Dead Rick searched Gresham Street and London Wall both, from one end to the other, and the curved length of Crutched Friars, until it became Jewry Street around Aldgate. Every yard of roadway was paved and curbed, lined with buildings and trampled by people, without the faintest hint of any scent he recognized.
It had been a good notion—until it fell apart.
His steps dragged as he turned back toward the Goblin Market. They dragged even more as he went down the rest of Mark Lane, on his way to Billingsgate and the door there; hoardings blocked one side of the roadway, and a piece of paper glued to them promised in bold letters that it wouldn’t be long at all before the new Mark Lane Underground station opened for business. “Bugger you all,” he snarled under his breath, then hunched his shoulders and hurried by. The visible work here was already done, the roadway dug up and tunneled and covered once more, but the navvies were probably right beneath his feet, toiling away at destroying his home.
He wasn’t even certain how safe it was to use the Billingsgate door. It had clung to existence after the rails were laid from Mark Lane to Eastcheap—no, he thought, the Queen ’eld onto it. But if her grip slipped, any faerie in the middle of passing through might go along with the door.
His choice was that or crawling through the sewers, or else going into some other part of the Hall, and hoping nobody noticed him on his way back to the Market. Sighing, Dead Rick went into the pub that now covered the door, and put up a charm to hide himself briefly as he passed the owner on his way to the cellar stairs. Not that he needed it; the man’s wits had been half-scrambled by all the charms used to make him forget the temporary invasion after the earthquake in May.
Down in the cellar, with one hand outstretched to open the door, he stopped.
The entrance was enchanted, just like the rest of the Hall. Enchantment was a faerie thing, and faerie things involved faerie elements. That was very nearly as far as Dead Rick’s knowledge of science went, but he knew two things more. First, that one of those elements was aether.
And second, that the Academy had invented devices for detecting it.
He’d seen one in the Goblin Market, after someone brought in a load of things supposedly from the faerie courts of India and China. Jade figurines, strange weapons, things like that. A Greek trader named Arkheton had been interested in buying them, but only if they were genuine, and so he’d tested them with one of those devices. An aetheric versorium, that was the term.
All but two pieces proved to be false, and Arkheton kept the versorium in case anyone tried to swindle him again.
’E won’t mind if I borrow it, right?
Dead Rick almost didn’t make it out of the Goblin Market with his head attached, but not because Arkheton objected to him stealing the object. The skriker doubted his victim even knew the thing was gone. Right now, you could steal a man’s left nutmeg and ’e might not notice.
His ally, it seemed, had decided to cover his absence by laying an enormous charm over what remained of the warren, confusing both sight and sound. Smell was more or less untouched, and that was the only reason Dead Rick had been able to carry out his purpose; he’d closed his eyes, ignored what he heard, and followed his nose to the incense of Arkheton’s stall. Then nearly lost his ears when Charcoal Eddie, convinced this was prelude to some kind of attack, began waving a rusted sword at anything resembling movement nearby.
“Blood and Bone,” he muttered, climbing with relief back into the cellar. “I thought I was working with somebody subtle.”
But it was effective. Nobody would be able to tell Dead Rick was gone. He didn’t know how much longer the effect would last, though; best to hurry.
Nothing at Crutched Friars. Nothing at Threadneedle. At Aldersgate…
The device looked something like a compass, with a barrier to prevent the needle from swinging about to point at the faerie holding it. On the way up Aldersgate Street, the needle began to twitch, and a thin line of something shimmering copper began to show along its length; the line grew, and the needle moved more strongly as he neared a particular building. When Dead Rick held the versorium out, it pointed steadily toward the building’s corner, and the line steadied to about a quarter the needle’s length.
Not much, for what ought to be the most powerful enchantments in London. But enough to tell him that something faerie still existed there.
Dead Rick had no desire to find out what, not on his own. Chrennois could be inside; so could half a dozen Market bullies, all prepared to kill anyone who walked in without permission. He would leave that to his ally.
And why didn’t that blighter get ’is own versorium and do this ’imself? It don’t need a good nose—so why send me?
Stupid question. Standing out here was dangerous; it might attract attention. Much better, from the voice’s perspective, to send an expendable skriker.
Dead Rick quickly put the versorium behind his back—as if that would save him, had anyone been watching. Then, with a shiver, he went back to the chaos his ally had made of the Goblin Market.
White Lion Street, Islington: August 6, 1884
There would be no waiting for Friday. Eliza walked through the gates of the Kensington workhouse late in the afternoon, and immediately turned her steps toward Islington.
She’d seen nothing more of Louisa, but the changeling must have kept her word; someone had persuaded the authorities to release a woman that only a little while ago had been declared a violent lunatic, a menace to those around her. Eliza kept to her best behavior while waiting for freedom, but couldn’t resist making a rude gesture once she was clear of the gates. They could go to the devil, the lot of them, from the workhouse matrons to the justice who put her there.
Put her there, and then put her back out, with nothing more than the dress and shoes she wore. All her other possessions had vanished somewhere between assault and freedom, save the photograph of Owen, rescued from Cromwell Road. How they expected her to feed herself, she didn’t know. Begging, she supposed. And it would come to that soon enough, when she dared not return to Whitechapel. But before she did that—before she decided what, if anything, to tell Quinn about the changeling—she would do what she’d been trying to do for seven long years.
She would get Owen back.
This time, there was no spying from a neighbor’s front steps, no disguising herself as more than she was. Eliza walked straight up to No. 9 and knocked on the door. When the maid opened it, Eliza said, “I’m here to see Mrs. Chase. Don’t bother trying to keep me out; it’s urgent business I’ve come on, concerning the London Fairy Society and the Goodemeade sisters. If she isn’t at home, I’ll wait until she is.”
Intimidating people wasn’t so very difficult; mostly what it required was an absolute refusal to back down. Eliza was prepared to shove the maid out of the way, if it proved necessary. It didn’t: a door not far down the hall opened, and Mrs. Chase herself looked out. “What on earth… Miss Baker, wasn’t it? Whatever are you doing here?”
The maid stepped clear. Eliza came into the hall—it would be a good deal harder to force her from the house, now—and said, “I need your help.”
Mrs. Chase’s white eyebrows rose. “Oh dear. Do come in—shut the door, Mary; we don’t need the whole of Islington knowing our affairs—and I will see what I can do.”