I dared not try anything too risky. My body felt as if I’d bruised it, forehead to toes, and even the simple act of seizing the flag pole in both hands drenched me in painful, cold sweat. I clenched my teeth, re-adjusted my grip so abruptly that I nearly slid one hand clean off the rod.
The weight of the net-launching device jerked me to the side, but wrapping my legs around the metal haft helped ease the rock from my stomach. The air whistled past my ears, and then I was upon the ground, tottering for balance, my shoulders aching
“Nicely landed.” Ishmael’s voice was not so quiet as to be a whisper, but it was near enough as he was capable. It came at me from behind, still in the vee of the lane I’d run beside. “Hurry, girl, before the Ferrymen come.”
My knees were a bit more watery than I expected them to be. I stumbled some as I turned.
Maddie Ruth was a pale blur behind the Baker’s greater shadow, eyes wide and dark.
“I’ll escort you close to Limehouse,” he said as I approached.
I joined them, saw the dockman was no longer present, and eyed Ishmael. “Why are you in Ratcliffe?”
His features were difficult enough to read, but there was no mistaking his apology—and the implacability of it—as he rumbled, “Baker business.”
Close enough to my frequently declared
I kept up with his pace easily, even with the device upon my back. Maddie Ruth struggled some, but she did so without complaint.
I edged closer to him. “Ish? You’re not encroaching on the Veil’s land, are you?”
His rolled grunt sufficed as a denial.
“Are the Ferrymen?”
The man said nothing, his gaze focused on the streets on either side of us as we hurried east through eerily empty thoroughfares.
“Likely,” Maddie Ruth piped up, not so lack-witted, after all. “Limehouse has the best dens.”
Opium dens, she meant, and she was right enough. They claimed the best because the Veil imported the best of the resin from China, where the organization hailed. Smuggled, more like. “‘Tis not something one may just step in and seize,” I pointed out.
“Baker business,” Ishmael said again, cutting off Maddie Ruth’s proposed wisdom with a glare. “Best stay clear, girl.”
The “girl” was mine. The glare was Maddie Ruth’s, deadly enough serious that I left both alone.
Fair enough. I would find out another way; I always did. Maddie Ruth, on the other hand, needed to keep her soot-smeared nose a good sight cleaner. “Right,” I said, ending it for the both of us.
We walked in silence, quickly as we could, but relatively unbothered. Short of a full-sized crew at hand, no one would dare take on Baker’s famed Communion. Soon enough, we approached near enough to Limehouse— and subsequently, the Menagerie—that he drew up short.
“There.”
I nodded. “Go ahead, Maddie Ruth. I’ll be on your heels.”
“But what about—”
That girl and her arguments. “Skiv off,” I cut in firmly, fitting her with a glare that suggested my already raised ire would be sharper if she didn’t obey me right this moment.
She did. There was hope for her. Not too terribly much, but some.
I turned back to Ishmael, looking up into his pitch-dark eyes. “Thank you. You were under no obligation.”
He shrugged, I think somewhat uncomfortable with the direct sincerity of my observation. “Not your fault you were caught in it.”
Perhaps. I could have argued in either direction, but did not. “Also,” I continued slowly, seizing my moment, “I owe you a great deal for—”
A very broad hand settled atop my head, in a move he had never before attempted on me. It was one part affection, I think, but mostly I believe it a way to cement my attention. I peered at him from under his fustian-clad forearm, surprised into silence.
“No thanks needed,” he rumbled in his dark, matter of fact voice. “Some things are best left.”
My brow furrowed. “Ish, I owe you—”
“No debts,” Ishmael cut in, his fingers—easily the span of my skull—squeezing gently. “I’m your man, girl.”
That simple statement stole my aching heart. To my consternation, tears sprang sharp and fresh to my stinging, too-long dry eyes. I blinked them back forcefully. “And I’m your girl, man,” I replied, repeating his turn of phrase with a smile. “Come case to crack or word to spread, you know where I am.”
His near-black eyes lifted behind me, to where Maddie Ruth lingered awkwardly. Then back to me. “Be careful. Word is that miller’s still about. Your miss there seems a ripe target.”
Miller, one of his many words for murderer. “You mean the murdering Jack?”
He nodded, and let go of my head. “And the other.”
The sweet tooth. The very mention of him turned my spine to brittle ice.
“Not for long,” I said, a quiet assurance. “I’ve promised to collect the latter.” I still hadn’t figured out how I would go about doing so, or who to deliver him to. This little escapade had cost me the first step in my nebulous plan.
“That’s the face what worries me,” Ishmael said, flat features arranging into grim lines. “Can’t be at your back all the time, girl. Be careful.”
It didn’t matter how often he said the words, they bounced off my determination like stones from iron. Yet I still nodded, because in the end, it made the large man feel better. “You, as well,” I said.
He did not nod. He simply turned and walked away, his distinctive heavy tread lingering long after the peasouper swallowed him.
I turned to find Maddie Ruth watching me warily, hands clasped at her waist.
My eyes narrowed. “Now,” I told her, ominous resolve, “we deal with you.”
The tongue-lashing I gave Maddie Ruth spanned the width of Limehouse’s western quarter. By the time the fog thinned, a miraculous occurrence just outside the Menagerie’s gates, my companion gave every appearance of proper contrition.
I didn’t buy that for a single second.
“Of all the reckless maneuvers,” I said, marching her past the gates and around. There were a few entries into the pleasure gardens, but the front gates would not open for another few hours.
I made for the western entry, which would put me farthest from the circus tent. And, fortunately, closer to the sweets. I could ring the market and avoid the red canvas altogether this way. And if she were very, very lucky, I would not drag Maddie Ruth to the Veil and demand restitution for my trouble.
Of course, I had no inclination to do so. The threat alone seemed to do the trick.
“I’m sorry, miss,” she said, not for the first time.
Apology, I heard. What I didn’t perceive was a promise not to do it again.
“What would you have done were I not there?” I asked her, pushing aside a hanging fall of thick green ivy cascading from the wall protecting the Menagerie’s grounds. A door behind it was unlocked, but likely not unguarded. The Veil was too mindful of its grounds for such luck, and as this led to the private garden, it would not be overlooked.
“I wouldn’t have been there were I not following you,” she said. Logical, certainly, but lacking.
I threw her an irate glance. “Whether you followed me to the collector’s wall or someone else, eventually you would have ended up in that very situation. Accept it, Maddie Ruth, you are ill-equipped.”
As soon as the poor choice of words left my mouth, I regretted them. A look of such smug satisfaction filled
