I reached into my coat and plucked the knife from its sheath at the front of my corset. So cleverly made was the whole that the blade acted as one more slatted support, with its twin acting the same at my back. I drew the first from the top, and the latter from the bottom, which made for fluid arming when necessary.
This time, I only required one. Very carefully, I set the point of the blade at the top of the notice and carved a line down the middle.
I’d perceived a pattern, in my years collecting. The standard mode of operation demanded that the notices were to be pulled from the wall once a collector accepted one. This kept collectors from, well, getting in each other’s way—either terminally or otherwise. However, over the years, there had been some calls for assassination that were not pulled so much as marked.
A single slash down the middle, as if the perpetrator dared the rest of us to challenge him for the winnings.
I believed my rival to be the man who taunted with the display. Not only was it exactly the sort of game he would enjoy, but deliveries of flowers upon my stoop or window sill had coincided with these marked notices. As if I were personally invited to the game.
The deliveries had stopped for a while, and I’d considered myself rid of the man for good. How wrong was I. When next I saw him, it had been over my husband’s bleeding body.
As I sheathed my blade and looked upon my handiwork, I felt no satisfaction at the act. No job well done. Only a pit in the depths of my belly, cold and aching.
I intended to collect the Ripper alive, but if I knew my rival, he would not be so kind. The test, regardless of method, was clear.
“May the best collector win,” I said to the wintry, damp air.
There was nobody else in the station to hear me. Only myself, and the fog that swallowed the bitterness of the challenge.
I would need help for this particular game.
I made my way through the East End, through Poplar and a titch south, where Blackwall played home to the bulk of the Brick Street Bakers. I had formulated no plan, and I did not think myself worried for it. All had moved rather quickly of late, and where that should have made me concerned, I found only determination in its wake.
The Veil had gone too far, and now I found myself without a safe sanctuary from which to work. This in itself did not bother me overmuch, for I had not considered that far ahead. What I found reprehensible was the manner in which the Veil made known his displeasure.
Had I dreamed that exchange between Zylphia and Hawke? I knew that my once-companion was very likely fulfilling the role that had been deemed mine in the lion-prince’s taming ring, and the terror that caused me was as infuriating as it was a warning of my own weakness.
What could the Veil possibly do to Hawke? He was as part of the Midnight Menagerie as the Veil itself; the gardens would not bloom without its serpent to tend it.
Yet what if the Veil did not consider this?
What if I overestimated the man’s worth?
These worries plagued me only until I forced them from my thoughts.
My goal was to find the sweet tooth. And in order to do this, I would locate Jack the Ripper.
Two impossible demands.
One plan to solve them.
For this to succeed, I needed more eyes and ears than I possessed. The Karakash Veil was certain that neither man had attended the Menagerie’s events, yet evidence suggested the sweet tooth could get in and out of the grounds without raising suspicion. Even I, who could easily make my way inside, could not avoid detection for long. This indicated the collector, the sweet tooth, knew more than I of the ground we had both walked.
Or that he was truly a master of disguise.
This I already suspected, for he’d gotten quite close to me on at least one occasion. He’d appeared an old man with a gruff voice and magnificently barbered whiskers one night, just another face in a smoky room.
How he’d taunted me with that knowledge.
I needed to out the man—dangle before him bait that he could not refuse. The challenge of a race, to find and capture the Ripper first, would suffice. More than suffice, for the Ripper had become something of a thorn, I think. A man glutted on the infamy of his barbarism, while an artist such as my rival would find himself overshadowed. Ignored.
Intolerable.
That I was able to consider these things said quite a bit more for my state of being than any physical act I could have committed, yet I did not stop to think too greatly on the ease with which I understood my opponent.
The Ripper was only a man. A madman, to be sure, and one whose evil demanded his attention fall on them what could not defend themselves, but such a madman would make mistakes. I needed eyes on Whitechapel—on the Ripper’s haunts.
I needed Ishmael Communion’s help.
I left the main thoroughfare, no longer surrounded by the din of the active evening roads near Limehouse. As I approached the East India Docks—not far from the West India Docks where I once would make my way home—the pall that fell over the area became a noticeable heaviness.
I did not imagine that my passing had gone unmarked, but I had not yet considered how I would make my needs known to Ishmael if I could not find him. As a collector, I was given a certain amount of leeway, yet I was still not of the crew. Loyalties ran deeply in such matters.
I was not made to wait long before finding my passing challenged.
“‘Alt,” came a gruff demand, subsequently followed by three men stepping out of the fog.
Even through the respirator I wore, I could scent the acrid stench of fish from the decaying Thames just south of us. The Isle of Dogs tended to reek of the stuff, what with being surrounded by the fetid river on all sides.
I obeyed, but did nothing to make myself appear harmless. “Collector business, lads,” I said, my voice muffled and flattened by the mask I wore. It did not appear overly feminine, and my repaired coat did much to soften those lines. “You’ll want to step out of my way.”
In a gang such as the Brick Street Bakers, there were ranks of men, from the highest rufflers to the lowest abrams.
There were females among the crew’s number, naturally, but their rankings were of somewhat less clear origin to me; many fell along definitions of prostitution, beggary and bait.
Of the three men who faced me now, I placed two as whip jacks—them what pretended to be sailors fresh from a wrecking and eager for begged coin to get back to port—and perhaps the wiry one as more of a ruffler. He had the look of a soldier’s mark about him, unkempt enough that any passerby might think him made daft by war and unable to tend to himself.
Beggars, the lot, but dangerous all the same. And none too pleased to find a collector in their midst.
The jack in the middle, a broad-shouldered man, folded his arms over his chest and sneered. The other, whose hair was dark in my yellow lens and his eyes narrow and set close together, spat upon the ground and said, “We know why’s y’ere. Don’t got no truck wif c’lectors.”
“I see.” My fingers twitched, so suddenly that the motion surprised even me. Yet as they did so, a curl at my sides, I found a slow, humorless smile pull at my lips. “Well, mates,” I told them, “I’ve got truck with you.”
The ruffler shifted uneasily. “It’s a collector,” he pointed out, just in case his crew had misheard that fact. “Maybe we oughter—”
“Shut’cher gob,” growled the speaker of the three. “Bartie’s done tow’d us ’bout that c’lector bird on ‘im. ‘S’her.”
Bartie told them what about me?
Oh, for the love of all things nonsensical and crass. Bartholomew Coventry, that bloody fool. Of course he’d tell his mates of the collector on him, and I doubt he’d leave the bit out about my sex.
“I’m not here for him,” I said, flicking that away with a dismissive hand. “It’s Communion, I want—”