The genie was writing this in the air as he spoke, in glowing letters of gold. Like a teacher waiting to see what his pupils knew, he said, “What, then, is the nature of London?”
Not far from Eliza, the Goodemeades had been whispering to each other. Now Rosamund cleared her throat and scrambled back up onto the barrel. “Gertie and I have been here longer than just about anyone. Longer than the Onyx Hall, even. London is, and always has been, the heart of England.”
“They say that one in ten Englishmen lives here,” Gertrude added. “Maybe more. Nowadays it isn’t the only city—there’s Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and so on—but they’re not a tenth the size of London.”
Sounds of startlement, from a few of the fae; none of the mortals looked surprised. These creatures may know history, Eliza thought, but they don’t know the world around them very well. Even she knew about those cities—many of them swelled by the emigration of her own people.
“Size is not the only thing that makes London the heart of England,” Sir Cerenel added. “The government is here, too. Or rather, in Westminster—but I suppose that is part of London now, isn’t it? Queen Victoria and Parliament are also England’s heart, and they are here.”
Not as much since Her Nibs went into mourning and never came out. Eliza couldn’t help but notice, too, the way they kept speaking of England. Not Britain, or the United Kingdom. Three hundred years and more, they’d been here. It showed.
Louisa Kittering spoke up boldly. “You mustn’t forget money, either. All the trade that comes into London, and the banks, and the investors; I don’t know what fraction of the nation’s wealth is here, but it must be vast. Anyone who wishes to count for anything must come to London eventually, if only for the Season.”
One of the mortal men gave a dry laugh. “You and Sir Cerenel are talking about the same thing, really: power. That’s what London is about. It is the heart of power. And the trappings of power follow with it, all the fashion and art and commerce and such.”
Voices rose up in agreement, murmuring about the elegant terraces of houses, the museums, the grand monuments, all embroidering upon the theme of London’s glorious power. Eliza sagged in her chair, excitement draining away. She’d felt, for a few moments, as if she belonged—but not in this conversation. This was for the Louisa Kitterings of the world, the educated folk and the wealthy, the privileged swells, whether they were faerie or mortal. At her side, Dead Rick was equally silent; their eyes met, and his lip curled upward cynically. She knew what he was thinking, as clearly as if he’d said it. That ain’t my London.
Eliza sucked in a sudden breath. The half sneer on Dead Rick’s face turned into wide-eyed thought, and then to a remarkably evil grin. As well it should; he’d stood up a moment ago and told everyone they were a pack of idiots. Of course it would please him to watch her do the same.
Months of hiding, of doing her best to make sure nobody took notice of her. Months of lying about who and what she was, the better to blend in. Hard habits to break, after all that time. But if she didn’t do it now, she would regret it forever.
Nobody heard her clear her throat. Should she wave her hand, or wait for a lull? The devil with being polite. Planting her shoes—her battered, secondhand shoes—firmly on the floor, Eliza stood and declared in a clear, carrying voice, “That’s the London ye see, is it? Well, ’tisn’t mine.”
The conversation staggered and trailed off. The genie turned an inquiring face upon her and said, “Please, Miss O’Malley, do share your thoughts.”
He might be a heathen, but Eliza couldn’t help but like him at that moment; she suspected he knew what she was about to say. There were enough of his kind—heathens, not genies—in the East End, especially around the docks. Where the city pushed much of its unwanted refuse.
“What is London?” she asked, and licked her lips, clenching her hands for strength. “’Tis thousands of servants scrubbing the floors of yer rich and mighty, so the missus’s skirt won’t get dusty. ’Tis boys sweeping mud out of the street for pennies, and scooping up dog turds to sell to the tanners. ’Tis cholera and measles and scarlet fever, poverty, starvation, drinking yourself half dead with gin, and being thrown in prison for debt. ’Tis paying fourpence to sleep on a bench with a rope holding you up, then going out to sell buns from a barrow while your fingers freeze with the cold.” She paused for breath, and found she was shaking so hard it came in a ragged gasp. “All yer power, all yer wealth, all those things that make this place important—they don’t come from nowhere. They’re just the top layer, the crust on the pie, and underneath is another city entirely. The Irish, and the Italians, and the lascars—even the Jews—all those people who are not English, and are not a part of the world ye see, but they are bloody well part of London, too.”
Quietly, Gertrude Goodemeade said, “Just as we are part of London, the hidden faerie folk. We, too, have been a part of making this city what it is today.”
Sir Cerenel offered Eliza what he probably thought was a sympathetic smile. With the anger trembling in her veins, she found it hard to accept as anything other than condescending. “Your point is well taken, Miss O’Malley. But we must ask ourselves: Are those layers what we want to choose? The new palace will reflect its foundation; surely we want to make that the best London has to offer.”
Of course a knight would say that. She spat at his feet in fury. “And power makes things best, does it? Money and fine clothes? Never mind the hard work, the folk who come here because they hope for a better life; ye would never want to reflect that, now would ye—devil knows what it might do.”
Behind Eliza’s shoulder, Dead Rick rose to his feet. “You want a strong foundation? I ain’t no architect, but I knows that a broad bottom works better than a narrow one. It don’t tip over so easy. And there’s a lot more poor than there is rich.”
“Who says we cannot include both?” Abd ar-Rashid asked. “Include all the visions of the city, high and low alike?”
In a tone that suggested his head was on the verge of exploding, the man who’d spoken of power said, “But we can’t include everything. It would be chaos!”
“Only if it is rendered in fragments,” the genie said, and looked significantly at Wrain.
Who turned to look at the machine he’d mentioned before, the calculating engine.
Lady Feidelm murmured, “Is this not the purpose for which it was built? To take certain values and bring them to bear upon one another, conducting the operations which will tell you the difference between them, or the average, or any such relationship?”
Multiple ideas of London, calculated into a whole. Eliza knew nothing of mathematics beyond bare addition and subtraction, and what the sidhe spoke of sounded only half like mathematics to begin with—but if they had some way to do it…
But Wrain sank with sudden exhaustion back onto his chair. “We can’t possibly calculate it all in time. Even rendering a single concept into symbolic notation would be a huge undertaking. A dozen or more? The Hall will be long gone before we can do it. If the Calendar Room had survived, then it would give us the time we need, but that last earthquake broke the chamber’s clock, and we cannot restore it.”
The only reason Eliza knew the French voice that answered was because she’d thanked him for returning Dead Rick’s memories. Yvoir said, “Then work from photographs, as Dead Rick said! As Nadrett did. But not souls, only thoughts, and a single lens only—we do not wish to remove the thoughts from anyone’s head, merely to copy them. Use the glass as a filter; what passes through, and what does not, can be translated for the calculating engine—”