The great steelworks at Fulham never slept, its forges never allowed to cool. Great pots of molten metal seethed like lava, hissing as they were tipped down long trenches and funnelled into enormous casts. Men wore only vests, helmets and stout trousers, all grimed with sweat and dirt. The darkness was thrown back by the hellish light from the furnaces, but the price to be paid was a constant and fierce heat that made the workers’ bodies run with perspiration. Long shadows fell against the black walls, of hammers rising and plunging, of great chains pulled and clanking pots rattling along on runners.
Word of the evil thing that brooded over the Old Quarter was all over the factory, but the workmen were a hardy breed and not given to idle talk, so the speculation was limited at best. As long as the forges kept burning, and the union watched their backs against the businessmen who would have their jobs and cut their wages, then they were content, which was as close to happiness as most of these men got.
It was past three in the morning when Bertlin Creel approached his foreman with a worried expression on his face. He was pudgy and balding, but his arms were like logs and he was as strong as any man in the works.
“What is it, Bert?” the foreman said, without taking his eyes off the beetle that was scuttling across the metal at his feet. He stamped on it, crushing it beneath his boot. “Well?”
“Its the melting pot, Amon.”
“What about the melting pot?”
“I should come ’ave a look if I was you. You wouldn’t ne’er believe me.”
Amon scraped the remains of the beetle off his shoe and followed where Bert led him, back through the clanking and darkness and industry to where the vast melting pot hung like some idol to a fire-god. It was an enormous cauldron of black alloy with a pooched lip like a jug, and chains hanging from it; several trenches beneath it waited for it to be tipped, to carry the molten metal to the casts.
They climbed the unsteady metal steps to the top, where the heat was fiercest, and there Bert pointed into the heart of the glowing mixture.
Amon stared hard. At first, all he could see were the black islands of impurities that floated on the top of the furnace; but then something stirred deep inside the pot, and his vision was drawn to it.
“You see it?” Bert asked.
“I see something, all right,” Amon replied. “I should think it’s—hold yer horses! Did you see that?”
“Course I did,” said Bert. “The blessed thing’s been movin’ about down there the better part of five minutes now.”
Amon studied it further. Other workers were there, too, watching him for a reaction. He examined it for a time. It was only a vague black blur, impossible to tell what it was, but he could see by the way it was moving what was happening. It was swimming like an otter or a seal. In molten metal that was several hundred degrees in temperature. Which was impossible.
“The boys think it’s a salamander, Amon,” Bert said.
“Whats a salamander?” Amon asked.
“It’s a thing that lives in fire. They get so hot that when they come out, they cracks like when you put a hot glass in cold water.”
“What ’appens then?” Amon inquired.
“Nobody lived to tell the tale,” Bert replied.
Amon tutted. “You tell ’em there’s no such bloody thing as a salamander. Get the moulds, pour that metal and get whatever that thing is out of there. You hear?”
“Right,” Bert said, glad that someone had decided what to do.
At five o’clock, the Fulham steelworks exploded in a rain of flame, sending burning meteorites as far as Chelsea, Battersea and Hammersmith, starting fires that spread hungrily towards the dawn.
By the morning, London had realized that the boil of the Old Quarter had burst and spread itself. If indeed a morning it could be called, for the sky was so thick with cloud that the sun’s best efforts could only muster twilight. Smoke drifted in a pall from the blazing sections of the city, and faint coronas of firelight could be seen above the terraces and parks. The day provided no respite from the wych-kin now; of those people who walked out on the streets to go to work, many never arrived. Carriage horses were savaged by packs of wolves. Factories were panicked by the sight of crouching things in the rafters. Children who had squalled in the night that there was something under their beds were missing that morning, and only little dolls of them were left on their pillows. The Crimson Fever was everywhere, more and more people observing with horror as the cracked red lines appeared over their body, the delicate tracery of burst capillaries showing up to jigsaw their skin. It struck with no pattern and no logic, and did not seem to be infectious in a conventional manner; yet overnight it had afflicted more people than in the previous week.
People hid, or locked themselves in their houses, or left the city as fast as they could. Some made it; most didn’t. Drivers on the way out seemed to become disorientated and found themselves on a road back into the heart of the city. Others found to their cost that there were things unmentionable waiting by the main thoroughfares out of London.
That was the first night, and the first dark day. As the twilight began to fade back to pitch without having ever touched brightness, London trembled and dreaded the night to come.
AT STITCH-FACE’S MERCY
THE SIEGE OF THE CROOKED LANES
REUNION 21
Alaizabel sat on the rickety wooden chair in the dark room, her head hung and her blonde hair lank across her face. Slats of grim twilight showed through the black rectangle of the single window, shutters letting in what feeble luminescence there was. Distantly, a wolf howled and was answered by another faraway pack.
Her wrists were chafed raw from rubbing against the ropes that tied them to the back of the chair. She was faint from hunger and exhaustion, and she shivered against the cold in the bare room. Clouds of her breath plumed raggedly from her mouth. She had been here for hours, it seemed; but it was still night outside, so it could not have been so long.
One horror to another, she thought to herself. When will it be over?
Stitch-face. How could it have happened, that of all the saviours that might have driven by in that freezing November night, the one to save her life would happen to be London’s most voracious serial killer? What manner of force conspired against her? What had she done to bring such evil upon herself?
Perhaps I am suffering for the sins of my parents, she thought.
But no; she would not give in to despair. The terrible weariness that had sunk into her bones was weakening her resolve, but she was stronger than self-pity. Stitch-face had her, but she still breathed. There was that.
She thought of Thaniel then, and for a time she entertained notions of him rescuing her; but they were false hopes. Nobody knew where she was, not even her. Alone, once again.
She heard the sound of a heavy key in the lock, and she looked up, her chest tightening. The thick wooden door opened, and Stitch-face stood there, a huge bowie knife in one hand, sharpened to a gleam.
“Good morning, child,” said the sewn corpse-mask beneath the beautiful cascades of dead brown hair. He stepped into the room, his knife held before him.
Alaizabel suppressed a sound of fear that threatened to escape her throat. She kept her eyes fixed on him, never wavering. If she was to die here, it would not be as a cowering child. She was herself now, free from the dark spirit within her. Alaizabel Cray.
He locked the door, and pocketed the key. Drawing another chair up, he placed it before her and sat on it. He was wearing riding boots, leather gloves and a greatcoat, the collar turned down. Nothing showed of him but the bow of his lips and his cold, dead eyes.
She waited, not saying a word, hardly daring to breathe.
He leaned forward and reached out a hand, stroking it down the line of Alaizabel’s jaw. She stiffened, frozen in horror and disgust. Stitch-face’s knife was at her neck the moment she flinched.
“Where is the wych-spirit, Miss Alaizabel? Why is she not with you any more?”
“Ho
w—” Alaizabel began, but her throat was dry and she made only a wheeze. She began again. “How do you know she is not?” It was both a question and a bluff; pretending to have Thatch inside her could mean she kept her life. Or lost it. She had no idea what Stitch-face wanted yet.
It didn’t matter. “I know, Miss Alaizabel. You just told me by the tone of your voice.”
Alaizabel kept her face blank.
He removed his knife from her throat, tapped the side of his head with the point, and then withdrew to sit back in his chair.
“You do not have the wych with you,” he said. “The Fraternity have her, I suppose?”
“What would you do if they had?” she demanded bravely. “Please stop these games, Miss Alaizabel,” Stitch-face said with a sigh. “Suffice to say that if you still had the wych inside you, I would gut you like a fish here and now, and then she would die and the Fraternity’s plan would collapse.”
He got up, leaving her chilled at the tone of his words. He walked over to the window, produced another key, and unlocked the shutters, throwing them wide. The sounds from outside came louder now: wolf-howls, running footsteps, distant pistol-cracks, high arcing screeches of unidentifiable things, and beneath it all a distant rumbling, almost too low to hear.
“Fortunate, don’t you think, that I happened by tonight?” he asked, looking out of the window. “Or rather, ironic; for I had come to find you and kill you, but I was sadly too late. Have no fear, child. You are a little young for cutting, and the mood is not on me tonight. I have other concerns. Come. See for yourself.”
He stepped away from the window and came up behind her. She winced in fear as he put his knife to her bonds, thinking only of that sharp edge so close to her skin. But the ropes fell free, and Stitch-face stepped back. She got up, rubbing her wrists, and went to the window as she was told. This side of her prison faced on to a wide patch of waste-ground, where rubble and pieces of junk lay scattered. Nobody within calling distance, even if she had got the shutter open. Beyond the waste was the city, and beyond that the awesome, fearful swirl of bloodied clouds that rotated gigantically in the near-darkness. The city itself was alive with shrieks and wails and ringing bells. One section was burning, the flames rising above the roofs and sending floating chunks of burning ash into the air. Lightning flashed and zagged, darting into the streets to light fresh blazes, and there was no rain to put them out.
“Is... is this the Old Quarter?” she asked in horror. She turned back to Stitch-face. “Have you brought me to the Old Quarter?”
“Oh no,” said Stitch-face casually. “We are still a good mile north of the Thames. The Old Quarter is beneath that particularly pretty maelstrom in the sky.”
She looked out again, numbed by shock. “Is it all like this?”
“Most of it,” Stitch-face replied.
“You said it was morning,” she said quietly.
“It is,” he replied. “Ten o’clock, or a little past. Those clouds keep everything awfully dark, you know.”
She slumped, moving away from the sight. “We failed, then,” she said.
“You’ve not failed,” said Stitch-face suddenly. “Not yet, anyway. This simply represents a small portion of what will happen if you do fail. The chackh’morg is complete; the sacrifices have been made, the gate is open. This is only the faintest breath of the power of what the Fraternity are bringing through that gate. They can be stopped yet.”
Alaizabel frowned, puzzled at this new turn. Of all the things she had expected from her first meeting with Stitch-face, she had certainly not expected this.
“I had a talk with a lady named Lucinda Watt. She was really quite knowledgeable about the workings of the Fraternity, once I had persuaded her enough.” He grinned, a horrible death-rictus. “The chackh’morg is the beginning. The preparing of the way. A great Ward, shaped with murders. The Fraternity have spent decades preparing for the summoning of Thatch. The Rite to summon Rawhead alone took seven years to procure all the necessary ingredients and knowledge. The gate is open now, the way prepared. But there is another ceremony yet. Thatch is the guide; a spirit who has died and been brought back. In life she had great power, which allowed her to overcome death.” He paused, examining the edge of his knife. “Where the dead are, it is not easy to find a way back to the land of the living. Now Thatch knows the pathways of the dead, and she can lead the Fraternity’s god to us. She is like the tug that pulls a great ship into harbour. She is the key. She is mortal. She can die.”
Alaizabel could barely take it all in. “Kill Thatch?”
“The ceremony will take a few days,” Stitch-face said. “When it is finished, all is lost. As is London, so will the world be.” Terrified as she was, Alaizabel heard herself speak. “Why?” she asked. “Why are you doing this?”
The ghastly face looked out of the window, tinged in red. “I am a monster, Miss Alaizabel. But even monsters want to live.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Someone was killing in my name,” Stitch-face said. “Pretending to be me. I mislike imitators of my work, child. But I know something of the Fraternity, and I guessed their hand in this. So I found Lucinda Watt, and I talked to her, and she told me all she knew. And after that... well. The Fraternity plan to bring death upon us all.” He fixed Alaizabel with a dreadful gaze. “And I do not wish to die. So they must be stopped.” He paused. “And if I should come across the man behind the plan to mimic my artistry, one Doctor Mammon Pyke, then I may be tempted to do to him what I did to his secretary.”
Stitch-face turned away from her then, walked to the door. He unlocked it and stepped through, then looked back. “You have friends. I suggest you find them. I shall not trouble to lock this door behind me.”
And with those words, he was gone.
“Burn them! Burn their filthy hides!”
Matches were struck and held to alcohol-soaked rags that poked from bottles of London’s most potent grog. The foetid air was full of shouts and howls, echoing along the tunnels in a constant throb. And above it all was the squeaking, the maddening chatter of the rats as they swarmed over the makeshift barricades, biting and scrabbling and scratching.
The dull explosion of the grog-bombs was accompanied by a surge of heat as long patches of fire raced along the sewer walls and spread themselves in burning slicks across the turgid, knee-high water. Rats screamed as their fur ignited, jumping for the water, but the water was aflame, too, and they could only dive for so long before they returned to the surface to die.
In amid the horde lumbered the Dog-rats, the wych-beasts that were leading the masses. They were a metre long without counting the tail, all arched hindquarters and bristly black fur, with jaws that could have a man’s hand off. Twisted from within, they were; possessed by wych-spirits that warped them and made them huge and foul. Their muzzles were leathery and dog-like in expression, their claws hooked and vicious, and their eyes glowed with a demonic light—little lanterns in the darkness.
Crott swung his own grog-bomb at one of them, smashing it dead centre on the creature’s back. He took a moment to enjoy its shrieking and thrashing before turning his sabre on a nearby clot of rats that had attached itself to the leg of an old beggar.
The Crooked Lanes were under siege on all sides. Wych-kin stalked the streets and tunnels, heedless of the defences and not a bit confused by the mazes within; and down in the sewers, these damnable rats.
The hastily constructed barriers of metal sheeting and grilles were proving remarkably ineffective against the tide of vermin that had arrived that morning. The rats had undermined some blockage further up the tunnels, and had come riding on a deluge of junk and debris to pile up against the barricades and overwhelm them. Driven by a dark intelligence, they had effortlessly invaded the humans’ domain, leaving the defenders flailing to keep them away.
Behind the barricade, dozens of beggars fought and thrashed in the stinking water, stabbing at the furred things that swam around their legs
or scampered along the footway at the side of the sewer. Crott swept up a rat by the throat and shook it viciously, feeling its bones crack, then tossed the limp thing aside and waded away, back towards the tunnels that would lead to the surface. He could do no good here. Their efforts at defence were futile, yet it was necessary to provide some kind of resistance. He had never felt so helpless.
Beggars hurried and hobbled down the grimy stone stairway as Crott made his way up it, heading to the battle below. They scarcely recognized their leader in his bedraggled condition, reeking of sewage and slump-shouldered. He reminded himself that he should act according to his position, and he corrected his bearing so as not to look quite so defeated.
He burst through the door at the top of the stairs, suddenly possessed by a fury born of frustration, and collared a beggar-boy who was about to run down the stairs to where the rats were.
“Never mind them, boy,” he said. “Go find me the wych-hunters, bring them to my chambers. Do it quick.”
The boy obeyed, holding his lame arm to his chest as he scuttled away. Crott stamped his way through the dark underground tunnels, stopping here and there to issue an order, to offer support, to help his people in some way. All around him was scuffle and skirmish, distant cries. Things were the same in Rickarack’s territory, by all accounts. He didn’t know what had become of the other two Beggar Lords; none of them had sent messengers in return, perhaps disbelieving his warning. He’d wager they believed him now.
He wanted to scream or kill something. Nothing he could do would hold back the invaders. He had no effective methods of dealing with wych-kin or Crimson Fever. The rats were the easiest to handle, and even they were beating the beggars hands down. He swore hard enough to make a sailor blush and stamped towards his chambers.
Cathaline and Thaniel were already there when he arrived. His eyebrows raised a little at the sight of Carver, sitting with the wych-hunters; the Detective should have had his hands full dealing with the chaos in the city. Closing the door, he sat down in an armchair that seemed to grow out of a heap of gold bedsteads and wooden dressers.