The Doomsday Vault

ashen coat around himself and curled up to sleep.

Gavin jerked awake with a yelp of pain. His body was so stiff he could barely move. His back howled with pain when he sat up, and he hobbled about with old-man steps in the damp morning air, breathing sharply and heavily, until his body relented. In the interest of saving money, he skipped breakfast. At least the sun drove the plague zombies into hiding and he didn’t have to worry about them for the moment.

Hyde Park was largely deserted in the morning-no point in playing-so Gavin spent the time looking for a better place to spend his nights. Public buildings such as train stations were bad because the bobbies would make him move on, possibly with a crack on the head first. He considered looking for a job, then discarded the idea. The factories were almost all automated and hired few human workers. His reading and writing were decent for everyday use but not up to scratch for an office. And the thought of manual labor that required him to strain his half-healed back made him shake. The main trouble was, he had no real skills except music and flying.

He was wandering aimlessly around side streets, fiddle case on his back, and eventually found himself taking a dogleg through an alley. Brick walls broken by windows and ragged doors rose up to a narrow strip of sky, though the alley itself was quite clean-trash attracted plague zombies, and people rarely left it out. Still, human refuse might show up at any moment. Gavin hurried his steps, then paused. A trick of the light brought his attention to a ground-level window. It was supposed to be boarded over, but he could just see that the wood was coming loose. Gavin glanced around to ensure he went unobserved, then pushed the boards aside, crawled through the opening, and risked a drop into darkness.

A damp, echoing room of stone lay beyond. The only light crept in through the window he had just violated. Rats scattered as Gavin came to his feet, groaning with reawakened pain. Then he cut the sound off. What if this place was used by plague zombies as a daytime hiding place? He froze, listening, until his eyes adjusted to the gloom. The cellar room was small, maybe ten feet across. A pile of crates jumbled up in one corner, and a door loomed opposite them. No zombies. Gavin heaved a relieved sigh and examined the door, which had no knob and had been nailed shut from the other side. A real piece of luck at last-no one would enter from the main building. It wouldn’t be safe to leave anything valuable in here, but it would be a place to sleep.

He piled the crates under the window as a makeshift staircase and crawled cautiously back into the alley. His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten at all that day. Furtively, Gavin moved the loose boards back into place and hobbled away. He deserved lunch, at least.

Gavin spent the next two weeks playing Hyde Park for farthings in the afternoons and evenings. After nightfall, he spent a precious penny to ride an omnibus to the West End, where he played for people entering and exiting the music halls and theaters. He arrived in his cellar long after dark, feeling his fearful way down the alley away from the gaslights and toward potential plague zombies. Fortunately, he didn’t encounter any. Unfortunately, even this frugal lifestyle didn’t allow him to save much. Some days he didn’t earn the two pennies it cost him to get to the theater district and back. Some days it rained, preventing him from playing at all. The dampness in the cellar finally forced him to buy a blanket, which ate up several days’ money. He had to buy food, of course. And sleeping in the cellar seemed to stop his back from healing completely. Every afternoon he jerked awake, stiff and sore, every muscle on fire. He never woke slowly or peacefully anymore, not since his encounter with Madoc Blue and the first mate’s lash. One day he spent nine pence at an apothecary’s, and the medicine helped with the pain, but only for a time, and then he was right back where he started. Gavin was beginning to feel desperate. Eventually, spring and summer would end, bringing the chill winds of winter. He would be in deep trouble then.

One soft afternoon in Hyde Park, he had managed to wash up a bit in one of the ponds and was feeling a little better. Gavin’s skin itched terribly under his clothes-he hadn’t even rinsed them since the Juniper. Maybe today he would catch sight of the Red Velvet Lady. She had shown up twice more with her automaton to listen to him, and both times he had found a shilling in his case, though she never said a word. If she came today, maybe he’d use the money to visit a bathhouse and have his clothes laundered to boot.

A fog rolled in from the Thames and mixed with the ever-present coal smoke from the chimneys and streetlamps, creating a thick yellow mist that covered the park in a sulfurous cloak. Gavin sighed as he walked. So much for optimism. Fewer people would be out in weather like this-the chill kept people indoors and lack of sunlight let the plague zombies roam. The damp also worsened his back. Clip-clop hooves and quiet voices mingled with the mist, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. Men in coats and women in wide dresses ghosted in and out of view. The itching under Gavin’s coat was growing worse, and he pulled his jacket off to scratch vigorously once he arrived at his usual corner.

At that moment, a commotion broke out somewhere in the distance. A woman squawked in fear or outrage. Voices shouted, and a pistol shot rang out. Gavin froze. Footsteps pounded down the walkway toward him, and out of the yellow mist emerged a boy a year younger than Gavin. With a start, Gavin realized he was Oriental and dressed in a red silk jacket and wide trousers. He tore down the footpath with angry voices coming behind him, their owners still hidden by fog. The boy skidded to a halt in front of Gavin and grabbed his elbow.

“Help me!” the boy begged in a light Chinese accent. “Please!”

Gavin didn’t pause to think. He pushed the boy to the ground in a crouch and flung his filthy jacket over him. Then he sat down on the boy’s covered back and opened his fiddle case just as half a dozen angry-looking men came into view, sliding out of the mist like sharks from murky water.

“Where’d the little Chink go, boy?” one of them snarled. He brandished a pistol.

Gavin could feel the boy shaking beneath him. “That way, sir,” he said, pointing down a random path.

The man flipped Gavin a small coin as the others tore off. Gavin caught the coin and pulled his fiddle from its case as if nothing interesting had happened. The boy didn’t move. Once the noises of pursuit died away, the boy shifted a bit.

“Don’t,” Gavin murmured. He set bow to strings and played as if he were simply perched on a rock covered by his jacket. Not much later, the men materialized out of the mist again.

“Did the little bastard come back here?” the man with the pistol demanded.

Gavin shook his head and continued playing a bright, happy tune, though his fingers felt shaky. The men conferred a moment, then rushed off in another direction. When their footsteps and voices had faded completely, Gavin whipped his jacket off the boy, who leapt to his feet.

“Thank you,” he said, pumping Gavin’s hand. “Thank you so much.”

“What happened back there?” Gavin demanded.

“A misunderstanding with the lady,” he said.

Gavin squinted at him. “That usually means the man did something he shouldn’t have.”

“No, no.” The boy put up his hands. “She kissed me. But then her husband jumped out of the bushes with friends. I didn’t even know she was married. She screamed, he fired that pistol, and I ran. You were wonderful.” He fished around in his pockets and thrust something into Gavin’s hands. “Take this.”

Gavin looked down. He was holding a tiny mechanical bird no bigger than a pocket watch. Its silver feathers gleamed in the pale light. Tiny sapphires made up its eyes and tipped its claws.

“It’s beautiful,” Gavin breathed. He touched the bird’s head. It opened its little beak and trilled a miniature melody, a perfect replica of a nightingale’s song, then fell silent.

“I can’t accept this,” he said. “I don’t even know your name.”

But when he looked up, the boy was gone.

Although a carriage horse clopped in the distance, crowds in the park were nonexistent, so Gavin put his fiddle away, perched on a bench, and examined the bird. Its wings were etched with tiny Chinese pictograms, and more tiny gems were hidden among the strange icons. Whenever he pressed the head, it trilled the same song over and over, without fail. The first few times, it was beautiful, but after a while Gavin realized it was really nothing more than a music box-very pretty, but lacking the soul of real music. Still, the bird was immensely valuable. The money he’d get from a pawnshop or fence would be five times the cost of a ticket home, though it would be only a fraction of the bird’s true worth.

Gavin stroked the nightingale’s smooth feathers again. It seemed a dreadful shame to sell something so beautiful for so little money.

Footsteps shuffled through the yellow mist. Gavin stuffed the nightingale in his pocket and leaned casually back on the bench as two well-dressed young men strolled into view. They were engaged in an animated discussion that involved a great deal of hand waving. Gavin whipped out his fiddle and set to playing-no sense in losing a