter?”
The shop master, Ferdinand von Herder, leaned comfortably back on his stool and sighed deeply, as
one might when dealing with an unruly child.
“Good sir,” he began, his voice ancient and tired, “the weapon is not ready. Nor will it become ready
until our mutual patron furnishes me with more nickel and copper.”
“Is there a problem?” Bergen asked.
Mulls whirled about, coming up straight when he saw who had just spoken. He was one of Scared’s
children, raised in the filth of the streets and badly ravaged by the clacks, but loyal and capable, if not
amiable. His already primitive features had become a mess of stray wires and misshapen bits of iron, and
his thick limbs bulged in some places into unnatural angles.
Von Herder cocked his ear and turned his sightless eyes in the direction of the door.
“Herr Keuper, is it? Welcome. Mr. Mulligan seems to think he should be the bearer of our only
functional steam rifle.”
“Wouldn’t be a problem if he’d bloody made two of them like he s’posed to,” Mulls complained.
“You will carry a flasher,” Bergen ordered. “And an air rifle loaded with steel rounds.”
“Fine.” Mulls snatched an air rifle and a belt of ammunition from the weapon racks lining the wall and
headed for the stairs leading back to the maze. He mumbled under his breath, as if the others couldn’t
hear him, “Stupid hun, hogging all the good stuff to yourself.”
Bergen and von Herder waited for his muttering to fade with distance. Two teenage assistants in the
back of the room disturbed the silence, having hardly slowed their pace at all during the argument. When
von Herder spoke, he did so in German.
“Unpleasant men are not hard to find in this country, don’t you think, Herr Keuper?”
Bergen shrugged, though he knew von Herder couldn’t see it. “Herr Scared attracts only the worst. The
Englisch are mostly a jovial people.”
The old mechanic blinked his milk-white eyes and scuffed his fist over the scraggly whiskers on his
cheeks. “Strange for you to be praising theEnglisch, I think. Your partnership with Nicholas Ellingsly was
legend in the penny magazines—always rivals for the bigger game.”
“TheEnglisch consider such contests the height of sportsmanship, Herr von Herder.”
“A silly people, to confuse friends with opponents.”
Bergen scanned the tables and racks in the rear of the workshop. “Is it ready?”
“Of course! How unprofessional of me to waste time on blather.” Von Herder swiveled slightly on his
stool and called for his two assistants to bring up the steam rifle. As one they dipped behind the far table and rose again straining and grunting. They carried the weapon up and set it on von Herder’s table with
tremendous strain.
“Thank you, my lads,” von Herder said. He ran his hands over the length of the rifle with an almost
loving touch. His eyes slowly fell closed.
Bergen surveyed the weapon from barrel to boiler: fully five feet in length, with a barrel the breadth of a
man’s fist, a coal furnace and boiler in the place of a breech, and a padded stock that allowed the butt
end of the weapon to rest atop the shoulder. It had been polished precisely, and shimmered like a mirror
in some places.
“It is a different colour,” Bergen said.
“Yes, I replaced most of it with a new alloy. Much stronger so less can be used, which should lighten it a
bit. I’ve also installed a new boiler.” He indicated each section as he spoke, dancing his fingers over the
components, checking fit and sturdiness. Then he gestured for Bergen to pick it up. “Test it. Test it.”
Bergen bent and hefted the monstrous weapon from the table. The stock fit perfectly to his shoulder. He
gripped its two handles, one perpendicular to the barrel on the inside, the other parallel on the outside.
He experimentally thumbed the trigger on the outside handle.
“It is much lighter. My compliments, Herr von Herder.”
“It will still be a heavy load to carry through the downstreets.”
Bergen smiled. “Africa has touched me, sir. It will be as nothing.”
Von Herder grinned back, displaying gums shrivelled by age. “I am told the sunsets are magnificent
there.”
“There are few greater pleasures, sir.” Bergen placed the rifle back on the table. He retrieved its special
holster and a band of ammunition and tossed them in a canvas shoulder sack. Bergen surveyed the rack
of breech-loading rifles and air rifles and considered whether Pennyedge should be armed.
The boy would be useless against the creatures of the downstreets with just his knife, and yet Bergen felt
some hesitancy at arming a boy who was under orders to kill him. The essential question was, did giving
the boy a firearm make him more dangerous than he already was?
“You were from Stuttgart, weren’t you?” von Herder asked.
“Hm?” Bergen murmured, breaking out of his thoughts.
“If I recall, you are from Stuttgart.”
“That is correct.”
Von Herder tapped two fingers absently on the table. “It is puzzling me, because you do not sound like
you are from Stuttgart.”
Bergen paused, wondering just how much the blind man’s ears could reveal. He chose his words
carefully. “I have not been back to the fatherland for years, Herr von Herder. Perhaps you are hearing some tribal variation I have acquired.”
“Of course,” said von Herder. “I’d forgotten.”
Bergen selected one air rifle and a bandolier for the boy. “Do you have any paper, Herr von Herder?”
“I haven’t much use for it,” von Herder said with a chuckle. “But Andrew is learning his letters.” He
called back for the boy to bring up some paper and a pen.
The assistant appeared, carrying a slip of paper dark around one edge with spilled ink, and a small bit of
charcoal.
“Beg pardon, sir, but me pen’s been leakin’ terrible of late.”
“Well then, fix it,” von Herder snapped. “How can I let you lay your hands on firearms if you cannot
even fix a lousy pen?”
The poor lad froze up for a moment. Bergen held out his hand. “Whatever makes a mark,” he said.
Relieved, the boy crammed the paper and charcoal onto Bergen’s palm and fled.
“Lad’s a dullard,” von Herder said in German, “though he’s competent enough on the furnace.”
“Hmm,” Bergen said. He laid the paper on the table and scribbled a few words.
One caught by Ironboys. One caught by Scared. They can’t hold. Third fell from tower, has
ticker-paper. Leading expedition to retrieve. Cannot delay; under watch.
He blew the excess charcoal off the paper and folded it in quarters.
“What were you writing, I wonder?” von Herder mused.
“My obituary.”
Bergen wrapped the steam rifle in its holster and swung the monstrous mechanism onto his back. It really
was lighter, perhaps sixty pounds. He slung the various bandoliers over his shoulder, gathered a few
more packs prepacked with food, water, and supplies, and hefted Pennyedge’s air rifle in his hand.
“Auf Wiedersehen,”said Bergen, and left.
He dropped the paper in a sewer grate on the way to the warehouse.

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