Chapter 3

My professors at the college told me that my buildings would not stand up. They pointed endlessly to
leaning walls and angled beams that could support no roof short of a canvas sheet. I nodded and vocally
agreed, and so they tolerated me, but I always knew my buildings were exactly as they should be.
No, they would not stand as I had designed them, but they would grow, and one day they would stand
on their own.
—I. xxv
Grandfather Clock was watching.
Oliver tilted his hat back enough to see the massive white marble and wrought-iron clock hanging above
the entrance to the boarding platform. Its regular ticking rang like a hammer and anvil through the space
above. Suspended on chains from the steel ceiling supports, it almost seemed to be leaning forward,
surveying the people below.
Oliver ducked his head and pulled his hat brim down. An old chill crept up his spine, the wearing,
gnawing awareness of scrutiny, and then a sharp dread at the possibility of being recognised from last
night’s operation. He hurried his pace through the crowds at Shadwell Station, a sea of men and women
in grey tweed and ash hats, stinking of coal smoke and grease and human sweat.
The operationcould have gone well, if he’d only been given time to research and plan.
“It must be tonight,” Bailey had said, overpowering all objection. “England needs you. It is your duty to
the crown.”
Oliver shouldered his way around a tin cart and the man pulling it, and wondered what Bailey thought he
owed to the crown. Oliver was Whitechapel-born and-raised, and but for blurry glances through the
smoke and ash, had never even seen this great nation he was fighting for.
Did that sour man not think Oliver had enough of his own reasons to want Baron Hume and his two
gods to be cast down?
He simply doesn’t trust me. He wouldn’t trust anyone born outside his God-blessed kingdom.
Perhaps the correct question was: why was he following Sir Bailey’s revolution, instead of running his
own?
Because I tried that before, and look at what came of it.
A series of rhythmic clacks and a screech echoed out of the boarding platform ahead, the sounds of
brakes upon the cable, stopping the car’s descent from Stepneyside Tower. A gaunt-faced ferryman
withdrew the gates from the platform’s entrance, and the crowd began to shuffle forward.
A short, round man wearing pale blue coattails and a matching silk top hat shuffled in close to him on his
right side.
“Eyes ahead, lad,” the man said. “There’s trouble.”
“There’s always trouble with you, Hews.”
“Hmph. You’re one to talk of other folk making trouble.”
The pressure of the crowd eventually pushed them through the arch and onto the boarding platform,
where a cable car sat ready. Pulleys and machinery chugged away on every wall. Oliver noted that the
crew rushing about pulling switches and turning valves all wore the black cloaks of Mama Engine’s
servants; they had some grand name in the rags, but Oliver and most folk just called them “the crows.”
They were rarely seen outside the Stack, preferring, Oliver assumed, to be near their goddess, working in her furnaces deep inside that mountain of iron. The red glow of their own heart-furnaces leaked
through burns and holes in their heavy clothes; some even had mechanical limbs, which held to no human
shape. Last time Oliver had taken this car, the crew had been ordinary men of the working classes.
“Keep your eyes straight, lad,” Hews hissed. “They’re in a mood today.”
Oliver made to turn his head forward again, but his eyes lingered. Something on the catwalk above, half
seen amongst the enormous gears and wheels that ran the car, tickled at his attention. Slowly, his eyes
made out the gleam of round black armor and the long, precise line of an Atlas repeating rifle. A bolt of
panic shot through him.
“What are the Boiler Men doing here?” he whispered.
“I don’t know. Now walk straight and don’t draw attention to yourself.”
Oliver felt a chill creeping through him. The Boiler Men: the baron’s personal army. Silent, unhesitating,
they acted and killed with the detached ease of things wholly mechanical. Unlike the cloaks, not a one of
them had ever been human. If Baron Hume had deployed them outside of the Stack, something must
have happened to cause him no small worry.
A stern-faced gold cloak held the door at the entrance to the cable car, scrutinising people as they
passed. Brass plates covered half his face, and his right eye had been replaced by an oversized orb of
porcelain. Like most of his order, he wore not an actual cloak but a short cape over finely tailored
clothes: waistcoat, jacket, slacks. Oliver had no sympathy for the cloaks. Their mechanical growths were
not the painful fruits of any disease, but rather gifts from the baron and his gods, given when a
once–human being walked into the Stack and took communion with Grandfather Clock or Mama
Engine. Their mechanisms were their thirty pieces of silver, the price of their souls.
Oliver was glaring hard at the doorman when Hews tapped him on the shoulder to bring him out of it.
“Anonymity is your friend right now, lad,” he said. As they entered, he placed himself directly between
Oliver and the gold-cloaked doorman and gave the fellow a friendly tip of the hat. The doorman’s gaze
lingered on Hews long enough for Oliver to slip into the car. He came close enough to hear the man
ticking.
Hews joined him a moment later.
“They’re looking for someone,” Oliver said.
“I had better not find out it’s you. Let’s retreat to the back.”
They pushed through the crowd to the end of the car, farthest from the door and farthest from the tin
clock set into the ceiling at the front. They found a place in a corner, where they were pressed against the
walls as the car slowly filled. Oliver turned to stare out through the wire mesh that served as a window,
hiding his face from the clock. Hews did likewise.
“They came out of the Stack in force this morning.” Hews said. “I received a telegram from one of my
old partners about it. Apparently there have been frequent arrests.”
Oliver felt himself flush. “And how does that differ from a normal day?”
Hews shushed him with a gesture, tilting his head back towards the car’s occupants. Oliver bit his tongue
until the anger passed.
They fell silent a few minutes as the last of the passengers filed on and the gold cloak shut and locked the
door. Hews slipped his fingers into the pockets of his waistcoat and rocked back on his heels.
“On a different topic,” he said, congenial once again, “how was last night’s work?”
When Oliver didn’t answer right away, Hews grimaced and rubbed his muttonchops.
“It went badly, then?”
Oliver exhaled deeply and rested his forehead on the window. “You might say that.”
“Did anyone spot you?”
“Likely.”
Hews cursed under his breath.
“Well,” he said, “nothing to be done now. This seems a lot of attention for just you, in any case. We’ll
talk when we get to Stepneyside.”
The car jolted and began to move. Wheels and gears screeched away, and hidden engines erupted into
deafening noise. The passengers braced themselves against the walls and against one another as the car
picked up speed. In a few seconds, it cleared the boarding platform and flew out into London’s
yellow-grey smog.
Oliver laced his fingers in the wire mesh as the car began to wobble side to side. Ahead, Stepneyside
Tower slowly faded into life from within the clouds and the swirling ash. Its thick steel beams arched
gracefully together, crossing and tangling, and at the top spilled back down in all directions, giving the
tower the appearance of a huge black flower. The scattered lights of human habitation blinked between
them like orphaned stars.
“Look there,” Hews said, pointing out the car’s right side. “On a clear day you can see the gun
emplacements at Wapping, and sometimes the Thames.”
Oliver turned to look but saw only more grey sky, with the twisted shades of other towers lurking in that
direction. Somewhere beyond stood the impassable wall separating Whitechapel from the rest of
London, topped with electric defences and guarded by untiring Boiler Men. Just beyond it, human
soldiers of the British army stood ever ready, standing fast against any expansion of the baron’s city.
“You’re from Wapping, Hewey?” Oliver asked.
Hews shook his head, as if ridding himself of a clinging memory. “Chelsea, actually. Someday, I’ll show
it to you, lad.”
A blast of hot, oily wind battered the car. Oliver held on to the mesh and closed his mouth and eyes
against the stinging ash that swirled past. A violent bounce caused screeching and twanging sounds to
echo through the car’s roof.
“Haven’t I always said it?” Hews grumbled from behind his kerchief. “It’s the lifts and the cables that will
be the death of us. The Boiler Men needn’t lift a bloody finger.”
A flash of red light illuminated them from the right. A half mile in that direction, Oliver made out the
square and orderly Cathedral Tower, gleaming and clean despite all the grit and dirt of the air, and
looming behind it, the black mountain of the Stack.
That was where Mama Engine’s inhuman children laboured without pause on her Great Work, and
where, day after day, good coves worked themselves to death at her machines. Red flame blasted
through the clouds around its uppermost tip. Smoke blacker than coal shot upwards, fanning out to cover
the city like a shroud.
Oliver nudged Hews in the arm.
“Seems that’s been happening more often of late.”
Hews squinted at the spectacle. “Aye. Pity we can’t get a man inside. I’d love to know what they’re
building down there.”
“Could always join up with the crows, Hewey,” Oliver said with a grin.
Hews’ expression laid plain what he was going to say, but after a quick glance at the men and women
pressed in on them at all sides, he simply replied, “I may at that, lad.”
The Stack burst once more, then guttered and went out. Smoke continued to seep into the sky.
A few more jolts brought them into the Stepneyside station. This station was much larger than the one in
Shadwell, and featured cable car passage to Montague Tower and a raised rail heading to Cathedral
Tower and the Stack. Oliver and Hews stepped into the crowd and let themselves be carried along in the
human current as it spilled out onto the boarding platform. Hews used the same trick to get Oliver past
the gold-cloak watchman.
“Peculiar,” said Oliver. “All this for some fop bookkeeper.”
Hews snorted. “He isn’t just some bookkeeper, lad. Didn’t Bailey tell you?”
“Bailey wouldn’t tell me the bloody sky was grey,” Oliver said. Then his stomach clenched a little tighter.
“Er…what was he then, if not a fop bookkeeper?"
“Washe?” Hews echoed, with a searching glance of Oliver’s face.
Oliver shook his head, an indication not to discuss it in the midst of a crowd. They shuffled along in
silence towards the exit. Above the entryway to the station hung a montage of small clocks, all ticking out
of time with one another and orbiting around a central, larger clock by the action of some mechanism
hidden from the eye. To the left of the entrance stood a half squad of six Boiler Men, five holding Atlas
rifles against their shoulders and one a steam hose connected to a copper boiler strapped to his back.
Oliver and Hews tipped their hat brims down, flipped their collars up, and walked by without a glance or
a word. Oliver felt the heat from the steam hose from a full five yards away. He wondered with a shudder
if it had been fired today and tried not to remember what he’d seen it do to the human body.
They did not speak again until they had escaped the station and found a side street hidden from the view of the station’s massive exterior clock. The alley led between two tilting tenements connected by a
slanting support beam that emerged from the second floor wall of one building and entered the third floor
of the other.
They found a recessed doorway and took a moment to remove their hats and coats and shake the ash
from them.
“I think perhaps you had better explain yourself,” Hews said.
Hews expected a direct and honest answer, Oliver saw. Oliver thought of Missy and knew immediately
he wasn’t going to give one.
“I had my knife on him to keep him quiet,” Oliver said. “He just dove onto it. I think he may have been
trying to strangle me.”
Hews’ face drooped. He swallowed hard several times before speaking. “So he skewered himself?”
Oliver nodded, fighting the guilt welling in his abdomen. “Without any warning at all. I made an honest
attempt to pull my knife aside, but it was all very sudden.”
Hews rubbed his muttonchops and stared at the ground. Oliver felt a weight of sadness coming off the
other man, feeding the gnawing sensation in Oliver’s gut.
“Sad way to meet one’s end,” Hews said. “Damned shame.”
“We got off fine with his documents,” Oliver offered. “Heckler seems to think they’re a key for
translating some sort of cypher.”
“You told him who you worked for?” Hews asked.
“He can’t exactly turncoat on us now.”
Hews flapped his hat angrily. “Damn it, lad. Did you tell him who you were?”
“Hewey, that isn’t something my crew normally discusses while on mission.”
Hews flushed red. His jowls vibrated as he spoke. “Bailey’s using you on my good word, lad, and when
he hears this he’ll have us both hauled off. Do you understand that?”
Oliver threw a finger into Hews’ face. “Well, if our muck-a-muck had told me anything more than a
name and a time I’d have brought that fox in spit polished like a brass kettle.”
“You should have bloody told him who you were.”
“And if Bailey had trusted me, I’d have known to do it. Just because I wasn’t born in the—”
“He was one ofours, Ollie.”
Oliver froze. His finger wavered. “What?”
“Your fox was one of ours.” Hewey jammed his hat back onto his head and shouldered back into his coat. “He was a bloody inside man.”
Oliver’s arms dropped limply to his side. His hat slipped from his fingers and settled quietly on the
pavement. “I…didn’t know.”
“Of course not. Bailey thought—correctly, I might add—that you would make a mess of it and might get
caught. Aaron Bolden was running a separate operation tonight which might have thrown suspicion on
your fox, so he had to be retrieved.”
Oliver moved his lips for a minute, running in his mind every conceivable apology, from humbly admitting
his mistake and resigning from Her Majesty’s service to prostrating himself on the ground and wailing
piteously for forgiveness.
“Christ” was all he said.
Hews’ face cracked and he choked out a sad laugh, which Oliver couldn’t help but echo. His gut sank
another few inches towards his toes.
“So what shall we do now?” he asked.
Hews took a deep breath. “Now we get all our ducks in a row. Was he drunk?”
Oliver nodded.
“Good. Bailey will buy that. Lawrence was always a lush.”
An image of the dead man flashed in Oliver’s imagination. His stomach churned.
“Jesus, Hewey. I didn’t need to know his name.”
“You’ll get past it, lad. It isn’t as if this is the first man you’ve killed.”
In the heat of armed rebellion, yes. But not like that: unarmed and unawares, and without offence so far
as I know.Missy had not elaborated on her justifications. In fact, she’d barely spoken at all.
“Though,” Hews continued, eyes hopping this way and that without looking at anything in particular,
“let’s have Thomas do the actual deed. He’s careless as a bull on his best days.”
“But that isn’t how it happened.”
Hews gave a chuckle that could have been a sob. “Well, I doubt a one of us is generally truthful, eh?
Though Bailey may check on it, so it would be prudent to review it with your crew.”
“He knows that Tommy never uses a knife.”
“But he carries one.”
Oliver nodded. “Good a tale as any, I suppose. We’ll look like fools no matter the details, I think.”
Hews smiled and stepped down from the doorway. “I’ve looked worse on many occasions, lad. All in
the name of queen and country, eh?”
Hews slumped off, his shoulders dropping under some unseen weight.
“Queen and country, aye.” Oliver pulled out a shilling, and for a moment gazed down at the stern female
face on the back side.
But not my queen. Not my country.
He plopped it back in and followed after.
“I don’t like the look of it,” Hews said.
Oliver bit into the ha’penny biscuit he’d bought, and spoke around the dry crumbs. “Not a coincidence,
today of all days.”
Hews faked a jovial smile for the benefit of the two gold cloaks prowling the opposite side of the street
and took an altogether too-large bite of the sausage roll he’d bought. The canaries were in what they
must have considered disguise, having traded their gold livery for identical suits of brown and fur hats.
They still moved in short jolts of motion like all of their ilk and their coats showed the conspicuous bulges
of weaponry.
The gold cloaks didn’t seem interested in Hews or Oliver. Rather, they scrutinised the people passing
close to the building across the way, which was also Oliver and Hews’ destination: a warehouse with a
condemned store in its front, which narrowed like a pyramid towards its top floor.
Oliver turned to stare down the length of the concourse, so as not to draw the cloaks’ attention. “Do
you think we’ve been discovered?”
Hews licked a bit of grease from his lips. “Possibly, though Bailey’s always careful. Would be a tough
bit of deduction, that.”
But what else could it be? The warehouse was one of Bailey’s safe houses, a hideout for him and the
agents loyal to Queen Victoria. Bailey’s safety measures were extreme: he enforced anonymity and held
all his information in his head. He kept no documents, no records, spoke to no one outside his
organisation. In fact, other than Bailey and Sims and a few others, Oliver didn’t even know who the other
crown agentswere, or what they looked like. The cloaks knew of Bailey’s crew and had been hunting
them for more than a decade, but had always, always come up empty. The thought that the cloaks had
found Bailey out was unthinkable. Yet…there they were.
Oliver turned back to Hews. He faked a smile and their talk took on the outward cast of a friendly
conversation between gentlemen.
“Well, they don’t seem likely to be off anytime soon. Is there a back entrance? Or a subterranean one?”
Hews tipped his hat to a passing lady, who glanced at him fearfully and hurried her pace. Hews sighed,
and picked some ash off his roll.
“Now that isn’t proper,” he said. “Out in London we’d have shared a smile and a few kind words.”
“You’ve told me.”
“All this,” Hews went on. “Baron and Ironboys and cloaks and clocks and all—it has everyone fearful
beyond their wits. If there’s any reason you need to be doing this, lad—that’s it.”
“I’ve always had reasons, Hewey.”
“Aye. I suppose you have.”
Oliver watched the lady stride away, her skirt stirring up dust and fallen ash from the sidewalk.
He’d never believed Hews’ tales of London. In Whitechapel, anyone a man spoke to could be an
informer to the baron and thus to his divine masters. Granted, that wouldn’t be the case outside the walls,
but even then, what guaranteed that the hawker one was speaking to one moment wouldn’t turn villain
and rob him the next?
He failed to mention this to Hews, who pulled himself out of his melancholy in due time. Then Oliver
asked again:
“Are there any other entrances, Hewey?”
Hews nodded, then stepped closer to Oliver and dropped his voice. “There is a way in from below,
though I don’t care for it owing to the fact that it’s little more than a few thin beams.”
Oliver gulped down a sudden burst of fright. “Do you think we have any other option?”
Hews sighed. “I suppose not. Just let’s finish our breakfast first.”
A few minutes later, they started off towards the far end of the concourse. The street rolled up and
down in this section of the tower, tilting and curving to take best advantage of the support of the beams
beneath it. Electric lights blazed down from above, accompanied by the occasional fuzzy hint of sunlight
bleeding though the incomplete ceiling.
After two or three buildings, Hews turned between two shops. He led them down the alley, kicking a
path through skittering clickrats, to where the pavement ended and the street fell away.
Oliver leaned over the edge as Hews paused to catch his breath. He saw a small tangle of beams just
beneath, then a drop into the murk of the downstreets dozens of storeys below. He clamped his hat on
against the gusting wind and clutched the wall for support.
A curse escaped him.
“You were never afraid of long drops as a child,” Hews snorted. “Made a habit of trundling along the
ledges as I recall. There’s a fine stair on the left.”
By “fine stair,” Hewey must have meant a set of beams crossing in a kind of thatch pattern. They
descended it carefully, Hews huffing the whole way and Oliver clamping white-knuckled fingers onto any
hold he could find. When they had gone twenty or so feet, they came to a horizontal beam wide enough
to walk abreast.
“Mind the wind,” Hews said.
Stepneyside Tower did not have an underbelly. Over the side was nothing but a drop to the invisible
streets and buildings of old Whitechapel far below. Oliver paused at one point to look over the edge,
instantly regretting it.
The braced concrete floor of the concourse blocked all the light from above. They worked their way by
feel along the beam to its opposite end, where a wooden ladder stood, tied to a crossbeam by lengths of
weathered and stained twine. Hews climbed the first few rungs and felt around on the underside of the
concrete above.
“Always bloody hard to find…”
Oliver crouched down at the foot of the ladder, trying not to acknowledge the queasiness of his
stomach.
“You may want to check before we go up,” Oliver suggested, “what with the gold cloaks out front and
all.”
Hews snorted. “I was just doing that.”
Oliver hunkered down and waited.
After a few minutes, Hews descended the ladder and squatted beside him.
“I’m hearing unfamiliar voices,” he reported. “Bailey is still up there, playing the role, trying to blather his
way out.”
Oliver shook his head. “And after he’s done that he can convince the sun to take a loaf for the day.”
“Bailey’s pigheaded enough to try it anyhow. This door opens quietly enough, and comes up through a
cabinet on the back wall. We’ll have a plain view of the warehouse.”
Already beating quickly from their precarious walk across the beams, Oliver’s heart jumped into a yet
faster rhythm. “You expect to just rush them?”
“By the saints, no.” Hews reached beneath his coat and withdrew a .45-calibre revolver from inside his
vest: a Webley British Bulldog. “But this may lend some perk to Bailey’s lack of eloquence, eh?”
“Just the one? And how many canaries do you think?”
“One?” Hewey said. “Aren’t you armed, lad?”
Oliver swallowed hard, then reached into his pocket and produced a four inch wood-handled flick
blade. Next to a firearm, the weapon looked more fit for sticking sausages than fighting. Hews’ face
constricted in a pained expression for a moment. Oliver stared dumbly down.
“I haven’t carried an iron since the Uprising,” he said.
Hews sighed and shook his head. “Just stay behind me and look like a mean-spirited Scot, or
something.”
Hews mounted the ladder again. Shortly, two clicks sounded and a faint square of light materialised
above Hewey’s head.
“Quickly, now.”
After some few seconds of manoeuvring his belly through the tight trapdoor, Hews slid up and
disappeared. Oliver clenched his miniature weapon tight in his right fist and steeled himself against the
quivering fear in his gut.Just up the ladder and to it.
He ascended.
The cabinet turned out to be not quite large enough for the two of them. Oliver had to bend his knees
and neck at an unnatural angle to fit entirely inside. Hews had a similar problem, being quite unable to
bend forward to the small crack between the cabinet’s two swinging doors on account of his belly. Hews
gestured at the trapdoor, and Oliver closed it silently by lowering it with his foot.
Bailey’s wine-rich baritone rumbled from beyond the doors.
“Well, Ido take it as an affront, sir. You and your ilk have no respect for the sanctity of a man’s
property.”
Another voice answered, punctuated by a springlike clicking sound on every glottal syllable.
“I’ve shown more respect than you rightly deserve, being traitors and spies.”
Bailey harrumphed. “How dare you, sir, after damaging my door and assaulting my comrades?”
As the crack between doors was out of Hews’ reach, Oliver bent his neck farther and lined up his eye
with the soft orange light filtering through. Already his neck had begun to ache.
Just beyond the door sat wooden boxes half the height of a man. The room seemed to extend perhaps
thirty yards to the other end. A jowled, sour-faced man stood perhaps halfway across, dressed in a grey
suit and bowler hat. He wore no cloak to signify his position but had enough gold on his person in terms
of hat ribbon, cuffs, chains, gloves, and tie to make up for it. He brandished a revolverlike weapon the
length of Oliver’s forearm.
When the man spoke, his facial muscles moved in tiny stops and starts like the hands of a clock,
eventually resting in a configuration resembling a tense grin. “I’ll savour dashing that out of you before we
hand you over to our brothers in armour.”
“You have made a threat on my person, sir,” Bailey said. Oliver heard something that might have been
Bailey spitting. “And that I will not tolerate. Let’s settle this without delay, hand to hand, as God
intended.”
The gold cloak squinted suspiciously. “I’ll not have you starting a ruckus and warning your
coconspirators.”
Oliver felt a poke in his ribs and turned to Hews, who spoke in a whisper that was little more than an
exhalation shaped by the lips.
“A view of the room.”
Oliver moved his head left to right, swinging his small slit of vision to encompass as much of the room as
possible. In order to do this without sound, he and Hews squashed and bent themselves into poses that
became downright painful. It was also getting uncomfortably hot. Oliver bent low, further craning his
neck, to whisper into Hews’ ear.
“Bailey and Sims on the left, possibly another—I saw a hand. The chief canary’s just out front, beyond a
set of boxes. Two more at the door with Enfields. Can’t see right or left wall.”
Hews nodded. “I can’t believe you don’t have a gun, lad,” he whispered.
“I’ve had enough of them,” Oliver shot back. “What now?”
“Sit tight. Ready when I say.”
Oliver nodded.
Outside the cabinet, tempers were flaring.
“I call you coward!” Bailey roared. “Pass me a pistol. I challenge you, sir.”
The gold cloak emitted a noise like a sputtering engine. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, you filthy
renegade? You’d play me for a simpleton.”
“You doubt my honour, sir, only because you have none of your own. Tell me, when they cut out your
heart, did they relieve you of your manhood as well?”
Hews held up one finger and gestured at the door. Oliver readied his knife.
“You fucking rotter,” the gold cloak bellowed. “I’ll kill you right here, Ironmen or no.”
“Praise England!” Bailey cried. “Long live the queen!”
Hews jabbed his finger forward. Oliver’s heart leapt into his throat as they crashed pell-mell out of the
cabinet. Hews fired two shots the instant the doors swung clear, then hurled himself down hard behind
the two crates. Oliver stood dumbly for a moment, watching the chief canary topple backwards, then
plopped down flat to the floor as the gold cloak on the right brought his rifle to bear. The cabinet door
splintered an instant later.
Sims dove in next to Hews. Bailey followed, rolling on his shoulder and coming to one knee suddenly
armed with a derringer in his right hand. The third man—Kerry—produced a .38 from his coat and fired
several times as he moved to join them. Then his back exploded and he dropped to the floor like an
abandoned marionette.
Things became quiet for an instant.
Groans and noises like the breaking of violin strings sounded from beyond the boxes. To Oliver’s left,
Bailey rose to an apelike crouch, muscles and tendons rigid under his sun-worn skin. The expression in
his eyes denied the age that showed in the spots at his hairline, the grey in his moustache. Silently, he
tossed Oliver the derringer and reached to the back of the second crate. He jammed his fingernail
between two slats and levered it open, revealing a set of pistols. He passed one to Sims and clasped the other in both hands.
Bailey and Hews shared a silent look. Oliver scrambled to right the derringer and fit his long fingers
around the handle. Muttered curses accompanied sounds of movement over the crates.
Bailey counted down on his fingers. Oliver turned himself over into a squat and got ready. Three. Two.
One.
They all leapt up at once, and the room filled with light and noise. Oliver’s first shot went into the ceiling.
Then he took aim on the gold cloak who’d shot at him and let fly with the second. The cloak went down,
tumbling backwards. The chief cloak, his fine coat a mess of blood, brown grease, and black oil,
staggered to the door despite the bullets slamming home in his broad back. The cloak on the left spun
and fell, his rifle tumbling from his hands.
Suddenly all firing ceased. Oliver brandished his empty derringer as fiercely as the others now held aim
on their last quarry.
“Buggers, all of you,” the man said. He grasped the door frame to stay upright, and shot a snarl over his
shoulder at them. Streams of oil streaked his face. “The noble Grandfather will bring me back, and I’ll
execute you all.”
The two cloaks from outside appeared in the doorway, eyes wide in alarm. Bailey and Hews, who,
Oliver realised, had been saving their last rounds, shot the two men through their foreheads.
“You don’t even die like a man,” Bailey scoffed, lowering his now-empty weapon.
The gold cloak’s sneer dissolved into a slack, vacant expression, and he slumped to the floor with a
sloshing sound that chilled Oliver’s bones.
Hews relaxed his arms. “Perhaps he does.”
Bailey turned to Kerry’s sprawled body. Only a small black-rimmed hole marred Kerry’s chest, but
beneath him lay a slowly spreading pool of blood.
Not a bad way for it to end,Oliver thought.Better than the Chimney or the steam guns or any of the other
horrors of this city.
The other three faced their fallen comrade and bowed their heads. Hews removed his hat.
“A great honour to die in the service of queen and country,” Bailey said, voice hard. “We salute this man
who gave his life for the cause.”
“Flights of angels,” Hews muttered. “We shall see you at the gates, my friend.”
Bailey turned to face the rest of them, dismissing Kerry’s body like so much scenery. He gestured
towards the cabinet.
“Everyone down.”
One by one they fled through the trapdoor. Hews came last, sealing it behind and fastening the unseen
catch. They knelt and huddled close against the stinking, grime-heavy wind that greeted them below.
Everyone took a moment to hide their weapons away and draw handkerchiefs to cover their mouths
against the sickening air.
“How did they find you?” Hews asked, pressing his hat down to keep it from flying off.
Oliver almost reeled back at the anger that flashed in Bailey’s eyes. Bailey made a fist with his free hand.
“Aaron has been captured.”
Oliver knew the name, having heard it passed in casual conversation between other revolutionaries. As
usual, they hadn’t trusted him with the details of Aaron’s role. Oliver had assumed he was another agent
like himself, but Hews’ startled gasp indicated otherwise.
“Lord in heaven,” Hews muttered.
“Contact your people and order them into hiding,” Bailey ordered. “Reconvene at the den in Dunbridge
Tower.” He and Sims backed up, dropped off the edge of the beam, and disappeared.
Oliver turned to Hews. “Hiding? What did he mean?”
Hews ground his teeth, staring inwardly. “If Aaron gave up this hide, he’ll give up the rest of them, lad.
Not a one of us is safe now.”
Oliver’s heart leapt back to a racehorse pace. “This man didn’t know my crew, Hews.”
“We can’t take any chances. Let’s get up and find a telegraph.”
Hews touched Oliver on the shoulder and pointed back the way they’d come.
“How’re we to get all the way to Dunbridge?” Oliver asked. “They’re certain to be watching the cars.”
Hews broke out of an internal reverie. “They didn’t seem to knowour faces. It’s Bailey and Sims who
have to be careful.”
They crawled in silence for a moment, walking on three limbs to counter the wind. Oliver glanced over
several times at Hews, whose brow grew more and more wrinkled, and his manner drew more
withdrawn.
“Hewey, who was this Aaron?”
Hews loosed a long, frustrated sigh.
“Our hope, lad. Our best bloody hope.”