Whitechapel Gods Read online

  The man was a killer; that was the long and short of it. There could be no guarantee of controlling him, no matter with whom he claimed to lay his allegiances. And if Bailey really had met his end, Oliver might not be able to pawn the fellow off on another crew. No good will come of this partnership, and that’s the truth.

  But that was something to leave to Providence and a later day.

  Bergen tilted his head. “We should return to the city.”

  “Let’s get ourselves to the base of the stair,” Oliver said. “We’ll wait there.”

  “Why would we wait?”

  “So that Phineas Macrae can find us. Let’s get on.”

  He urged Tommy into a slow shuffle by gentle pressure on his back. Bergen scowled, but fell into step.

  “Do you truly still hold out hope that any of your party survived?” the German asked. “If the Boiler Men did not kill all of them, surely your rat’s army finished the work.”

  Tommy swallowed hard before adding his comment. The pain of the admission contorted his face: “I hate to say it, Ollie, but…I haven’t seen him. He’d have found me, I think, if he was still…”

  Tommy choked off the last few words, and Oliver gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

  “He isn’t dead, Tommy. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he was already waiting for us at the stair.”

  The German grunted—a half laugh. “If he’s truly so resourceful as to have escaped his fate, he would be quite capable of rescuing himself without our aid.”

  The mockery in that tone raised Oliver’s hackles. He ground his teeth a moment before making a reply. “You’re quite correct, Mr. Keuper. He does not need our help. But getting Thomas all the way back to the Underbelly in his present condition is going to require more than one man.”

  “We have more than one man.”

  “Keuper, ever since you first laid eyes on my friend’s state, you’ve been thinking that he is an unnecessary burden. You’ve been scheming ways to rid our expedition of him so that we can make better time.”

  Tommy gasped, looking towards Oliver for confirmation.

  Oliver’s eyes tracked the rolling mud battleground ahead. He did not look at either of them. “And so I have decided not to trust you with my friend’s safety.”

  His mood improved slightly as Bergen fell into a sullen silence.

  “Fair?”

  Oliver took the further silence as affirmation.

  They found Phineas at the base of the stair, perched on the edge of an overturned rail car, one so out of style it might have predated the baron’s takeover of Whitechapel. He stubbed his cigar out in the mud and left it there as they approached.

  Oliver resisted the urge to rub his satisfaction in Bergen’s face.

  Phin greeted them with a tip of his impacted hat.

  “If you blokes walked any slower I’d rent a cab for you. Hellfire, I’d build a cab for you and rope a couple of those dogs to pull it. And what in God’s name is wrong with Thomas?”

  Tom smiled through his grimace. “War wounds, you piss-yellow dodger. I assume you’ve none of your own.”

  “He took a few prods from those flashers of theirs,” Oliver explained.

  Phineas scowled. “I know that. I was there, or hasn’t gear-guts told you? I mean that bloody noise.”

  Oliver helped Tommy to seat himself on a bent train wheel. The big man groaned with the effort. Oliver handed him a canteen—the last remnants of his water supply. “What noise, Phin?”

  Phineas gestured at Tommy with a vague sense of disgust. “The…the noise, man. He’s always been a damned factory all to himself but…Oy, bolt-britches, you hear that grinding?”

  “I can’t hear hardly any, you…you…” He sighed. “They burned me something terrible. Yeah, I can hear it.”

  Phin shared a look with Oliver, which even through Phineas’ perpetual squint Oliver knew as a warning.

  And now Mr. Keuper is thinking that Tommy is a danger, as well as a hindrance.

  Bergen remained stony silent, bending a little now under the weight of his enormous weapon and several hours’ long hike. He kept Phineas under a watchful eye. Doesn’t trust any of us. Perhaps Missy can crack him. Missy would dive right into the man the instant she saw him: smile at him, charm him, melt him, rub him down under her heel.

  Phineas was giving Tommy a pat on the shoulder and muttering some encouraging, if vulgar, words. Oliver motioned him over. For Bergen’s benefit, he announced ten minutes’ rest.

  The German nodded.

  Oliver drew Phineas aside, to the edge of the rail car.

  “What’s this grinding, Phineas?”

  “Something in his belly, I’m thinkin’,” Phin whispered. “Wasn’t there last I saw him. Like a clickrat crawlin’ in mud.”

  “Any ideas on its identity?”

  “Not a one, Cap’n. Ne’er heard it comin’ from inside a man before.”

  Oliver sighed and glanced back at Tom, who had fallen into still, regular breathing. Bergen was unabashedly observing their conversation, though he was probably too far off to eavesdrop. Oliver turned back to Phineas.

  “How did this happen, Phin? Didn’t you warn them?”

  “Wasn’t any warning to give, Cap’n. Not firstly, anyways. The Ironboys, they don’t make any noise.”

  “Codswallop. They shake the bloody ground.”

  “When they’s movin’, sure, but when they’s still, they’s silent as the bloody grave. No breathin’, no gears grindin’ or heart pumpin’. We didn’t even know they were there until we’s thirty feet away.”

  “But the dogs, man.”

  Phin crushed his hat farther down his head, until the dropping brim almost hid his eyes.

  “I heard the damnable mutts ages before we got to ’em. Mr. Knight ordered us ahead anyway.”

  Oliver nodded. Can’t say I blame him. Hounds or Boiler Men? I’d have chosen the same. “And the fight?”

  Phineas spat into the mud. “What’s I supposed to do against the Tin Soldiers, Ollie? I lit out. Not my fault that copper-balls goes berserk. He didn’t even use his rifle, for Christ’s sake.”

  Phineas ground his teeth

  “I hid in the dirt, Ollie,” Phin said through gnashing teeth. “ ’S what they all should’ve done. Blasted stupid, just like the Uprising.”

  “You gave them your warning, man. Everything else is on Bailey’s head.”

  Phin smoothed out his impossibly wrinkled coat. “Bailey’s dead, Ollie. He took two or three shots. I heard him crying those eloquent curses of his. The Ironboys, they charged him and stomped him down.”

  Oliver nodded. It was what Bailey had wanted—to die in service of his beloved queen. Oliver felt a curious hole in his stomach, like a coal burning there. It’s what I wanted, too: to be free of that man. To be free of his rules and his damn distrust—Oliver felt guilty just thinking it—and now I am.

  So, what now? With what the cloaks knew, would Joyce still be alive, to build this weapon on Scared’s tape? Would any of Bailey’s other nameless compatriots still be alive? Would…Hews?

  “What do you think, Ollie? We’s a bit buggered, eh?”

  Oliver looked up. Phin stood expectantly, fiddling with his pockets.

  “Let’s get climbing.”

  They turned and walked back to the base of the stair. Jeremy Longshore had returned, and sat looking contented with his head poking out of Tommy’s pocket. Tommy stroked the silver ridges of the thing’s back, murmuring silent nothings to it. Bergen crouched like an ape, watching wordlessly.

  “Stalwart like an ox, Chief,” Tommy announced, proudly hoisting Jeremy into the air. “What did I tell you?”

  “He’s more than proved himself to me, Tommy,” Oliver said. “Let’s make him an official member of the crew, shall we?”

  “The king bowing to another master? Never!” Tommy said, chuckling. Phineas helped him up, all four or five hundred scraping, squealing pounds. Oliver pointed to Bergen.


  “You’re our lead climber, Keuper.”

  Bergen rose. “So that you can keep a watch on me?”

  Oliver held his mouth shut.

  “So, tell me, since you have styled yourself our governor,” Bergen said as he approached the first rickety, rusted and bent step of the stair, which at its base turned out to be more like its namesake. “What shall we do, now that Bailey Howe truly is dead?”

  Oliver felt acute stares from Tom and Phineas. Once again they looked to him to take up that mantle he’d watched burn five years past, and lead them all to their deaths in some heroic folly. They wouldn’t let him off, not again, not when he’d been hiding from the responsibility all this time.

  You wanted this, chap. Deep down, you always wanted it.

  A second chance. A second Uprising.

  Tom rocked foot to foot. “Ollie?”

  “We return to Sherwood,” Oliver said. “We gather the crew and call in Hews and Sims and Joyce and whoever’s left.”

  He stared at Bergen, matching the man’s intensity.

  “And then…we proceed, my way.”

  “I know who you are.”

  That was all Baron Hume had said.

  The lift locked into place with a shower of sparks and the two Boiler Men jerked Bailey forward. His captors’ titan strength had long ago crushed the bones in both arms, and Bailey was beyond the sensation of pain. He was aware only of the endless layered thrashing sounds of machinery to rival hell itself, and the smell of cooked meat drifting up into his nose. The Boiler Men had welded a metal plate to his skin using their lightning rods, to steal his death away.

  Bailey had looked into Hume’s impenetrable brass eyes and seen nothing—not anger, not satisfaction, only the cool detachment of logic. Bailey was not a defeated enemy made to kneel; he was a faulty part being corrected, so that the machine would run smoothly once more.

  We are as nothing to them. Empty, lifeless soldiers that moved and killed and could not die, weapons that threw lightning and steam and bullets faster than a man could tap his fingers—Lord, what were we thinking? What arrogance to assume we could topple these creatures. These…gods.

  His legs lost all power, and he fell forward. The Boiler Men dragged him by his shattered arms without breaking stride. Bailey’s tears splattered on the walkway. His twisted feet smeared them as they passed.

  They were deep inside the Stack by now, past the visitor ledges on the outer rings, down past the workrooms and storerooms and the holy places of the gold and black cloaks. Down here Mama Engine’s furnace burned eternal with a heat to rival the sun, and the eldest of the black cloaks, their humanity stripped away by layers of iron limbs, tempered the foundations of the Great Work.

  The endless gyrations of the machines faded, and a hum rose in their place. The sound boomed and echoed around the cavernous space into which they now passed, ringing like the song of a thousand angels, or the hissing of a thousand devils.

  Good Lord, if I have ever been good to you, take me now…

  The chamber stretched a hundred or more yards across, lined on all the outside surfaces with clocks of senseless and maddening design. The walkway extended into it, held up by gossamer golden cords, to the room’s central feature.

  Bailey could not look. He knew what he would see: row upon endless row of broken, drained, mutilated men and women and children; golden wires piercing their skin; muscle and flesh rotting off their bones; and yet none of them dead—none permitted to die, so long as the Great Machine had need of them.

  The Boiler Men dragged him to a halt in front of a creature constructed of tangled strips of brass. Porcelain eyes assessed him, a single finger indicated the place of his fate. Bailey watched the creature as it turned away to its duties, and knew instinctively that it had once been human.

  His shoulder came loose as his captors renewed their march. His bowels gave as they slammed him roughly into an empty brass chair. His last breath escaped as they forced steel bolts through his hips and chest to pin him there. His vision darkened.

  Please, Lord.

  A wire broke the skin of his neck and began digging into him, burning like an electric worm. A second punctured his rib cage, a third, his lower back.

  Not this, he screamed. Death I have always welcomed, but not this.

  The Boiler Men marched away, and the ticking began. It grew, instant by instant, pummelling his perceptions with its insane repetition, until it deafened his very thoughts. It stripped away everything he knew, everything he had ever thought, every hope and every plan. The weight of Grandfather Clock crushed him down, hammered him, shaped him. He became a perfect component of a larger whole, losing all that he had been before.

  And all was harmony in the Great Machine.

  The Second Day

  It must be dull and lonely to live in a new city, while to live in an old city like London is to enjoy the society of a very noble army of ghosts.

  —Sidney Dark

  Chapter 12

  His chosen will call themselves the Brothers of Order. They will be the expression of His Function, and the makers of His Harmony, and they will call me Master.

  —IV. i

  It was like a veritable sewer of the filthiest dregs of humanity, all coated in their own foulness, all gathered together in a drainpipe so clogged that no amount of rain would ever wash it clean.

  Yes, that’s it.

  And those churls at the Stack had sent him knee-deep into it without so much as a clothespin to protect his nose. Yes, he’d botched the capture. Yes, he’d let the British sons of bitches shoot him to death. It hadn’t been his fault. They’d been hiding in a tool cabinet, for goodness sakes; a bloody, bleeding, fucking tool cabinet. How could he have known? Yet his superiors had blamed him harshly and shipped him off to Shadwell to wallow in his shame.

  Except that Marcus James Westerton did not feel shame, as it didn’t do one a damned lick of practical good. What he felt was anger; anger at those queen-worshiping zealots and whatever inborn human stupidity drove such people to rebel against their betters.

  Anger, you see, was useful. Anger made people do as you wanted.

  “Look sharp, you,” he growled, without warning or provocation.

  The young lad who was the target of the growling shrunk back like he’d been actually struck. The Stack had given Westerton two fresh recruits as underlings and he had to go about breaking them in. The sooner they kowtowed to his every whim and cruelty, the faster they could become an adequate fighting unit. This one lad—Eugene?—Westerton had ordered to stay by his side as a bodyguard. The other marched some twenty feet ahead, in the company of the intolerable street urchin leading them to their prise.

  And what a prise, what a prise.

  “You, boy!” Westerton called. “How much farther is it?”

  The little cretin turned a gap-toothed grin back at the question. “No’ long, sir. Few mo’ turns, i’ is.”

  “It had better be soon, or I daresay you’ll get no shilling. And if I’m in a mood I’ll have you hauled off to the Chimney.”

  “No worries, suh. Few mo’, likes I said.”

  His growl seemed to have little effect on the human rodent. I might have him hauled off anyway, on account of his irksome presence.

  Despite himself, Westerton felt his foul demeanour slipping. Whether this creature was lying or not, the day would be a good one. Either he would send that animal to the Chimney, or he would have satisfaction on one of the men who’d shot him. He’d almost had him once, but the villain had eluded Westerton with the help of that damned bookseller Fickin. A traitor and rotten to the core, that one. Why didn’t the Good Lady simply burn him up?

  Because the Lady is as inconstant and as fickle as any woman. Not like the Lord. Ah, his is the beauty of structure and logic. Unassailable. He deserves to be worshipped.

  “Here, sirs,” the boy said. “Just here.”

  They had arrived at an alley, which, like all the alleys of this God-cursed tower, was da
rk and stank of mould and general hideousness. Westerton checked the street to either side. He recognised none of the tenements nor the guttering lamps or the stray dogs probing the stairways and doors looking for food.

  “Where are we, Brother?” he demanded.

  Eugene swallowed hard and shook his head. “I…don’t rightly know, sir.” He cringed at Westerton’s gaze and mumbled an apology.

  The street boy stood expectantly at the alley mouth.

  “Presumptuous child,” Westerton said. “You think I’ll pay you before the job is done? For all I know you’ve led us to a whorehouse and will run off with my shilling.”

  The child shook his head. “Led you true, I did, suh. The door’s at the end, in there.”

  “It had better be.” Westerton motioned Eugene to move up beside his brother-in-gold. Westerton himself drew out his 1.20-calibre breech-loading sidearm, which he had ordered custom built at great expense. It was always a fine day when he got to fire the thing.

  “You stay here,” he said to the boy. “We’ll be back presently.”

  The boy sat patiently on the curb and stared at his shoes.

  “Forward.”

  The alley’s shadows swallowed his two underlings after a single step. Cursing under his breath, Westerton followed. The dark that closed over him was nearly total, revealing only hints of the walls and the vague outlines of forms in front of him. He’d never been able to see properly in the dark since his initiation, when Grandfather Clock had blessed his heart and replaced much of his nerves with copper wiring. Westerton trusted that the Good Lord had a reason for this particular debility, though he sometimes found it irritating. Not that I’m ungrateful, noble Grandfather. Not at all.

  Two shots filled the alley. Something wet splattered on his face and frock an instant later.

  “To the sides, my brothers! Give me space.” Without waiting, Westerton discharged his weapon directly down the alley’s length. He thrilled to it: percussive force sufficient to shatter nearby windows and enough recoil to tear the arm off a mere human being. His enthusiasm dulled somewhat as the impressions the muzzle flash had burned onto his eyes resolved themselves into two bodies crumpled on the street in front of him wearing gold vests.