Failing that, she could at least get a bit of revenge in parting.
Lips peeled back in an expression that might have been mistaken for a grin, Eliza went about her work.
Sewerside: May 1, 1884
“Remember Moor Fields?” Gresh asked, spitting tobacco juice onto the floor.
He’d been kind enough to spit in the other direction from Dead Rick, and so the skriker didn’t bite his head off for bringing up the painful subject of memory. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s May Day, old chap! We ought to be outside, with bonfires and feasts and such. Dancing. Music. Nymphs from nearby villages, willing to spread their legs for anyone. Mortals we’d lured in, that we’d be nice to for once.” Gresh spat again, then fingered something out of his mouth that didn’t look like tobacco leaf. “But they’ve gone and built all over it. So we sits ’ere and gets drunk, and it’s no different than any other day.”
Dead Rick bent his attention to the dirt under his fingernails, as if that could be his excuse for not answering. Fields, and celebrations in them: two more things he didn’t remember. He felt like punching Gresh.
But an approaching scent brought him into a wary crouch, not sure whether he was about to growl or show throat. Nadrett swept into the room, trailing a trio of other fae: the fetch Nithen, a thrumpin named Old Gadling, and a sprite Dead Rick didn’t recognize, who was lugging an unwieldy leather case. Showing throat it is.
“On your feet,” Nadrett said. Dead Rick stood, warily, not liking the sense of purpose in his master’s posture. “Take these.” His hand flicked outward, twice; Gresh and Dead Rick both caught what he threw. “Now come with me.”
Dead Rick uncurled his fingers, his nose telling him what he held before his eyes did. Bread. Nadrett was taking them outside.
Gresh cackled and threw his piece up into the air, catching it in his mouth as it came down. “Moor Fields!” he said to Dead Rick, chewing. “Think ’e’s laid on any nymphs for us?”
Nadrett was far enough ahead by then that he either didn’t hear or, more likely, didn’t think Gresh worth answering. Nithen did it for him. “Moor Fields has been paved over as Finsbury Circus, idiot, and the only way you’re going to see a nymph there is if you get a head full of Po’s opium first. Now shut up.”
They were still in the Goblin Market; Nadrett would have ripped the guts out of anyone stupid enough to say anything of their purpose where others could hear. It didn’t take Dead Rick long to figure out where his master was leading them, though. There were only four ways out of the Market: two passages to the rest of the Hall, one concealed entrance to Billingsgate above, and the sewers.
His hackles rose as he remembered bringing Irrith here. Had Nadrett learned about that? Stupid whelp; ’e wouldn’t give you bread if ’e ’ad. But they did have bread, which meant they could have gone through the door into Billingsgate without worry. The sewers were mostly used by unprotected fae, willing to brave the filth and the danger of drowning in order to avoid the worst of the iron.
Could be what Nadrett sought was in the sewers.
The black stone of the Hall gave way to a brickwork wall, with a hole knocked in it big enough for a faerie to slip through, so long as he wasn’t a giant. This wasn’t one of the proper entrances, built into the Hall’s fabric; it was a break, a spot worn thin and finally through by the cast-iron gas main running alongside the great intercepting sewer. They couldn’t keep a glamour over the hole for more than a short while, and mostly only bothered when men came through to inspect the tunnel. Any tosher who spotted the gap and climbed through was fair game for the Market inhabitants on the other side: a small compensation for when the sewer flooded through to their chambers.
Dead Rick helped the unnamed sprite maneuver his case through the hole. “Careful, that’s delicate—” the sprite said in a distinct French accent, but swallowed his words when Nadrett spat a warning curse. Dead Rick sniffed, but couldn’t smell anything beyond a hint of leather over the sewer.
He dropped through the gap last, into water that came up past his knees. Nadrett produced a hawthorn box from one pocket, and slid aside a disk on one end until a will-o’-the-wisp floated out of the small hole there. It was considerably safer than a lantern, which could ignite the bad air and kill them all, but Dead Rick didn’t put good odds on the wisp’s survival. Those things couldn’t eat bread. Nadrett covered the hole again and put the box away. “Follow me.”
It was hard going, in water that deep; the brickwork was slick below his feet, and Nadrett had them walking upstream. Dead Rick hoped it wasn’t raining outside, and watched the water in the dim faerie light, ready to flee if he saw it rise. It remained steady, and when they’d gotten some distance away from the Market, Nadrett stopped.
“Tell them,” he said to Nithen.
The fetch grinned. In the scant light, he looked even more cadaverous than usual. His voice echoed weirdly over the sound of the water, making his words hard to understand. “So there’s stories of a ghost in these sewers. Every year on this night, for a couple of years now. We’re going to hunt it down.”
Gresh looked confused. “But it ain’t All ’Allows’ Eve.”
Old Gadling smacked him on the back of his head. Nithen said, “Ghosts can appear at any time. The night they died, for example. This isn’t an All Hallows’ Eve ride, us sweeping away ghosts with the dawn; we don’t want this ghost going anywhere.”
“We’re going to capture it,” Nadrett said.
Dead Rick’s eyes went back to the sprite’s heavy case, which Gadling had taken control of. The water came nearly to the thrumpin’s waist, but he didn’t seem to care; the stocky faerie balanced the case on his head and waded through without apparent trouble. There were ways of capturing ghosts, but none of them—so far as Dead Rick knew—required anything so bulky.
He’d see what it was soon enough. “Where’s the ghost?”
“That’s what you’re ’ere to find out,” Nadrett said. He let out three more will-o’-the-wisps, then gestured ahead, and Dead Rick saw dark shadows along the walls ahead, openings into the smaller sewers that connected to this main trunk. “Start looking.”
That seemed to be directed at him, Gresh, and Nithen. Old Gadling braced his feet and served as a stand while the sprite unlatched the case. And Nadrett, of course, could not be bothered to help. Dead Rick went without complaint. He wanted to be the one to find the ghost—and maybe warn it to flee.
Iron shivered against his senses as he went, not hurting him, but palpably there. They were close to the Underground works, where navvies labored day and night to build the railway’s final extension; no tracks had been laid yet, let alone trains run along them, but there were spades, mattocks, nails for the bracing beams, carts to bring cement and drag the spoil out. The doom of the Onyx Hall, less than a hundred feet away.
Right, left, or straight. Dead Rick went left, climbing the slick bricks to enter the smaller tunnel. The flow here was neither so deep nor so fast, but that was at best a mixed blessing; without the force of the water to scour material away, the passage was much fouler. Dead Rick held his breath as best he could and peered ahead, searching for the telltale flicker of a ghost.
A dead tosher, most like, he thought. People didn’t seem to be leaving ghosts as often as they once did. Or maybe ghosts, like fae, were being worn away by the changes in the world. All he knew was that Gresh complained every year about the loss of the old All Hallows’ Eve ride—an event he missed far more than May Day in Moor Fields—but the inability of the fae to sweep away weak ghosts each year, as they used to do, hadn’t left London neck-deep in phantoms. Maybe some Academy scholar was trying to answer that very question, and Nadrett intended to sell this ghost to him.