Alice (6 page)

“Not yet,” she said, watching the activity under the window. A grubby-looking girl of twelve or thirteen approached a young man smoking a cigarette. They talked for a moment; then the girl took the man’s hand and led him away to the shadows. Alice turned away, feeling sick to her stomach.

The tavern keeper and his wife seemed all right, but she couldn’t get rid of the feeling that they weren’t safe here. “Hatch, don’t you think there’s something wrong?”

“No,” he said, pulling his cap low over his eyes. A moment later his breathing was deep and even.

He always slept like that, Alice thought. He would be wide awake and talking to her through the mouse hole, and then suddenly the talking would cease and she’d hear the sound of his breath, smooth and regular. Except when the Jabberwock was awake. When the Jabberwock was awake he couldn’t sleep at all.

There was a soft knock at the door, and Alice remembered the landlady was going to bring them some pies.
But it might not be her,
she thought. She pulled the knife from her pocket and kept it low against her thigh as she opened the door a small crack.

The tavern keeper’s wife stood there, holding a tray covered with a piece of flour sacking. She expressed no surprise at Alice’s caution. “Pies,” she said.

Alice nodded, tucking the knife back in her jacket before opening the door farther. She took the tray from the lady, murmuring, “Thanks.”

The woman peered over Alice’s shoulder at the sleeping Hatcher. “That your man?”

“Yes,” Alice said without thinking. Then her eyes widened in terror, because she was supposed to be a boy.

The woman shook her head. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

“How did you know?” Alice asked, her voice low.

She was worried that Hatcher might not be completely asleep, that he may have overheard. If he had, there was no telling what he might do. He could decide to pay the keeper and his wife to keep their mouths shut. Or he might think killing them was easiest. Hatcher was not easy to predict. That fact was clear after his actions with the guards. Alice didn’t want to leave a trail of bodies behind them all the way to Cheshire’s place. If anyone
were
following them, the bodies would be better than bread crumbs.

“I was like you, once,” she said, her eyes full of understanding. “My Harry saved me, and kept me safe all these years. You can trust us.”

There was a history in those few sentences, the story of a girl who’d been taken and used, like Alice. Only Alice didn’t remember who had saved her from her captor. She might have had help. She might have saved herself. The feeling of a knife in flesh had felt so familiar. Still, Hatcher had rescued her from the asylum, and from the traders who would have taken her the moment she was free from there.

“I don’t think others will know what you are, unless they’re looking for a girl,” the woman went on. “But they won’t find a girl here.”

Alice met her eyes, and a shared understanding passed between them. “Thank you . . .” she said, her voice trailing off into a question.

“Nell,” the woman said.

“Thank you, Nell,” Alice said.

“Now, you eat up those pies,” Nell said. “I’ve got the sense you have some traveling ahead of you. Are you running from Mr. Carpenter?”

Alice shook her head. “He told your husband true. We don’t know Mr. Carpenter.”

Nell wisely did not ask whom they had escaped or where they were heading. She nodded and went away down the stairs.

Alice sat on the floor with the tray in her lap and pulled off the sacking. She’d half expected something greasy and half-cooked, automatically assuming that the quality of food would not be so remarkable in this part of the City.

But the pies she uncovered smelled heavenly, and the pastry that wrapped them was golden brown and flaking, which meant Nell used lots of butter in them. Alice knew that because as a child she’d spent many an afternoon in the kitchen, watching Cook magically turning flour and water and butter and a little sugar and salt into delicious pies.

She bit into the crust, savoring the melting buttery taste on her tongue. The pie was stuffed with meat and gravy and potatoes, the smell of it taking her back again, until she was just four or five years old, perched on a chair eating a bun while Cook stirred the pot at the stove.

She finished the pie before she knew it, and looked longingly at the second one on the tray before wrapping it in the piece of sacking and tucking it in her jacket pocket. Hatcher would want it when he woke.

Alice knew she should sleep, knew that Hatcher would push the pace when night fell. She was eager to escape Mr. Carpenter’s territory. The uneasy feeling stayed with her, growing despite Nell’s assurances that they were safe. Something was coming. Alice was sure of it.

But Hatch is a Seer, and he doesn’t think anything is wrong,
she thought. It was just nerves. There had been nothing except stress and danger since they’d emerged from the poisoned river, and now that they were a few moments away from that danger, she couldn’t shake it.

“Sleep, little butterfly,” she whispered, pulling her jacket close around her and crossing her arms. The cap tilted low over her eyes, like Hatcher’s, but she did not lie down. She was under the window and across from the door, feeling that if something came through either opening she would know immediately.

And what’s coming through the window, you nit?
she thought. She’d noted herself that it was too small for any but a child to fit through.

“Sleep, little butterfly,” she repeated, and closed her eyes, humming the tune softly.

She did not expect to fall asleep, but she must have, for she woke later with Hatcher’s hand on her arm, his face close to hers in the darkness. The darkness had a different quality, the dark of falling night. They must have slept all day, or at least Alice had, and Hatcher allowed it. She could just make out the finger over his lips, silently telling her to stay quiet. Alice shook off the dream that clung to the edges of her brain, something about cake. She’d eaten the cake and gotten very tall, so tall she’d filled up the room.

Hatcher moved away from her, tiptoeing to the door. The pack was already slung over his shoulder and the axe in his hand. Alice slowly came to her feet and followed him, stepping carefully so the floor would not creak, until she was at his shoulder. Now she could hear the sounds of struggle downstairs, glass breaking, benches falling over. Hatcher turned the knob on the door and eased it open a tiny crack, just enough to peer over the balcony and down into the tavern room.

There were five men there, all of them wiry with muscle and wielding knives. There were two other men near their feet, who looked like they might have been customers. They would not be customers any longer. Both of the men had slashed throats.

The attackers appeared to be untouched. They also seemed to be better kept than the sentries Alice and Hatcher killed earlier. Their faces were clean, as were their clothes. They were all dressed in a kind of uniform, blue coats and grey pants and black bowler hats.

The intruders formed a loose half circle around Harry, who stood in front of Nell and Dolly, his hands curled in fists. Nell had her arm around the girl, who was shaking with terror, her mouth open in a silent scream. There was no one else visible. Alice assumed that the other patrons had fled.

She put her mouth close to Hatcher’s ear, speaking so low only a mouse could hear. “Do you think they’re from Mr. Carpenter? Looking for us?”

Hatcher shook his head once—
No
—and then cupped his hand over his ear to indicate they should listen.

The man in the middle of the group spoke. He didn’t look different from the rest of the men, but he had clearly been designated the leader.

“The Walrus is taking over this street, and as you can see,” the man said, nudging one of the bloody corpses with the toe of his boot, “the terms of your agreement may be different from your terms with Mr. Carpenter.”

Alice took an instant dislike to this man. It wasn’t the posturing and bullying—she’d seen that already, and would see it again—but the oily
smugness
of his tone made her back teeth grind.

Someone should teach him a lesson,
she thought, and she felt the handle of her knife under her hand.

“I pay Mr. Carpenter thirty percent of the takings, plus the rent,” Harry said. “Anything more and we won’t be able to eat, nor pay the girl wages.”

“Thirty percent,” the man said, his tone musing. “Well, that is quite generous of Mr. Carpenter. Unfortunately the Walrus is not quite so generous. Forty percent is where he starts, and your books will be checked by Allan here every week.”

He gestured toward the man next to him, who did not look like he knew very much about figures, in Alice’s opinion. But perhaps that blank snake’s look was what the Walrus wanted in a numberchecker.

“Forty percent?” Harry said, his voice hoarse with outrage. “I might as well close up shop and leave. We’ve barely enough to get by as it is.”

The leader of the little gang sidled forward, touching the tip of his knife with a finger. He looked at Harry, the position of the knife suddenly more purposeful, and Alice thought that blade would slide right between Harry’s ribs smooth as a spoon through jam.

“I don’t think it will be so difficult for you to make forty percent,” the man said, and pointed the knife toward Nell and Dolly. “Especially since the two of them will be coming with us, and that will be two less mouths for you to concern yourself with.”

Dolly did scream then, a howl of fear that chilled Alice to the marrow of her bones. “No! No! I won’t go to the Walrus, I won’t! He’ll eat me!”

CHAPTER
6

“That’ll do,” Hatcher said, and threw the door open.

Alice watched in astonishment as he leapt over the rail, his axe in his hand. By the time she collected her wits he had already killed the two men closest to the stairs.

Harry took advantage of Hatcher’s surprise appearance and swung a meaty fist at the leader. The man was likely too fast for Harry under normal circumstances, but the tavern keeper managed to land a blow hard enough to make the man’s nose crack.

The leader snarled as blood gushed over his mouth, slashing at Harry with the wicked-looking blade. Alice wouldn’t have credited the big man with speed but he avoided the slash easily, punching at the leader again. The smaller man avoided Harry’s blows. The two of them settled into a kind of dance, each one striking, missing, settling back to try again.

Alice hurried down the stairs, her knife out. Hatcher appeared to have the other two under control. These men were considerably more skilled than the thugs that Hatcher dispatched the night before, but a glance told her that Hatcher could manage them. One of the attackers already sported a large gash in his left shoulder from Hatcher’s axe. His face was white and Alice didn’t think he would last much longer.

Nell and Dolly had scampered away from the fighting, toward the stairs. Dolly still screamed, though Nell shook and shushed her, trying to keep the attention of their attackers away. Alice pushed around them, one goal in mind, and Harry made that goal much easier by keeping the leader’s attention on him and his back to Alice.

She jammed the knife into the leader’s back with so much conviction that the blade disappeared up to the hilt. It wasn’t quite the same as pressing a knife into a soft and squishy part (
like eyes
) but her anger gave her strength she didn’t know she had.
Eyes? Where had that come from?

He stilled for a moment; then his arms flailed out, clawing for the thing that was stuck inside him. Harry stepped in and punched the man one last time. He caromed backward into Alice and she fell over an upturned bench. She scrambled to her feet again, hands curled and ready to fight, though she had no idea how she would defend herself without the knife. The leader crashed against the bench as well and spun to the floor, landing on his stomach, his legs kicking unnaturally.

Harry and Alice stared down at the twitching body of the leader for a moment. Dolly was still screaming.

Alice had missed Hatcher’s final blows but the other two men were also on the floor now. He wiped the blade of his axe on his coat—where, Alice noted, there was quite a stain building up— and crossed the room to Dolly and Nell. Nell backed away from him, her arm around Dolly pulling the girl with her. Alice couldn’t blame her. Hatcher was splattered in blood and his grey eyes were fierce and wild.

“Don’t you hurt her,” Nell said, and though the tavern keeper’s wife was putting on a brave face she didn’t seem very sure of Hatcher at the moment.

“I won’t,” Hatcher said, his voice impatient. He put his hand under Dolly’s chin and made her look at him. “That’s enough, now.”

Dolly’s mouth clapped shut and she gave him a small, frightened nod.

Hatcher looked around the room at the bodies—two the result of the attackers’ actions, the rest due to himself and Alice. “Do you know these lads?” he asked Harry.

Harry shook his head. He seemed somewhat deflated now that the fight was over. He and Nell shared a frightened glance. “They said they were from the Walrus.”

“And who is the Walrus?” Hatcher asked. Alice could tell by his tone that he was walking on the thin edge of patience.

“He eats them,” Dolly said, and her voice was small now, scared to be heard.

“Eats who?” Alice asked.

“The girls he likes best,” Dolly said. “He’s monstrous, they say, bigger than four men put together. And when a girl catches his eye his men bring her to him, and she’s never see again. ’Cos he takes them and eats them while he’s doing it. Eats them alive.”

The vision these words presented made Alice shudder. As if rape were not enough of a horrifying specter for those girls, now there was this—a man so hideous and evil that he ate his victims even as he defiled them. Could this be a true thing? Could the world really be this terrible? Every step Alice took made her long again for the safety of the hospital, a place where the only nightmares to burden her were familiar ones.

“That’s only a story, girl, and one you shouldn’t be repeating,” Nell said, though her eyes told Alice a different story.

“No, it’s true,” Dolly said, shaking her head. “Everyone knows.”

They all fell silent then, looking at one another, wondering whether it was real, that such a monster could exist. The specter of the Walrus seemed to fill the room, an enormous shadow casting a pall over their seeming victory.

Hatcher, ever practical, said, “No sense troubling ourselves over him now. We need to clean up this mess before any of his other men come looking for their friends.”

“We’ll have to wait a bit before we take them out,” Harry said. “It sounds as though the rest are having a bit of fun outside.”

Now that it was mentioned Alice heard the sounds of trouble in the streets—breaking glass and wood, rough shouting, the horrified screams of women. She started toward the door, but Hatcher grabbed her arm, shaking his head.

“We can’t just leave them out there,” she said. The screaming was hurting her brain, hurting her heart. Those girls were going to be taken to the Walrus.

“We’re not an army, Alice,” Hatcher said. “You and I, we can manage a few tough boys, but we can’t stop them all.”

“I don’t want to leave them,” Alice said. “All those girls. All those screaming girls.”

She remembered screaming herself, screaming until she was hoarse, screaming until blood ran and her scream mingled with his, a knife pushing into soft flesh (
into his eye, his blue-green eye
) and she ran, and she couldn’t scream anymore because she needed her breath to run.

Hatcher shook his head again, and his thumb wiped away the tears on her cheek. “We can’t save them all.”

“This place is terrible,” Alice whispered. “So terrible. Why did you take me away from the hospital? I was safe there, safe from all this.”

Hatcher pulled her close, put his arms around her. Her head rested against his chest and she heard the steady, reassuring thump of his heart. Harry and Nell and Dolly seemed to fall away, to disappear outside the little circle of Alice and Hatcher. “How could I ever love you properly with a wall between us for all time? I won’t let anything happen to you, Alice. I will kill you before I let the Walrus or anyone else take you away from me.”

She gave a choked laugh through her tears, a grim and not-so- merry sound. “Most men give a girl a ring, you know, not threaten them with murder.”

Hatcher put his hands on her face so he could look in her eyes. “A ring won’t save you from the men who would use you and break you. I don’t want you to suffer, Alice, not one moment. I won’t let them take you.”

She was staring in his eyes, so she saw when it happened. Saw the love and the fierce will disappear, and his eyes go blank. His arms fell away from her, limp at his side.

“No,” she said. “Not now. No.”

“He’s coming,” Hatcher said, and his voice was not like Hatcher’s at all. It was low, full of menace and glee.

“The blood is like honey to him. He’s coming.”

Hatcher slumped to the floor on his knees like a marionette with cut strings.

“What’s happening to him?” Dolly asked. “Who’s coming? The Walrus?”

Alice barely heard her. She crouched at Hatcher’s side, shaking him, tugging at his hand. “Not now, Hatch. Don’t let him in. Hatch, stay with me. Stay with me.”

He hadn’t fainted, but this frozen blankness was far worse. It was as if Hatcher could only feel the Jabberwocky, see what he was seeing.

The noise in the street stopped abruptly. Harry crossed the room to Dolly and Nell and put his arms around them both. Alice could see her breath in the air. The shadow of the Walrus had been replaced by something else, something infinitely more terrible.

There was a footstep on the walk outside, a deliberate ring of heels. The shape of a tall, thin man in a topcoat and hat drifted underneath the door, and as it passed they all exhaled the breath they’d been holding.

The footsteps stopped. The shadow under the door inched into view again. The knob began to turn.

Hatcher clutched Alice’s hand with a sudden bruising force, and she saw blood and fire in his eyes.

“No,” she said again, and felt something rising inside her. She wrenched her hand from Hatcher’s and faced the door, her body filled with fury. She would not lose Hatcher to this thing. She would not. “No, you can’t have him. You
can’t have him
!”

The room was lit by light then, a light that was as red as Alice’s burning, bleeding heart. There was a hideous sound from outside, the sound of all the monsters beneath the bed howling as one, the sound of all the lurking nightmares that clung to the darkness, the sound of something terrifying realizing that it could be frightened itself, frightened by a power it had long considered gone and vanquished.

The shadow under the door disappeared. Alice was rooted in place, her heart galloping in her chest, sweat running down her face and in the small of her back.

“Alice?” Hatcher’s voice, small and confused.

She turned back to him slowly, feeling like she wasn’t entirely herself in her own body, feeling like something inside her had woken up and she didn’t really want that something there.

“He was here,” Hatcher said. His eyes were clouded, waking up from a dream. “But he went away.”

“Yes,” Alice said, helping him to his feet. “Thank goodness, he went away.”

“Not goodness,” Nell said.

Alice and Hatcher looked at her. The tavern keeper’s wife loosed herself from Harry and Dolly, approaching Alice with shining eyes.

“Not thank goodness,” Nell repeated. “Thank
you
.”

“Thank Alice what?” Hatcher asked.

Nell gestured at Alice with a trembling hand. “She sent . . . whatever that was at the door. No, don’t say its name. I don’t want to know. When you know the name of a thing, it can find you. She sent it away. She’s a Magician.”

“A Magician? No. There are no more Magicians. Not really,” Alice amended, thinking of Bess and Hatcher and their Seer’s blood.

Hatcher glanced from Nell to Alice. He shook his head like a dog with a flea in its ear, and the dazed expression cleared away. He peered closely at Alice, his eyes focused on her but also on something else, as if he were listening to a voice in his head.

“Yes, you are,” Nell said, taking Alice’s hands in hers. She was crying now, even as she smiled up at Alice. “Now that you are here, everything will be better. The other Magicians will return. All of this darkness and grief will go away.”

Alice tugged her hands away from Nell’s, panic rising up inside her. “I’m not a Magician. You’re mistaken. I’m just a perfectly ordinary girl.”

Hatcher shook his head. “There’s nothing ordinary about you, Alice. Nothing could have sent the—”

“Please, don’t say his name,” Nell repeated.

“Him,” Hatcher said. “Nothing could have sent him away except magic, real magic. He’s not afraid of people or weapons. But he is afraid of Magicians, for a Magician put him in his prison, and could do so again. Bess said you had a fate, that only you and I could defeat him. Now we know why.”

“I’m not a Magician!” Alice said again. She felt that if she could just go on saying it, if she could say it often enough, then it would be true.

“Leave the girl be,” Harry said. He watched Alice with troubled eyes.

“But she is a Magician,” Nell insisted.

“I said to leave her be,” Harry said. “We’ve enough troubles here with this lot to clean up.”

Yes, a lot to clean up,
Alice thought. Seven bodies, and so much blood her boots were sticky with it.

The leader had long since stopped twitching. Alice reached for the hilt of her knife, protruding from his back. As the blade slid wetly from the flesh she again had that flash of (
memory? dream?
) blue-green eyes, and a man’s voice howling in pain and fury.

Outside in the street was the sound of movement again, although the screaming and shouting and breaking had ceased. Instead it seemed that everyone drifted aimlessly, just awakened from a terrible dream. Alice hoped that some of the girls would come to their senses and escape before the Walrus’ men could take them away.

I wish I
were
a Magician,
she thought.
I’d find all those lost girls and bring them home. I’d take all those men who hurt those girls and make
them
cry.

But she wasn’t a Magician, whatever Nell or Hatcher liked to believe. She was born to an ordinary family in an ordinary part of the New City. There had never been a hint of anything out of the way in their blood, not on her mother’s side or her father’s. They were quiet and perfect and eminently respectable.

Except you,
Alice thought.
You were not any of those things.

That did not mean she was a Magician, though. It just meant that she didn’t belong.

“You shouldn’t bother with the cleaning,” Hatcher said. “If what you say is true and the Walrus will take a cut too large for you handle, then you need to leave. And if he finds out his men were killed here your life won’t be worth a tin coin.”

“I thought you didn’t know who the Walrus was,” Harry said.

“I don’t,” Hatcher said. “But I know how these bosses are. If they let you get away with killing their soldiers, then others will think they can do the same. That’s how these fellows lose their power, and they don’t like to lose power once they’ve got hold of it. So once it’s discovered that these boys went missing after visiting you, the Walrus will come back to you, swift and hard. You’ll wake up one night in a burning bed and find there’s no way to escape.”

Dolly whimpered. “If they leave what’ll happen to me and me mam? I need this work. She can’t walk. And I don’t want to be taken by the Walrus if he’s moving in.”