I stamped.
When it was a gentlemen’s club with a bathing-house below, it was likely kept up spruce, in good repair. Since it was abandoned, not so much. Not at all, to be honest. We kept it as clean as we liked it and the boilers working, but the building wasn’t our responsibility. Reno’s, perhaps – I didn’t know the terms of her lease, if she had one – but she had other things on her mind. So long as we weren’t complaining, she wasn’t interested what went on over here. This wasn’t even technically Savoy; I’d never seen her out here. Come to that, I’d never seen her outside her office, night or day. It might be difficult for her, coming and going, the size she had to be standing up; if she had no other damage than the wings, I was still sure it would be painful, walking about. No blame to her if she chose not to do that, if she could contrive to avoid it.
What’s the internal economy of an angel? I didn’t know. Perhaps she lived on sunbeams. Bottled sunbeams, fetched down underground and kept in one of her filing-drawers like a subterfuge whisky.
Whatever. If she didn’t check the state of the building, no one did. And this floor wasn’t laid on solid rock, or even rubble. I knew it, I could feel it: flagstones beneath the tiling, maybe, but those flags lay on wooden joists. And what with all the water dribbling down through cracks, through decades, with oozing clay beneath to keep everything good and damp...
I stamped, and stamped again.
The tiles were long since shattered. The flag we stood on tilted and fell back. I stamped again.
The stone cracked, but the joists beneath just splintered. The whole floor came apart, and through we fell.
There was clay, I said, beneath the joists – but no great depth of it. Under that was a tunnel. And we fell and were heavy, too heavy for Victorian engineering not built with the Overworld in mind. We fell through, in a slimy mess of sticky clay and crumbling brick.
And I thought we’d come down in a railway tunnel, probably with a Tube train bearing down on us.
As we fell – as we fell apart, which I guess was a blessing, and had always been part of the plan, in so far as there was one – I remembered about the live rail. And wondered if we’d both fall directly onto it or only one of us, and if so, which one, and whether my Aspect could absorb six hundred and fifty volts of current, and whether the Corbie could fly apart into all his separate birds before he hit, and –
A
ND THEN WE
struck.
Struck
water
.
Struck and sank, heavy and unexpectant.
It took me a moment of cold startled shock before I could recover enough to remember that I’d probably need to swim, I wasn’t going to get far just thinking myself buoyant. I might not need as much oxygen as often as a regular unenhanced girl, but that didn’t mean I could just wade underwater until this culvert spewed out into the air...
No, it was more than a culvert. It was over my head; I kicked out and broke the surface and found myself in a positive river. It was almost black dark, but my eyes are as good as anything I have, and that hole we’d made in the tunnel roof let fall enough light to see by. There was a current, but the water was foul and sluggish with city corruption; I swam to the side, and here was a walkway and a ladder leading up to it. Old and rotten with rust, but even so. I thought myself as light as possible, and hung from a rung of the ladder while I scanned the water for any sign of my enemy.
This was the second time today I’d dunked a Corbie. I was guessing that they wouldn’t like it much.
Frankly, neither did I. I wasn’t sure if that mephitic atmosphere was explosive – but I wasn’t sure that it wasn’t, either. I tried not to breathe too deeply, and just hoped nobody came down here with a candle.
Nobody seemed to be coming down at all, despite the hole in the floor above. Nor was there any sign of the Corbie coming up. If he was still down there, he must be in trouble.
Well, good.
I hauled myself out, and right by the ladder was a door in the ancient brickwork. It was locked, but I didn’t even need to set my shoulder to it; there’s strength enough in Aspected fingers to break most locks with a twist of the handle.
The other side of the door was a short brick passageway that smelled of damp, then stairs rising up to another door.
Beyond that was the janitor’s room. We didn’t have a janitor, and I guess we’d never had a key or enough curiosity to find out what lay down below. Mostly we just used this as a laundry room.
Squelching, I walked out into the broken hallway.
People were gathering: not from the baths as they should have been, I think everyone who’d been in the baths or the kitchen was dead now, but they came from Savoy, through the boiler-room, puzzled and afraid.
One came down from the club above, and oh, was I glad to see him.
Jacey wasn’t the only one staring at the state of me, but he was the only one I cared about. I skirted the hole and everyone else and went to him and said, “Don’t ask. What’s the state of things upstairs?”
“Don’t ask,” he said. “Knee-deep in feathers and corpses, since you did. But they went away eventually. Not the feathers, not the corpses. Don’t get clever. All that muck’s still up there, a nice job for someone, bags not me. I mean the endless bloody birds. After we heard the ruckus down here, they just wheeled up and flew away.”
I supposed that was a blessing. Temporary one, maybe. “They’ll be back,” I said, as ominous as I could make it, just to stop him getting cocky. “Or someone will. One way or another. I know what they want now, and they won’t stop.”
“Okay. What do they want?”
“Me.”
“Well, yes. I think we knew that. What do they want you for?”
“Confession. Punishment. Revenge... Something like that. Look, I’ll tell you, okay?” I really didn’t want to – it was going to sound like an accusation,
this is what you drove me to
– but there wasn’t any help for it, as far as I could see. “Just, not like this. Not sodden, and not stinking. You go up to Reno, tell her what’s been happening, if she doesn’t know already. Then raid Lost Property for me, will you? Clothes, boots, everything. Bring it down here. I’m going to take all the hot water that there is, and scrub myself from the inside out.”
Poor Jacey. I might be the only person on the planet who felt sorry for the guy – or who would dare to – and I seemed to be making a habit of it today. He knew my size intimately, and he had a good eye – he used to love buying me clothes when we were new together, when I was all unused to designer labels and fittings with the actual designers – but he was all unused to being ordered about, by me or anyone. He’d just been a heroic warrior upstairs, and he probably wanted praise for it; I was sure he wanted a bath himself, preferably with a drink attached. And instead here I was sending him off on errands. No wonder he looked bemused.
Still, he agreed placidly enough, once he’d reassured himself by word and eye that I really wasn’t hurt. And once he’d done what he could to wedge that door shut, that I’d come through. Nothing he could do would have stopped me, and I didn’t think for a moment that it would stop a Corbie, but it made him feel better. He peeled off his new jacket first, then started ripping great baulks of timber from the broken floor and slamming them into place with his bare hands. I left him to it, shedding my own clothes unheedingly as I headed towards a long and scalding soak. If the Corbies came back – well, they needed a bath too, but they’d just have to wait their turn.
CHAPTER SEVEN
J
ACEY ALWAYS WAS
fastidious. It was no surprise when he did come to find me in the steam room that he came towelled and scrubbed, with his thick hair dripping wet. Everyone else was long gone, the shocked and the helpful and the dead. Whatever came next – and something surely would – I figured it would be different; birds just weren’t cutting it today. Hopefully, arranging something else would take time. I was determined to take time anyway, no more fighting till I really felt clean all the way through. Fastidious might have been one more thing I picked up from Jacey.
That meant I couldn’t dodge it, though, as he settled down beside me and said, “Come on, then. Give. What’s this all about? That’s not Jordan sending the Corbies after you, or his family either; and I’m damn sure it’s not mine. Whatever you think, or want to think. So who? Who else has a reason to be after you?”
“A better reason than anyone. Or he thinks so.” I smiled a little thinly, and wanted just to nestle up against his shoulder, so that at least I wouldn’t have to look at him while I confessed. And then thought,
sod it
, and did just that.
Damp hair on bare skin: he didn’t seem to mind. I inhaled the old familiar smell of him, as his arm settled around my sweaty shoulders. Neither one of us was going to worry about the sweat, or the fact that I didn’t even have a towel on. We’d come too far, too strangely to be body-shy with each other now.
Even so, it wasn’t only the situation that had me keeping a tight hold on my Aspect. Let that slip, and – well. So would his towel, if being hurled aside counts as slippage.
“Don’t go to sleep, girl. Talk to me.”
“I’m not. I was just... organising my thoughts,” and never mind what thoughts, or in what order.
“Come on, then. Trot ’em out. Tell me who’s been sending bad people to ruin my life.”
I could feel his lips moving in my hair. We used to talk like this all the time, but that was long ago, back when I never wanted to peel apart from him, when I’d have melted into his skin if it was only possible.
Now I only wanted to apologise, for being the one who was ruining his life. He’d deny it, of course, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t quite sure that I was bad, exactly, but dangerous to know, oh, yes. Trouble didn’t follow me, so much as the other way around. I stalked it down dark and obviously untrustworthy alleyways, picked its pockets for the hell of it, tapped it on the shoulder and ran away like a kid playing games, led it inexorably into other people’s paths and let them face its fury.
“When I –” I said, and stopped. And tried again: “When you and I...” And stopped again, because that was just dishonest; and so, back again, “When I left you, when I... had to hole up for a while, I did that thing that kids do, sinking down into the streets, getting lower and lower.” Finding trouble, more and more. “I was lucky; I ended up here.” Lucky, or well-connected. I didn’t dare use any of my connections, because they’d all lead back to Jacey and the Cathars, but – well, call it well-informed. I knew all about the Overworld, so I knew what to avoid and what to be afraid of; and when I’d sunk far enough, when I’d found my way down to the underworld and the Savoy, I wasn’t fazed by an angel with shattered wings. I wouldn’t have trusted her either, except that so many of those she’d gathered here –
under my wing
, she liked to say, deliberately ironic, cruel only to herself – were in the same state, distrustful and holing up. And not betrayed. And moving on, some of them, one by one as Reno found them safe passage; and coming back every now and then, an act of kindness, just to reassure us that they really were safe and not sold down the river, and –
“One day Reno called me upstairs, because she had something for me. Better than hiding, she said. She says there’s always something better, always a way to live if you can find it. Or if she can. That’s the best thing about Savoy, that it’s like the hotel overhead; you can stay as long as you like, as long as you need to, but it’s only ever meant to be a stopover. People come and go and you can see that happening, it’s like a constant reminder that the same thing can happen to you, your life can change, there’s always somewere else to be if you can get there. If she can get you there.
“What it was, she had a client looking for a girl. That’s... not unusual. Sometimes it means just what you think it means. Reno isn’t judgemental; if a girl is willing – or a boy – then that’s fine, so long as they know what they’re getting into. And how to get out of it again, that too.
“This time it wasn’t about sex, though. Not just about sex. He was offering a full makeover, a daemonic Aspect with all the bells and whistles, enough to help me feel safe in the world.” As much as anybody could feel safe, with the Cathars hunting them. I leaned harder into my own Cathar, and didn’t feel safe at all, and went on talking.
“What he wanted... Well. Put plain, he wanted an assassin.
“An assassination, rather, it was a one-time deal. Seduce someone, get inside their guard – and kill them.”
“Fay wouldn’t do that.” His objection was immediate and absolute, as if it had been jerked out of him on a string, or just utterly physically rejected by his body: projectile vomiting of a thought.
I said, “No, of course she wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t be Fay, would I? I’d be Desdaemona: cool and strong and not bothered. In my head, Desdaemona was like hatching from a caterpillar to a butterfly, she wouldn’t be like me at all. Not recognisable. I thought I could write her like a song, make her amoral and magnificent...
“And besides, that isn’t what he said. He didn’t put it plain like that, he didn’t say ‘assassin.’ I don’t know what Reno would have done, if he had. Maybe she’d just shrug and say okay, she’d find him someone. I think maybe my dream of Desdaemona was quite a lot like Reno. I wanted to be... not human, I think. As far from Fay as it was possible to get. If he had said ‘assassin,’ I might have stepped up anyway, just to prove to myself that I could do that.