Chapter 12

Chapter 12
His chosen will call themselves the Brothers of Order. They will be the expression of His Function, and
the makers of His Harmony, and they will call me Master.
—IV. i
It was like a veritable sewer of the filthiest dregs of humanity, all coated in their own foulness, all
gathered together in a drainpipe so clogged that no amount of rain would ever wash it clean.
Yes, that’s it.
And those churls at the Stack had sent him knee-deep into it without so much as a clothespin to protect
his nose. Yes, he’d botched the capture. Yes, he’d let the British sons of bitches shoot him to death. It
hadn’t beenhis fault. They’d been hiding in a tool cabinet, for goodness sakes; a bloody, bleeding,fucking
tool cabinet. How could he have known? Yet his superiors had blamed him harshly and shipped him off
to Shadwell to wallow in his shame.
Except that Marcus James Westerton did not feel shame, as it didn’t do one a damned lick of practical
good. What he felt was anger; anger at those queen-worshiping zealots and whatever inborn human
stupidity drove such people to rebel against their betters.
Anger, you see, wasuseful . Anger made people do as you wanted.
“Look sharp, you,” he growled, without warning or provocation.
The young lad who was the target of the growling shrunk back like he’d been actually struck. The Stack
had given Westerton two fresh recruits as underlings and he had to go about breaking them in. The
sooner they kowtowed to his every whim and cruelty, the faster they could become an adequate fighting
unit. This one lad—Eugene?—Westerton had ordered to stay by his side as a bodyguard. The other
marched some twenty feet ahead, in the company of the intolerable street urchin leading them to their
prise.
And what a prise, what a prise.
“You, boy!” Westerton called. “How much farther is it?”
The little cretin turned a gap-toothed grin back at the question. “No’ long, sir. Few mo’ turns, i’ is.”
“It had better be soon, or I daresay you’ll get no shilling. And if I’m in a mood I’ll have you hauled off to
the Chimney.”
“No worries, suh. Few mo’, likes I said.”
His growl seemed to have little effect on the human rodent.I might have him hauled off anyway, on
account of his irksome presence.
Despite himself, Westerton felt his foul demeanour slipping. Whether this creature was lying or not, the
day would be a good one. Either he would send that animal to the Chimney, or he would have
satisfaction on one of the men who’d shot him. He’d almost had him once, but the villain had eluded
Westerton with the help of that damned bookseller Fickin. A traitor and rotten to the core, that one. Why
didn’t the Good Lady simply burn him up?
Because the Lady is as inconstant and as fickle as any woman. Not like the Lord. Ah, his is the beauty
of structure and logic. Unassailable. Hedeservesto be worshipped.
“Here, sirs,” the boy said. “Just here.”
They had arrived at an alley, which, like all the alleys of this God-cursed tower, was dark and stank of
mould and general hideousness. Westerton checked the street to either side. He recognised none of the
tenements nor the guttering lamps or the stray dogs probing the stairways and doors looking for food.
“Where are we, Brother?” he demanded.
Eugene swallowed hard and shook his head. “I…don’t rightly know, sir.” He cringed at Westerton’s
gaze and mumbled an apology.
The street boy stood expectantly at the alley mouth.
“Presumptuous child,” Westerton said. “You think I’ll pay you before the job is done? For all I know
you’ve led us to a whorehouse and will run off with my shilling.”
The child shook his head. “Led you true, I did, suh. The door’s at the end, in there.”
“It had better be.” Westerton motioned Eugene to move up beside his brother-in-gold. Westerton
himself drew out his 1.20-calibre breech-loading sidearm, which he had ordered custom built at great
expense. It was always a fine day when he got to fire the thing.
“You stay here,” he said to the boy. “We’ll be back presently.”
The boy sat patiently on the curb and stared at his shoes.
“Forward.”
The alley’s shadows swallowed his two underlings after a single step. Cursing under his breath,
Westerton followed. The dark that closed over him was nearly total, revealing only hints of the walls and
the vague outlines of forms in front of him. He’d never been able to see properly in the dark since his
initiation, when Grandfather Clock had blessed his heart and replaced much of his nerves with copper
wiring. Westerton trusted that the Good Lord had a reason for this particular debility, though he
sometimes found it irritating.Not that I’m ungrateful, noble Grandfather. Not at all.
Two shots filled the alley. Something wet splattered on his face and frock an instant later.
“To the sides, my brothers! Give me space.” Without waiting, Westerton discharged his weapon directly
down the alley’s length. He thrilled to it: percussive force sufficient to shatter nearby windows and enough
recoil to tear the arm off a mere human being. His enthusiasm dulled somewhat as the impressions the
muzzle flash had burned onto his eyes resolved themselves into two bodies crumpled on the street in front
of him wearing gold vests.
His heart-clock began to fall out of rhythm. “Brothers?” he said. “Answer me, you disobedient
libertines.”
At a whirring and grinding from behind, Westerton grabbed for another shell from his pocket and
scrambled to reload.
That’s it. Get closer, Englishman. Get up where I can see you.
Rapid, plodding footsteps accompanied the noise. At the last moment Westerton whirled and discharged
the weapon into the centre of the massive shadow closing in on him. The shadow jerked and halted.
Westerton laughed aloud. “Take that, traitor. A taste of the Good Lord’s justice.”
The shadow swiped out a hand and ripped the gun from Westerton’s fingers.
“What do you know?” it said, pointing to its belly. “Got me a matching pair now, Chief.”
“Wh-what?” Westerton stammered. “You’re a cloak! You’re a bloody crow, that’s what you are!
Fickin put you up to this, the no good bastard.”
Then a voice from behind: “It occurred to me that you probably don’t see very well in the dark, Mr.
Westerton.”
That made his heart-clock twinge painfully. He was out of balance, his perfect order disturbed. He felt
an infirmity creep into his knees, and spun around to find two figures, one hunched as if aiming a rifle, the
other tall and thin. He pointed accusingly at the taller one.
“You! You’re under arrest.”
“I’m very busy right now, Westerton,” said the man, “and I can’t have you or yours prowling about the
Underbelly looking for me.”
At that Westerton cackled. “Do your worst, villain. Kill me again if you like. I’ll simply come back for
you tomorrow, and I’ll have more men next time, now that I know where you’re hiding.”
“Ah, yes, that. Well, surely you don’t think I hired that young lad to show you to my real hideout.”
“It doesn’t matter. I know your face. That is all I need to find you again.”
“Be that as it may, I’ll need a few days more. I’m going to have my associate shoot you and then we’ll
be tossing you off the tower.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“Listen closely, Canary. I’m going to give you your gun back before we drop you. Use it only to defend
yourself. The hounds shouldn’t bother you unless you become hostile.”
“You…savage.”
He’d intended something more eloquent, some scathing words to put these renegades in their places.
Well, perhaps a sterling display of violence would suffice. One second was all he needed; a quick
squeeze or a quick jerk and the battle was won even if they shot him down. A single tick of the clock.
The Ticking Lord had long ago taken away his pain, and then his fear of death. He hesitated only an
instant, then lunged.
The third man shot him in the throat. The big man dragged him back by his collar, while the others closed
in. He took seven rounds in the stomach and chest before his assailants were done. In each flash
Westerton absorbed the grim-faced glare of his adversary, memorising its creases and features until he
knew them as well as his own.
Body forced out of harmony, he slumped to the ground and found he could not move.
It doesn’t matter. The Lord protects me. The Lord will bring me back to harmony so that I can strip the
eyes out of that fucking creature and break his skull with my fingers.
His senses went dark, and he was alone with the ticking of his own heart.
The Ninth Prophecy was delivered to me as follows:
Whether this year I see will be a time for mourning or celebration I do not know, for so much will be lost
and in a single stroke so much gained. How can She contemplate such an act, and how can I, knowingly,
consent in its execution? I do not understand this strange path Providence seems to have laid out for me,
to be a vessel for two warring minds and to aid in the slaying of one by the other.
For She will kill her mate, of this I am certain. Since the vision has come to me they have both consented
to its propriety. Even He, the Great Machine, knows it is fated to occur, and though He cannot give the
act His blessing, for such sentiment was long ago banished from His mind, His very incapability of
considering another outcome admits his tacit consent.
This is madness, and yet She is not mad. She, after all, existed before She took Him as Her lover. Was
He man or machine before that horrid affair? I cannot say. The answer is there in this terrifying new mind
of mine, if I dare to ask for it. But I dare not. I haven’t the courage.
Another is coming…Isee…
I will name this my Tenth Prophecy, and it was delivered to me thus:
She will take a mortal lover, a new consort to fill the place of Her murdered spouse. Who this will be I
cannot yet see, but he will be a creature of logic, as the Great Machine was in the beginning. She has
been angry for so very long, and this poor man will bear the penalty for Her suffering. My mind trembles
when I dare to dwell upon it.
This man is to be moulded as one moulds clay or stone. What She desires of him is Her secret to keep,
though She would tell me, if only I was not such a coward.
Almighty God, why did they pick me? Of all the whelps wandering London’s streets, why am I to be so
cursed? For I know, too, what I am to suffer, what terrible deeds I am to perform at the behest of these
creatures from Beyond.
I call these things my Eleventh Prophecy, and will speak on them no more.
—IX. ix–xi
Candlelight gave poor illumination at farther than reading distance, and she hadn’t made any sound. She
just had a way of being noticed.
Oliver closed theSumma Machina and set it on the short wicker table.
“Miss Plantaget,” he said. He rose, approached her, then swept up and kissed her gloved hand. Her hair
was down and fell about her shoulders. The soft light seemed to glow beneath her skin as her lips spread
in a smile. Realising he’d been staring, Oliver cleared his throat. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
She cocked her head and blinked lazily at him. “I suppose you’re aware that there are perfectly good
reading chairs out in the lounge, not to mention better light.”
“Solitary contemplation can be good for one,” Oliver said. “Phin says the Hindus and the Japanese do it
all the time.”
She fixed him with a stare he found unreadable.
“I don’t doubt that Phineas says it,” she said. “He also says he once owned a pet sea serpent he called
Lila.”
Oliver chuckled to hide his growing unease. Why was she looking at him so intensely?
“I haven’t heard that one before.” Oliver straightened his vest, then the suspenders beneath it. “What is
it?”
“Thomas is awake again. I thought you would like to know.”
“Thank you.” He made to push past her. When she didn’t move aside, he waited.
“Is there something else?” he asked.
Her eyes searched his.
“Michelle?”
“Oliver,” she began. Several expressions passed over her face in rapid succession. “It’s the German.”
Oliver sighed. “He’s a sullen bravo, I know. I’d stick him with a different crew if I thought any of the
others survived.”
“You got word, then?”
Oliver nodded. “Joyce’s address was hit by the Boiler Men early this morning. The cloaks assaulted half
a dozen other places at the same time. I can’t say there’s much hope.”
“I’m sorry.”
Missy’s face readjusted into the subtlest expression of sympathy, and suddenly all the sadness he hadn’t wanted to feel flushed over him in one wave. No Joyce, no Sims, none of the other crews. Oliver knew
how it would have happened: echoing footsteps coming up the street, a blast of steam through the door,
another through a window, leaving the men to choose between fleeing into the street and being shot or
hiding inside and being broiled alive.
During the Uprising he’d seen it happen to a neighbourhood family, and he’d run to his secret tunnel and
hid. They’d chosen to stay inside, and he’d listened to the mother scream for more than an hour before
the Boiler Men got around to executing her. That memory had always been caught on the question of
whether she was screaming for her children or screaming from her own pain. Silly thing to wonder about,
all these years later.
A warm finger poked into his arm.
“Come back, Oliver,” Missy said, a soft, petite smile on her red lips.
Oliver cleared his throat. “Sorry, I was just—”
She held her finger up to interrupt. “I don’t care to know where you were just then, Mr. Sumner. The
past is really not something one should worry over. Don’t you think?”
She lowered the finger. Her eyes awaited agreement.
“Right,” Oliver said finally. “That’s a sensible piece of advice.”
“I’m glad you agree.” She drew her finger through the air as if following the path of a fly, eventually
landing it on an unseen piece of furniture. “Getting back to my original question…”
“The German. Right.”She isa distraction. “I know he’s abrasive and I don’t want to make excuses for
him…”
“Then don’t.” Missy’s look became harder.
“…but right now he’ll do us more good than otherwise. You should have seen his shooting, Michelle.”
“It might be better that I didn’t,” she said. “He’s an evil man, Oliver. That’s as clear as day to me.”
“I wouldn’t have chosen him, for certain.”
“Then kick him out. Let Heckler use that ghastly steam gun of his. He can’t be trusted; surely you can
see?”
Missy looked to be in genuine earnest—no, in panic. He watched Missy’s jaw and lips tighten.
“He can’t becontrolled .”
It’s the same expression as the last mission,he realised.She wore the same one just after she’d
stabbed…Oh my.
“I think he can be,” Oliver said, trying to reassure her without exaggerating his chances. “I’m keeping an
eye on him and I’ve got Hews doing the same. I think we can keep him in line. Besides, he wouldn’t give
up his cannon willingly, I don’t think.”
Missy scowled. Her fingers fidgeted on her handbag. “There are other ways to get it away from him, you
know.”
Oliver’s eyebrows shot up. “What did that mean?”
A small gasp, and then Missy was all smiles and fluttering eyelashes. “Just a suggestion, Mr. Sumner, an
attempt to be helpful. You were once a thief, were you not?”
Oliver smiled back, allowing himself to be led from the subject. “I know many people would have
considered me one. This may be a different situation.”
“Well, there you are.” Missy gathered arms close to her stomach and tipped her head to him. “Just a
suggestion, then. Well, please just…Well, watch him, would you?”
“I said we would keep him in line.”
“Then, my gratitude, Mr. Sumner.”
“Anything for a pretty face, Miss Plantaget.”A very pretty face indeed.
She smiled at him, then strode into the foyer as if she had somewhere very important to be.
Dismissing Missy’s strangenesses for the time being, Oliver stowed theSumma Machina on his bedside
table. The language made perfect sense to him even though he had never so much as looked at it before.
This oddity had been accompanied by a burning in the back of his skull, identical to when he had sighted
the ghosts on the rusted stair.
He hurried down the hall to one of the unused chambers that Dr. Chestle had converted into a sickroom.
Oliver swung the door open and flinched at the smell of alcohol and the greasy odour of Tom’s sweat.
Thomas lay shirtless atop the covers of the room’s single bed. The doctor sat on a short oak stool to the
right, sewing shut the new gaping hole in Tom’s stomach. Jeremy Longshore lay curled in one corner like
a dog.
“ ’Hoy there, Chief,” Tom said with a wave.
Dr. Chestle calmly pressed Tom’s arm back to the bed. “Please try not to move, Mr. Moore.”
“Ah, the doc’s a bit grumpy this morning, Ollie. Seems he’s a bit miffed about me being shot. Imagine!”
Oliver walked up to the bed and inspected the wound. “Bigger than the last one, Tommy,” he said.
“Three inches side to side,” Tom said. “You could drop a shilling through me.”
Oliver laughed automatically, trying not to betray his trepidation. Black veins lanced across Tommy’s
chest beneath the skin. They radiated from the flasher burns on his ribs and shoulder, like the tunnels of
burrowing worms. Dark grey patches discoloured large portions of his arms and stomach. His chest was
a patchwork of scars, notably the group of them over his heart.
“I am a right mess, aren’t I?” Tom said.
“No uglier than usual, chum,” Oliver said. Tommy’s face was a wreck as well. Chestle had patched
some of the wounds closed with stitches and bandages, but the left eye was still nothing more than
burned, burst flesh. The right watered constantly, but he seemed to be able to see from it, and that was a
start.
“Bet my arm doesn’t seem so strange now, eh?” Tom lifted his mechanical arm to show the point where
iron bones pierced out of malformed human muscle.
Chestle again pushed the arm down.
“Kindly lie still, Mr. Moore.” The doctor was sweating almost as much as his patient. Oliver detected
the faintest tremble in the man’s hands.
“Best follow his directions, Tom,” Oliver said, “or I might have to shoot you again.”
The poor doctor’s eyes flared wide.
“The man is quite the disciplinarian, Doctor,” Tom said. “Of course, I would have shot him as well if my
aim wasn’t so lousy.”
The doctor paused. “That’s appalling. That’s no kind of talk for civilised men to engage in.”
Oliver laid a pitying hand on his shoulder. “There’s not a word of it untrue, Doctor. Surely Hews warned
you about us.”
The doctor cleared his throat and admitted, “He did not praise your good sense.”
Oliver rubbed his own jaw, where the stubble had progressed to the soft beginnings of a beard. “‘Good
sense’ is a relative term, I’m afraid.”
The doctor finished the final stitch and cut away the excess string with a penknife. “Good sense is good
sense, Mr. Sumner. I’m advising that Mr. Moore stay confined to bed for now. He may have whatever
food bolsters him but should refrain from imbibing for the time being.”
“I’ve always wanted to try teetotalling,” Tom said.
“I would see you outside, Mr. Sumner,” said the doctor.
“I’ll be there presently,” Oliver replied.
Dr. Chestle packed up his equipment and left to wash his hands.
As soon as the door shut, a groan tore out of Tom and he curled his hands over his belly.
“Easy, Tommy, easy.” Oliver fetched a cloth and dabbed at the big man’s leaking eye.
“Bloody, I’m all right. Just feels like a rat eating my liver, is all.”
Oliver’s guts had long since knotted irretrievably. He tried to speak and found his mouth dry.
Tom scowled at him.
“Now don’t you dare go and tell me you’re sorry for dragging me out on business last night. I had to be
there in case things went sour, and we both agree it’s a better thing that I got shot than someone else.”
“Ah, Tom…” Oliver felt tears coming to his eyes and blinked them back.
“I’ll go out again, Ollie. Often as you need.” Tom gestured after Chestle. “I’m a walking dead man, and
the cutter knows it. I’d rather spend my last days pounding on cloaks than lying in bed like a grandma.”
Oliver clasped him on the shoulder, trying to smile. “That’s my lad.” Oliver jabbed his thumb at the
doctor’s bag. “Don’t think he’d mind.”
Oliver left the room as Thomas stole himself some brandy.
He found Dr. Chestle in the bathroom, drying his hands with a frayed towel that had been in the building
since Oliver purchased it. Grey and red wisps swirled in the large bowl that stood in for a proper sink.
The tub was half full, it being the crew’s only way of storing water; plumbing was reserved for Aldgate
and Cathedral Towers.
The doctor looked half dead himself: pale skin, unkempt moustache and hair, eyes sunk deep into the
head. Oil and blood stains marred his white shirt and vest.
“Tommy seems to be under the impression that he hasn’t long to live,” Oliver said.
Chestle’s sigh was like the gurgle of air escaping a punctured lung.
“I’m unable to tell you how much time he has, Mr. Sumner.” The doctor finished with the towel and hung
it over a bent iron drying rack nearby. “I had one patient die on me in a matter of days. Some are still
holding on despite all sense. Once the disease turns, there’s no way to know.” The doctor began
absently rubbing his left hand where brass nibs poked through the skin.
Oliver crossed his arms. “Don’t figure there’s a cure.”
The doctor spent a minute smoothing his moustache. “I’ve spent most of my career studying this ailment,
Mr. Sumner. So have my colleagues. We’ve yet to determine a viable cause, much less a cure.”
Oliver knew the cause—not that a man of science would believe it. Oliver offered his hand and the
doctor took it.
“Thank you for your help, Doctor. The Underbelly could use a man of your talents.”
Chestle smiled at that, but shook his head. “I have patients in Bishop’s Gate and Fenchurch who need
me, Mr. Sumner, but your offer is appreciated.”
“Then how about the offer of a few hours’ rest? We’ve an empty room if you’d like to make use of it.”
“Your offer is very kind. I may.”
Oliver escorted him back to the sickroom and left before the doctor realised his brandy was missing.
He detoured to Heckler’s room briefly to check his progress.
The young American looked up from the tiny desk they’d acquired for the work of translating the tape.
He set his fountain pen aside and mopped his brow with a well-used kerchief.
“What can I do for you, suh?”
“How’s it coming along?”
“Jus’ about done, suh.” He shifted uncomfortably. “But Ah got some bad news.”
“I’d say I’m getting a taste for it,” Oliver said, then gestured for him to continue.
“Well, suh”—Heckler showed a few of his translated pages, coated in scribbled notes and freehand
diagrams—“Ah’m almost done with the translation, but there ain’t no way Ah can build this here
contraption.”
“Why not?”
“Ah don’t have the tools it’s gonna need, suh. I don’t have the materials. And…” He placed the papers
neatly back on the table. “Ah just wouldn’t know how, suh. This ain’t no gun and ain’t no trap neither.”
Oliver sighed. “Finish it anyway. At least that much will be done.”
Heckler nodded and slipped the pages back into their proper place in the manual, then bent to work
without another word.
The poor young man had been slaving on that one task for six hours now, though Oliver knew he was
desperate to be part of the planning. Heckler was the only one among them who had any kind of
mechanical aptitude. Except for Bergen, perhaps, but Oliver wasn’t about to let him lay hands on the
tape.
“Suh?”
“Yes?”
“Is that really Bergen Keuper upstairs?”
Oliver looked at his young crewmate curiously. “I have no reason to doubt it.”
Heckler fiddled with his pen. “Ain’t that something else, eh, suh? Even back in Williamsburg, Ah’d heard
of him. Is it true he took a lion through the eye at three hundred yards?”
“I have no reason to doubt that, either.”
“Hot damn—beggin’ pardon, suh. Do you think he would teach me if Ah asked?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Oliver. “But let’s just wait until after the ruckus dies down to ask him, eh?”
“Oh. Of course. Sure thing, suh.”
Oliver left him to his work and climbed the curly staircase about Sherwood’s trunk towards the lounge.
He found Hews standing at the top, hand slipped into the pocket of his plaid vest, pipe smoking from
between his teeth. His hair was roughly combed, his muttonchops ragged, his face downcast and sullen.
“Damnable shame,” he said. “I served with Bailey in Afghanistan. There’s never been born such a
natural soldier as he.”
“You have my condolences,” Oliver said.
“Don’t pretend you’re too choked up, lad. You’ve hated the man since you were fifteen.”
Oliver sighed and joined Hews in silent contemplation of Sherwood’s random support beams. “I never
hated him, Hewey, but I won’t pretend now that he treated me well.”
“I can’t fault you for your honesty, lad,” Hews said. “But he was a great man, and I’ll go to my grave
saying nothing less. He took me for a collaborator at first, you know; couldn’t get past the fact that I
owned a factory.”
Oliver smiled at memories. “You might have called it a poorhouse, or an orphanage.”
Hews shrugged. “I did my bit. The cloaks never caught on that my efficiency came from feeding my
workers more than gruel and oil. Well, until recently.”
Oliver turned to search Hews’ face. “What do you mean?”
“A cloak came by last week,” Hews said. “Told me I’d have to join up and take my vows or step aside.
I’d love to believe they’d let me take my retirement in the country, but we both know them better than
that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
The older man shrugged. “Nothing anyone can do about it. The canaries know me too well.”
“But Bailey might have been able to sneak you out on the airships. And we could still hide you here.”
Hews gave him a wise, fatherly smile. “After tonight it might not matter, eh?” He left the rail. “Shall we?”
They entered the parlour, finding Bergen brooding over the main table. Maps and lists carpeted the
room, stealing spaces on chairs, end tables, and great expanses of floor, some pinned on the walls
concealing the nameless portraits and their disapproving glares. The one on the main table was a detailed
map of the Stack, specifically, the terraced rings of factories, train stations, and chapels that coated its
outer skin.
Bergen acknowledged their presence with a nod. His midsection had been expertly repaired by the
doctor. Bergen had hidden the bandages beneath a loose shirt and now affected perfect health.
Oliver greeted both of them, then planted his knuckles on the table and leaned over it.
“We found an entry, no doubt,” Hews said. “The Stack is actually fairly accessible. We’ve five
entrances via cable car, four via rail, and walkways from Aldgate and Commercial Towers.”
Your American says the device will work only from within the Chimney,” Bergen said.
Oliver nodded. He’d feared as much.
The map was bewildering in its complexity, a twisting maze of hallways, walkways, lift shafts, staircases,
chambers, and rooms and massive engines, pistons, and constructions arranged in no sensible order. The
Work Chamber dominated the Stack’s centre, at the base of the monstrous shaft from which the Stack
took its name. There, in that dark place, the crows toiled endlessly on Mama Engine’s Great Work. The
Chimney paralleled it on the south side, much smaller and fifteen storeys down from the Stack’s surface.
“Do we have an ingress yet?”
Hews traced a route on the map as he spoke. “I can get us to the freight lift that runs down the southeast
edge of the Work Chamber. Only thing is, there’s a large gold chapel three storeys down, so we’re likely
to be spotted.”
“We will go in disguise, then,” Bergen said from behind crossed arms.
“Won’t do us a mite of good,” Oliver said. “We can dress up all we please, but the canaries know their
own.”
Hews sucked his pipe. “I’m still waiting on telegrams from a few of my acquaintances. I might be able to
get us down a steam pipe on the north side. It’s all ladders and we’d need masks, but there’s not likely
to be any golds, at least.”
“A long march around to the Chimney, as well,” Bergen said.
Oliver scowled, his patience already wearing. “I didn’t think you would balk at a little hike, Keuper.”
Bergen glowered. “You mock me.”
“You’re the one moaning about it. Stiff upper lip, as we say here.” He looked to Hews. “How long, do
you think?”
Hews shrugged. “No more than a few hours, one would hope.”
“Smashing. Keuper, you’ll go out and get us supplies.”
The German’s face flushed. “I am no one’s errand boy.”
Oliver straightened to his full height. “You’re irritating me, Kraut. This will be difficult enough without
your obstructing us at every step.”
Bergen looked a bit surprised, as if he was realising for the first time that he was not the tallest man in the
room. “You accuse me of hindering you.”
“Yes, Keuper, I do,” Oliver said. “I need the support of all my men on this. If you have some problem
being necessary, we can discuss that at a later date. Besides, of all the ones here, you’ve likely been
through the most hostile of environments, and presumably know how to prepare.”
Bergen was slow in his nod.
Oliver bent back to the map. “Good. Get some money from Heckler and return in a half hour.”
“So soon?”
“I expect more cloaks will be coming after me, and I am not difficult to find if one asks the right people.”
Bergen nodded again. He uncrossed his arms. “You’re more prudent a man than I thought. I apologise
for my behaviour.”
“Thank you.”
Bergen strode out.
Hews had watched the entire exchange without a word. He lowered his pipe. “You realise those were
the same words Bailey said to you just yesterday.”
Oliver lowered himself into a chair. Suddenly his bones and his brain ached. “They worked on me,
didn’t they?”
“I must say,” Hews continued, “that I, myself, wouldn’t have known how to handle that man.”
Oliver shrugged. “He needed to know I was strong enough to be followed. That was all.”
Hews turned to wander, idly examining maps and portraits.
“You’re becoming more like the boy I knew, who was always brazenly stealing my wife’s Bundt cake
but never any of my money or valuables.”
“She made a good Bundt cake, rest her soul.”
“I’m just glad to see you coming back into your own.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Hews smiled and waved the question away.
Oliver took a moment of silence to run down the mental list of things that needed to be done. “Hews,”
he said. “I need to know more about Aaron Bolden.”
Hews scrutinised a portrait of a particularly sad-looking woman. “Doesn’t seem to be much point now,
eh?”
“I need to know what comprises these abilities of his. I need to know what he is capable of doing.”
“Bad form,” Hews said, “to speak of the dead as if they’re still around.”
Oliver couldn’t quite bring himself to assert that Aaron was not, in fact, dead. The hesitation stretched
long enough that Hews turned from the portrait and raised a fuzzy eyebrow.
“My, my” was all he said.
Another minute passed before Hews began speaking. He wandered the room’s perimeter as he spoke.
“Aaron had a gift, lad, apparently since his younger days. He didn’t tell too many people of it, you
understand, because of accusations of Spiritism and so forth. He said he could see the inner essence of a
thing, whether person, animal, building, or machine. I never think I quite wrapped my mind around it.”
Oliver leaned forward. “What did he see of Whitechapel?”
“Patience, lad,” Hews said. “Aaron was born in Manchester, but he’d always felt a draw towards
London, he said. He came here at the age of twelve. That was in 1877, just after the Boiler Men put up
the wall and drove out the last of the British Army loyalists. They’d been fighting for eight or nine years
before that. You’ve never seen them use their lightning guns, have you? What they could do to a
man—to a battalion even—with a single shot…Such things shouldn’t be allowed.”
“Hewey…”
Hews chuckled. “Right—Aaron. He described Whitechapel as one might a garden or a reef. He spoke
of Mama Engine’s breath coming in and out of the Stack and the beams and pipes and all the larger
things as her garden. He thought of the towers, that is, the floors, buildings, cable cars, and so forth, as
Grandfather Clock’s domain.” Hews puffed his pipe, and finding it empty, tapped the ashes out in the
small bowl provided for that purpose. “He said they weren’t territories, as a normal man might govern,
but rather limbs and organs. He viewed Whitechapel as two immense systems of biology intertwined.”
“Only two?” Oliver asked.
Another pause. “My boy, youare full of interesting intelligence this morning, aren’t you?”
“Did he ever talk of the other one, the one that lives in the downstreets?”
Hews considered. “Not as I recall. He did seem to have an intimate fear of looking down off tall heights,
though.”
Oliver sighed.He likely knows more about that one by now. He considered pouring himself a drink, just
to have something to do with his hands.It’s ten o’clock in the morning, chap. Tea might be more
appropriate, don’t you think?
“Must I beg for clarification, lad?” Hews said. He’d returned to the table and seated himself while Oliver
was distracted.
“By the bye, there’s a third god in Whitechapel,” he said.
“I gathered.”
“I think we may be able to turn it against Mama Engine. I just need to talk to Aaron again to arrange it.”
Hews grunted. “You might start with prayer, or a ´ance.”
Mercy. How shall I begin to explain this?Oliver pushed his scraggly hair back from his forehead.
“Well…I suppose if you were going to think I’m mad you’d have already come to that conclusion.”
“Long ago.”
“Aaron isn’t dead, Hewey. Rather, I don’t think he is. He’s a prisoner or guest of the third god. He’s
connected to it in a way that at least allows him to speak to it, and he may have intelligence about these
creatures that could be helpful. He said he would be gathering information.”
Hews rubbed his muttonchops. “All right. That rapping and séance nonsense aside, I wonder how one
speaks to the, shall we say,nebulously dead?”
A sound ticked at Oliver’s ear. Not a noise, so much as a pregnant silence hovering at the door. He
straightened and cocked his head. “Iwonder who it is that’s standing in the hall, listening to us.”
Hews started. They both turned their heads.
Missy stepped into view, bashful and charming. “You’ll pardon me, of course. I was passing by on the
way to the kitchen and found your conversation irresistible.”
Both men stood. Oliver offered her an empty chair. “If it wasn’t impolite to say so, I’d have to call you a
sneak, Miss Plantaget.”
“‘A woman of many talents,’ will suffice, Mr. Sumner.” Missy slipped herself onto the cushion with a
cat’s grace. “You know, I met a man once who was a Spiritist. He said the dead can speak through a
special board with letters on it.”
Hews chuckled. “I doubt that this one would, lass.”
“All ideas are welcome at this point, I think,” Oliver said.
Missy set her elbows delicately upon the tabletop. She had chosen gloves of a deep red this morning.
Funny that Oliver hadn’t noticed them before.
Missy drew a cigarette from her bag and held it out for Hews to light it. He did so, with an air of
importance about the action. Missy then turned her dyed lips and huge, glittering eyes on Oliver. “Correct
me if this is a woman’s simplification of what is certainly an important and complex situation, but couldn’t
you return to the place you met this dead man the first time?”
You’re playing me, girl. I wonder what you want.
Oliver mused a bit. “That would be a mite difficult. I’m not entirely certain I was anywhere at all.” Again
that brandy tempted him as the memories of those horrible vistas stirred. “I don’t think they canbe
anywhere, as you or I define the term.”
“Poppycock,” Hews muttered. “A body has to be somewhere. We just need to find the route, is all.”
“There isn’t any way to walk to this place, Hewey.”
A voice from the door: “There’s a way.”
They all looked up to find Phineas at the door, sunk in his ulster coat and hidden beneath his hat.
“Sorry f’r eavesdropping, Cap’n, like some fool housebreaker,” he said. “But there’s a way, aye.”
“Tick, tick, tick.”
Irregular footfalls echoed down the long hallway. Windows of red stained glass in unknowable geometric
patterns measured the wall space between arches. Clocks of brass and chrome gazed down from the
ceiling. The floor shook with the rumble of the Stack’s constant eruptions. These things passed in and out
of John Scared’s senses as he walked to his death.
Someone had betrayed his location. It was the only explanation. Some dishonest underling had turned
informant and led the baron to him. He wondered how much money the baron had offered him, or what
religious claptrap.
The cloaks had shown up on his doorstep. It could not have been accidental, as he had made an entirely
new residence—in addition to his usual hides—at the side of a theatre, down an alley, in the most
crowded and confusing level of Commercial Street Tower. They’d walked right up and knocked.
“Baron Hume, the First Favoured, requests your presence, sir.”
Of course, Scared had presented his most congenial smile and informed them that he was glad they’d
come, and that he had intended to give a report to the baron in the near future, in any case.
“I have information I’m certain will be of great use to him.”
A quick train and lift ride later they had deposited him at the entrance of the Long Hallway, as it was
called. The two cloaks who had fetched him still stood guard just beyond the bronze entry doors. There
was no need for them to provide an escort, as the hallway had only the one exit.
He took another step, leaning heavily on his cane.
What bothered him was that the baron must know his intentions by now. The British agent they had
captured two nights previous could not have held back any information about the designer of the
god-killing device. Scared had to assume he was being brought here as a prisoner; yet if the baron had
wanted information, he would have had the Boiler Men haul him to the Chimney and there would be no
need for any personal meeting.
Scared did not like unknown variables.
“Tick, tick.”
Hmmm, perhaps it is a nervous habit after all, my dear.
But perhaps Baron Hume was ignorant of who had asked Scared to design the weapon and then given
him the intuitive knowledge to do so. Such information might be used as a bargaining chip. All he needed
was to barter passage out of this hallway. Once back inside the Stack, a thousand avenues for escape
presented themselves.
The Long Hallway led from the Stack to Baron Hume’s personal chapel. Both hall and church hung in
the air without any apparent means of support. An escapee, breaking through the stained glass, would
find not even a beam to shimmy down to freedom. And given the proximity to the Stack’s burning maw, the air would likely kill him before he managed to descend anyway.
The hall ended at another set of bronze doors, smaller than the hall’s entry but set with greater detail.
Gears and springs of all shapes and sizes covered both doors, churning faintly away. Scared studied for
an instant the pattern of their movement, tracking motion from gear to gear; one spring wound another,
which unwound and coiled yet a third.
Above these doors a silver clock ticked its regular time. Of all the clocks in Whitechapel, this clock
alone told only the proper time and nothing more.
The doors ceased their motion, and steam blew out of their hinges as they swung outward.
You’ll see me through, won’t you, lover?he thought.Half of the man belongs to you, after all.
The heated tickle at the top of his spine, so long an indicator of the Mother’s attention, had faded all too
rapidly over the past few days.
The doors fastened themselves to the walls. With an effort, Scared straightened and took one reverent
step into the chapel. For all the times he’d been in it, he could not help but marvel. Seething red light
illuminated the chapel floor, cast by the Stack and entering through the enormous plate window at the
peak of the chapel’s arched roof. Every inch of every wall, even up in the arched ceiling, was covered in
clocks. The clocks were of all sizes and shapes, rendered in brass, iron, copper, tin, and glass, all
showing strange and foreign calculations of time, and all ticking in their own rhythm. Thousands of ticks.
So many they washed together in a sound not unlike the sea, or a forceful wind blasting in the ear.
The faces of Grandfather Clock.
The baron waited beneath the great quartz clock that hung like a cross at the far end of the room, silk
top hat and cane tucked under one arm.
Scared removed his hat. “Sir.”
Baron Hume lifted his head and gazed at the quartz clock with reverence. Any human features he may
once have possessed had long since been subsumed: his skin had become strips of brass, and his only
identifiable features were his expressionless eyes.
“Jonathan Augustus Scared,” he said.
John Scared waited, reading into the baron’s stance and movements. Hume was a difficult man to read,
given what had been done to his physical body by the two intelligences that inhabited it. He seemed to
have taken more and more of the Clock into his habits, such that his movements read like a gear turning,
and yielded no useful information.
Today, however, Hume’s shoulders were ever so mildly slumped.
The baron turned smartly on his polished wing tips.
“On the one hand there are limits, on the other creations. When one ends the other must outgrow itself to
the point of stagnation. The ending of one is the ending of the other, but one wonders where that ending
dwells.”
Heh. He actually needs my help, darling. What a lark.
“What do you need me to find, sir?”
Brass eyes, tinged red by the light, studied him. The baron wore a tailcoat and impeccable slacks, a
crisp and gleaming tuxedo shirt beneath. Strange how he always made a point of dressing like the man
he’d been.
“The ending of order without the growth of chaos, sealed in the code of scratches upon the skin of trees.
Where is that which is yours no longer?”
He knows then. As expected.“I have yet to locate it, sir. When I do I will notify you.”
The baron’s featureless black head tilted slightly. “The enders of prophecy are men who walk upon two
legs. These creatures of great words and frail bodies saw at the stem of that which must come to be. Do
they hide in their own skin and resist harmony?”
“The Britons are mostly wiped out, thanks to the golds,” Scared said. “I have my boys looking after the
rest. Not to worry. I have them well in hand.”
“A hand on the saw moves. Is the saw vicious when at the neck, benign when at the trunk? Who can
hate that which is moved by another hand?”
Scared’s eyes narrowed. “Your point, sir?”
“You are a tool, Jonathan Augustus Scared. You are the saw that revels in the shedding of dust, thinking
itself mighty.”
Is that you speaking, pet? Heh. You really know nothing about me.
“I live to serve, sir. Truly.”
“A dog who walks in front of his master still cannot swing a cane. In this one thing he can be proud, but
no more.”
I already know what place you’d pigeonhole me, my love.
The baron continued. “Creation without limits is chaos. A yard without a fence is a plain. A sea without a
shore is a place where men drown.”
A long pause followed, so long Scared almost turned to leave. Then Hume spoke again, in a voice softer
and more human.
“Why?”
The question carried genuine pain. Was it the man speaking now, and not the double tongue of the
gods?
“Can you be more specific, sir?”
Another long pause, like a machine with a stuck gear, grinding to break loose. When the words finally did come, they emerged in a clockwork rhythm with gaps and starts, like Hume was choking on them.
“Brother slays—brother a plant—despises the—sun why—does a harp fall—out of tune when—the
music is—so beautiful?”
Scared actually laughed. He cackled, his voice ringing off the hard surfaces, mingling with the ticking,
playing with the light.
“You don’t understand, do you, Hume?” he said. “You can’t fathom it at all. Under all those gears and
pistons, you’re still that same simpleminded architect who could never get his buildings to stand.”
The baron stared with the eyes of a statue.
“Shehates him, Hume. She hates him because she loves him and she loves him because he doesn’t care
one whit about her. It’s madness, all of it. Mania and melancholy all around. Your gods areinsane,
Baron.”
The baron replaced his top hat. The white ribbon wrapped about it near the brim sparkled like sunlight
on water.
Yes, I said it, my sweet. I said it directly to his face and to yours. And yet he won’t kill me for it because
it is the God’s own truth.
There was something of a man in the way Hume turned away to contemplate his Church of Measured
Time.
Scared took it as his cue to exit. He deliberately planted his cane out of synch with the cacophony
around them.
Yes, Hume, see if you can find your answer in that ticking monstrosity.
Marvelous! The weak-willed man who’d written theSumma Machina was still buried in that mechanised
body, and still remembered the failing days of his own sanity. Back then, the baron had realised the
absurdity of the Lord and Lady: a match made in hell and consecrated with shit and shackles. Scared had
simply reminded him of that.
Scared had read him. The man inside had stirred, and begun thinking and feeling again. So much the
better if his doubts rendered him unable to act. That just left more of the city open to acquisition by one
Jonathan Augustus Scared.
Oh, my sweet. Even your adopted son cannot save you.
The bronze doors hissed closed, and Scared practically skipped down the Long Hallway.

Chapter 11

How many worlds They have consumed, I cannot fathom. How many small creatures They have leashed
to serve Them—I cannot count them all. How many ghosts have been thrown screaming into Their
bellies, I dare not guess.
What I do know is that They will continue in Their way until the end of the universe, for They are
machines, and machines do only one thing, over and over.
—II. xvii
Pennyedge had to be killed.
In the short time since retrieving Scared’s precious tape, Bergen had discovered he could not bring
himself to take it back to its creator. He knew he couldn’t stomach serving that troll one instant longer.
The horrid things he’d done to maintain his cover mounted on his conscience with each step, freed to
haunt him by the act of mercy just performed. He had to escape. He had to bring the tape into Bailey’s
hands and rejoin his true comrades in arms.
His cover might have been blown anyway. Scared would not have sent his child-killer along if he didn’t
at least suspect.
And so Penny had to be killed. Mulls as well, as an inescapable consequence. That saddened Bergen a
bit, for Mulls, if he had escaped Scared’s trap and been raised by decent folk, might have become a
decent man. Penny was a monster and Bergen spared not a scrap of remorse for him.
The question washow to do it. Penny was sharp, and as silent as a snake in the ferns, and was at every
opportunity manoeuvring for a killing stab on Bergen. He probably wouldn’t strike until Bergen led them
to within sight of the rusted stair, which gave him perhaps two hours of time.
He passed up several opportunities to take his shot—times when Penny was beyond the range of a
good lunge and scanning the dark after some suspicious sound—because Bergen was unsure of what to
do with Mulls. How many shots would it take? Would the bullets even hurt him through all those
mechanical growths? Mulls might have to be down long enough for Bergen to hit him with the steam rifle,
and that was a long space of time indeed.
They passed a mound of sodden and collapsed debris on their right. Bergen heard the click of metal tines on stone. He drew his sidearm with his left hand, and aimed it into the dark. Penny spun the wheel
on his flasher, then dropped into a crouch and spread his arms, knife in one hand and striking rod in the
other. Mulls, after a moment’s delay, brought his rifle up to his shoulder, though he apparently did not see
anything to aim at yet.
A clickrat scuttled into the radius of their electric lights. Mulls let off a rough chuckle.
“Ha. Just a littl’un.”
“Quiet!” Bergen hissed. The clickrat stopped and began to make buzzing and ticking sounds. Bergen
tuned it out and listened to the other sounds of the dark around them. He let his ears guide his weapon,
until its aim rested at the top of the mound.
“Come out where we can see you,” Bergen ordered.
Mulls started and locked his rifle onto the same location. Penny did not move.
The voice came back. “We have you surrounded. Throw your weapons on the ground.”
“There is only one of you,” Bergen said. “And there are three of us. Can you shoot us all, do you think,
before we kill you?”
The enemy fell silent, considering, Bergen supposed, what to do now that his bluff had failed. It was an
opportunity.
“Boy, rush him,” Bergen whispered. “Mulls and I will pin him down.”
Penny turned his head just enough to examine Bergen in his peripheral vision, and did not move.
“What are you waiting for, boy?”
Penny’s fingers flexed on the handle of his knife.
He knows. It must be now.
He reaimed his weapon and fired at Penny’s back, but simultaneously, the youth darted to the left,
ducking under the swing of Bergen’s arm and dodging entirely the arc of fire. A clean miss.
Mulls, perhaps misinterpreting the action, fired his rifle at the hidden man on the mound.
Penny had spun about, quick on his feet like a dancer, and had already covered one of the two strides
necessary to slip his blade into Bergen’s throat. Bergen flicked his arm into position and discharged
directly into Penny’s chest. A spark exploded there, and the bent remains of the flasher’s striking rod
flew smoking from Penny’s hand as he closed the final step.
Quick.
Bergen slammed the butt of his pistol onto Penny’s stabbing arm as it swung in. The strike cracked
soundly on bone, but an instant later Bergen’s flank split with the passing of the boy’s blade. Numbing
shock spread like lightning into his left leg and arm. His follow-up swing went wildly askew as Penny
darted past.
Another shot rang out and Mulls tumbled to the street in a spray of blood and oil. Penny pivoted on the
ball of one foot and plunged the knife towards Bergen’s belly.
Bergen locked the fingers of his right hand around the boy’s wrist, keeping the knife still. Penny yanked
away but was held prisoner of the older man’s greater strength. With a kind of calm and deliberation,
Bergen planted his revolver against Penny’s chest and blew a hole in him.
The youth spasmed and fell, releasing the knife. Penny writhed and sputtered across the flagstones,
gurgling and choking—the first genuine sounds Bergen had ever heard him make. Bergen raised his
weapon and sighted on Penny’s head.
“Don’t move!” came the command from atop the mound. The hairs on Bergen’s neck tingled.
“Lower your weapon,” Bergen shouted. “In a moment we will talk face-to-face, but these two must be
eliminated first.”
“No one else dies without my say” came the reply. “Throw that pistol on the street and we’ll converse
like civilised human beings.”
Penny gasped in a shuddering lungful of air. He began to look around and take stock of his situation; his
right hand fished into the pocket of his ragged trousers while his left clutched at blood streaming from the
bullet hole.
Bergen held his aim steady. “I am an ally,” he yelled. “A comrade of Sir Winfred Bailey Howe. I am not
your enemy.”
Unsteady footsteps approached from behind, twitching at Bergen’s instinct to spin and face the danger.
The unseen man did not sound experienced in combat; Bergen could probably cut him down before the
man got a shot off, but he dared not take his eyes from Pennyedge. At his left, Mulls began to stir.
“What you are,” the voice said, closer now, “is a man who just gunned down one of his own.”
“Weren’t you listening? I am a comrade of Winfred Bailey—”
“Don’t think that tossing that name about gives you any clout with me,” the unseen man snapped. “Place
your firearm on the street. The boy isn’t going anywhere.”
“You are a damned fool,” Bergen growled. He sank slowly to his knees and planted the barrel of his
pistol against the street. Slowly, eyes on Pennyedge, he unwrapped his fingers from the grip one by one.
Something of the predator slipped back into Penny’s expression. Bergen locked gazes with him, trying
to read into Penny’s eyes. The boy’s gaze broke for a moment and flicked to their captor, now only a
few paces behind Bergen.
I am the only danger to you in the next few seconds, boy. Attacking him will only gain me the time to kill
you. You must attack me.
Penny’s right arm tensed. Bergen’s fingers tightened back around the pistol’s grip.
Penny’s throw was awkward and slow. Bergen had his weapon up and aimed by the time the small knife departed Penny’s hand. His finger yanked back on the trigger.
A blast splintered Bergen’s left ear. White muzzle flash blinded him. Chips of stone and concrete
exploded up from the street and Bergen’s shot went wildly right.
Cursing, he blinked the sparks from his eyes and fired blindly after the blurred shape fleeing into the
dark. An instant later, the gun smoke cleared and the only available targets were a red stain on the street
and a cast-off electric lamp rolling to a tired stop.
With a burning fury Bergen stood, whirled, and cracked his captor across the face. The man clattered to
the street, a heavy express rifle spinning from his grip. Bergen straddled him as he fell and jammed the
pistol against the man’s nose.
He was tall, over six feet, and thin. A flat-topped ash hat, slightly askew, barely hid his tangle of
unkempt hair. Goggles and a mask mostly obscured his features, but he appeared to be smiling.
“You seem to have me at a disadvantage,” he said.
Something yanked at Bergen’s heel. The other man slapped Bergen’s pistol aside and scooted from
beneath him with surprising speed. Bergen ignored him for an instant and kicked away the clickrat
gnawing on his boot.
He swung his weapon back towards the other man before even turning his head.
“He’s developing a taste for shoe leather,” the tall man said.
Bergen squinted at the man’s firearm.
“My two shots to your one,” the man said, with almost a shrug. He held a two-shot derringer in his right
hand—a hand bandaged and obviously injured.
“You’ve been counting,” Bergen said. “Do you honestly mean to hold me hostage? It is a long way back
to the Shadwell stair.”
“It’s only until we decide what to do with you. Do you have a name?”
“I am Bergen Keuper, originally of Stuttgart, recently of Egypt and Sudan. And yours?”
The man considered a moment. “John Bull.”
“That was impolite,” Bergen said. “I spoke truthfully.”
“We’re spies, my friend. None of us are generally truthful.” He gestured with his weapon. “Don’t
pretend ignorance when I ask this: do you have the ticker-paper?”
“Yes, I have it.”
“Lay it on the ground.”
“HerrBull, you seem to be under the impression that you have an advantage over me. Allow me to
elucidate our situation. Your derringer, while sufficient to wound me at this range, is no match for my Gasser. You must also realise that, as I am losing blood, I will be forced to end our standoff in short
order. If you will not step down I must kill you.”
“And you, Mr. Keuper,” the man said with a twitch of the eyebrow, “seem to be under the impression
that I am here alone. As I said,we have you surrounded.”
“Do not try to bluff me,Herr Bull. If there were other men in your party, I would have heard them.”
“I don’t doubt it—ifthey were men.”
Bergen squinted at the man.He’s bluffing, surely. I’d have heard…
He let his senses expand, let the focus of his hearing drift and the primeval jungle awareness of ancient
man predominate. Silence—but not empty silence. The silence of a tiger watching its prey. The silence of
an unseen snake curled to strike. Dozens of watchers, all around.
“Jeremy,” Bull called. “Bring a few up closer, if you’d be so kind.”
A sudden string of ticks; the skittering crawl of a clickrat; heavier steps following. Into the light lumbered
two monstrous hounds, a full hand taller than any that they’d fought earlier, with exposed gears churning
along their shoulders and back. Soundlessly, they opened their enormous jaws and let oil-saliva slide out
between savage teeth. The silver clickrat scuttled forth.
“Thank you, Jeremy,” said Bull, then to Bergen: “There are quite a few more.”
“Yes, I know.” Reluctantly, Bergen lowered, then holstered, his firearm. “How?”
“Not your concern, Mr. Keuper,” said Bull, also lowering his weapon. He popped the derringer into his
coat pocket. “The tape, if you’d be so kind.”
Bergen kneeled and began to shrug off his pack and the steam rifle. “I must know who you work for.”
Bull considered a minute, then nodded. “I work for Bailey. Against my better judgement sometimes, I
admit. I assume you work for John Scared.”
Bergen snorted. “No longer.”
“You were the inside man, then.”
“I was.”
“That settles that, I suppose,” Bull said. “Since you can imagine what would happen to you were you to
turn on me, I suppose I can trust you at least that far, eh?”
Bergen grunted. He reached into his pack to retrieve the tape. His first impulse was to unravel the steam
rifle and try to make a fight of it, but he stifled that. “I have told you the truth. You have not even told me
your name.”
A muffled crack sounded from the right. Bergen and his captor spun to see Mulls, silhouetted by his own
lamp, firing his air rifle into the dark.
Bull was the first to react. “Stop! They won’t hurt you if you don’t…”
Bergen turned his eyes away and said nothing.
A half-dozen scraping growls went up, followed by a crash. Then Mulls’ lamp sparked and died, and
Mulls’ screams began.
“Jeremy!” Bull cried. “Stop them! Get them off him.”
The silver clickrat sat still and did nothing.
He had to die,Bergen reminded himself.If only the bullet had done its work.
Bull stepped closer to retrieve his rifle. Bergen clamped it to the brick with one powerful hand.
“What are you doing?”
Bergen set his face and eyes grim. “He is loyal to Scared. This cannot be avoided.”
What’s one more atrocity, after all the murder I have done for that man?Bergen thought. He stared into
the younger man’s eyes, wide and quivering behind the goggles, until the screams stopped and the tearing
and crunching began.
“He could have been taken prisoner,” Bull said quietly, venomously.
“He would have realised that bullets do not kill him and then turned on us.”
Bull faced the horror perpetrated upon the dead man’s corpse, though the dark hid it. With the breaking
of that gaze Bergen felt something die inside him. He quashed the sting of it, and refused to mourn.I
sacrificed my soul to this work long ago.
They sat in reverence until the feast ended and the silence rose once more.
Bergen released his grip on the man’s express rifle. Bull held out his hand.
“The tape.”
Bergen handed it over. Bull slipped it into a pocket, then snatched up his weapon and his pack.
“Gather your property and let’s go.”
“I know the way back.”
“Then you lead.”
Bergen hefted the steam rifle and his supplies back onto his shoulders and pulled the straps tight across
his chest. They secured their burdens in silence. The younger man oozed regret and anger. Bergen
steeled himself against his own sense of shame and said what needed to be said.
“I apologise in advance for asking this, but I must know.”
Bull nodded for him to continue.
“Your hounds—did they get the boy?”
Bull’s stare was granite. “We’d have heard it, don’t you think?”
“Easy, Tom. Sit on up.”
“Ollie? Ollie! Jesus, I can’t see.”
“You’re breathing. That’s a start.”
“They got me! They got me with their damnable flashers and…Lord Almighty, it was like being burned
alive and…They’re guarding the stair, Ollie—the Boiler Men! They were waiting and we…”
“Calm down, man.”
“Bailey’s dead, Ollie. I saw it happen. And Phin’s gone, and the other chaps, too. They’re guarding the
stair. We won’t make it back to…”
“Don’t worry about the Boiler Men, Tommy. Jeremy’s new friends can handle them.”
“Jeremy?”
“We ran into each other.”
“I’m glad. But…Ollie, I can’t see. I can’t feel anything. I…I’m frightened.”
“You’ll be all right. Let’s see if you can’t walk and we’ll get you back to Sherwood.”
“Thanks, Ollie. Knew I could count on you. Always looking out for us, you are.”
“Always.”
Oliver had never seen a dead Boiler Man before.
This one lay sprawled across a decayed mound that might once have been a wooden cart. In his hands,
he still clutched a spear-length, copper-tipped flasher hooked to a machine on his back by a length of
rubber hose. His eyes had cracked, and his black armour was marred by deep, gleaming slashes and
dents. His chest plate splayed out in ribbons where Bergen’s rifle had cracked him like a walnut. Oliver
leaned over the hole. The scent of dry dust and spent gunpowder crinkled his nose.
Ten feet onward, the road dissolved into a jumble of bricks mired in mud, afterward stretching into an
uneven field of forgotten trinkets and stinking human refuse. There was some light here, shed by seepage
through the domino hole above. It illuminated a thousand half-buried items cast off from the city above:
pots, hats, empty matchboxes, bags and boxes of all description, wagons—whole or in pieces—and the
occasional corpse. What a strange disconnection of the mind it was to think that the things one tossed from the towers were instantly gone forever.
Across that small plain, the soldiers of Jeremy’s army wandered, stepping over the broken bodies of
both their comrades and their enemies without so much as a glance. Oliver could hardly believe that
twenty minutes ago these horrid gargoyles had been swarming the Boiler Men like a legion of hellish rats.
The first wave had been shattered by the Ironboys’ Atlas rifles. The second as well. But there were
more, so many more, that the rifles simply ran dry of ammunition. And as they fell silent, the horde of
screeching, buzzing, clawing, biting inhuman doom poured over hastily constructed defences and bore the
baron’s soldiers to the ground.
Even then it hadn’t been over. Possessed of an unnatural strength, the Boiler Men had, one by one,
tossed off their harassers and regained their footing. And then Bergen had blown them to pieces with his
shoulder cannon.
Oliver shuddered to recall the look on the man’s face: like a statue, eyes colder than those of the
half-human wretches the downstreets had claimed.
He navigated between the remains of six or seven hounds, a good dozen of the Frankensteins, and two
more Ironboys, eventually finding a clear path, and worked his way back to Tom. The big man sat
leaning back against the oxidised remains of a copper boiler, arms piled in his lap, head lolling to the side.
The light danced over Tommy’s features and Oliver felt his heart clench up. Tom’s clothes had been
burned through by flasher strikes to his belly and shoulders. Wormlike scorch marks had been seared
into his one real hand and the skin on his neck and face; some had cracked and were leaking runny
brown grease.
Oliver had seen Tom injured before, had seen him with wounds much graver than these. It was Tom’s
posture that alarmed him: he sat with hunched shoulders and raised knees, shaking like a beaten child. To
see this happy soul so lost and afraid brought tears to Oliver’s eyes. He blinked them back, swallowed
hard against the quivering in his gut, and knelt by Tom’s side.
The big man started. His eyes flew open, panicked. “Ollie?”
Oliver laid a heavy hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“Easy, chum. It’s me.”
Tom shakily exhaled. He reached up and clasped Oliver forearm with his real hand. “Jesus. Gave me a
start, there. It was so quiet, I’d wondered…”
As Oliver looked on Tommy’s face he felt the tears welling again. Tom’s entire left eye had been burned
away from the inside, leaving only an oozing scab over most of that side of his face. The right eye moved
around with random jerks, squirting oil with each movement.
Oliver gave the shoulder a squeeze.
“The battle’s won, Tommy. You should see it—Ironboys rusting in the mud. It’s positively the most
beautiful sight I’ve seen in years.”
Tom’s face fell. “I’d rather have fought.”
“Buck up, man,” Oliver said. The encouraging tone came automatically, quite in spite of any rational
evaluation of Tom’s condition. “Hews knows a doctor. I’ll post him a telegram when we get back to
Sherwood and we’ll have you fixed up in less time than it takes to down a pint.”
It was a weak lie weakly presented, but it seemed enough for Tom, who managed a smile.
“If you say it, Chief, then I’m game.”
“There’s my lad,” Oliver said. He clapped Tommy on the back. “Now, let’s get you on your feet. You
still owe me that round.”
Tommy’s face crumpled in concentration. “How do you figure that?”
“I beat you to the ground, Tommy. And a gentleman like yourself’ll surely keep to our bargain, eh?”
“Codswallop. You probably tiptoed like a ballerina down the whole route. There is no earthly way you
could have beat me to the ground.”
“Perhaps. But seeing as there is no apparent way for us to compare our arrival times, the round still goes
to me.”
Tommy frowned, adjusted his hat. “Again: how do you bloody figure that?”
“Simple: I now have to haul your not-inconsiderable bulk up that whole blasted stairway.”
Tommy cracked a smile at that. He threw off Oliver’s hand and lifted himself up to perch on unstable
knees.
“A round says you’ll have to do nothing of the kind.”
“Double or nothing, then?”
“A deal, Chief.”
Oliver held his hands ready to provide additional stability to his friend as Tom tested the motion of his
legs. His joints shrieked terribly.
Tom chuckled. “Like a banshee. Hee, hee.”
Oliver looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps.
“Twelve of them dead,” Bergen said, in the manner of a soldier giving a report. “That is their full number.
A lucky thing, since I am nearly out of ammunition.”
Bergen’s eyes had not changed. They were stone, lifeless, emotionless. The rest of his body kept
perfectly still like a compressed spring, as if the man was still expecting battle.
The man was a killer; that was the long and short of it. There could be no guarantee of controlling him,
no matter with whom he claimed to lay his allegiances. And if Bailey really had met his end, Oliver might
not be able to pawn the fellow off on another crew.No good will come of this partnership, and that’s the
truth.
But that was something to leave to Providence and a later day.
Bergen tilted his head. “We should return to the city.”
“Let’s get ourselves to the base of the stair,” Oliver said. “We’ll wait there.”
“Why would we wait?”
“So that Phineas Macrae can find us. Let’s get on.”
He urged Tommy into a slow shuffle by gentle pressure on his back. Bergen scowled, but fell into step.
“Do you truly still hold out hope that any of your party survived?” the German asked. “If the Boiler Men
did not kill all of them, surely your rat’s army finished the work.”
Tommy swallowed hard before adding his comment. The pain of the admission contorted his face: “I
hate to say it, Ollie, but…I haven’t seen him. He’d have found me, I think, if he was still…”
Tommy choked off the last few words, and Oliver gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.
“He isn’t dead, Tommy. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he was already waiting for us at the stair.”
The German grunted—a half laugh. “If he’s truly so resourceful as to have escaped his fate, he would be
quite capable of rescuing himself without our aid.”
The mockery in that tone raised Oliver’s hackles. He ground his teeth a moment before making a reply.
“You’re quite correct, Mr. Keuper. He does not need our help. But getting Thomas all the way back to
the Underbelly in his present condition is going to require more than one man.”
“We have more than one man.”
“Keuper, ever since you first laid eyes on my friend’s state, you’ve been thinking that he is an
unnecessary burden. You’ve been scheming ways to rid our expedition of him so that we can make
better time.”
Tommy gasped, looking towards Oliver for confirmation.
Oliver’s eyes tracked the rolling mud battleground ahead. He did not look at either of them. “And so I
have decided not to trust you with my friend’s safety.”
His mood improved slightly as Bergen fell into a sullen silence.
“Fair?”
Oliver took the further silence as affirmation.
They found Phineas at the base of the stair, perched on the edge of an overturned rail car, one so out of
style it might have predated the baron’s takeover of Whitechapel. He stubbed his cigar out in the mud
and left it there as they approached.
Oliver resisted the urge to rub his satisfaction in Bergen’s face.
Phin greeted them with a tip of his impacted hat.
“If you blokes walked any slower I’d rent a cab for you. Hellfire, I’dbuild a cab for you and rope a
couple of those dogs to pull it. And what in God’s name is wrong with Thomas?”
Tom smiled through his grimace. “War wounds, you piss-yellow dodger. I assume you’ve none of your
own.”
“He took a few prods from those flashers of theirs,” Oliver explained.
Phineas scowled. “I know that. I wasthere, or hasn’t gear-guts told you? I mean that bloody noise.”
Oliver helped Tommy to seat himself on a bent train wheel. The big man groaned with the effort. Oliver
handed him a canteen—the last remnants of his water supply. “What noise, Phin?”
Phineas gestured at Tommy with a vague sense of disgust. “The…thenoise, man. He’s always been a
damned factory all to himself but…Oy, bolt-britches, you hear that grinding?”
“I can’t hear hardly any, you…you…” He sighed. “They burned me something terrible. Yeah, I can hear
it.”
Phin shared a look with Oliver, which even through Phineas’ perpetual squint Oliver knew as a warning.
And now Mr. Keuper is thinking that Tommy is a danger, as well as a hindrance.
Bergen remained stony silent, bending a little now under the weight of his enormous weapon and several
hours’ long hike. He kept Phineas under a watchful eye.Doesn’t trust any of us. Perhaps Missy can crack
him. Missy would dive right into the man the instant she saw him: smile at him, charm him, melt him, rub
him down under her heel.
Phineas was giving Tommy a pat on the shoulder and muttering some encouraging, if vulgar, words.
Oliver motioned him over. For Bergen’s benefit, he announced ten minutes’ rest.
The German nodded.
Oliver drew Phineas aside, to the edge of the rail car.
“What’s this grinding, Phineas?”
“Something in his belly, I’m thinkin’,” Phin whispered. “Wasn’t there last I saw him. Like a clickrat
crawlin’ in mud.”
“Any ideas on its identity?”
“Not a one, Cap’n. Ne’er heard it comin’ from inside a man before.”
Oliver sighed and glanced back at Tom, who had fallen into still, regular breathing. Bergen was
unabashedly observing their conversation, though he was probably too far off to eavesdrop. Oliver
turned back to Phineas.
“How did this happen, Phin? Didn’t you warn them?”
“Wasn’t any warning to give, Cap’n. Not firstly, anyways. The Ironboys, they don’t make any noise.”
“Codswallop. They shake the bloody ground.”
“When they’s movin’, sure, but when they’s still, they’s silent as the bloody grave. No breathin’, no
gears grindin’ or heart pumpin’. We didn’t even know they were there until we’s thirty feet away.”
“But the dogs, man.”
Phin crushed his hat farther down his head, until the dropping brim almost hid his eyes.
“I heard the damnable mutts ages before we got to ’em. Mr. Knight ordered us ahead anyway.”
Oliver nodded.Can’t say I blame him. Hounds or Boiler Men? I’d have chosen the same. “And the
fight?”
Phineas spat into the mud. “What’s I supposed to do against the Tin Soldiers, Ollie? I lit out. Not my
fault that copper-balls goes berserk. He didn’t even use his rifle, for Christ’s sake.”
Phineas ground his teeth
“I hid in the dirt, Ollie,” Phin said through gnashing teeth. “ ’S what they all should’ve done. Blasted
stupid, just like the Uprising.”
“You gave them your warning, man. Everything else is on Bailey’s head.”
Phin smoothed out his impossibly wrinkled coat. “Bailey’s dead, Ollie. He took two or three shots. I
heard him crying those eloquent curses of his. The Ironboys, they charged him and stomped him down.”
Oliver nodded. It was what Bailey had wanted—to die in service of his beloved queen. Oliver felt a
curious hole in his stomach, like a coal burning there.It’s what I wanted, too: to be free of that man. To
be free of his rules and his damn distrust— Oliver felt guilty just thinking it—and now I am.
So, what now? With what the cloaks knew, would Joyce still be alive, to build this weapon on Scared’s
tape? Would any of Bailey’s other nameless compatriots still be alive? Would…Hews?
“What do you think, Ollie? We’s a bit buggered, eh?”
Oliver looked up. Phin stood expectantly, fiddling with his pockets.
“Let’s get climbing.”
They turned and walked back to the base of the stair. Jeremy Longshore had returned, and sat looking
contented with his head poking out of Tommy’s pocket. Tommy stroked the silver ridges of the thing’s
back, murmuring silent nothings to it. Bergen crouched like an ape, watching wordlessly.
“Stalwart like an ox, Chief,” Tommy announced, proudly hoisting Jeremy into the air. “What did I tell
you?”
“He’s more than proved himself to me, Tommy,” Oliver said. “Let’s make him an official member of the
crew, shall we?”
“The king bowing to another master? Never!” Tommy said, chuckling. Phineas helped him up, all four or
five hundred scraping, squealing pounds. Oliver pointed to Bergen.
“You’re our lead climber, Keuper.”
Bergen rose. “So that you can keep a watch on me?”
Oliver held his mouth shut.
“So, tell me, since you have styled yourself our governor,” Bergen said as he approached the first
rickety, rusted and bent step of the stair, which at its base turned out to be more like its namesake.
“What shall we do, now that Bailey Howe truly is dead?”
Oliver felt acute stares from Tom and Phineas. Once again they looked to him to take up that mantle
he’d watched burn five years past, and lead them all to their deaths in some heroic folly. They wouldn’t
let him off, not again, not when he’d been hiding from the responsibility all this time.
You wanted this, chap. Deep down, you always wanted it.
A second chance. A second Uprising.
Tom rocked foot to foot. “Ollie?”
“We return to Sherwood,” Oliver said. “We gather the crew and call in Hews and Sims and Joyce and
whoever’s left.”
He stared at Bergen, matching the man’s intensity.
“And then…we proceed,my way.”
“I know who you are.”
That was all Baron Hume had said.
The lift locked into place with a shower of sparks and the two Boiler Men jerked Bailey forward. His
captors’ titan strength had long ago crushed the bones in both arms, and Bailey was beyond the sensation
of pain. He was aware only of the endless layered thrashing sounds of machinery to rival hell itself, and
the smell of cooked meat drifting up into his nose. The Boiler Men had welded a metal plate to his skin
using their lightning rods, to steal his death away.
Bailey had looked into Hume’s impenetrable brass eyes and seen nothing—not anger, not satisfaction,
only the cool detachment of logic. Bailey was not a defeated enemy made to kneel; he was a faulty part
being corrected, so that the machine would run smoothly once more.
We are as nothing to them.Empty, lifeless soldiers that moved and killed and could not die, weapons that threw lightning and steam and bullets faster than a man could tap his fingers—Lord, what were we
thinking? What arrogance to assume we could topple these creatures. These…gods.
His legs lost all power, and he fell forward. The Boiler Men dragged him by his shattered arms without
breaking stride. Bailey’s tears splattered on the walkway. His twisted feet smeared them as they passed.
They were deep inside the Stack by now, past the visitor ledges on the outer rings, down past the
workrooms and storerooms and the holy places of the gold and black cloaks. Down here Mama
Engine’s furnace burned eternal with a heat to rival the sun, and the eldest of the black cloaks, their
humanity stripped away by layers of iron limbs, tempered the foundations of the Great Work.
The endless gyrations of the machines faded, and a hum rose in their place. The sound boomed and
echoed around the cavernous space into which they now passed, ringing like the song of a thousand
angels, or the hissing of a thousand devils.
Good Lord, if I have ever been good to you, take me now…
The chamber stretched a hundred or more yards across, lined on all the outside surfaces with clocks of
senseless and maddening design. The walkway extended into it, held up by gossamer golden cords, to
the room’s central feature.
Bailey could not look. He knew what he would see: row upon endless row of broken, drained, mutilated
men and women and children; golden wires piercing their skin; muscle and flesh rotting off their bones;
and yet none of them dead—none permitted to die, so long as the Great Machine had need of them.
The Boiler Men dragged him to a halt in front of a creature constructed of tangled strips of brass.
Porcelain eyes assessed him, a single finger indicated the place of his fate. Bailey watched the creature as
it turned away to its duties, and knew instinctively that it had once been human.
His shoulder came loose as his captors renewed their march. His bowels gave as they slammed him
roughly into an empty brass chair. His last breath escaped as they forced steel bolts through his hips and
chest to pin him there. His vision darkened.
Please, Lord.
A wire broke the skin of his neck and began digging into him, burning like an electric worm. A second
punctured his rib cage, a third, his lower back.
Not this,he screamed.Death I have always welcomed, but not this.
The Boiler Men marched away, and the ticking began. It grew, instant by instant, pummelling his
perceptions with its insane repetition, until it deafened his very thoughts. It stripped away everything he
knew, everything he had ever thought, every hope and every plan. The weight of Grandfather Clock
crushed him down, hammered him, shaped him. He became a perfect component of a larger whole,
losing all that he had been before.
And all was harmony in the Great Machine.

The Second Day
It must be dull and lonely to live in a new city, while to live in an old city like London is to enjoy the society of a very noble army of ghosts.
—Sidney Dark

Cgapter 10

The second principle of the forge is Method, or perhaps Technique. The artisan must be skilful in all
aspects of Her craft. Such perfection comes only from long practice, which inevitably litters the floor with
the misshapen remains of Her failures.
—V. iii
Missy had not been truly introduced to drink until she met Thomas Moore. Matron Gisella had laid
down strict rules concerning imbibing by her girls: they were not to have any at all, except if the client bid
it. Even then, they were to touch scant a tenth of what the client consumed. Missy had rarely had
occasion to even smell brandy or scotch, as the majority of the customers were upstanding, proper
gentlemen who came into the Matron Gisella’s house to vent their carnal lusts and then flee into the night
like robbers.
Sit up straight; fold your hands across your lap. Hold your head upright, your knees together. You are a
shy, naive gentlewoman.
Missy drained her glass and poured another. The brandy seared its way down her throat.
No, she had been introduced to drink truly on the third night that she had been invited to Sherwood
Forest. She’d walked in on them unannounced, unobtrusive as she had been trained. Thomas had been
caught mid-swallow, choked on his mouthful, and then scrambled to hide the glass by slipping it half full
into his pocket. Thinking back, perhaps she’d wanted to spare him the embarrassment.
She’d stepped over to him, relieved him of his drink, and tossed the whole of it down her throat without
so much as a sip to gauge it.
Your sleeves shall be crimped and even. Your hem shall be free of stray threads. Every hint of lace shall
be sparkling white.
That vile liquid had been the strongest of Tom’s collection. It had taken all Missy’s aplomb to remain
upright and charming as the fire surged into all her limbs, then her brain and her lips, and then lit her
cheeks like twin suns rising on a winter morning.
But she’d held her composure and had reigned in her laughter at their gapes. And for one glorious,
memorable evening, the matron’s voice had been silent.
You shall move to reveal not ankle nor wrist nor neck lest the client bid you or take the initiative himself.
Should your client wish you to surrender to his advances, then do so. Should he wish you to resist, do so.
The glass was full again. She started in on it without delay.
Sherwood stood empty. Heckler had taken watch at the lift with a pair of street urchins Oliver held
sometimes in his employ. The rest of the crew were likely rotting in the downstreets by now, and Oliver
with them.
She swallowed, and examined the amber liquid as it caught and mutated the light of the single oil lamp.
Always remember that your client has paid for you. I expect that he should come away satisfied and that
he should return to my house when the mood next strikes him. I expect to be spoken of highly in the
circles. A lady has only her reputation, after all.
More brandy scalded her throat. Since that third night at Sherwood, she had made alcohol her daily
tonic, to keep the Matron Gisella silent.
She poured the brandy onto the floor, for tonight it had lost its power.
A good lady doesn’t cry. Only if the client wants you to cry shall you permit yourself. Oh, don’t worry
yourselves; he will make it amply clear.
Gisella was lecturing from some long-ago memory. Missy had heard the speech dozens of times and
remembered it perfectly: always the same wording, the same sharp gestures, and the same piercing glare.
She stomped one foot into the puddle of liquor. Droplets splattered her dress and shoes.
You wouldn’t approve of this at all, would you, Witch?
My, my, isn’t someone testy? Have you a reason for throwing a tantrum like a child of six?
Missy refilled the glass. She sipped it, realising suddenly how light-headed she was.
What if they didn’t come back? What if Bailey’s mad crusade left them all corpses and Sherwood
stayed this empty forever?
Then you will come back to me, my little one. When you were brought to me, you were coated in dirt
and crawled on your hands and knees. You were born a dog, little girl, by God’s hand. That kind of filth
never truly comes clean.
She felt oily inside and out with perspiration. It was too cruel to contemplate, that her new life should be
wrested from her after three short months. Oliver had not even asked where she came from or what she
had done before. Nor would he, or any of them. Here she had found men who did not judge her, and a
place to rest her feet.
Her throat cringed as the brandy scorched it again and she refused to think on such things any further.
A rap sounded at the door.
Oliver had told her never to answer that door. One of the men should always do it and even they should
always be armed. The caller was to be checked by peeking from the second-storey windows, and the
door traps released only if it proved to be one of the neighbourhood folk.
Well, Oliver wasn’t there, and she had a gun. Even if things became dangerous, she could defend
herself. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t done so before.
Gisella had been silent that night as well.
She drained her glass and tottered to her feet. The world spun. She snatched the lamp from the card
table and her handbag from the chair. She politely forced the doorjamb aside and staggered into the hall.
The rap came again.
“Hold on,” she cried, though it may not have emerged so eloquently.
Each stair smacked heavily against her feet as she descended. The railing pressed inappropriately into
her side.
The rap sounded again, suddenly pounding against her ears like thunder.
“You, sir,” she said accusingly to the door, “have no manner of patience at all.”
Her fingers found the right switches, pulled the right chords. The deafening clicks told her Heckler’s
traps had been withdrawn. She grasped the handle and yanked the door wide.
A face stepped out of her nightmares and into the foyer.
“Oh, mother of mercy!” The handbag fell from her fingers. The lamp tipped and burned her hand with its
hot glass.
“Heh. I see you remember me.”
Her knees buckled like so much wet cloth and she crashed to the ground on her tailbone. The lamp
bounced on the floor and rolled away.It can’t be real, she screamed.He can’t be here.
The intruder righted the lamp with a deft flick of his cane.
“Gisella was distraught when you left, Michelle. Even my considerable powers of persuasion were barely
enough to keep her from murdering you.”
The man closed the door.
“Imagine my surprise to find you here, of all places, in the lair of my recent rival. The Lord does indeed
move in mysterious ways. Don’t you agree?”
A hobgoblin face beneath a fur top hat. Gnarled bone-white clawed fingers reaching from a black coat
as large as the night sky. All the girls knew him, all had felt his nails tearing at them, heard his voice
commanding them. Gisella rendered them helpless with her potions and thenhe came in fevered dreams, a
visage of terror half remembered upon waking.
Sweat slicked her hands. The floor tilted and rolled as she scrambled for the bag, and for the cool,
comforting lump of steel inside. Suddenly he was in front of her, squatting. He jammed a handkerchief
over her face and a jolting ozone stench blasted up her nose.
“The yellow man calls thisbeng lie, my dear. It is Gisella’s favourite, as I recall.”
Her nails raked over the handbag’s edges, spinning it towards her. Her legs and fingers began to twitch,
then to numb.
“Gisella needed my help to train her little whores, you see,” said the man. “You were one of my earlier
attempts, as I recall. Probably, there is no one to blame but myself for your present waywardness, but I
was new to this then. One learns, doesn’t one, child?”
The clasp of the handbag fell apart beneath her fingernails and the bag yawned wide. Her fingers snaked
inside, the motion in them dying one by one. The muscles in her back jerked and she collapsed, knocking
her head on the floor.
You didn’t think he would find you, you stupid girl? You came into the world dirty and vile and pretend
at decency. It is God’s will that you be found.
The edges of her vision swam with tears. The room swung like a pendulum. The man crouched like a
gargoyle next to her, reaching skeleton hands for her face.
“Gisella will give me a tongue-lashing, it’s true, but I’m afraid I shan’t be returning you to her just yet.”
His fingers pressed into the skin of her forehead and scalp. The contact burned and sent shoots of pain
deep into her head and neck.
“I had to look to the East for this process, you know,” he said. “It requires a certain exercise of the mind
and the energies, but it makes Mesmer and Braid into simpletons by comparison.”
His words blurred, one into the other, until they hissed and crackled together. Missy slipped deep down
into a warm pool of thick liquid. His voice came to her in flickers of dream thought, as flashes of hot and
cold and terror.
“Listen, now, little one. Follow carefully my every instruction. You will not remember any of this until I
command you. When I do so, you will answer all of my questions truthfully and without evasion. You are
to remain with Oliver Sumner. Do as he asks, and act as you always have. Remember all you see and
hear.”
A pause. Mind distant across expanse. No movement.
Scared cleared his throat.
“My dear, I want you to discover why the Great Mother finds Oliver Sumner so attractive.”
Missy vomited on herself. She choked, spat, sat up.
The foyer was empty. A single lamp lit the dark from its place on the floor some three feet away.
Oh, goodness. The mess! My lord, the smell!
She scrambled to her feet, gasping in horror at the hideous stain on her blouse. She snatched the lamp
and fled to the bathroom. She filled the washbasin with water from the room’s iron bathtub, then stripped off her shirt and submerged it.
If you put your coat on and run straight home, they’ll never know. Just bundle the shirt and take it in a
basket—surely they keep a basket somewhere.
Filth follows you like a hungry dog, dirty girl.
Shut up, you shrew.
Missy held the lamp up and surveyed herself in the mirror. Her hair had fallen out of its tight bun; her
lip-stain had run down the length of her chin.
“Not right at all,” she murmured.
She screamed and jumped back, nearly dropping the lamp. She’d seen…No, it couldn’t have…But it
had been there…an ogre’s face grinning at her from the mirror.
It wasn’t him. He wasn’t here.
His voice whispered to her, from far away or from inside her own ears, she could not tell.
“Tick, tick, tick.”
At the first sound Oliver unhitched the express rifle and lugged it into his arms. At the second he had it
butt to shoulder ready to fire.
Damn it, this was not just a product of his imagination. Something had been stalking him for the past
hour.
He didn’t even know where he was. He thought he was heading northeast, though after the long,
confusing slide down to street level, he might have gone any which way. His hip-mounted lantern
provided only enough illumination to see three strides around him. He probably stood out like a
lighthouse down here, though he’d rather that than be in complete dark.
The sound came again: a heavy crunch, a shifting of debris out in the ruined buildings of Old
Whitechapel. His bandaged hand twitched on the stock and the single unwrapped finger on the trigger.
When the streak of white blasted into the light he’d let the shot off before he even had time to register it.
The heavy slug escaped into parts unknown, kicking Oliver nearly off his feet with the recoil. He
stumbled and brought his rifle to bear on the object approaching him.
It was a clickrat. Moving slower now, it tottered forward on its six legs, maw opening and closing in
random rhythm. The noise had been far too loud and slow to be from a clickrat, and that left one
plausible alternative.
He’d hoped to catch up with Bailey’s crew before the hounds found him. It should not have been
difficult to spot seven lamplights in absolute dark. Most of the buildings of Old Whitechapel had long
since decayed into lumps of sodden debris, so the terrain was mostly clear, but multiple trips to the tops
of said mounds had garnered him nothing but more black all around.
And probably brought me to the attention of every whelp creature down here. Damned foolish.
The clickrat ticked a few steps closer. It sat back on its stubby tail and wailed a low buzzing sound, then
tilted its head and regarded him in a pose resembling curiosity.
“Jeremy Longshore!” Oliver said. The clickrat bounced back to its legs and scuttled up next to his shoe.
Oliver smiled down at him. “You clever little bastard. You must mean Phin and Tom aren’t too far.Tom!
”
His voice echoed away into the dark. A growl like glass being ground down reverberated back to him.
Stupid.Oliver swung the express rifle back into position and began scanning the shadows as much as his
fogged goggles would permit.
Jeremy Longshore hopped a foot forward and bobbed his nose in a direction to Oliver’s left. Oliver
swiveled to face the rifle that way, just as a black and silver shape broke the perimeter of the lamplight.
He put a bullet into its shoulder. The hound twitched, but did not back off.
Jeremy Longshore leapt forth and confronted the creature, balancing on tail and two rear legs and
clicking into its face. Oliver shot the hound again, this time in the flank as it reared back to take stock of
its second opponent. The impact jerked it to the side, but it barely seemed to notice, its attention fixed on
Jeremy Longshore.
Oliver swept away the gun smoke with his left hand, keeping unsteady aim on the hound as it circled
right, its sleek muzzle poking into the clickrat’s striking range. Jeremy Longshore stood his ground,
emitting an unceasing string of clicks in patternless rhythm. Oliver orbited the clickrat as well, keeping it
between him and the hound.
The thing would eventually figure out that Jeremy was bluffing and crush him. Could Jeremy keep its
attention if he bolted? Oliver had no delusions about outrunning it if it chased him.
The hound paused and dipped its head. From deep inside its silvery, steel-sheathed ribs, Oliver heard a
ticking—like someone tapping a wooden spoon on a large pot. After a few moments of overlap, they
began to tick one to the other, then the other to the one. Back and forth: a conversation.
Oliver squinted hard at the pair. For an instant, the hound seemed to have a human face, indistinct and
blurred, like a botched daguerreotype. The face tilted and changed, shifting into and out of expressions
that Oliver could not quite identify. Jeremy, as well, took on an aspect far more human seeming. It was
something in his bearing, in the gestures made with his front two legs.
The conversation ended, and for a long moment the two stared at each other. Then Jeremy dropped to
all six legs again, and the hound turned and slunk out of the light. Jeremy Longshore ticked a few times
and scuttled back over to settle beside Oliver’s shoe.
Oliver remained perfectly still until the hound’s receding footsteps passed into the distance. Then he
lowered his rifle and breathed.
“You’re a handy fellow,” Oliver said. Jeremy clicked. “Remind me to stop thinking that Tom is crazy.”
Oliver considered the mechanical animal winding around his feet. Tom hadn’t had time to train the thing
to do what it had just done. Jeremy himself was different from his kin.
“Can you lead me to Phin and Tom?” Oliver asked, thinking it was worth an attempt.
Jeremy clicked and buzzed, then started off at a fair clip into the darkness.
“Slow down!” Oliver called, and limped after.
The creature led him on a chase past tumbled beams, ruined buildings, and pits of dank slime. The rotted
underworld passed through the arc of his lamp, fading into view from illuminated mist and seeping back
into the absolute shadow of Shadwell Tower that flanked him and loomed always over his shoulder.
He scrambled along as best he could, hobbling on his ankle as the pain swelled with each step. He called
out again and again for Jeremy to hold back, but the little creature tore ahead, hell-bent on whatever goal
it had chosen. It escaped the range of his lamplight as they entered what might have once been a public
square; the constant jumble of beams, debris, and upturned chunks of roadway gave way to an unbroken
succession of tightly fitted bricks.
The pace wore on Oliver’s lungs. Even through the mask, the air was coarse and heavy with
particulates. The heat, unnatural even for Whitechapel, provoked an unending sweat that beaded and ran
down his neck, slick and sticky in the oily air.
Panting, Oliver finally halted the mad dash. Holding his breath and his nose, he carefully lifted the mask
and splashed some water in his mouth. It tasted of ash, but calmed for a moment the tickle in his throat
and the rampant thirst drying out his lips and tongue.
Out in the dark, the skittering of clickrat legs faded.
No use trying to follow now.
He set himself and his rifle gingerly down on the brick and rubbed at his ankle. He scanned his
surroundings and made out nothing beyond the flickering lamplight but for a far-off glow. It might have
been a hint of the bright lights of Aldgate.
If so, then that way was northwest, where Bailey’s crew would be heading.And since I couldn’t possibly
trace my way back to the stair…
Oliver wiped his goggles, chewed a piece of jerked beef, and put some more oil in his lantern. After a
few minutes’ rest, he struggled back to his feet and began walking. For twenty or so steps the bricks
rolled beneath his feet, unchanging. Then he came to a low wall of concrete, topped with a twisted and
rusted wrought-iron fence: too tall and too uneven to climb. He unhooked the lantern from his belt and
lifted it up. The light cast dancing doppelgangers of the fence on the wall beyond. Something twisted and
fled as the light struck it.
I hope that was Jeremy,Oliver thought, knowing it wasn’t.
Oliver tilted the light farther back, revealing the façade of a building reaching high above the fence’s top.
Mortar had worn away between the blocks used to build it, leaving deep black slashes on its pale
surface.
A sudden scuffing sounded from behind the fence. Oliver hefted his rifle to face forward in one hand,
then leaned into the fence and panned his lamp back and forth. The gap between the wall and the building
seemed devoid of anything, including debris. A sparkle caught his eye at the far right of the lantern’s light.
Red?He took a few strides down the wall to the right.
Red and yellow and purple and blue, a jumble of colours glowing in the flickering light. It resolved itself
into the shape of a stained-glass window.
It’s a church,he realised, then smirked.A white chapel.
He panned his lantern upwards, revealing an arched top to the window, a peaked roof, and hints of a
steeple at the light’s farthest edge. This was not a church as he knew them, as little decrepit buildings
constructed from scrap and tolerated by the cloaks so long as they stayed that way. No, this church was
a magnificent structure, designed to stand out from the city around it, bold and proud. It was a piece of
that London spirit that Hews and Bailey always went on about. Oliver felt a welling of uncomfortable
emotion: some mixture of pride, longing, shame. What was he supposed to feel at this sight? London
wasn’t his city. England wasn’t his home.
Maybe it could be.
When the clacks sounded behind him he knew it was already too late to run. He hooked his lantern to
his belt again and wrapped both hands around the express rifle. He took a deep breath, held it, let it go.
Then he turned.
Faces: brass eyes, steel teeth, iron bones, and long snouts. Shapes: canine and simian, some hunched
parodies of human, even sporting a few last remnants of flesh and hair. Not a sound from any of them,
nor breath disturbing the air.
Oliver’s own breath and heartbeat suddenly became thunderous.
The circle was tight against the wall on either side. He counted seven hounds, maybe two dozen clickrats
of varying composition, a legion of Frankensteins behind that had once been men, fading shadow over
shadow to the edge of the light. None of the clickrats sported the silver colour of Jeremy Longshore.
He fitted his bandaged hand around the stock and curled one finger on the trigger. The barrel shook
wildly.Hold together. You’ve been in worse spots than this—remember the battle in Marlow Square?
Only that had been Boiler Men, and Boiler Men were slow. One might run away.
Oliver risked a glance over his shoulder. The fence might be scalable, if he abandoned his pack and his
rifle.
The dogs could leap it, or might simply bite through. No good.
Oliver skipped his eyes back to his grim audience. There had to be a route of escape. He noted two
gaps wide enough to run through, assuming the hounds held still. He could maybe hold them off with the
rifle…
All of them? With the clickrats and…those ghastly things?
His breath began coming in staccato pulses. There had to be something else. Could he toss them some
meat maybe? Or…
One bloody stick of dynamite.
With numbing slowness he shouldered out of his pack and slipped it to the ground. He knelt and reached
inside. The dynamite slipped into his hand as if it had been waiting for him. The matchbox he clasped
between two fingertips.
His eyes never left the horde around him. The snouts and muzzles and bared skull teeth began to shift,
taking on more human features. They became rounder and softer, a shifting image of translucent flesh
over the metal beneath, like a trick of the smoke, a trick of the light, the unhinging of a tired mind. A chill
touched the air.
Hold together,he thought, repeating it like a manta.
Oliver set the butt of the rifle on the ground and leaned the barrel against his leg. With his left hand, he
slid the matchbox open, then plucked a match out with his right.
One toss. How many could he catch in the blast?
The metallic heads continued their stares unbroken. The phantom images dipped as one, as if in prayer.
The air grew cold.
Oliver laid the match head against the edge of the box.
A wind cut across the square. Yellow-green mist began collecting in the empty space between Oliver
and the hounds. It lapped at the stones and the feet of the creatures, seeping into cracks and between
toes and claws. Oliver stayed the match, retreating back against the fence. The yellow mist, blackening as
it swept the brick, began a steady undulating pulse, propelling itself along the stones like an inchworm.
The ground began to boil.
Oliver stuffed the dynamite in his pocket and leapt for the fence. His injured hand landed on a
rough-edged slat of iron that tore into the bandages. He wrapped his other arm into a tangle of bent
crossbars and held himself up by the sheer strength of fright. His legs kicked for purchase, scuffing the
edge of the low wall.
Below, the square suddenly became a seething lake of black-yellow pus. Bubbles churned to its surface
and burst, spraying up into the air. Tendrils of yellow mist snaked up beside Oliver’s face, then swept
over him with a rank odour of decay. They got in his nose, his throat, his ears.
And something crashed through into his mind.
Not this time, by God!Oliver released one hand and grabbed for the dynamite, and at once the world
evaporated.
He was hanging above an endless sea of filth: blood mixed with oils, ashes, white and yellow ichors, and
pus. Above loomed a sky of towering grey fingers, their steel ends lancing into the ocean. Bodies swam
the seas, drowning, choking, flailing, bloated and pustulant.
Oliver hung from nothing, having lost all perception of his body. He clawed with no hands at the iron
fence he knew to be there.
A figure came walking across the ocean, stumbling over the roiling bubbles. He wore an oversized long
coat, speckled with additional pockets, which the spurting filth did not seem to touch. He fixed Oliver
with startling blue eyes.
“You’re Oliver Sumner,” he said.
Oliver clung to the invisible fence, still trying to secure his feet.
Who’s asking?
“My name is Aaron,” he said. “Aaron Bolden.”
Could I trouble you for some assistance?
His slight smile flattened. “I’m not sure how.”
Perfect.Oliver gave up on his fingers and tried to will himself to stay above the frothing liquid.You’re the
Aaron, aren’t you? You know, Hews and Bailey speak very highly of you.
“For watching, perhaps; for intelligence. I haven’t had much luck with action, I’m afraid.”
Hews mentioned that you had certain faculties of sight.
“And so I do.”
What do you see?
“Do I see you hanging off a fence, you mean? Yes, you’re there.”
With a mental sigh, Oliver concentrated on loosening his grip.
“No, no. Don’t drop down,” Aaron said hastily. “It isn’t real, but it may still harm you.”
How do you know that?
“I…” A sudden jolt of pain stole across the man’s face. “Grandfather Clock…hurt me. The noise wasn’t
real, not in the auditory sense, but it was still…I remember my bones breaking.”
Oliver looked up and down the man’s limbs. Aaron followed his gaze.
“It’s strange, I know, that they’re intact now. Though I’m not quite dead and may thus retain a bit of
myself.”
Bailey said they’d hooked you to the Chimney.
Aaron’s hands began to tremble.
“I…true…though I…” He inhaled, still shaking. “I should not be alive. A thousand times I should not be
alive.”
You seem quite alive to me.
The small smile returned.
“A conclusion drawn from observation. I suppose I can accept that.”
Oliver looked around, seeing no visible means of escape. He realised with some relief that his sense of
smell did not appear to be working, nor could he feel fatigue in his clinging arm, nor nausea in his gut from
the vile sights. The sloshing and moaning of the ocean’s prisoners echoed undiminished by distance.
Where are we, Aaron?
“We are inside his mind.”
Whose mind?
“The third one,” he said. “Not the Lord, not the Lady. Someone else.”
I would hope I heard you wrongly.
“Except that you heard perfectly.”
Aaron began to pace beneath Oliver.
“I have gathered through my limited observation of him that he is an exile of sorts. He hates the Lord and
Lady so powerfully…” Aaron’s eyes flickered almost closed. He tilted his head as if craning to hear a
sound Oliver couldn’t hear. “They’ve done something to him, I think, to hurt him, to cause him pain.
That’s what all this is.” He swept his arm to indicate the sea. “His pain.”
And those?Oliver said, casting his glance at the moaning souls slipping between the waves.
“They are those of us who have been claimed by the downstreets, and the machine disease.”
You know that?
“He…showed me.”
Has he claimed you as well, then?
The man’s face fell. “I don’t know.”
Oliver thought for a moment as Aaron stood caught in his melancholy.
Would he help us, do you think, Aaron?
“Help us? This is not some Titan that can be bribed.”
You said he hates the Lord and Lady. Well, if Bailey does his job, we will have what we need to kill Grandfather Clock, but we may need help with Mama Engine. We haven’t even begun to look at how to
deal with her.
Aaron hunched his shoulders and glanced out across the ocean. “He hatesus too, Oliver.”
Then we’ll have to deal with him as well, won’t we?
Aaron sucked in a breath. “He could very well have heard that.”
Talk to him. Offer him an…an agreement. Between him and myself. Let him know we have common
enemies.
“Are you certain about that?”
No. It may turn out to be the most fool thing I’ve ever attempted, but it’s prudent to keep your doors
open.
The cries of the damned hammered on Oliver’s ears. He struggled to keep his concentration amidst
rising panic.
At last, Aaron nodded; then his eyelids began to flicker again. Oliver hung for an endless few minutes as
his impromptu companion performed whatever inward gyrations the contact required. Doubt worried at
him—What are you thinking, allying with this horror?—but he quashed it with logic: one of these unholy
creatures was easier to deal with than three. That made sense, didn’t it?
Aaron jerked and came back to himself.
So? What’s the word?
Aaron shook his head. “I can’t tell. I know he understood.” Aaron took a deep breath, rubbed his
abdomen absently with one palm. “But this doesn’t feel right. What if he turns on us after…”
And suddenly Oliver was hanging from a fence, with his left arm cramping and a stick of dynamite in his
right hand.
The ground rushed up to meet him. He landed squarely on the already-injured ankle, toppled forward,
and slammed cheek first into the brick. His stomach clenched and he barely had time to tear the mask off
his face before yellow and white vomit surged up and out. After that, the scalding air rushed in and he
hacked up more vileness. Vomit be damned, he slapped the mask back over his mouth and took long
breaths until his lungs settled back from convulsions to mere searing discomfort.
Bugger.
He pushed himself up and leaned heavily on the wall. His pack and rifle lay where he’d left them. The
lamplight guttered out, disturbed by its rough treatment. A few minutes of exhausting struggle found a
match struck and the flame reluctantly wiggling back to life.
A silver, eyeless snout regarded him from just past his shoes.
“Jeremy?” Oliver said.
The rat shook its head.
“Aaron?”
Jeremy ducked his head and clicked backwards and sideways without turning. Oliver lifted his gaze
slightly and found the glinting brass eyes of his choir staring back. They’d stepped off to the sides. A
clear path spread in front of him, out into the dark.
Jeremy backed some more and ticked three times.
“Jesus. Give me a minute.”
Oliver took a pull from his rapidly emptying water flask and fixed his mask. Then, with aching joints and
muscles, he collected his gear and his rifle and pushed himself to his feet. He kept the dynamite and the
matches in his pocket.
Jeremy turned and scuttled away. Oliver followed at a slow limp. When he’d gone twenty feet he heard
noise and turned.
Ticker hounds and clickrats and half-human Frankensteins gathered behind him. He stepped forward
and they followed. He started again at a steady pace, and they trailed behind him like a herd of
cattle…or a pack of wolves.
Guess we know his answer, eh, Aaron?
Albright had fallen with a bullet in his throat.
Kinney had died screaming with a hound tearing into his belly.
Sims had crawled nearly thirty yards with a severed arm before the Boiler Men cooked him like a pig
with their copper rods.
Phineas had just vanished, and he’d last seen Thomas Moore assaulting a Boiler Man with his bare
hands.
And who had run away and hid himself in the shadows of old Mile End Road?
Bailey crouched behind a piece of rotted and soggy wall, once the façade of a building, and clutched his
rifle to his chest. It was an old Enfield from his days in the army, made in ’41, and it had seen him through
worse snags than this.
Worse than metal beasts impervious to bullets at war with metal men equally impervious?
He silenced his own thoughts to better hear the movements of the enemy.
The Boiler Men had been waiting right at the base of the rusted stair. Phineas Macrae had been the first
to spot them. They might have been waiting for hours, not needing air or rest or water. Luck was with the
queen’s agents, however, as the Ironboys were some ways off and facing away from the stair, as if
waiting for someone to return to it. Bailey had ordered retreat, hoping to slip away and circle around outside their field of vision.
Then the dogs had come at them, tearing out of old shop doors and from beneath the uneven flagstones
of the street. Nothing Bailey’s crew had thrown at them had done anything to slow them down. Then the
Boiler Men had caught them, charging impassively into the fray and killing everything in sight with Atlas
rifles firing as fast as Maxim guns and copper lightning rods lancing through the perpetual night. At some
point Bailey had ordered retreat and fled.
There had been noise, then silence. Now there was only the thudding footfalls of the baron’s soldiers
patrolling the perimeter of the street, and the shuffle of their guns poking into cracks and beneath rubble.
Bailey held one lapel of his vest over his mouth and sucked a breath. His mask had vanished in the
fighting, along with his lantern and half his ammunition. He squatted, sweating, and fiercely willed himself
not to cough.
He wished for a moment he was back in India, where the heat was not so oppressive and the enemy
died like men aught to. But Boiler Men did nothing like normal men. Even their movements were strange,
executed with the confident, measured precision of creatures who knew themselves to be invincible.
A foot fell on the other side of the wall. Time to move on.
Bailey sucked one last burning lungful of air, blinked the soot from his eyes, and crept backwards from
his place of concealment. The old shop’s floor had rotted and fallen through, and had formed a shallow
crater into which Bailey retreated. He slipped silently into a viscous pool at the bottom, cursing the lack
of light.
The Boiler Men seemed to have no need for illumination, and thus hid their movements. Worse, Bailey
could not see far enough through the smoke to determine how visible he might be. Did the sides of this
hole provide any cover at all?
He exhaled his held breath quietly and drew another through his lapel. The Boiler Men could not be
stopped with a single Enfield rifle. It would be at least another two or three hours trekking though these
depths to reach the base of Aldgate Tower. Bailey had no mask, no eye protection, no water, no food,
and thirty rounds of ammunition that were useless against such adversaries anyway.
But the tape had to be retrieved. No matter the cost, those horrid godlings of Whitechapel had to be
dealt with.
“Praise to England,” he muttered to himself. “God save the queen.”
The oily liquid moved.
Tentacles shot out of the pool at the base of the hole, entangling his legs with terrible speed. In an instant
the faithful Enfield was readied and a shot plunged into the opaque waters. Whatever lay beneath
spasmed with the impact. The tentacles contracted, shredding though Bailey’s trousers with serrated
metal edges. The sting of sliced skin shot up through his spine, followed by the blazing fire of slime in the
wounds. A second shot shattered the water’s surface, sending up bits of metal and gore. The tentacles
shuddered and fell limp back into the pool. Bailey staggered from the water, collapsing on the bank of the
hole.
A ness. Damn it—how could he have been so careless? He tested one leg to see if there was any tendon damage.Flesh, mostly. Good. First order is to get out of this blasted hole.
He planted the butt of his rifle in the muck and pushed himself up.
A shot rang out, and a portion of Bailey’s arm exploded.
Another, and a force like a charging elephant bore him to the ground, smothering his face in the clinging
mud. White pain flared in his back and abdomen.
His gasp drew in the unfiltered razor smoke of the downstreets. Choking, he clawed at the slick, cold
earth and cursed every machine built since the dawn of history.
The ground shook with the approach of iron boots.