“Let me take one of those,” I said.
“Master all the ways carries the tank. Ye just keep yer head down and let me do the yammering,” he advised as I followed him out of the station. “’Em boys up there aren’t as thick as I’d like.”
We crossed through several tunnels until we reached a staircase and climbed up into the back of an enormous room packed with shelves of boxes. Before he approached the two guards sitting at the front, Hedger used a wrench to loosen a joint on a water pipe, just enough to create a steady drip.
“Here’s the leak, Jimmy,” he said in a loud tone, and then called out, “Tunnel service.”
One of the guards strolled back. “Hang on, old man, you can’t go barging in here.”
“Sure and I’ll leave now.” Hedger nodded toward the leaking pipe. “But ye boys best put on yer waders and fetch some pails.”
The guard surveyed the pipe. “How bad is it?”
“Might not burst right away,” Hedger said. “Could go tomorrow, the day after. But it’s a main line, lad. When she goes, she’ll go a-gusher.”
“Well, then what are you pissing about for?” The big man gestured toward the pipe. “Get on with it.”
“Can’t use me torches with ye lot in here,” Hedger said patiently. “Gas’ll leave ye senseless.” He hefted the tanks he carried. “Only brought enough air and nozzes for me and the lad.”
“Flame my ass. Oy, Jerry,” the guard called to his partner. “Tunneler’s got to torch a sprung pipe. Fancy an early tea?”
The other guard grumbled but left with his partner, leaving us alone in the vault room. Hedger immediately began setting up his torches.
“You needn’t do that,” I said. “Just tighten the joint again.”
“I’ve got to burn a bit of it; they’ll be sniffing the air and checking the pipe when they get back.” He thrust a tank at me. “Keep the noz on while ye’re looking, or the gas will knock ye on yer little bum.”
Even with the cumbersome air tank on, being allowed to roam freely through the city’s protected archives was a bit like being a hungry child turned loose in an unattended sweets shop.
I gave in to the temptation briefly and glanced inside one long box at random; the first sheaf of glassines inside held the birth records of three royal bastards, the testimony of a minister who had uncovered a massive swindling scheme to defraud and embarrass the Crown, and an old, slashed waistcoat marked as belonging to the governor’s deceased valet, whose blood staining it had dried to an ugly dark maroon.
Something twinkled at me from the bottom corner of the box, and when I took it out, I saw it was a tiny silver disk, marked with the queen’s rose and edged with runes.
I dropped the wardling, shoved the box back in place, and took a deep breath through the noz. Whatever I found here would be dangerous to know, the sort of information I always avoided. But even if I were suffering from some form of hopefully temporary madness, I had to know who my grandfather was. Otherwise I’d spend the rest of my days wondering until I truly went mad.
I took a few moments and checked the sides of the long boxes, noting how they were sorted by date and surname and following the sequence back to the annum of my mother’s birth. There I searched through the glassines one by one until at last I found a thin envelope marked Doyle-Weiss. Until she married, Mum had used the name Doyle. But who was this Weiss?
“Lad. Lad.”
A rough hand shook my shoulder, startling me back to the present. I turned my head to Hedger, who had taken off his noz to speak. I did the same and smelled a trace of the sickening-sweet scent of gas. “What?”
“They’re coming back,” he whispered. “Shake yer ass, gel.” He stalked back to the pipe.
I regarded the pile of glassines I’d taken from the box, which I now had no time to read. Destroying them would serve no purpose; six copies of them were stored in the protected archives of the other provinces, and the Crown would have the originals safely secured in the Royal vaults. But I had to know what they contained.
With a trembling hand I removed from the box all the glassines pertaining to my grandfather and mother and stuffed them inside my shirt before I trudged back to rejoin the old tunneler.
“Good enough, then.” Hedger tapped the pipe with the side of his fist. “Did you see any seepage under the shelves, lad?”
I heard the guards unlocking the gates to the vault room behind me and managed a strangled “No, marster.”
“Good on ye.” Hedger tramped through the aisle of shelving, had a word with the guards about opening the outside air slats to ventilate the last of the gas from the room, and then brought one back to see the unnecessary work he’d done.
“You’re sure this’ll hold?” the guard asked.
“Aye, it’s as strong a patch as any I’ve done, and none of them ever have cracked.”
The guard yawned. “Get on with you, then.”
As I stepped toward the hatch, the glassine in my shirt crackled, and something grabbed my collar and turned me around.
“What you got on you, boy?” the guard demanded.
“Naught but lunch, Cap’n,” Hedger said, taking out a glassine bundle from his pocket and holding it up. “Wet down here. The old glassies we scram make fine wraps, keep our sandwiches dry.”
If the guard demanded I show him my nonexistent sandwich, Hedger and I were going to the gaol. The whimper that broke from my lips was quite genuine.
“’Sall right, boy,” the guard said, releasing my collar and giving my shoulder a rough shove. “I’d eat dirt before I’d touch scram.” He turned to Hedger. “You be sure to secure that hatch, old rat.”
Hedger nodded eagerly and hustled me out of the vault. Once he’d closed the hatch and spun the hub to lock it, he leaned against it and pressed a blacking-streaked fist against his heart as he murmured a prayer.
If I’d been Church, I’d have done the same. “Sorry.”
“So am I.” He dragged me down the tunnel until we were well away from the vault. “What were ye thinking, Kit? Ye’re no thief. Were ye trying to get us shot?”
I was too shaken to lie. “The papers are about my family. There’s a man who’s looking into my past, and I can’t let him find them.”
He held out his hand. “Give ’em over.”
“Hedger—”
“There’s naught about ye that could rattle me bars,” he snapped. “But I’ll see what ye just near stretched me neck over.”
I pulled out the glassines and handed them to him and watched as he sorted through them. In the midst of the pile he went still.
“Ye’re Harry’s Charm.” He looked at me, his face gone leech white under the layer of dirt. “Why did ye never say so, gel?”
“Because I don’t quite know who I am, Hedger.” I tried to smile. “Did you know my grandfather?”
“Served with him, I did.” His voice grew distant as he stared at nothing in particular. “Until he went up to the North Country. Then he disappeared for years, until . . .”
He didn’t say anything else, and my skin prickled with unease. “Mr. Hedgeworth?”
His face darkened abruptly. “This settles things between us.” He seized my arm. “Ye’re to go now, and ye’re not to come back down here, do ye understand? Never again.”
“Why not?”
“The debt is settled,” was all he would say.
He allowed me just enough time to change back into my bucks before he marched me back to the bathhouse, where he gave me a hard push toward the stairs.
I couldn’t leave without knowing. “Who was my grandfather, Mr. Hedgeworth?” I asked. “What did he do?”
His face twisted. “Get on with ye now.” He turned away.
“Please,” I called after him. “I have to know.”