He would ask the Academy blokes, but first, he had someone better. A former minion of Nadrett’s, who had no reason to love him now. And he’d been meaning to deal with the blighter anyway.
“Bring Dead Rick to me,” he said.
I wonder if ’e realizes I’m the one as knocked ’im down in Blackfriars.
Dead Rick had vaguely hoped Abd ar-Rashid’s comment about turning him over to Hodge had been something to mollify the girl. But that would require his luck turning good, and aside from getting his memories back, he hadn’t seen much sign of that happening. Yvoir was doing his best to sort out what exactly Chrennois’s cameras had done, but so far he had nothing useful to say, and they were running out of time.
At least the Prince’s court wasn’t much to speak of. Dead Rick had nothing to go by save Cyma’s occasional nostalgic recollections, but he had an imagination; what he’d imagined for the court had been a lot grander than this. There was little ceremony, and even he could recognize the spindly furniture as old-fashioned. The Prince himself dressed like a working man, even down here, in trousers and shirt probably bought ready-made, if not secondhand. It gave Dead Rick the thin consolation that his punishment might be something as ordinary as a beating. Hodge didn’t look like the sort to get creative.
To be honest, he looked too tired for it. Maybe the darkness that night in Blackfriars had just hidden the sick exhaustion in the man’s face, but Dead Rick would have bet anything other than his memories that the Prince had weakened more since then, as the rails raced to join up in Cannon Street. All those earthquakes, at best half suppressed. The Queen’s got it worse, he thought, remembering what Irrith had said. He wondered if the rest of what she’d said was true, that Hodge heard the Queen screaming.
The Prince sat with his face in his hands, scrubbing wearily at his eyes; then he drew in a breath and straightened. It was just three of them in the room, Hodge and Dead Rick and one of the Prince’s knights, Sir Cerenel. Dead Rick wasn’t even chained. Without warning, Hodge said, “Passages to Faerie. What do you know about ’em?”
Dead Rick blinked in surprise. He’d expected the Prince to read him a lecture about that mortal boy, not question him. Stupid of him; of course Hodge would want to know about Nadrett. “Scarce more than I did when I saw Irrith in the Market. Got the notion from Aspell; ’e comes to me—in secret; I didn’t know it was ’im—saying Nadrett’s trying to find a way to make one. I been looking for months, though, and the only thing I found was this business with the photos.”
“I know about those. But what’s ’e using them for?”
The question had been plaguing Dead Rick since that moment in the sewers. He wasn’t any closer to an answer now than before. “Blowed if I know. I can’t even invent nothing. It don’t make sense.”
Hodge pinched the bridge of his nose. “But you know Nadrett. Better than any of us do. Even if you don’t know ’ow the thing works, you can guess about ’im.”
Dead Rick would have preferred never to think about the bastard again, except to tear his throat out. He couldn’t get there without doing this first, though. “’E loves power; that’s what I know. Loves being the biggest rat in the sewer, with everybody afraid of ’im or owing ’im debts. If this place weren’t falling apart, ’e’d probably stay right where ’e is, fighting Hardface and all the rest until there ain’t nobody to challenge ’im no more. I’ll lay a clipped penny to a loaf of bread, ’e wants to make sure ’e don’t lose that when this all falls down. And that means making sure ’e’s got something everybody wants.”
“Something everybody wants,” Hodge muttered, “and people to sell it to. Did you know ’e’s vanished from the Market?”
“What?”
“Some of ’is lieutenants, too. We’re thinking they’ve shoved off to Faerie already. But I keep wondering: Why would ’e go, and leave everybody else behind? What use is it being a king in Faerie, if you’ve got nobody to rule over? Does ’e think ’e’s going to conquer ’imself a kingdom there, using cameras?”
Dead Rick frowned. “Could be ’e’s making ready for people to follow—”
“Then why ain’t ’e saying nothing? Getting everybody outside the door, ready to leap through?” Hodge got up from his chair and paced, not like a man with too much energy, but like one who simply couldn’t bear to remain still. “Something ’ere don’t make sense.”
Sourly, Dead Rick said, “I ain’t the one to tell you. My ’ead’s more ’ole than memory, you know.”
Hodge stopped, muttered to himself, turned back to face him. “Why did ’e take your memories, anyway?”
With Dead Rick’s mind buried in the other matter, it took him a moment to understand Hodge’s. “What?”
“I ’eard what ’e did to you. What was the point? What was ’e going to use ’em for?”
“Nothing,” Dead Rick said, frowning. Irrith had told him to trust Hodge; he made himself answer more fully. “That is—they was just for keeping me in line, is all. Whenever I disobeyed ’im, ’e broke one. ’E wouldn’t do that, right, if ’e was going to use ’em for something else?”
“Probably not. But do you think you knowed something, and ’e wanted to steal it, or—”
The Prince stopped again, and they both stared at each other. “Or destroy it,” Dead Rick said, with lips and tongue that had gone quite numb.
He’d never prodded too hard at that ragged, bleeding edge within his spirit, the place where everything had been torn away. It hurt too much, and Nadrett seemed to know when he was thinking about it; his master had kept him close in those early days, and broken more than a few memories to teach his dog his place. But now—
“What’s the first thing you remember?” Hodge asked.
The boy, Dead Rick thought, but it wasn’t true. That was just the farthest back he ever really let himself think about. Before that…
His breath came faster, his heart pounded harder, his knuckles ached from the tightness of his fists, but he made himself think back. Before the girl’s screams, before the boy’s trusting cooperation, even before Nadrett’s orders.
The earliest thing was pain.
Being thrown down onto a stone floor, puking-sick with pain that didn’t come from his body, and only white light when he blinked. “Somebody ’ad been flashing a light in my eyes,” Dead Rick said, hearing his voice flatten out with tension. “And somebody—Nadrett, I think—’e said, is that the lot, and whoever ’e asked must ’ave nodded or such, because ’e said, good. And then they dragged me out of the room, and somebody else chained me up, a chain around my neck like I was a dog even though I was a man, and then—” He stopped, unable to go further, and shook his head. There was nothing worth telling, no hint of whether he’d once known something useful. Something Nadrett would shred his mind to get.
Cerenel stepped forward, and Dead Rick nearly jerked into violence; he’d forgotten the elf-knight was there. Cerenel’s hand floated just above the butt of his pistol, though he didn’t draw. Dead Rick realized his own body had drawn wire-tight; to anyone watching from the outside, it must look like he was on the verge of something dangerous. Like hurting the Prince. Drawing in a slow breath, trying to convince himself it was calming, Dead Rick unclenched his hands. His knuckles creaked at the release.
Hodge was chewing on one fingernail, half-turned away as if trying to give Dead Rick some privacy. “Yvoir’s got to put you back together. If you knows something we can use, I want to know it, too.”