I was not truly Society, not in the way my late husband had been, but I had spent countless hours among them, learning to shape my words as a weapon and my demeanor as armor.
Maddie Ruth bore no chance. Too young, I think. Too uncertain.
She shut her mouth, pressing herself back against the crumbling wall as if she could disappear into it.
The alley now echoed with the hue and cry of men, and the Ferrymen swore wildly, angrily. Rather uncreatively, to be honest. I’d heard them all already.
Measuring the distance between the alley walls with my gaze, I processed my plan as quickly as I dared and launched myself at the first wall. “Allez hop,” I grunted, just as my feet found purchase on the rough surface and propelled me towards the other. Like a grubby frog, I jumped from wall to wall, climbing with the grace of the acrobat I used to be until the wash line—a useless bit of rope that was not meant for laundering at all—was within reach.
My knees ached with the effort, and my body would not thank me after. Had I paused to consider the foolishness of this maneuver, I don’t know that I would have maintained the momentum to climb this way, but the skills shaped by mostly forgotten childhood are not so easily dismissed. On the final leap, as if by rote, my arms extended on the last spring, my fingers found the rope, and I allowed my momentum to carry my weight once forward, once backward. Another forward, and this time, I curled my body up, pulled my legs in, and landed squarely atop the rope as if it were a bar and I the tightrope walker atop it.
The loose support made certain of my awkward balance, and it took me precious seconds to regain sure footing.
“God in heaven,” Maddie Ruth groaned from the street below.
Not for me, I was sure. Up here, I could see the eddies of day lit vapor tossing about as more of the Ferrymen hurried to find us.
“Let us go!” roared the stocky man, wriggling like the fish his crew was named after. “Cut us loose, damn it!”
Why they were so plentiful in Ratcliffe would be a mystery to suss out later. I rose to my feet and took careful but quick steps across the line and to the far end, where the ledge was much higher. This was not an act likely to be kind to my body.
I plucked one knife from the corset slatting beneath my coat. If Maddie Ruth ever forgot what I did for her this day, I’d deliver a bolloxing so hard, her skull wouldn’t stop ringing for a fortnight. Clenching my teeth, I cut the end of the rope I stood upon. My stomach left its usual haunts to launch into my throat as the support dropped out from beneath me.
Allez hop, I thought wildly, because that, too, was a kind of habit, and one I relied upon to focus myself.
I grasped the rope, swung across the alley and slammed hard into the wall. My palms burned with the effort; flesh tore under the rough, twisted hemp. That would scar, I was sure of it. Rope abrasions were never gentle.
Nothing for it, now.
Agile as an African monkey, I climbed up the rope, hissing as my hands twitched, and over the ledge. “Maddie Ruth!”
“Where are they?” came a not so faint demand from my left. “Dicker! Abe?”
“Get over here,” roared the one I assumed was called Abe.
“Maddie Ruth,” I called in a loud whisper, “get on this rope!”
This far up, the murk seemed thicker towards the street than it did while upon it. I couldn’t be sure Maddie Ruth obeyed, not until the rope I held in my throbbing hands went taut.
Untested though she was, she had gumption. I did not know exactly what Hawke’s Menagerie had taught her, but as I pulled the rope hard, hauling her bodily over the ledge with enough effort to drench my forehead, neck and back in sweat, I was glad that she knew enough that she could hold on to a rope without wilting.
She grasped the ledge as she came close enough, wriggled onto the slanted surface of the rooftop we now occupied, and collapsed, gasping for breath.
I did not sit. I was not so ignorant as my unbidden companion.
“Take a moment,” I said, my gaze not on her as she struggled to catch her breath, but on the roiling fog drifting across the landscape. Pointed rooftops and slanted shingles parted the miasma like ships at sea, bordered by wrought iron grating or strung together by more ropes or twisted bits of cloth. The occasional sheet—ragged sails, usually, pinched from wherever they could be found—flapped like beacons. There were no lanterns to see by up here, not by day, but there were many marked signs. I could read some of them, but none were in written word. The cant of the Crossing was a learned thing, and mine mostly by accident.
Maddie Ruth pushed tendrils of brown hair from her sweat-damp cheeks, looking for all the world like the wayward child she protested not to be. “Is this safe?” she asked, only fortifying the naïve comparison.
I shook my head. “Of course not,” I replied, giving her the courtesy of unbuttered honesty. She winced. “Welcome to Cat’s Crossing, girl. Pray your footing is as precise as your aim.”
“It is.”
“That will be seen.” Lights bobbed in the swirl, and I muttered an uncivility beneath my breath. “Come on, then. We’ve ground to cover.”
“But—”
She was rather fond of the word, wasn’t she? I cut her off with an impatient gesture. “Cat’s Crossing is the domain of the quick and the agile, and you may rest assured that every gang has a bantling or two to run it. Including the Ferrymen,” I added pointedly. “Now, off your backside, Maddie Ruth, and make good on your boasting.”
That was enough. She clambered to her feet, less grace than I expected but I imagined the weight of the device upon her back made for awkward maneuvering.
That would pose a problem. Brusque though I was, I had no intentions of losing the girl.
Cat’s Crossing was the name given the run of rooftops above London’s low’s streets and far below the lifted platforms comprising London proper. It was usually the haunt of children—bantling gangs who either worked for themselves until they were too big to safely run the Crossing or kept company with the foremost gangs in whatever turf they occupied.
It was, in essence, a suicidal course. Even the children who occupied it weren’t immune; many was the small body found twisted and broken on the cobbles below.
I would have to be very careful with Maddie Ruth in tow.
“I’m ready,” she said, huddling closer as masculine swearing drifted from below and the occasional bit of lantern lit a dull glow from rooftops just beyond.
I really didn’t imagine that she was. But she’d learn.
The alternative was not one I was willing to pursue.
Chapter Five
Were we on Baker ground, I would have expected to find the occasional carrier—usually a pair of young kinchin rogues whose purpose was to keep watch on the territory and run messages to members below when likely prospects came wandering past.
More often than not, these kinchins saw great sport in fishing for hats by way of hook and twine. One recognized a successful angler by the state of his hat, usually somewhat too big and stuffed with rags for fit.
As Ratcliffe was unclaimed territory—by careful politicking by the Karakash Veil, I’d wager, who’d not take kindly to the Black Fish Ferrymen’s usual muckery of prostitution and drink encroaching upon their own wares—I saw no carriers of any stripe. As I led Maddie Ruth on a quick-footed chase across the adjacent rooftops, over a knee-high divide of twisted iron fencing—to keep the birds away, naturally—and bade her jump across the narrow gap dividing one roof from the next, I saw nothing to indicate that the district’s Crossing was well-used at all.
This way was not a path for standard men, as many of the most useful ways required leaping, twisting, climbing and the occasional fall. Being short of stature as we both were, we could easily fit in the narrow passes between overhangs, or where one ledge tucked against another in cramped residence.