But the stranger’s eyes narrowed, and not like those of a man wondering what he was staring at it. The fellow came forward with three quick strides and said, “You’re jumping ’im for bread, ain’t you? Fucking goblins. Well, I’m the Prince of the Stone, and I’m telling you, let ’im go.”
A disbelieving bark escaped Dead Rick’s mouth. “You? The bleeding Prince of the Stone?”
He’d never seen the man himself, only heard stories. Nadrett often complained about the Prince, poking his nose where it didn’t belong. Oh, supposedly the man’s nose belonged everywhere; he was the mortal ruler of the Onyx Court, after all, consort to London’s faerie Queen, with authority over everything having to do with his kind. Only there wasn’t an Onyx Court anymore: just a group of self-indulgent courtiers enjoying their last pleasures, and a cockney Prince trying to pretend he had control over anything at all. As for the Queen, she’d been gone for years.
Dead Rick peered through the darkness, sniffing past the reek of the Thames for the man’s scent. He could smell the faerie touch that bound the Prince to the Onyx Hall, and see its effect on the fellow’s face: he had a strange young-old look, like a man aged long before his time. Well, that was no wonder, with the palace crumbling apart; they said it had drained the Queen down to almost nothing, in the years before she vanished. Dead Rick would be surprised if the Prince had much more in him.
He’d put one foot on the tosher’s chest to hold him in place; now he felt the man shift restlessly, confusion winning out over fear. The brief flash of sympathy Dead Rick had felt for the aging, exhausted Prince faded, driven back by more important concerns. “This ain’t any business of yours,” he said to the Prince.
“The devil it ain’t. That bastard you’ve got there can barely feed ’imself; you can’t just go stealing ’is food so you can cause more trouble up ’ere!”
The Prince’s sanctimonious reply would have been annoying enough if it were accurate. His complete lack of understanding made Dead Rick furious. Cause trouble? He wished he could afford to waste bread on that. Instead he was out here, with the Blackfriars bridges hanging over his head like two axes waiting to fall, because he needed some kind of insurance against the future, and didn’t want his ears cut off by any of the half-dozen fae to whom he owed a debt. And every minute this Prince stood there lecturing him was another minute Dead Rick had to put up with a weight of iron that made him want to howl and run for home.
So he didn’t bother answering. Instead he just snarled, and threw himself forward.
Trying to change shape out here felt like breaking all of his bones, individually. The iron fought him: it didn’t care whether he was man or beast, but it hated letting him shift between the two. When Dead Rick hit the Prince, he was caught halfway in between, a roaring monstrosity, bowling the man down in a tangle of fur and skin and teeth.
Pain stopped him from doing more; his momentum took him into the wooden pillar of a crane, where an iron nail seared against his back like fire and ice. Dead Rick howled, writhing, and abruptly was in human form again. He lay panting on the ground, trying not to vomit, until he had control enough of his muscles to raise his head.
By then he was alone. The tosher had fled, and so, apparently, had the Prince.
So much for ’im and ’is orders. It seemed the man knew just how far his authority went.
Dead Rick forced himself to his feet. Down in the mud, his knife and the packet of newspaper lay untouched; the tosher hadn’t bothered to collect his food before fleeing. But it wasn’t any use to Dead Rick without the man.
It needed no dog’s nose to track him. The footprints were clear in the mud, heading west, under the bridges and up onto the massive wall of the Embankment. Dead Rick gritted his teeth and began to lope after him. There were iron pipes behind the granite exterior of the river frontage, but that was still better than the bridges, and Dead Rick was light on his feet; he gained rapidly.
The tosher heard him coming, and spun to face him, knife in hand. Dead Rick held out the packet and his own knife alike. Up here, he didn’t have much time; the peelers did watch the Embankment walk. “I ain’t done with you yet. But you do what I tells you, and you’ll get out of ’ere without a scratch. Understand?”
Clearly not, but the man nodded warily, willing to listen whatever this apparent lunatic had to say if it meant saving his own skin. “Take this,” Dead Rick said, tossing the packet back at him. “Now put that down at your feet and say, ‘A gift for the good people.’”
“What?”
Not quite as cowed by fear as Dead Rick thought. “Do it, or lose an ear. Your choice.”
Shaking his head, the man dropped the packet onto the stone of the footpath. “A gift for the good people. Now what?”
“Back up.” He obeyed. In one swift move, Dead Rick snatched up the packet and retreated. “Now you go. Back home, or into the sewers; I don’t care which. Just get out of my sight.”
The tosher didn’t have to be told twice. He turned and continued running upriver, toward Westminster, away from Dead Rick.
Who waited to be sure the man wouldn’t turn back, then stuffed his knife back into its sheath and tore open the soggy, greasy newspaper. Inside was a sausage roll. Not caring if the thing was soaked with river water, he sank his teeth into the end and ripped a chunk free.
Eating it was like wrapping a warm blanket around himself when he’d been standing all this while in the freezing winter air. The pipes in the Embankment, the gaslight lamps above, the bridges behind him—all became nothing more than human artifacts, bits of metal wrought into useful shapes. A church bell could ring in his ear now, and he would only laugh at it. Mortal food, given in tithe to the fae: the only thing that let them walk the streets of London in safety.
And desperately hard to come by, nowadays. Nadrett’s caged mortals served many different purposes, but all of them were forced to tithe bread each day, until they were sold off or ate faerie food or died. It went a long way toward making up for the loss of belief among the people above, who no longer set out food for the faeries, except in scattered pockets far out in the countryside; a long way, but not far enough, not with all the refugees crowding into the Hall. If Dead Rick wanted any hope of surviving once the Market was gone, he had to get some for himself.
He already regretted eating that bite. It meant he had one bite less with which to pay off his debts, or escape London when the time came. But with all these banes around him… he hadn’t been above in ages, had forgotten how terrible it felt.
He sighed, staring at the torn roll.
Then he looked around, at the city he almost never saw. London, full of mortals—not caged and broken, but free men and women and children, millions of them, living in blissful ignorance of the decay beneath their feet. And untouched by the faerie stain that would make them unable to tithe. The longer Dead Rick stayed out here, the greater the odds of his master noticing—but the bite he’d eaten protected for a whole day. With that in his stomach, he could find somebody else to jump, get more bread, prepare for the end that was coming.
He would pay a price for it—he always did—but this once, it might be worth it.
Dead Rick stuffed the remainder of the roll into the pocket of his coat and concentrated. Not much; he wasn’t one of those fae who took pride in all the faces he could invent, making himself look like a fine gentleman or a little boy or anything else. He was satisfied with looking like himself—just without the faerie touch. For his purposes, it was enough.