And then there were too many echoes to put my concerns at ease.
“Stay close,” was all I managed to say before two shapes lumbered from the fog. Particulars were difficult enough, but I’d spent too much time in the murk—usually at night—to lose the ability of perception now. Two men. One squat and broad, one taller and thin but stooped.
Two sets of blatantly forthright eyes, two kinds of cool, self-satisfied leers. One, the lean one, tossed a blade hand to hand, as if it were merely a toy he fidgeted with.
I allowed my lips to curve into a smile. “Dicker.”
He jolted, coming to an abrupt stop. “’Ow you know me name?” he demanded, gap-toothed confusion lending a little thrill of victory to my calm.
I couldn’t tell him the truth—that when last I’d come face to face with the bloke and his Ferrymen crew, I’d been a red-haired lady chasing an invisible woman in a cloak. Dicker had cracked me a good one across the face, effortlessly cruel in the presence of his mates, and my fingers itched to return the favor.
Instead, I cleared my throat roughly, and spit the contents upon the damp street. Charming, really, but there were no ladies present here. “This isn’t Ferryman land,” I pointed out.
The stocky bloke sized the both of us up. Then, his mate. “Who’re them?”
Dicker shrugged, his small, dark eyes firmly on me. Smart one, really. Of the two of us, Maddie Ruth was naught but a skirt-wearing kinchin mort posing no threat.
Unlike her, I’d shown some knowledge, and displayed no fear.
“Mebbe they live ’ere,” he suggested.
“Maybe you want to let us pass,” I offered instead. I could have invoked Ishmael Communion’s name—as a known man of the Brick Street Bakers, they’d have heard of him, at least. But it didn’t escape me that I was still out for a Baker’s collection, and it seemed unfair to invoke their protection with one hand and deliver one of their own with the otherother, so I said nothing.
The Ferrymen exchanged a glance; I read the shared commitment upon each unattractive scowl as they bolstered each other’s nerve. Maddie Ruth shifted behind me, her shoulder brushing against the back of my arm.
Damn that girl to perdition, I could not very well engage both men without concern for her well-being. One, certainly, and perhaps both if Maddie Ruth was not present—but the truth was not so kind. I was blind in this alley, ignorant of whether these two Ferrymen were walking alone or as part of a large group.
There was a maneuver used by low pads—the smart ones, unfortunately—that involved herding marks deeper into alleys and into the arms of a larger crowd of thieves. A loss of one’s possessions was only the start, and I could not engage either without knowing if more waited somewhere nearby to deliver a drubbing.
Neither appeared willing to back down.
I really, truly did not want to try this tact, not in front of the girl; she’d take the bloody phrase and run, I just knew it. Unfortunately, I had no choice. “Collector’s business, gents,” I said quietly. I watched Dicker’s reptilian eyes widen some; his mate did not appear impressed. “You want to let us pass, you do.”
“Tchaw.” A scornful sound from the short one. “Ain’t no collector here.”
Leather creaked behind me. I wanted to reach back, seize Maddie Ruth’s arm to hold her still, but I feared losing my tenuous control of this volatile situation.
Dicker hesitated for only a breath before rolling his lanky shoulders. The blade he toyed with winked in the murky daylight. “Right. ‘And over the lot, and maybe we leave the bird alone.”
Laughable. Of all the gangs—the Brick Street Bakers, the West End Militia, the Hackney Horribles, and still more rising and falling season to season—it was the Black Fish Ferrymen known to be among the worst of them. My own run-in with them had proven they weren’t likely to let a bit of skirt wander away without at least a foray into humiliation. As cross as I was with Maddie Ruth, I did not wish her harmed.
I allowed myself a short sigh, annoyance clear as a whip crack in the alley’s echoes. “Have it your way,” I said, and took a small step-forward—weight on the balls of my feet, hands held loosely in preparation for anything they threw at me.
Leather creaked loudly. Maddie Ruth called, “Duck, please!”
The men looked from me to the very person I was trying to protect, undoing my bravado with a simple, girlish command.
I rounded on her, exasperation so great that I presented my back to the Ferrymen.
Only to glimpse a thing of copper and brass hoisted in the shorter girl’s hands, a wide tube and what looked to be vents of some kind carved into the brass facing. It was ugly, unwieldy, held up by leather and facing me.
I dropped to the mucky street just as Maddie Ruth’s finger depressed the trigger. Air vented, there was a dull thoop as I’d never heard before, and as at least one set of footsteps pattered behind me, I felt a breeze wobble my hat askew.
I turned to my back on the pitted cobble, open-mouthed with shock. A long dark tube unfolded in mid-air, spread into a net of woven rope silkier than any flax twist usually seen. Uncurling until it looked to be a spider’s web, with weights attached to each point, it sailed through the damp with startling ease. IIt slapped into Dicker—whose ire earned him the arguable honor of being first taken down by the netting. The weights yanked him backward, yelling all the way, and slammed him into his mate, who yelped in pain as the same weights wrapped tight around him and likely clobbered whatever bits of skull and flesh they found.
I watched this unfold as if in a dream, not quite certain if I’d managed to walk into an opium fantasy or not.
Certainly what little I’d imbibed would not affect me quite so obviously.
The men tumbled, a tangle of netted limbs, and Maddie Ruth grasped my shoulder. “I can’t reload here,” she said breathlessly.
I looked up at her, my eyes wide. “Maddie Ruth,” I said, certain of nothing but this, “you and I shall talk again.”
“Aye, as you say,” she said hurriedly, her gaze flicking now to the deeper alley where shouts now bounced in reply to the tangled Ferrymen. She shouldered the weapon the leather straps had been securing, once more placing it upon her back. “I think there’s more coming. What do we do?”
Of course there was more. Hadn’t I thought so?
I allowed myself a small smile as I stood. “Now you do exactly as I say,” I told her, and pointed up. “Do you see the line just above us?”
“The wash line?” She looked up, fear and excitement combining to give her a blotchy sort of wash. Her brown eyes were too wide, but sparkling.
I knew that confusion. The rush of victory replete with the knowledge that such victories would be short-lived if things went poorly. I had often made my own choices upon such a balance.
“Step on my hands,” I told her. “Grasp the line and stand upon it, then reach for the ledge just above that.”
Her mouth gaped. “I can’t!”
“‘Tis easier than it sounds, you know.”
“Is not!”
Frustration filled me. “For the love of all that is holy, Maddie Ruth, you will be the death of one of us.” I spat this out on a muttered tide of aggravation as I surveyed the wash line, the ledge of the wall just above. “Stay here.”
“But—”
“Do as I say, girl!”
Authority, as they say, is not the measure of whether others are willing to obey, but the confidence that they will do so whether they wish to or not. It is a thing ingrained in one, and often displayed by those who sit among the peerage.