Whitechapel Gods (25 page)

On the other side of the doorway was a staircase, winding tightly around a support beam. At the top of the staircase, clearly visible through a gap between smaller beams, stood the largest gun Westerton had ever seen.

“Fucking…” was all he had time to say.

An impact hammered his right shoulder and tore his arm from his body. His collarbone and ribs collapsed on that side. He spun wildly, careering off the archway.

Lord, protect me…

Blistering steam rushed over him, searing exposed skin and eyes. Cracking lightning followed and…

White.

Oh, by the Lord, the pain!
He couldn’t stand, couldn’t feel…

White.

The floor struck him in the face. His whole body burned, inside and out. Oil flooded his mouth and heat seared his brain. In an instant, senses and thoughts burned away, leaving only agony and rage.

Huge hands clamped around his neck and began closing with the force of a dozen steam-powered lifting claws.

The fucking crow!

His remaining arm shrieked and bent as he lifted it, but it obeyed him. With a towering effort of will, he lashed out at his attacker. The brass bones in his fingers sank deep into slick flesh. He tore it back and struck again, this time latching on to thick bones. He squeezed and twisted these, yanking them from beneath the skin. The pressure on his neck released and he drew a halting breath.

Another body tackled him from the side, this one lighter, flimsier. Westerton glanced down. Even through the white streaks that marred his vision, he recognized the drawn face of his nemesis.

Nothing noble or eloquent came up Westerton’s throat, then, just shrill, bell-like laughter.

He yanked his fingers free of the other brute’s rib cage and shot them out at his adversary’s throat. He squealed with glee as they found purchase around a soft, human windpipe.

One quick twist, one tick of the clock.

Massive hands hauled his fingers back, robbing him of his prise. He struck out with his other arm, forgetting it was lost.

Then the bullets came into him. Round after round, six, ten, twenty penetrated into the core of his body, denting bones, knocking gears apart, twisting springs. His body shuddered, and with a curse on his lips he passed out of harmony and fell still.

Thomas collapsed.

Oliver forgot his burning throat. He wheezed his friend’s name and reached out to him over a stretch of floor impossibly long.

Thomas Moore: the latest victim of Oliver Sumner’s ill-fated crusade.

Oliver’s vision ran with black spots and then vertigo conquered him. Through reeling perceptions, he watched Heckler rush up to the fallen cloak and put three more shots into him. The young American then ran to the door, sidled up against the remaining brick, and began shooting outside.

Oliver concentrated through the ringing of gunfire and the dulled sounds of combat and strained to hear the only thing that mattered to him: Tommy’s breathing.

It was the German’s voice he heard. “You must get to safety.” Bergen lifted Oliver by the collar and dragged him to the side of the room.

“Check him,” Oliver whispered.

“If he lives, he lives,” Bergen said. Bullets pinged off the beams above. Bergen deposited him just inside the hallway and left him there.

Oliver may have passed out, for the next things he saw were Missy’s moist eyes as she bent over him.

“That’s it, Oliver,” she said. “It seems I’m to be the one taking care of you.”

She held a canteen to his lips and he drank like a camel. When he was done she wiped the excess off his chin.

His first question: “Tommy?”

For a single instant, Missy’s face betrayed her panic, and then she was as calm and as soft as could be. “The doctor is working on him now. They want to speak to you when you’re ready.”

“Who?”

“Everyone.”

Whoever remains.
“Help me up.”

Missy hoisted him with surprising ease, given her small frame. With him leaning on her for balance, they hobbled into the foyer. Thomas lay in a corner, splattered in slick blood. Dr. Chestle knelt over him, covered to his elbows in gore, while Phin looked on. At Oliver’s entrance, the sailor looked up, and shared a gaze that communicated the hopelessness of the situation.

“A saw,” the doctor said. “I must have a hacksaw, or anything that will cut iron.”

Phineas hastened to obey, a pronounced stoop in his step. Oliver’s gaze fell back to Tom.

I can’t help him,
Oliver told himself.
If he lives, he lives.
Then,
I’ve seen him weather worse.
He hadn’t, but it was a comforting lie.

Reluctantly, he pulled his eyes from his friend and allowed Missy to guide him to the front door. Outside, he found Hews supervising the disposal of the dead cloaks and the distribution of their firearms. The townsmen were carrying the bodies one by one and tossing them off the side of the Underbelly, not half a block away.

As soon as they saw Oliver, the pointing and the questions began.

“Were they after you, Oliver?”

“What in heaven’s name’ve you got in there?”

“Are we going back to war?”

“What do you need us to do, Oliver?”

Oliver gestured to Hews, who mounted Sherwood’s front steps and turned to the crowd. “Quiet! We can do nothing until we all settle down and hold civilised council like civilised men.”

The shouting died off, though murmurs continued. Oliver looked out on the sea of faces, stained with soot, blood, oil, some with tears. It was a force all its own, the mob anger, something beyond reason and beyond control.

A man Oliver knew, a baker, stepped from the crowd, his ribbon-thin teenage son with him. He still wore his apron and working shirt, covered in flour and ash and with the sleeves rolled up. The prints of bloody fingers stained the corners of his apron.

“Oliver, we know you’re up to something. The whole place’s buzzing ’round it,” He began. “We want in.”

Oliver swallowed. “Fred…” he began.

“You killed them, didn’t you?” said the baker, moustache twitching rapidly as he spoke. “Ain’t no one who’s done it before, but you did, and the whole town knows it. We heard the battle down there, and lo, no Ironboys climbing back up. Just you. A cove draws that like a chalk X.”

“Fred…” Oliver tried again.

The baker blundered ahead. “And what with these canaries showing up on your doorstep, we know you’ve got something new. We’re sick of it, Oliver. I’ve been mixing ash in my flour for weeks, and yesterday this crow comes a-knocking saying my boy’s got to go to work in some factory starting his next birthday. We want in.”

How do I say no?
Wasn’t this what he had longed for—the average man finally digging in his heels?

Hews leaned in close to him and whispered in his ear. “They’re willing, lad. You can’t deny a man his proper time.”

For an instant Oliver was aware only of the hundred pairs of eyes on him.

They wanted to fight. Oliver had felt it for five long years—in their stares, in their none-so-casual greetings, in their body language. Since the Uprising’s bloody end, it had been simmering in the back of the minds of every survivor. Oliver had ignored it, placated it, redirected it, but now, with some forty cloaks murdered in the street, they were going to have war no matter Oliver’s fears.

It’s a second chance. It’s a chance to do it right.

He tapped Missy lightly on the shoulder and, with some hesitation, she withdrew her support. Oliver wobbled a little but stayed upright. He gave the baker a smile, clasped his shoulder, and stared over him at the crowd beyond.

“All right, listen, now,” he called. “I need all of you to prepare, as the Boiler Men may be down here in a matter of hours. I need the tunnels reopened and stocked. I need a weapon placed in the hand of every able-bodied man, and I need everyone incapable of fighting evacuated to the tunnels. I need any other cloaks in the Underbelly dealt with, and I need barricades set up on the Parade outside the lift station.”

Immediately, the fevered undercurrent stilled, and the crowd buzzed with galvanized energy. A rush of excitement filled Oliver toes to crown, a sensation of confidence and competence and indestructibility, and for an instant he forgot the Uprising, and remembered why he’d led them.

“And I need every explosive that can be found placed in the hands of this man.” He pointed to Heckler. “I need all this done in one hour, gentlemen. One single hour.”

They held still, waiting for more.

Hews leaned forward. “
Now,
you slack-jawed cockneys! Hop to it.”

The men ran in all directions. The baker grabbed his son by the shoulder. “Now we give ’em what’s coming,” he said, and they both bolted away.

Oliver watched them hustle, swollen with pride for the few instants before he remembered how many of them would likely be dead by midnight.

“Goodness,” Missy breathed. “You have them trained like hounds.”

Hews chuckled. “One needn’t train a hound to sniff, lass, nor to chase a hare. All the same, you’re a regular John Bull, lad.”

Oliver nodded, surprised to find a grin spreading over his lips.

“So they say.”

Her chosen will call themselves the Brothers of
Creation. They will be Her Intention, the legacy of human creativity bent to Her purposes, and weaned upon Her ancient Methods, and they, too, will call me Master.

—V. i

Scared left Tuppence crying. They always cried, at first. In a while he would send the boy up to Gisella’s house of sin and her girls would feed him and dry his eyes.

He toddled his ancient frame up the twenty wooden steps leading from his bedchamber, avoiding, with great difficulty, those that concealed his various traps. Blast, he must take some of these out. Security did him little good if he slipped one day and found himself stuck on the point of a poison dart.

It was a shame about the other boy. He’d died of fright, perhaps, compounded with malnutrition and general filth. He’d left the poor thing’s body where it had fallen, as it provided a perfect learning opportunity for the one still alive.

Such darling things, children. Such wonders of God’s world. When you call me husband and master, my sweet, what wonderful offspring we will fashion.

“Tick, tick, tock, my sweet. The watch stops at the end of the day.”

His voice echoed back from the plaster walls. The heat that burned in the back of his head flickered in time with the lamps in their sconces.

And what do you want with this other man, my sweet? Well, soon I’ll know that secret, too, and in time I will own every scrap of soul you try to hide.

He wandered the halls of his labyrinth awhile, alone with his thoughts. When he was a boy, he’d wandered in a similar fashion through Hyde Park, sometimes halting to climb the Gate, until some policeman or well-meaning citizen chased him off. It had been a distraction then. Now it was a necessary exercise to keep the mind calm and functioning.

The labyrinth was one of four hidden in various towers close to the Stack. This one was his least favourite, lacking a proper amount of madness in its design. It was functional, for certain, but hardly inspiring. Unfortunately, since his hides in Aldgate and Dunbridge had been compromised, he had to settle for this one. It sat below Gisella’s den of sin, so there was some consolation there. Fine and stern old woman, she was, and she’d be chaste to her dying breath, bless her.

He walked through halls and staircases, past row after row of identical doors. His mind churned and refused to lie silent. He caught himself ticking several times and each time angrily clamped his teeth.

Why did he feel anxious? It was planned, all planned.

He stopped, halted his breath. His ears picked up the last distorted echo of a scuffing. An intruder? Moran didn’t know of this place. Neither did the German, or Boxer or Hobbyhorse. And Gisella would never lower herself to walk these filthy halls.

Scared twisted his cane’s head, releasing the knife from the tip. The click it emitted resonated down the halls. Scared’s senses picked at that noise, dissecting, calculating.

He flattened himself against a shadowed corner and waited.

At length a figure stumbled around the corner at the hall’s opposite end, stooped and limping. The intruder placed his hand on each door as he walked, as if counting them.

Scared had not fought with his cane for years. It had to be used like a bayonet to be formidable. For a brief moment he feared his arthritic knuckles would not be capable of it.

He could hear the intruder’s laboured breathing, the moist sucking of the terminally ill. The figure shrugged through a pool of light.

“Oh, my boy!” Scared cried. He rushed from concealment even as the figure collapsed to the floor.

Scared knelt down and gathered the boy’s head in his hands. “Oh, my darling. What have they done to you?”

Tears rolled down Penny’s cheeks, from eyes that stared glazed at the ceiling. The boy’s mouth opened, closed. A bullet had cracked through his sternum; his shirt was black with old blood and filth. The wound had been cauterised, probably by the broken flasher still hooked to the lad’s belt. His skin was pale and sunken beneath the grime.

“Lie still, my boy. I’m here.” Scared knew Penny was dying. Nothing could be done but to give him up to the cloaks, and that, Scared could never wish on one of his sons.

Penny’s breathing grew more relaxed as Scared stroked his hair. Eventually, the boy fell into a light sleep.

No, my child, I cannot save you. But there is life in you yet, and you deserve more than an infected death in a lonely hallway.

“Don’t weep, my darling,” he whispered. “All is not lost. There are potions, my dear, secret mixtures that can sustain you for a few glorious, final days. I will make one of these mixtures for you, my sweet, and it will fill your veins with burning blood and bring strength into your legs once more.”

Penny opened his eyes again.

“And we will get you knives, my darling, for I know how you adore knives. And for those few days, you will express that one act at which you were so blessed by Providence to excel.”

Penny’s tears dried up. Some of that stone came back into his eyes, that carefully crafted heartlessness Scared had slaved over for so many years.

He could not help but smile.

Ah, pride; how can they call it a sin, my love?

The little bell dinged. Oliver found the shelves in their places and the lamp buzzing overhead. His first step onto the floorboards sent up a creak, and then the skittering of retreating rats. He let the door slide shut behind him, and waited.

Outside, Bergen sat casually on the front step, puffing on a thin cigar.

Oliver heard the whispering of shifting cloth, and turned to face the bookseller as he floated into view.

“I thought I’d be seeing you again,” the old man said.

“You seem to be closed for a while,” said Oliver. “Let’s have a chat.”

If anything, the man’s smile grew toothier.

“Of course. Shall we?” He indicated the rear of the store.

“Right here is fine, if you please,” Oliver said. “I have questions for you.”

“I’m sure you do.” The man’s hands clicked softly as he folded them together against his stomach. He settled back into a sitting position, as if buoyed on whatever lay beneath his skirt. “I’m happy to accommodate them, with the Lady’s blessing.”

Oliver opened his coat and drew the heavy book from within. Fickin’s eyes followed it.

“This is not the
Summa Machina,
” Oliver began. “Not the real one anyway.”

“It’s the real one.”

Oliver breathed slowly. “I want no lies, Crow.”

“I have none to tell, Mr. Bull. That is the original script as written down by Atlas Hume in 1834.”

“Then can you explain to me why the canaries haven’t gone to war with you yet?”

“Ah, yes, the prophecies.” Fickin steepled his fingers. “The Brothers for Order cannot go to war, Mr. Bull. Their only reason for being is to bring things into harmony. What wars have you ever known to be harmonious?”

Oliver rubbed the raggedy stubble on his jaw.

“So they know?”

Fickin nodded.

“And they do nothing about it?”

“You must understand the mentality of the clock, Mr. Bull,” Fickin said. “A clock is a machine. It repeats one task endlessly, unchanged. That is its role. Even for its own preservation, a machine cannot alter that role.”

“What is Grandfather Clock’s role, in your opinion?”

“Grandfather Clock exists to bring about harmony and precision. He controls the environment, to make it safe for the Mother to create. He makes it possible for the Great Work to be built.”

A faint sound penetrated the windows: two taps of Bergen’s foot. Entry had been accomplished.

Fickin straightened, agitation coming into his eyes. “But Grandfather Clock never stops with simple harmony. He wants everything to tick to his tune, so that nothing can ever be out of place. Once he is done with humanity he will turn his efforts against the Mother herself. He will suffocate her, as he has for their entire union. Gods, when I think of the aeons he’s been doing this to her…”

A flicker of fire lit Fickin’s eyes.

And there you are, my Lady.
Oliver tapped his pocket. Inside, Jeremy stirred.

“Aeons?”

“You have no idea, Mr. Bull, how old they are. They’ve been on our small little world since the great beasts ruled it, hiding in their primitive brains and waiting for a race capable of birthing them. We are their chosen people now, the builders of their womb and the stewards of their kingdom.”

“She didn’t think to kill him sooner?”

The fire flashed deep in those sunken eyes. “She didn’t know how, Mr. Bull. She doesn’t understand him well enough. It is like asking a tree to understand a steamship. We were the first she found that were capable of fathoming him; that is why she adopted us as her children. She needed our help. The Lord simply wanted to dominate us.”

Jeremy nudged his nose out of the pocket. Oliver spread open the book and began leafing through pages, focussing his attention on the flashing brass, to draw Fickin’s eyes there.

“She found someone, didn’t she?” Oliver said. “She found a whole gaggle of people lining up to help her cause. Like Scared. And myself.”

The fire dimmed. “I’ve always been a bit ashamed that she felt she needed to look outside the Brotherhood.”

“So it really doesn’t matter who gets their hands on this weapon of hers. As long as it’s used, she’ll be the one who benefits.”

Fickin licked his lips. “She’s waited so long for freedom from her tyrant consort. And now, through our help, through the help of this man Scared, it is within her reach.”

The emotion welling up in the bookseller was Mama Engine’s own.

“We are
her
salvation, Mr. Bull. Can you fathom that? We tiny creatures of flesh and blood. She loves us so fiercely for what we are willing to do for her.” He eyed Oliver with a smile. “She will need to take another husband, you know.”

Three taps of Bergen’s foot: instrument delivered, awaiting the go-ahead.

“I think she will be disappointed,” said Oliver. “She and her kind aren’t welcome here.”

Fickin perked up. The fire danced in his eyes, casting its glow over the rows of spines lined on the shelves.

“So you know about the child, then?” he said.

Oliver nodded.

“Mother Engine always wanted children of her own,” Fickin said. The heat of his body touched Oliver’s face. The air began to grow smokier. Illumination from no discernable source spread into the room. “She once tried, long ago, to conceive from the Lord’s seed. What was born was an abomination to both of them, a creature of disharmony and decay. It has dogged at their heels from world to world, unable to be rid of them just as they are unable to be rid of it. But what else could come from a union of such hatred on the one hand and indifference on the other?”

Fickin became distracted with the passions washing over him. Oliver took the opportunity to scan the room and take in the changing light, the sudden smokiness of the air. Right now, in the back of the store, those four furnaces were flaring higher as a fanfare for the goddess’ arrival.

It was time to leave. Oliver took one quiet step back towards the door.

“She likes you, Mr. Bull,” Fickin said. “You have qualities she fancies.”

Another step back. Jeremy poked his head fully out of the pocket.

“Qualities.”

“I don’t presume to understand her,” Fickin said. He floated closer as Oliver retreated, stretching out his hands in a kind of pleading gesture. “She has needs and desires far outside the boundaries of human experience, and she engages in many kinds of unions.”

There’s a vile image.
Oliver snapped the
Summa Machina
closed and slipped it back into his pocket. “She knows my opinion of her, Fickin. I’ll be going now.”

Fickin snatched Oliver’s sleeve. The voice that spoke next was no ancient bookkeeper’s, but a rattling gasp like the last breath of a dying man. “She
needs
you. She cannot suffer this again. She must have a husband who will love her.”

The lamp overhead exploded, raining sparks onto the shelves. Strips of Fickin’s skin peeled off steel bones when Oliver tore his sleeve loose, and Oliver bolted for the door. Jeremy burst from his jacket in a flurry of ticks and buzzes as the shop exploded into orange light.

Oliver did not see what Aaron Bolden did next. For an instant time suspended, sound deepened, and space expanded past comprehension. The cracks and fissures in the walls began leaking yellow pus. A sickly green light flared up outside the windows.

Fickin’s cry for deliverance gurgled away.

The pus fell to the floor, where it picked up a sudden speed and rushed past Oliver’s feet. An instant later a blast of heat struck him from behind, followed by a wall of hissing steam, and a shriek of pain went up like the beams of a tower ripping itself apart.

This time without hesitation, Oliver tore the door open and plunged into the street.

The crack of the sidewalk against his cheek brought him back to clear reality.

Bergen made no move to help him up. The German drew his revolver and trained it on the bookshop.

Oliver lifted himself off the street, straightened collar and cuffs.

“Light it now, Phineas,” he whispered, knowing the sailor would hear him.

The derringer leapt into Oliver’s hand.

The bookstore stood dull and darkened. The door creaked shut. They waited.

Phineas appeared by Oliver’s side.

“Got the block evacuated, sir,” he said.

Oliver nodded, keeping his eyes trained on the door.

“Better cover your ears,” Bergen grumbled, leaving his own unprotected. Phineas ran off, already bunching his collar around his head to dull his hearing.

Oliver’s heart stung for him.
I’m sorry to have to do this to you, Phin.

Steel fingers slick with blood moved the shop door aside. One spindly appendage, bending evenly at a hundred different joints and arching like a spider’s leg, reached beyond the doorjamb. Oliver heard Fickin’s voice from inside.

“Why do you do these things?” the bookseller rasped, his face a hint of teeth and bloodied scalp. “Why do you hate her so? All she wants is your love.”

The voice held all the sadness and hurt of the unjustly wronged.

The German loosed a shot that took Fickin in the face and drove him back. An instant later the building exploded and they all crashed to the ground.