“Iron rot you,” Dead Rick snarled, through teeth that would not unclench. All he could see was the camera in front of his eyes, but he knew Nadrett was out there somewhere, and directed his curses at the bastard. “I ain’t going to give you nothing—”
“That,” Nadrett said coldly, “is where you’re wrong.”
Another flash, another scream, his muscles knotting into hard points of agony.
“Your arrival in London, I think, sir,” Chrennois said. “Closer, but not quite.”
He had to hold on to it. Whatever the cost, he couldn’t let Nadrett take what he knew—
Dead Rick twisted his mind frantically away from that thought. ’Ave to think of something, anything other than what ’e wants—
Drinking in the Crow’s Head. With a rending flash, that was gone. The first Prince of the Stone—gone. The Great Fire, which had burned London to the ground—gone. Desperate, Dead Rick threw everything he could think of between him and the camera, and piece by piece it dwindled, as his body thrashed and his throat went raw with screaming. The moors of Yorkshire, where he’d roamed for ages before coming to London. Centuries of All Hallows’ Eve rides, sweeping ghosts from the city’s streets. Irrith. Other Princes. Mortals he’d known—Owen and Eliza—he’d told her about—
“Ah,” Chrennois said in satisfaction. “We have it at last.”
“Let me see.”
Dead Rick’s breath sobbed in his chest. Despairing, he reached into the bloody, shredded depths of his mind, knowing there had once been something there, something important, something that explained why he was here…
Nothing but a gaping hole remained.
“Excellent,” Nadrett hissed, and the sound of shattering glass filled Dead Rick’s ears.
The skriker’s hands had cramped into fisted masses, useless so long as he was tied down. But as soon as they let him out, drugged or not, he would get his revenge. It didn’t fucking matter what he’d known about Nadrett and lost, if the bastard was dead.
The sprite asked, “Do you want him killed?”
The question chilled Dead Rick’s blood; Nadrett’s thoughtful laugh turned it to ice. “No. We know it works, now; let’s try something more. Let’s see what ’appens when ’e don’t ’ave any memories left.”
A mindless, panicked howl burst out of Dead Rick then, long before the camera clicked once more into action. He fought like a rabid dog, until the straps cut into his skin and he thought he might tear his own arms off; he would have done it if he could, and counted it a worthy trade.
But mere flesh and blood could not buy him escape. Nothing could. And soon the pain in his body faded into insignificance next to the agony in his mind. The light flashed again and again, each burst tearing him apart piece by piece until even the memory of the tearing was gone, leaving behind nothing but a gaping wound where someone used to be.
The howling went from memory to reality, a primal sound driving up from his gut to split the air. “C’est terminé, c’est tout!” Yvoir was shouting, and Irrith’s nimble hands were tearing at the buckles that held Dead Rick in place; he tried to fling himself from the chair before he was entirely free, wrenched his legs, snapped the last ankle cuff without waiting for anyone to undo it. Dead Rick fell to the floor, gasping, crawling away from the all-too-similar chair, staggering to his feet and forward until a wall stopped him, where he clung to the black stone, relying on it to hold him up.
Too many thoughts flooded through his mind at once, a swirling, incoherent mass of memory that even the clarity granted by faerie absinthe couldn’t settle immediately. Faces stared at him—familiar faces; Blood and Bone, Irrith, I ’elped ’er rob the British Museum—everything piled atop everything else, arranged more by connection than time, so that he looked at the Prince and remembered every man who had preceded him, Joseph Winslow, Geoffrey Franklin, Michael Deven, who was buried in the ruins of the night garden. Galen St. Clair, who haunted the Onyx Hall every year after his death, lending what help he could to his successors, until the breaking of the palace stranded him in the sewers.
Nadrett. The bastard who ripped apart Dead Rick’s mind until he got what he wanted, then tore the rest out just to see if he could make a puppet from what remained.
“I did know something,” Dead Rick ground out, fingers pressed against the wall, not sure whether he was about to fall down or launch himself off it. “Fucking bastard. You was right, milord. I’d found out something about Nadrett; that’s why ’e took my memories.”
Hodge’s eyes went wide. “What was it?”
Dead Rick shook his head, ignoring the way the room and everything in it danced at the motion. “I don’t know. Burn my body—burn my mind; that’s damn near what ’e did—’e broke it as soon as ’e ’ad it, to make sure nobody could get it back.”
Groaning, Irrith squeezed her eyes shut. They popped back open, though, when Dead Rick laughed—a laugh as ominous as the one Nadrett had uttered before.
“I don’t remember no more,” the skriker said, baring his teeth in a fierce snarl. “But I knows somebody who does.”
St. Anne’s Church, Whitechapeclass="underline" August 22, 1884
It might have been better to leave the church and go somewhere with fewer eyes that could recognize Eliza and James O’Malley. But they had nowhere suitable to go, and Father Tooley was not eager to throw the recipient of tonight’s miracle out onto the streets; instead he hurried the five of them into the sacristy, where they might be cramped, but at least there was a bit of privacy, and the priest himself went to make sure no one else was stirring.
Tears kept ambushing Eliza when she least expected them. Crying after Owen began to speak again, that was understandable; but every time she thought she was done, a fresh spate would begin. It was all she could do to stand back and let the Darraghs at their son, Owen’s mother hugging him as if the meager strength of her arms could undo all the separation of before.
It couldn’t. He was still fourteen but not; he still seemed to remember almost nothing. But he spoke again, and looked at the world around him like he saw it, which was more than they had before. Eliza sniffed back the latest round of tears and told herself that was enough.
For distraction, she had her father. The success of the baptism did wonders of its own for Eliza’s feelings toward the man; he’d been a part of that miracle, and for that she was grateful to him. But not so grateful that she didn’t think to say, “It’s later, Da. And long past time to talk.”
His face settled into a grimmer shape. Keeping her voice low, so as not to distract the Darraghs a few feet away, she growled, “Isn’t it enough, all the trouble you were for us before? Drinking and gambling and falling in with the wrong sort—and now the sort you’ve fallen in with are the bloody Fenians. I’ve had Special Branch after me, because of you.”
Because of her own actions, too; but the boiling resentment in Eliza’s gut left no room for that kind of nuance. James O’Malley grabbed his daughter and pulled her farther from the Darraghs, as if another two feet would make any real difference. “Because of me? It’s Fergus Boyle who’s had the loose tongue—”
“Aye, I know that—”
“And telling lies to boot,” he finished. “Christ, Eliza, I’ve been in prison; I don’t have a bloody thing to do with those boys. Don’t you see what Boyle’s doing? He’s trying to protect her.”
And he jerked his thumb at Maggie Darragh.