“She said it would be all right but she wouldn’t say why.”
Ma nodded. “Smart. Don’t spill every bean to every bleeder and there won’t be beans all over the floor to slip on.”
Beth considered this phrase for a moment in silence, then said, “So will you help?”
“What d’you want me to do?”
“Help us get Evvie out.”
“Hmm. And what makes you and her Ma so convinced she’s in need of getting out?”
“I don’t know,” Beth said. “It doesn’t make sense, I mean, she’s clever, isn’t she, Evvie, she’s always got out of everything before, but this time...”
“You got a tickle?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“A tickle, an itch, a tightness in your belly, a feeling you missed something what’s important. That.”
“Yes... Both of us, I think. I mean Mrs Sparrow had more reasons, but...”
Ma made another satisfied puff of smoke. “Hah. Reasons, words, them comes later. You seen or heard or felt something, and didn’t know what it was at the time, that’s what. Something she or someone else done, or said, or had about ’em. If you ignore that tickle it’ll snap a chain around your ankles, sure as eggs.”
“It’s not
my
ankles I’m worried about,” Beth said.
“Well,” Ma said. “We need some o’ the girls, and we need a vehicle. Because yours is out, en’t it?”
“The
Sacagawea
? Yes. I was trying to improve it, but I took it apart and added bits and I’d never get it back together in time, not safely.”
“And we need a driver. That’ll be you.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Don’t go ma’am-ing me, I ain’t the Queen. I can get a vehicle but... ah, you’ll do, ’cording to Evvie there ain’t a machine made you can’t get to walk and talk.” Ma gave her a sharp look, catching the smile on Beth’s face. “Yes, it’s nice to know she thinks well of you, but is she right? Don’t you say you can do it if you can’t.”
“I don’t know until I see the vehicle,” Beth said. “But... yes.”
“Honest, at least. Well, we’ll see. If we can get it off the old fool.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to round up the best of the girls, and get them to meet us. We’re going to get us a vehicle. And then, we’re going to drag that silly chit out of the mire.”
The Russian Embassy
B
ARTHOLOMEW
S
IMMS SAW
the girl silhouetted in the window, with a bundle in her arms. He’d been right.
Stug had been planning to do him over, replace him with this chit. What use did he think she’d be? Sharp enough, yes, but who was going to be afraid of a little thing like her? The man was a fool. Not the first Simms had dealt with and wouldn’t be the last – and like the others, he’d have to pay for his folly. Not right away, no. This time, Simms would do what should have been his job in the first place: get Stug what he wanted – payment would come later. Once you turned your back on Bartholomew Simms you’d better grow eyes in your spine – and you still wouldn’t see him coming.
If you didn’t know better, Duchen looked just like any respectable maid; in a place like this, you could pass as a lower servant easily enough. The building was crawling with them. The ones in livery were hard to mimic, but at the lower end – skivvies, boot-boys, nursemaids – easy. The gentry didn’t look at such lowly faces much, or if they did assumed someone new had been taken on. That was how he’d got his information from Stug’s offices – no-one noticed chimney-boys, and the starveling scraps were always eager to earn a few extra pence.
Getting in was shamefully easy; he shook his head at it. And this the ambassador’s residence! But with everyone arriving for the ball, all this coming and going, sliding in was simple enough. Dress like a respectable servant, hold your head up, look confident, and find the right person...
The maid was harried, skinny, and young, her arms full of towels. She was also Russian, and looked at him blankly when he said, “Where’s the nursery?”
“
Ya ne ponimaju
.”
“Nursery!” Dammit, the chit would be out of here with the baby before he could stop her. Simms crushed down the impulse to put his hand around the stupid girl’s skinny white throat, but something must have shown in his eyes. She backed away, shaking her head, and casting frightened glances about her – looking for some help. She’d yelp out if he didn’t calm her. He took a breath, and smiled. “Don’t take on, love. I just need to find where the baby is. Baby, baba.” He made a rocking motion with his arms. “I have medicine, for the baba.” He took a bottle from his pocket, made coughing sounds. “Medicine. Doctor. Baba.”
“
Rebjonok bolen
?”
“Baba.” Rocking motions, hand to brow, checking for a fever, serious look, shaking head. Giving medicine. Smiling. All better. What a raree-show, he felt a proper fool, grinning and capering like some penny gaff mummer. Maybe he’d come back for this girl, pay her out for forcing him to make such a show of himself.
“Oh!” Finally, she seemed to get it. Pointing up a set of servant’s stairs, gesturing, turn left.
“Thank
you
.” He gave her a grin which made her glance nervously behind her again, and headed up the stairs.
He’d have to be quick. The maid might be foreign and beef-witted, but he’d pushed a trifle too hard and maybe she’d have second thoughts about the stranger she’d let upstairs, tip the office to whichever footman she was mooning over.
Ao Guang’s Palace
E
VENTUALLY, THEY WERE
summoned. Unlike the Queen’s court, it was below the dignity of most of Ao Guang’s followers to show too much interest in such a lowly visitor as Liu; the formal dance of the Court, the movement of each to and from their appointed place continued much as it always had, with only a sidelong glance here and there, from behind a sleeve, or a fan.
Liu looked about for his father. There he was, looking entirely comfortable and playing at Go. Liu felt a surge of resentment. Everything he had gone through, everything he had risked – and his father was not even in prison.
Not that he wished for that, he told himself fiercely. Not at all, not for one moment.
Ao Guang sat upon his throne, dressed in scarlet and gold. His form was human; usually a sign that he was in a good mood, and did not feel the need to impress his followers with terror. He was manifesting as an elderly man with a long white beard. Dignity and wisdom, then.
Liu prostrated himself.
One of the dozens of little lion dogs that infested the place scuttled up as the Harp was set down, to sniff at it. Liu showed his teeth at it, and the dog, its dignity affronted, growled, before being swept up by a dignitary and carried, yipping, away.
“So, it seems you have succeeded,” Ao Guang said. “Rise.”
“Thank you, Great Lord.” Liu got to his feet.
Ao Guang rose from his throne. His manifestation did not extend to tottering like an ancient; the cane he carried was purely ornamental, his walk as sleek and powerful as that of a warrior at the height of his strength.
“So, Harp,” he said. “What do you make of my Court?” He spoke in English, to the annoyance of those of his court who could not.
Liu held his breath.
The Harp’s gaze scanned the walls, the lacquered columns and silk robes, the enamelled boxes and painted scrolls. “It is most magnificent,” he said. At the sound of his voice, a stillness passed through the court, quieting the soft shuffle of feet, the whisper of garments.
“More so than the place from which you have been freed?” Ao Guang said.
“There are riches here the Queen dare not dream of.”
Ao Guang smiled. “And now you are here.”
“I am.”
“Play for me, Harp. Show me what it was that made the
gweilo
Queen so eager for your skills.”
“My Lord, I will do my best.”
And he began to play, reaching back with his hands in a way impossible to one still human, to strum his own strings. It looked, and almost certainly was, painful.
He began to play, and to sing.
Liu had spent a great deal of time in Great Britain, one way and another, and in its shadow world. He had learned some of their ways and heard a great deal of their music. But the voice of the Harp was unique. It made his ears quiver and his brush puff out. Tragedy wound through every phrase. The most lilting tones took their shape from sorrow carved pure as crystal. Had he once, Liu wondered, been a merry singer? Had he sung of shining spring days unmarked by frost, of happy lovers hand in hand? What would a merry song become, if he were to sing it now?
His sorrow was beautiful, even as it tore at the heart, even as it wrenched Liu with every regret and loss he had ever encountered, as it brought Liu’s mother’s face before him, drawn with the ravages of her last sickness. And something else began to tug at him. A sense of some other, terrible loss; of some awful tearing sorrow. Something that began to send steely threads of fear winding along his veins.
But even as he listened, and shivered, Liu was still what he was. And he was aware that things were not...
right
. He tore his gaze from the Harp.
The Court was still; listening. Waiting on Ao Guang’s verdict. But their faces...
The Harp came to the end of the song. The last note hung in the air. He folded his hands on his breast, and lowered his head.
And then Ao Guang yawned.
“This?” he said. “This is the taste of the great, the mighty Queen of the Isles? With this she charms her court? I am surprised their ears do not fall from their heads and crawl away.”
The Harp’s head rose, the merest fraction. Liu wondered what might be in his eyes. Some vagrant flicker of pride? Some sense of insult?
Don’t...
he thought.
Don’t be a fool.
But the Harp’s head sank down again.
Liu was already thinking, as fast as he could. The music of the English, of course, was not the music of the Chinese. He might have become used to it, even learned to love it – but here, the harmonies that charmed an English ear fell heavy and strange.
Ao Guang was disappointed. This had to be turned around, and fast.
But that sense of terror and loss was twisting up in him, making it hard to think.
“Indeed, O great Lord,” he said. “But how could I have convinced you, without the work of bringing him before you?”
“Hah.” Thin threads of smoke curled from Ao Guang’s human nostrils, and the long white moustaches he wore wavered as if in a slow current. “If nothing else you have convinced me the Queen has even worse taste than I suspected.”
Then, of course, because it was inevitable, Min leaned forward and bowed, not looking at Liu. “Great Lord,” he said, “how can we be sure this is the Harp she loves so much? Surely this could be some scheme or trick, designed to free Chen Sun from your most righteous justice?”
“Hah,” Ao Guang said. “Indeed.” He pointed one long, gilded nail at Liu. “Speak,” he said.
Sometimes Liu wondered if life would be easier if Ao Guang ever thought for himself, instead of relying on his advisors even for this. But probably not. “Great Lord, he is the very one – I was forced to create schemes and tricks indeed, in order to obtain him, but they were to fool the Queen, not your noble self. That would be far too hard a task.”
Normally Ao Guang was susceptible to such easy flattery. But this time, with Min at his ear, he shrugged, and turned away.
Think, Liu.
It was getting harder. His heart shivered in his chest.
Evvie.
Evvie was heading into trouble. The jade fox he had given her was trembling with the racing beat of her heart.
But his honour demanded he save his father; that was the pact of fathers and sons – and there was the Harp, who he had dragged all this way with half-promises, only for him to be humiliated and dismissed. Broken though he was, it was surely a bitter thing.
Think! Are you not the Fox, the tricksy thief with a foot in both worlds? Talk, use that tongue of yours!
But his heart was beating
Evvie Evvie Evvie
and suddenly there was a terrible pain in his side, and as a strange chilly grey, the grey of a London smog, began to creep across his vision, he heard the voice of Ao Guang saying, “Take him away. Put him in the Room of Reflection, and there let him contemplate his failure, while we decide on his fate. And let
that
go with him.”
He was aware of the faces that turned towards him as the Shi lioness padded across the floor towards him. The raised fans, the whispers. Min, his heavy face pulled even further down by a look of bitter satisfaction. And his father, who turned from his game, shocked, his mouth opening, his eyes darting from Liu to Ao Guang.
If you’d been paying attention, you could have run,
Liu had time to think before the teeth of the lioness closed on his robes, and he was carried away, dangling like prey, like a toy. Servants lifted the Harp and carried it after him.
He could not stop himself from glancing at it. Its eyes were closed. He could not bear to think what expression might be in them.
And the pain in his side worsened, and worsened, and his heart was shivering as though it had been plunged into a winter river.
Evvie...
The Russian Embassy
S
IMMS DIDN’T ATTEMPT
to creep up the stairs. It was the best way to attract attention. Stride everywhere as though you owned the place, and doors would open.
He glanced into rooms as he passed, noting some very fine things, things that would be worth a second look, but he wasn’t here for such frivols.
There, a door opening, and there she was, looking down at the bundle in her arms. Simms slipped himself into another doorway. As she came past, he noticed that she held the bundle slightly away from her. At least the bantling was quiet. Let’s keep it that way, nip out, hand over her mouth, pull her back into the room, smooth, not jerking, no need to wake the cub. She writhed and tried to bite, that was Evvie Duchen, but he was bull-strong. She went limp, but he knew that trick, and didn’t loosen his grip. He put his mouth to her ear, feeling her writhe away from the tickle of his whiskers. “Now, now, Evvie, where are you going to run to, eh? Be a good girl. Just hand me the nipper, and we’ll keep it all quiet.”