“Where are they?” came a not so faint demand from my left. “Dicker! Abe?”
“Get over here,” roared the one I assumed was called Abe.
“Maddie Ruth,” I called in a loud whisper, “get on this rope!”
This far up, the murk seemed thicker towards the street than it did while upon it. I couldn’t be sure Maddie Ruth obeyed, not until the rope I held in my throbbing hands went taut.
Untested though she was, she had gumption. I did not know exactly what Hawke’s Menagerie had taught her, but as I pulled the rope hard, hauling her bodily over the ledge with enough effort to drench my forehead, neck and back in sweat, I was glad that she knew enough that she could hold on to a rope without wilting.
She grasped the ledge as she came close enough, wriggled onto the slanted surface of the rooftop we now occupied, and collapsed, gasping for breath.
I did not sit. I was not so ignorant as my unbidden companion.
“Take a moment,” I said, my gaze not on her as she struggled to catch her breath, but on the roiling fog drifting across the landscape. Pointed rooftops and slanted shingles parted the miasma like ships at sea, bordered by wrought iron grating or strung together by more ropes or twisted bits of cloth. The occasional sheet—ragged sails, usually, pinched from wherever they could be found—flapped like beacons. There were no lanterns to see by up here, not by day, but there were many marked signs. I could read some of them, but none were in written word. The cant of the Crossing was a learned thing, and mine mostly by accident.
Maddie Ruth pushed tendrils of brown hair from her sweat-damp cheeks, looking for all the world like the wayward child she protested not to be. “Is this safe?” she asked, only fortifying the naive comparison.
I shook my head. “Of course not,” I replied, giving her the courtesy of unbuttered honesty. She winced. “Welcome to Cat’s Crossing, girl. Pray your footing is as precise as your aim.”
“It is.”
“That will be seen.” Lights bobbed in the swirl, and I muttered an uncivility beneath my breath. “Come on, then. We’ve ground to cover.”
“But—”
She was rather fond of the word, wasn’t she? I cut her off with an impatient gesture. “Cat’s Crossing is the domain of the quick and the agile, and you may rest assured that every gang has a bantling or two to run it. Including the Ferrymen,” I added pointedly. “Now, off your backside, Maddie Ruth, and make good on your boasting.”
That was enough. She clambered to her feet, less grace than I expected but I imagined the weight of the device upon her back made for awkward maneuvering.
That would pose a problem. Brusque though I was, I had no intentions of losing the girl.
Cat’s Crossing was the name given the run of rooftops above London’s low’s streets and far below the lifted platforms comprising London proper. It was usually the haunt of children—bantling gangs who either worked for themselves until they were too big to safely run the Crossing or kept company with the foremost gangs in whatever turf they occupied.
It was, in essence, a suicidal course. Even the children who occupied it weren’t immune; many was the small body found twisted and broken on the cobbles below.
I would have to be very careful with Maddie Ruth in tow.
“I’m ready,” she said, huddling closer as masculine swearing drifted from below and the occasional bit of lantern lit a dull glow from rooftops just beyond.
I really didn’t imagine that she was. But she’d learn.
The alternative was not one I was willing to pursue.
Were we on Baker ground, I would have expected to find the occasional carrier—usually a pair of young kinchin rogues whose purpose was to keep watch on the territory and run messages to members below when likely prospects came wandering past.
More often than not, these kinchins saw great sport in fishing for hats by way of hook and twine. One recognized a successful angler by the state of his hat, usually somewhat too big and stuffed with rags for fit.
As Ratcliffe was unclaimed territory—by careful politicking by the Karakash Veil, I’d wager, who’d not take kindly to the Black Fish Ferrymen’s usual muckery of prostitution and drink encroaching upon their own wares—I saw no carriers of any stripe. As I led Maddie Ruth on a quick-footed chase across the adjacent rooftops, over a knee-high divide of twisted iron fencing—to keep the birds away, naturally—and bade her jump across the narrow gap dividing one roof from the next, I saw nothing to indicate that the district’s Crossing was well-used at all.
This way was not a path for standard men, as many of the most useful ways required leaping, twisting, climbing and the occasional fall. Being short of stature as we both were, we could easily fit in the narrow passes between overhangs, or where one ledge tucked against another in cramped residence.
The men who searched for us below, however, did not give up so easily.
“Why are they searching so steadily?” Maddie Ruth asked as we paused to let her adjust her burden. Red- cheeked and now soot-smeared, she looked as much a fright as I expected I did. At least she was no longer so out of place, what with her higher standards of cleanliness than the streets often demanded. I’d helped her tuck up her skirt, baring a sight more woolen stocking than I expect she cared for.
Better that than tripping on the hem and regretting the lack of foresight during the tumble to a broken head.
I shook my head. I had no answer for her. I could see no benefit to be so focused on two flighty birds with no apparent value to them. I leaned over the ledge we crouched beside, coughing harshly to dispel the gummy taste of the smokestacks we passed by from my throat.
I couldn’t see the streets below, not as such, but I could still hear the echoed remains of hue and cries, lifted from one side of the district to the other.
“It makes no apparent sense,” I muttered.
“Maybe they’re after you?”
“If they are,” I said, not one to let a lesson slide, “then ’tis because I am a collector and they see an advantage to it.”
“Or they know you’re a girl.”
“You’re the twist here,” I pointed out, glancing at her skirt with deliberately pointed interest. “My sex is not so apparent to them what don’t know how to look.”
Maddie Ruth frowned, but said nothing.
Good. I hoped she thought about that.
I braced my fingertips against the ledge, wincing when the act sent sharp tingling across my injured hand. I muttered a few choice words. I should have asked to borrow Maddie Ruth’s gloves. She still carried them, tucked into the back of her belt.
“I thought you would have fought them off,” she said, her voice quiet and a little small. “They’re not supposed to bother collectors.”
“And who told you that?” Turning away from the long drop beside me, I hopped over a loose shingle and beckoned. “Come on, then, we’re not free yet.”
She rose from her crouch, wincing. The weight of her launched netting device was likely becoming less insignificant by the minute. “It’s the rule, right? We all know collectors’re to be left alone.”
“Is that so?” My voice was as dry as the Arabian sands, and slightly amused as I navigated us across the less steep rooftop of what I suspected was a pub, or some like communal gathering. The smell of roasting meat —plain, without spice, and likely flavored with rat or stray dog—merged with the thick pong of the typical London low barrage of odorous delights. Over it all, a fishy rot, wafting from the River Thames just south. “Pray tell who this
“But they all say it.”
Maddie Ruth was of an age where the truths of her knowledge had not quite come to terms with the realities of living. I had very little patience for it, though I admit that in her I saw some of my own arrogance.
