I did that. I chose that life, and simply by being close to me, it made my friends targets.
Hadn’t I learned that best only a fortnight ago?
Maddie Ruth may not like me much, but she would forget this nonsense. She may not thank me for her life, either, but at least she would not lose it for her folly. I could not stomach watching another good man or woman die.
I took a deep, scratchy breath, shouldering between two large men who attempted to direct the flow of the walkers by shouting. A bit of broken glass lay between them, to be docked, no doubt, from the day’s wages.
“Off wit’ya,” one snarled, tossing a dismissive fist my way as if he’d a mind to box my ears but made no effort to reach.
I bit back a cheeky word and hurried on.
’Twould do me a fat lot of good to be caught in a tiff with a man whose head was worth nothing.
Coin. The only focus I needed to maintain. Coin to spend when I needed it, coin to purchase opium, and coin to grease the palms of those wayward cogs in the machine that was London. There were always them cogs what need greasing.
London above the soiled drift or London below, it all ran on at least one shared principle: greed.
Anything that a body can get for as little as can be spent for it.
I found myself whistling aimlessly as I walked, feeling much more cheerful than when I’d set off. With a goal firmly in mind—collect a bounty—and a bit of the tar taken to soothe the nerves, I found my mood vastly improved.
A mild ache still prodded at my head.
I considered that spot, tender and raw inside my own forehead as if I’d poked it repeatedly from the inside of my skull. Like a bruise or a seeping wound, I could not stop myself from worrying at this intrusive bother.
If I could have put a finger in my own eye and wiggled it about to get the measure of the hurt, I would have.
I have never been what one might call a good patient. To be honest, I rather considered taking more of the opium I carried—its relief from pain was one of the many reasons it was so valued by doctors and patients alike.
I did not, though. Much as I wanted to, the thought of running out before I had more coin was frightening enough.
Collection first. Resin second. Rest, possibly, following all that, for I need to be sure that I did not fall to illness.
Such thoughts occupied me in slow, deliberate detail, punctuated by the ebb and flow of them what lived in this fog with me. The bit of tar I’d chewed was not enough to take my senses away—I could not afford that much—but I nevertheless enjoyed its effects.
The world seemed a titch brighter, even in this thick haze. All seemed a little more manageable.
I passed an empty storefront just in the upper northeastern corner of Ratcliffe. The windows were boarded and the remnants of the glass long since turned black from too much time without a washer’s rag, and the inside likely as blackened and rotted as the out. Ratcliffe was not a wealthy district by any means, catering to the dock-born, the grubby-handed laborers who could not manage to land work above the drift at the upper West India Docks, and those who made their wages any way they possibly could.
I’d noticed a few more Chinese here and there, but mostly on the eastern edge—where Limehouse’s reach dwindled, but the Veil was not entirely disregarded. I’d also noticed more dock workers than usual; one may learn to recognize them by mode of dress and roughened hands, which were often gnarled like a sailor’s but lacking the distinctive sea-born calluses.
There had been rumors of strike not that long ago, union men demanding fair conditions and equal pay as those who worked above, but I’d heard nothing of late. This many unemployed, lazing about the open porticos of the pubs and prostitutes who made their homes here, was not a comforting sign.
A glimpse into the smudged film coating the remains of the storefront glass assured me that I looked no more out of place than a working man who was not at work, and I blew out a silent breath of relief.
My nerves did not settle. A sign of something more afoot, as I had learned long ago to trust my fog-sense—that instinct of those who made their way in the smoke. Opium might have dulled my anger, but it did little else noticeable.
As I passed the abandoned store, past the slender alley mouth dripping fog from its narrow crevasse, it was only by chance of that mucky reflection that I glanced sidelong into the lane instead of watching the walk at my feet.
The shadow that flitted back from view did not escape my attention.
My heart stuttered once. Then it slammed into my rib cage and hammered hard enough to turn my vision into a narrowed, brittle focus.
I was not alone on these streets—or rather, alone in the sense that a person walking in a crowd may be.
I did not stop—I remembered well what happened last time I threw myself into the smoke and fog in search of a murderer—but my fists clenched against my sides. My throat swelled on words—on an anxious, terrible anger—that I could not expel. The commotion of Ratcliffe about me, the shouting men and laughter of conversation not far away, the cheer of children playing marbles in a smooth patch of sand-filled mud, faded to a throbbing beat.
Was he close? Was he reaching for me even now?
I found myself straining to hear a whistle in the dark.
But it was not dark, was it? I wasn’t alone in the smoke and the fog, haunted by a murderer’s laugh.
I shook my head hard, and the world came back into rights about me. Laughter turned strident and tinny, but it was real. Normal.
What ever that was, I did not know. My heart slammed against my ribs as if it would tear itself out of its bodily cage. The world seemed suddenly too bright, too shrill, too much in all the things I looked at.
Still I walked, my hands fists by my sides, my fingers drenched in damp sweat. My jaw hurt from the clench of my teeth, and I forced myself to loosen it. It would not do to tip off whoever followed me—assuming, of course, that I had not fallen to ghosts of my own making.
I deliberately relaxed, easing into a stride I’d practiced for months before I’d learned to do it right. A street rat as I aped learned the art of walking at a pace that made it seem as if one was in no hurry, but that moved quite briskly indeed. Between the flick of a wrist and the clink of a coin purse, that walk turned into a run that could only be called a scarper.
I employed that talent now, walking as if I had not a care in the world—no school, no mum to worry for me, no thought as to from where my next meal may come.
And all the while, I found excuses to look behind me. I employed distractive techniques—a wave at a young girl here, a nod at a gnarled old man there—that allowed me to semi-turn and glance into the fog around me.
The trembling in my knees eased.
I was in fact, being followed, but I was suddenly certain that it was no sweet tooth come to finish what he’d started in that bloody fog.
If it had been, I was rather sure that I would not have seen traces of him as often as I saw glimpses of this less clever cat. I couldn’t know if it were a footpad after my pockets, meager as they promised to be, or something else, but it would be easy enough to learn.
Sliding my hands into my coat pockets, I whistled again as I sauntered down a narrow street dividing this larger thoroughfare. The tune was something jaunty and heedless—a giveaway, really, for only those up to no good whistle so easily in the cold streets. The damp bit at my ears and reddened my nose, but the warm tide of adrenaline as it trickled through my leaden veins took care of any discomfort I might have felt.
This, then, was something more fun. Unplanned, to be certain, but oh, how I relished the chase.