Another fork. The side passages were narrower still, barely large enough for Dead Rick to fit through. He didn’t want to go down them. But he was a skriker, a death omen, and instinct led him left.
He didn’t have to go far. Mist floated in the air ahead, where no mist should be; then it eddied as if turning to face him, and took more solid form.
Dead Rick found himself staring. This was no tosher. Nor was it a recent ghost. He didn’t need memories to know that knee breeches had gone out of style generations ago for anybody who wasn’t some rich swell’s footman. And footmen didn’t carry themselves the way this figure did.
It was a young man, slender of build, with the habitual dignity of a gentleman. He seemed relieved to see Dead Rick. “Oh! Thank goodness you found me. I seem to have gotten lost.”
Dead Rick was too startled to prevent his will-o’-the-wisp from streaking away. He hadn’t put on a glamour; despite his human form, he was clearly a faerie. And yet this ghost seemed completely unsurprised. Was it because he was dead, and therefore accustomed to strange things? Or had he seen fae before?
The ghost glowed faintly, just enough for Dead Rick to make him out. The skriker said, “What do you mean, lost?”
A laugh almost as faint as the light answered him. “I mean that unless I am very much mistaken—addled by death, perhaps—I ought to be in the Onyx Hall. But I haven’t seen so much as a bit of black stone in four years, now. Am I in a cesspit?”
The quality of the echoes changed. Dead Rick cursed. The wisp hadn’t bolted; it had gone to fetch Nadrett. They could take simple commands well enough.
Whoever this ghost was, Dead Rick wasn’t inclined to help Nadrett capture him. “Look, you’ve got to get out of ’ere. Go back to wherever you came from.”
“I’m sorry?” The phantom drifted closer, cocking his head to one side as if that would help. “I couldn’t quite understand you.”
Because Dead Rick had spoken quietly, not wanting the untrustworthy echoes to carry his words to Nadrett. He grimaced and flapped his hands, trying to shoo the ghost back, but the young man peered as if he could not quite see, either. Of course not, because I ain’t glowing.
Then it was too late. “Out of the way, dog.”
When he didn’t move, a hand seized the back of his waistcoat and yanked, dropping him onto his arse in the built-up muck. Nadrett shoved him against the sewer wall, then stopped, staring at the ghost. In the light of the gathered wisps, Dead Rick saw a wondering and unpleasant smile twist Nadrett’s lips. “Well, well. Ain’t this an interesting surprise. Evening, milord—out for a walk, are we?”
The ghost frowned. “Do I know you?”
More hands, grabbing Dead Rick under the arms; with slime and shit greasing the passage, Gadling was able to pull him out with only the most casual effort. “If you remember much, you might,” Nadrett said. “Though after this long—a century? No, more—I’ll be surprised if you do. Don’t much matter either way. Chrennois, get to it.”
Nadrett moved out of the way. Dead Rick, climbing to his feet, saw the sprite go to the mouth of the ghost’s tunnel with something in his hands. A box, about the size of a man’s head but wider, with flexible canvas sides that allowed him to extend the front forward. Two silver-rimmed lenses were set into that front board, winking clean brilliance in the dim light.
Wary, but not yet afraid, the ghost said, “What is that?”
Dead Rick answered him silently, held frozen by sudden, half-formed understanding. It’s a camera.
Lunar caustic, satyr’s bile. Nadrett was doing something with photography—or rather, this French faerie was, on his behalf. Were they about to open a passage to Faerie? In the filthy sewers of London? Dead Rick tensed, unsure what he was going to do, but ready to do something.
Chrennois peered through an opening in the top of the box, then pulled a lever set into the side. With a most peculiar noise—halfway between a moan and a huh of surprise—the ghost vanished.
It didn’t even fade; it simply blinked out of existence. The figure of the young man disappeared, leaving behind only faint wisps of phantasmal substance, which dissipated before they could fall to the sludge below. Those weren’t even gone yet when Nadrett demanded, “Did it work?”
The sprite shrugged, collapsing the front of his camera back into the rest of the body. “I’ll have to develop the plate to be certain. But he went somewhere; it seems likely.”
“Good.”
There was no mistaking the malicious pleasure in Nadrett’s voice. For the camera’s work, or the capture of that ghost in particular? Maybe both. He’d clearly recognized the young man, and just as clearly didn’t like him. That alone was enough to make Dead Rick feel sorry for the unknown phantom. But he couldn’t regret the fellow’s imprisonment too much, because it had just handed Dead Rick another piece of the puzzle.
Now if only he could figure out what it meant.
There was certainly no sign of a passage to Faerie. Were Nadrett and Chrennois planning on using the ghost in some fashion, later on? Or was this a test of the photography concept, a stepping-stone on the way to something greater? Dead Rick had no idea; what little he knew about science came by way of the mortal and faerie inventions that occasionally appeared in the Goblin Market. But the voice, he was willing to bet, would know more.
For one unpleasant moment he thought he’d given his intentions away, when Nadrett turned without warning on him and Gadling. In a voice colder than ice, the master said, “You don’t tell nobody about this. Understand? First one to open ’is mouth gets an iron knife through the eye.”
“Nobody,” Gadling said, and Dead Rick echoed him. Nadrett hadn’t guessed his thoughts; it was just the master’s usual vicious caution. Probably he had some hold over Gadling, as he did over Dead Rick, more fearsome than even an iron knife. Nadrett wouldn’t have brought anyone out here he didn’t think he could threaten into silence.
Which meant Gresh and Nithen, too. Half-considering a test of his theory, Dead Rick said, “You want me to go find the other two?”
Nadrett shook his head. “I’ve got no more use for them tonight. They can find their own way back.”
Praed Street, Paddington: May 7, 1884
The nearness of freedom made Cyma brave.
By tomorrow morning, she would be free of Nadrett’s control. No longer dependent upon him for bread or a place within the Onyx Hall; gone where he was unlikely to track her. Free of the Goblin Market, with its grasping, hateful ways. She wasn’t like the rest of them, happy to kidnap humans and tear away their voices and dreams, seeing people as little more than things to either be used or feared. Cyma had been a lady once, in a far-off court, and had come to London because she wanted to live closer to the mortal world, to bask in their bright warmth. She adored the city, in ways fae like Nadrett could never understand.
Soon, it would be hers.
Before that happened, though, she was determined to face the demon.
The building to which her steps led her was entirely innocuous. Twenty years of London smoke had darkened its low walls to the same drab, black-streaked shade as everything around it, but Cyma knew it was only her imagination that gave the stone a sinister cast.