Shanghai Sparrow (21 page)

But something was happening. Fox knew the wind, he felt its shift, the tiny movements within the greater movements, harbingers of change. It was his necessity and his joy, to dance along the edges of things, seeing the patterns in what those at the centre ignored as insignificant. And something was ruffling his fur, making the fine hairs in his ears shiver. A breeze, thin and tiny as a thread come loose from its reel, which could unspool and set a typhoon spinning. What it was, yet, he didn’t know. But there was something. His mother’s people, such meddlers as they were, were forever poking into things. He had seen nothing yet to tempt his mistress, but he kept his nose to the winds of change, and this still-tiny breeze smelled of brass and oil – and advantage.

He had spent enough time recently in the Crepuscular, and longed for the crude and brilliant warmth of his other life. It was time to pass back again, to wear the other mask.

Sometimes he wondered what his own face looked like, and even if he still had one. But then everyone wore masks. Everyone switched from upper to lower, man to master, bowing the head here and flicking the whip there. He saw all the hierarchies clearly, and though he might dance within them, he knew that it was all a game of masks.

There was, of course, the girl. She intrigued him. Her cleverness was pleasing, and like him she danced along the edges of things.

Though, perhaps, not for long. She triggered his sensitive nose. She smelt...
significant.
Whatever this shift was, she was bound into it.

Also, he liked her. She wore masks, too, of necessity – but sometimes he glimpsed beyond them.

Only when he was curled up alone, one eye open on the verge of sleep, did the thought ever creep past his defences of how good it would be not to wear a mask, to rest from the endless dance of hierarchy and favour, and be simply himself. But he was no longer sure he had a self to be.

The Britannia School

E
VELINE TOUCHED THE
machines, running her finger over a lever, or the groove where a ball bearing should run. So hard to remember those voices her mother had drawn from them like fine gold wires. So hard to remember how it had been near the end, when she had started making them all sing together. She could remember it was like being in a wonderful cave all made of music, but she couldn’t remember what it sounded like, or how to make it happen again.

Her mother’s hands had moved on them so surely. Her own hands were neat and quick at their work, but their work was thieving, not this. Tears kept coming, trickling down her face and soaking her collar. With pounding head and aching throat, she tried to think. Hastings came back.

“Hastings, how’d you know these were Etheric machines?”

“I saw some in a book. I told you, I like machines.”

“Do you know how they work?”

Hastings gave her a sideways look. She seemed ill-at-ease. “They make noises, and they’re supposed to have some sort of effect on people. That’s all I know. Your mama never taught you?”

“I was
eight
.”

“I’ve been interested in machines at least as long as that,” Hastings said. “It’s why I’m here.”

“Well I wasn’t interested, not then, all right?” Eveline snapped. “How was I to know she was going to die?”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, what do you mean it’s why you’re here?”

Hastings fidgeted with a coil of wire that lay on the bench. “I was forever messing with things, taking them apart to see how they worked. Mama tried to beat it out of me. She thought I might make a decent marriage – she was daft. I’m a bastard, no-one respectable was going to marry me. Anyway, she wrote to my father and he got me put in here. She told me it was that or Bedlam. This is better.”

“She said you’d go to Bedlam?”

“If I didn’t do as I was told.”

Eveline grimaced. She’d heard about Bedlam, where all the mad people got kept – but she’d never thought you could be put in there just for liking machines. “She
wrote
to your father?”

“Yes. She didn’t normally – he’d only pay for my upkeep if she kept out of his way and didn’t embarrass him.”

“So they’re not married.”

“I’m a bastard, like I said.”

“Well, I’m an orphan.”

“Orphan’s respectable.”

“Not if you’re a thief.”

Hastings shrugged. “Well, he didn’t want me, and in the end nor did she, so it hardly matters, does it? Do you remember how any of these work?”

“Sort of. Maybe. Some of them. But... I know how to get some of them started, but I don’t know what the noises are supposed to do. Or how.”

“You don’t remember that?”

“No. Were there any notebooks, when it was all brought in? Mama had dozens of them.”

“I didn’t see any, I’m sorry. Why do they want you to study this, anyway?” Hastings said.

“I wish I knew. It’s why
I’m
here.” Eveline frowned at the instruments, looking so strange in this big clanging dusty space, bits of her childhood yanked from the past and dropped in front of her. What did Holmforth want, with the instruments, and with her?

And if she couldn’t make them work, what would happen then?

“Hastings, you ever done any of this?”

“What, Etherics? No. Most people...” She hesitated, glanced over where Mr Jackson was still waist-deep in his machine. “No.”

“Most people what? Come on, you’ve been chewing on something since you said what they were.”

Hastings sighed. “Most people think it’s nonsense. I’m sorry, Evvie. They either think it’s nonsense or that it’s something only some people have an ability for – that it’s like having red hair, something you’re born with. And it’s mostly women. So, even people who believe in it don’t think it’s important.”

“Well, if it were something you were born with, I’d know, wouldn’t I? Anyway I don’t believe it. She worked hard, my mama. Harder’n anyone. Day and night, sometimes. She didn’t just
know
what to do from the day she was born.”

Hastings looked at the mechanisms, rubbing her nose. “It’s never made sense to me,” she said. “If people get a chance to learn things they can do things, mostly. Some people are better at some things, yes; but I don’t think it’s in you when you’re born. It’s like thinking only men can do engines. I can make an engine work, I learned.”

“‘Men’re good for doing plenty, but women can do that plus twenty,’ that’s what... someone I know says. She liked mechanisms, too, she just wasn’t much good at ’em. I don’t think it was anything to do with being female, though. It’s not like you gotta hold a spanner in your dick, is it?”

Hastings frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“You do know what a dick is?” Eveline said. Hastings shook her head. “You know. A chappie’s chappie, his....” Seeing Hastings’ utter bemusement, she said, “What he pisses outa.”

Hastings clapped a hand over her mouth and choked behind it, her cheeks bright red.

“’Sall right,” Eveline said. “Jackson ain’t listening.”

“Yes, well, I was!” Hastings said, her eyes screwed up with laughter. “Oh, don’t let Mr Jackson hear!”

“He’s got his ears fulla steam.”

Eventually Hastings got control of herself.

“So you got no idea how they work?” Eveline said.

“I don’t even know
if
they do.”

“Oh, they do. My mama could make them work. She was getting somewhere, before she got sick. Mr Jackson know anything?”

“He doesn’t believe in it either, so probably not.”

“Well that’s a fat lot of good, then.” Eveline sighed and kicked at the straw. “Now what’m I to do? If I don’t work out how they work, I’m like as not out on my ear. Or worse,” she said. “That Holmforth, I don’t trust him a farthing’s worth.”

“Who’s Holmforth?”

“He’s the cove what brought me here. He’s the one thinks I know how to make these work, because... wait a minute, he thinks
Uncle James
could do Etherics. He mentioned him. He never mentioned Mama at all.”

“I don’t understand,” Hastings said.

“Never mind. I do. Bloody Uncle James pretended it was his work. Holmforth must have been one of the people he took it to. Don’t know why Holmforth is interested now the miserable old bastard’s dead.” There was a sudden
clang
and a bout of muffled swearing from the other side of the room.

“What is that thing he’s fadgetting with?” Eveline said.

“Jackson’s Velocitator.”

“Velocitator?”

“That’s what he calls it. It’s an advanced version of a steam car, much more powerful... or it would be, if... Never mind,” she said.

“If what?”

“If he’d let me work on it. I’ve got lots of ideas. But
he’s
one who thinks you should have to hold a spanner in... you know.”

But Eveline was barely listening. She could see that cosy little room, the fatly upholstered armchair, the little embroidered footstool in front of the fire. Her feet, in warm stockings, resting on the footstool. The tines of a fork dimpling the grease-shining skin of a sausage. The footstool was embroidered with blue and yellow lilies, like the dusty stolen curtains in Ma Pether’s room.

The little room shrank and greyed, fading out of her reach.

If she displeased him... well, she
might
just end up dumped in the country miles from anywhere, with no money.
If
she was lucky. And if she made it back to London... if Holmforth thought Ma wouldn’t know she’d been taken up by someone who smelled like law, within minutes of it happening, he was a fool. Not that he needed to care – he wasn’t the one that would have to try and persuade her to take Evvie in again, convince her that Evvie hadn’t spilled every bean on her plate to Holmforth and whoever he worked for.

Ma Pether’d never trust her again. Never. Which meant half the Newgate birds in London would have no use for this particular sparrow, neither.

She had to make the machines work.

K
NOWLEDGE, THAT WAS
the key. Without it, she was helpless. She needed to know more about Holmforth and what he wanted, about the instruments and what they did. And until she could speak to Holmforth again, the only person she knew who might know something was Miss Cairngrim.

Of course, there were other ways to get knowledge – cajoling, persuading, getting people to talk about themselves; she knew, and had used, all of them – but sometimes a hairpin in the middle of the night was by far the best way.

The door swung open. Not a scrap of moonlight was allowed into Miss Cairngrim’s office; it was as tightly shuttered as the woman herself. Eveline didn’t want to risk opening the shutters, in case of noise. She had brought a candle, which would have to do.

She made her way methodically through the drawers of the desk, carefully returning every bit of paper and scrap of pencil where she found it. Miss Cairngrim’s tidiness made it all the easier – this would have been a lot harder in Ma Pether’s rooms, with everything all of a higgle-piggle. With some people you could trust they wouldn’t notice, but not with Ma Pether.

She found a battered book with a blue cloth cover, full of figures. Accounts. Income. The main amount from someone or something called HMG; which, seeing a letterhead with the same initials, she realised was Her Majesty’s Government.

The monthly stipend looked substantial, but it got eaten up fast. Clothes, food, teachers’ wages, soap... tiny obsessive figures in ever-smaller columns as Miss Cairngrim tried to stretch the money over the bills like thin pastry over too big a pie.
Owed to butcher, 6s 5d. Owed to baker, 2s 9d.
Eveline grinned to herself, wondering if the candlestick maker was in there, too. Then her head shot up as she heard a noise; something scraping the glass of the window, outside the shutters.
Scree, scree.

A branch shifted by the wind, nothing more; it was only the silence of the house made it seem so loud.

Still, it was a warning she should heed. Well, Miss Cairngrim was short of money, that was interesting; a lever, if Eveline chose to use it and could find the means. But it told her nothing about Holmforth.

Another drawer – more accounts. Another – a diary. Appointments and reminders listed in that same cramped, tiny hand.
Speak to Mr M about books. Carstairs girl’s accusations – ridiculous.
Carstairs girl? What Carstairs girl?

Scree, scree,
the branch went, scraping on the glass.
Hurry up, Eveline.

She sighed. Well, at least she knew a few things she hadn’t before, but whether any of it was the least use...

Then her eye caught a fine line in the veneer of the desk, no more than a thread of light; if the candle hadn’t wavered, in the draft, she’d never have seen it. She’d seen such a thing before, in some of the furniture that had passed through Ma’s hands. If she was right, it was a secret drawer. A secret drawer for secret things.

She felt about with careful, clever fingers, gently pulling and pushing, until a little ledge went
click.