Jerzy gambolled up like a monkey. Despite the failure to remove the Caraprix, his new-found freedom had left him changed: brighter, more optimistic, filled with passion and humour.
‘Bloody hell!’ Tom strode off, shouting, ‘Damnable ape! What I would give for some intelligent companionship.’
Niamh followed Jerzy, her cape billowing behind her. ‘There is beauty in these Fixed Lands.’ She lifted her head to survey the sea of stars.
Jerzy did a little jig. ‘Methinks the beauty she has her eyes on is earthbound.’
Tom was sitting on a fallen megalith, smoking, when Church reached the circle.
‘At least you’re starting to use your God-given brains,’ the Rhymer said.
‘You were the inspiration.’ Church searched for landmarks, then began to pace out the distance. ‘I needed to stop seeing time from my own narrow perspective. Start taking the long view.’ He weighed in his hands the stone he had brought from Niamh’s court. ‘I need to send a message from now to then.’
You’re starting to make as much sense as the monkey-boy,’ Tom observed.
Church reached the correct spot and then dug a hole with a silver trowel. He dropped the stone in it, replaced the soil and the turf and stamped it down.
When he looked up he was not where he had been standing and the shock of dislocation almost threw him off his feet. Stonehenge was nowhere to be seen, nor were Tom, Niamh or Jerzy. He was on the Downs somewhere — he could tell from the rolling landscape. Struggling with his disorientation, he walked a few paces, calling to the others.
‘What, ho!’
Church jumped. Jerzy was standing a foot behind him, although he had not been there when Church had looked a moment before.
‘Where did you come from?’
Where did you come from?’ Jerzy mimicked.
‘This is no time for your jokes.’ Church looked around uneasily. ‘We need to find out where we are.’
‘We are here, and if we were over there we would be here, too.’
Church ignored the Mocker’s mischief. He was wondering whether this was the start of some attack by the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders, or if the Libertarian or Salazar or Veitch were going to descend on them.
‘I must bid you farewell, to seek my fortune in London,’ Jerzy said.
We’re all going to London,’ Church replied, distracted. You know that. I’ve got to start spreading the word.’
‘There is much mischief in these lands, and mischief is what I love the most. Things shall be turned on their head. What is down shall be up, and vice versa, and inside out. I go to serve at the foot of a master.’
Church was puzzled by Jerzy’s tone, and when he looked at him properly, he caught a strange cast to the Mocker’s face. The unfamiliar expression may have been caused by a shadow passing across the moon, but for one fleeting moment it didn’t look like Jerzy at all.
Church heard his name called, and when he looked up he saw he was back at the same spot where he had buried the stone. The others were walking across the grassland on the other side of the stones; and Jerzy was with them.
Church looked behind him, where Jerzy had been standing. He was alone. He shivered, not quite knowing why, and ran to the others. But when he rounded the circle he could only see Tom and Niamh.
‘There you are,’ Tom snapped. ‘What are you doing, wandering off? I thought the spiders had got you.’
Where’s Jerzy?’ Church asked.
Tom and Niamh looked around, puzzled. ‘He was here only a moment ago,’ Niamh said.
Though they called his name for more than an hour, there was no sign of him. Church told the others what Jerzy had said about going to London, and they all agreed that they had little choice but to hope Jerzy would meet them there.
As their carriage pulled away from the moon-shadows sweeping over the Downs, Church felt that they had been at the centre of something very strange indeed.
2
The winding, pitch-black cesspit streets of the East End were almost lost beneath the ramshackle buildings that towered over them, seeping degradation and despair. Occasionally there were pools of light, the pubs where the locals attempted to make the best of their lot amidst the vinegary stink of sour beer and the thick smoke of cheap tobacco. But mostly there was darkness.
Veitch strode purposefully through the dire lanes. His sword was strapped to his back beneath his cloak. He could feel the blade calling out to the shadows, sense its subtle black energies permeating his own flesh and bone, hungrily seeking out his desire for vengeance, and his hatred and his bitterness.
He had grown up across the river in South London, an area of similar hardness and struggle. South Londoners and East Enders were rivals, but there was an affinity beneath the surface that forged an unspoken bond. They knew life wasn’t easy, that it was about compromise, and attempting to mine whatever nuggets of happiness you could find in the thick seam of day-to-day hardship. That was life; no point moaning about it.
Though the East End had changed a great deal by his own time, thanks to German bombs and out-of-town developers, he could still find his way around. The old familiar markers were still there: Mile End and Whitechapel, Shoreditch and Ratcliff Highway. The names were comforting. They brought back memories of running with his brothers when he was in his teens, of hot nights and beer and girls, before his mother’s death and his father’s descent into booze, when their only option had become petty crime. That’s when the shutters had started to come down.
‘Mister, mister! A fuck for a farthing.’ The reedy voice floated out of a nearby alley. Veitch paused as a woman slowly emerged like a ghost from the shadows. She was hunched over, her hair wild, her arms like sticks. Veitch at first took her to be in her sixties, but only when she neared did he see she was a young girl of around thirteen. Her face and body bore the weight of life on the street; it didn’t look as though she had many years ahead of her.
‘What are you doing out here at this time of night, love?’ Veitch already knew the answer.
‘I’ll suck for less. Or a quick handshake. Just a farthing, mister. You can put it anywhere.’
Veitch went over and the girl’s smile was filled with a pathetic gratitude. Behind the hardness of her face he saw something that spoke to him.
What’s your name?’
‘Annie, mister.’
She looked as if she might faint, and when Veitch put an arm around her for support she felt like a bundle of sticks. ‘You shouldn’t be out here, Annie. It’s dangerous at this time of night.’
Her look told him that the danger was ever-present. ‘I haven’t earned enough for my lodgings yet, mister, and I don’t want to spend another night under the arches in West Street.’ She looked hunted. ‘My friend was stabbed to death there the other night.’
‘Where’s your mum and dad? You should be home with them.’
‘My mum died of the pox, not two years gone. I’ve never known my dad. Mum always said he was good for nothing, and spent her pennies on gin.’ She hacked a cough. ‘Will you come down the alley with me, mister?’
Veitch was horrified by her plain, workaday tone. He dug into his pocket and found the guinea that would have bought his own food and lodgings until the business was finished. He pressed it into her hand.
‘You take this and get out of this shit-hole, all right? Get yourself some food. Get up West or … or … down to Bromley or somewhere. Get yourself a maid’s job.’
Even as the words left his lips he realised the hopelessness in them, but the girl didn’t care. Gasping for breath and words that wouldn’t come, she stared at the guinea on her palm as if it were a sign from God.
A shadow fell over them both. Veitch glanced around, saw nothing, then looked up as he caught a glimpse of movement dropping from on high. A figure landed before him. Veitch was not easily unsettled, but what he saw shocked him with its sheer strangeness. The figure was white and slippery, though he couldn’t tell if it was clothes or skin for a black cloak billowed all around it. The hands were clawed where they clutched the material. As it raised its head, Veitch saw goat horns and blazing red eyes, a face that was part-human and part-bestial, but before he could fix on it, the thing opened its mouth to release a blaze of Blue Fire.