A much safer path than attacking Louisa Kittering. But still, a thin thread upon which to hang her hopes. Staring out over the filthy brown waters of the Thames, Eliza said, “And that’s the best you can say?”
“Don’t you be insulting me again, Eliza O’Malley—not when I’ve been as helpful as I can.”
She rather thought he had, and forced herself to murmur an apology. Her heart was still heavy, though, and she couldn’t immediately bring herself to move; instead she sat and watched a ship floating gently into the tight quarters of the Shadwell Basin, where dockworkers more fortunate than Dónall Whelan waited to unload its cargo of rice or tobacco or wine. And when the ship’s stern had passed from view behind the high walls of the closed dock, Whelan spoke again.
“I suppose I’m owing you an apology of my own.”
Startled, Eliza turned back to him. Whelan had hunched down upon his coil of rope, fingers jabbing at its tarred strands. A sharp breeze off the water made them both shiver. “For grabbing my paps?”
His unrepentant laugh said she’d missed the mark. Then Whelan sobered. “No. For doubting what you said, near seven years ago. About fairies in London.”
Eliza was off the rope in an instant, tired feet slamming onto the boards of the wharf. “You’ve seen them?”
“No.” The word struck like the grim blow of an ax. “But I’ve had others come asking for help. From West Ham, out past Mile End. Girls have gone missing, and they say the fairies took them.”
The energy of a heartbeat before drained out of her, its place taken by slow horror. “How many?”
Whelan spread his gnarled hands. “Three? That I know about. There might be more. A girl named Eliza Carter, ten or fifteen years old… I don’t remember the other two. The police looked, I think. But of course they found nothing.” He spat onto the planks, still damp from that morning’s rain. “The police never find anything in the East End, unless it went missing from the West. You could murder a dozen women here and never be caught.”
They certainly hadn’t been able to find Owen. One patronizing fellow had told Mrs. Darragh her son probably ran off to America. Eliza never understood it, how one minute these English could talk about the irrational closeness of the Irish family, and the next assume a young man would abandon the mother and sister who needed him. And was that where they thought Eliza Carter had gone?
West Ham. That was on the very edge of the city, a good five miles from Newgate. But the horse-tram was cheap, and Eliza had the whole day off. It might be worth going out there, to see what she could learn.
But first she had a debt to pay. “On your feet,” Eliza told Whelan. “We’re going to find someone selling potatoes, and some butter to put on them, too; and while we do, you’ll be telling me everything you know about this girl and the others. Starting with where their families live.”
The Goblin Market, Onyx Halclass="underline" May 26, 1884
There were fae in the Goblin Market who were very good at stealing secrets.
Dead Rick was not one of them.
But he gave it his best try anyway, knowing it wouldn’t be good enough. Counting on it not being good enough. Because when Nadrett asked questions later, the master needed to be satisfied that the story Dead Rick told was true.
So he slipped through the chambers and passages of the Market, making his way toward the one corridor that still led to the rest of the Hall. A lot of fae had to pass through that area, making it the perfect territory for the Market’s biggest buyer and seller of secrets.
When Nadrett asked later, Dead Rick would say, with perfect truth, that he was looking for proof of an alliance between Lacca and Valentin Aspell. The goblin woman no longer had any territory in the Market; if she wanted to survive, she needed help, and about the only thing she had left to sell was the information in her head. So it was reasonable to think she would offer it to Aspell, who traded in such things, in exchange for something that would help her avoid being crushed by Nadrett and Hardface. It was also reasonable to think that Nadrett would be pleased with any faerie who brought him proof of that offer.
Not that Dead Rick was going to succeed. But Nadrett wouldn’t have to question why he tried. For a skriker who was absolute rubbish at lying, it was important to have these things in place beforehand.
A fidgeting sprite stood watch at the edge of Aspell’s territory, no one Dead Rick recognized. Slipping past him was easy; all it took was a charm of concealment, persuading eye and ear there was nothing worth noticing. That was only a doorman, though, not an actual defense. The first layer of that waited in the chamber Dead Rick soon came to, where Aspell’s underlings lounged at their ease on stolen silks, playing cards or talking idly. No dogfighting here, no pit stained with blood; Aspell’s crew was more disciplined than that, if no less ruthless.
Some of these were fae Dead Rick knew. Orlegg, for example, whose thick muscles made him an intimidating enemy. The thrumpin, though, wasn’t half the threat Greymalkin was; her feline nose might not be as sharp as a dog’s, but it was enough to catch his scent on the air. And scent was a good deal harder to charm away than sight or sound.
Dead Rick had optimistically thought he might get past this room, to where the actual guards kept watch. No such luck: Greymalkin’s head came up in swift alert, and then before Dead Rick could decide whether to try and run, they had him.
Orlegg growled impressive threats about breaking his arms, but it was just talk—Dead Rick hoped. Aspell’s minions were disciplined, more so than most in the Goblin Market. They wouldn’t really lay into him until their master gave the order.
And that meant seeing the master.
This was the part that most worried Dead Rick. He didn’t dare ask to see Aspell; people would take notice of that, and while the discipline here also extended to information, he couldn’t trust it wouldn’t get out somehow—maybe on Aspell’s orders. So when Greymalkin asked him what he was doing there, what he had seen, Dead Rick gave the most threatening laugh he could manage, and said, “More than you want to know.”
She swiped his face with her claws, but he smiled through the blood, because one of her companions had gone away with a worried look on his face. When the other faerie came back, he jerked his thumb at the door and said, “Bring him.”
Dead Rick let them drag him; it wouldn’t do to look eager. And for once luck smiled on him, because they shoved him into a chair, bound him in place, and went out again, leaving the skriker alone with Valentin Aspell.
Who studied him with an expression forbidding enough to make Dead Rick hope this wouldn’t turn out to be a fatally bad idea. Aspell’s thin mouth was pinched close, his brows drawn in over sharp green eyes. The wingback chair in which he sat shrouded him partially in shadow, as if it were the hood of a cobra. In a straight-up-and-down fight, Dead Rick would win—he didn’t even think the other faerie was armed—but Aspell knew that, and would never let it come to such a fight. Tied to a chair, with plenty of people just beyond the door, Dead Rick was potentially in a great deal of danger.
So he spoke before Aspell could. “I didn’t see nothing, and I didn’t expect to. I only broke in so I’d ’ave a way to talk to you, private.”
The sharp eyebrows rose. “Oh? There are accepted means of doing so. Violating my territory is not one of them.”
Aspell should have looked ridiculous, dressed as he was. The former Lord Keeper had been imprisoned for a hundred years of sleep, ever since the middle of the last century, and when he awoke he’d been unimpressed with the dreary simplicity and dull color men’s clothing had taken on. He still wore the long, decorated coats of that previous era, usually in a serpentine green, though he’d given up the absurd wigs Dead Rick had seen in old engravings. Seated at the heart of his power, however, Aspell could have worn a pantomime costume and still been terrifying. The skriker had to swallow before answering.