The Sunken (5 page)

If the winner of the King’s competition were granted the position of Presbyter, then that man would have a vote in the dealings of the entire sect. Stephenson would no longer be able to ignore him, and Isambard wanted that honour more than anything.

If only Isambard could win, which he wouldn’t.

“I shall complete the plans shortly,” declared Isambard. “And take them to Somerset House within the week. What do you think, my friend? Do you believe I have a chance?”

“More than a chance,” Aaron lied, lifting the tiny locomotive in his fingers and watching the pistons moving the wheels around the shaft. “We’ll be building this Wall together by next month, of that I am certain.”

“The only problem is the exterior.” Brunel threw a set of drawings on the table. “The King favours designs with a strong aesthetic, and I have no eye for such trivialities. My Wall is ugly, and this will count against me. But I won’t have someone from the Church of Isis turn it into a Romanesque bauble. I need an industrial architect, someone who cares more for steel pylons than Corinthian columns and acanthus leaves!”

“As fortune would have it, there is an architect just arrived in London,” Aaron said. “I met him on Tuesday, after I rescued his friend from the dragon in Kensington Garden. He has trained in France.”

“He sounds perfect. What is his name?”

“Nicholas Rose, although you might know him as Nicholas Thorne.”

Brunel’s face paled. “And his friend you rescued?”

“James Holman, the Blind Physician.”

Brunel slumped into his chair. “Both James and Nicholas? In London —
together
?”

“Nicholas has only just returned from France under strange circumstances. How he got across the blockade he didn’t say, but they both asked after you most profusely. They are anxious to meet you, and wonder why you have not answered their letters.”

With trembling hands, Brunel reached behind him and withdrew from the desk beside the furnace a small drawer. He tipped a stack of letters into his lap. “All unopened, all unread. I thought they blamed me for Henry’s death, for I was the one who dragged them on to the platform. I blamed myself … and then my father was sent away. I just wanted to forget, to throw myself into the world of machines. And so, I could not bring myself to answer either of them. But now it is too late. It has been so long—”

“If they did blame you, that blame has long faded. They express only concern, and pleasure at your success.”

Brunel’s eyes did not leave the stack of letters in his lap. “They truly do not hate me?”

“They worry that you harbour hatred for them.”

He looked up then, and Aaron saw the beginnings of tears glistening in the corners of his eyes. “Tell Nicholas I would be honoured to receive him, and that I have urgent work for him if he requires it.”

Nicholas had seen the paper, too. He’d paid a matron of the guesthouse a small fortune to get him a copy of the
Times
with his breakfast, and he’d roused himself from his melancholy long enough to flip open the pages. He hadn’t seen a British newspaper in several years — they were in short supply on the ships, and they’d been banned in France since George III denounced Christianity. Not that he could’ve got his hands on one anyway from his mountaintop prison—

He scanned the headlines. The announcement of the engineering competition sounded vaguely interesting — perhaps he could find work with whoever won. Suddenly, a sentence popped out at him.

“Excuse me?” he called to the landlady. She bustled over with her tray of tea things, but he held his hand up to stop her filling his cup. He pointed to the article. “The paper talks about the King recovering from an illness. When did this happen?”

“Gor, you been living under a bridge, sonny?”

“Something like that,” he said gravely. “I had no news where I’ve been. Last thing I’d heard, he’d made a complete recovery from his malady and sent his eldest son to the block.”

She snorted. “That nasty business was some years ago, now, though the next two sons is dead too. The King was distraught — he’s only got daughters left now, and he keeps them locked in the castle for their own protection.”

“What did the princes die of?”

“Well, that Joseph Banks — he was only the Royal Physician then — said it was venereal disease on account of all the ladies they were having relations with — but both of them within days of each other? Most say ’twas poison, the poor dears. George hasn’t married again, and with none of his immediate family still livin’, no one knows who’ll be crowned when he dies — I get men in here all fired up over the Council debates, an’ they think we’re headin’ for another Cromwell. But dammit if George ain’t ninety years old and no sign of him bein’ infirm ’till he took ill a few months ago—”

“And that’s why Banks—”

“—is now the Prime Minister. You’re a clever lad.” She patted his shoulders. “More tea?”

He obliged, hoping she didn’t charge extra for the tea. His financial situation was already dire. He’d left France with all he had, but that wasn’t much. He could only afford a few more nights at this guesthouse — one of the cheapest, seediest ones overlooking Convent Garden — before he’d be on the streets.

Everything must go well with Isambard today, or I am doomed. How fitting that my future now lies in the hands of the schoolboy whose own future had seemed the bleakest of all.

Wringing his fingers in the napkin until the ends turned white, Nicholas stared at the crusts of his toast, his mind unfocused — travelling in endless circles. Another guest entered the dining room, dragging a mangy dog on a chain. The mutt yapped at the table legs, its eyes wide as it took in the room. The dog’s thoughts floated into Nicholas’ head — the curious smells emanating from every surface, rising like clouds and swirling together into a haze of colour. Nicholas rubbed his neck, feeling the bite of the chain against his skin.

If I return to the Ward, to the machines, perhaps the voices will finally be silenced.

Nicholas retired to his room to prepare for his meeting with Isambard. He spread his things out on his desk. He didn’t have much — he had brought only a small satchel from France — some papers, his faded lieutenant’s jacket, the cuffs stained with blood, a Lammarchean bible, a tiny switchblade, and a small flask of his favourite whisky. He stuffed the switchblade into his pocket. Clasping the bottle, he unscrewed the lid and swallowed the entire draught.

“You know, most Englishmen drink tea at this time of the morning.”

Nicholas jumped, startled. He turned around and saw Aaron leaning against the door to his room, his face and clothing even blacker with coal dust than the previous day. A trail of dirty footprints followed him up the hall.

“Isambard sent me to collect you.” Aaron pushed past Nicholas and surveyed the room. “By Great Conductor’s lead-soaked testicles, this room is barely better than my Stoker hovel.”

“I
am
capable of walking to the Engine Ward myself.”

“Suit yourself, but the place is a madhouse — engineers rushing everywhere, trying to finish their designs for the competition. Everyone is terrified their idea will be stolen. They’re not letting anyone in or out without an insignia. Here.” Aaron pushed a Stoker pin — the insignia of St. George’s cross made of gauge nails adopted by Brunel’s church — into Nicholas’ hand. “Put this on.”

Nicholas pinned the tiny crossed railway nails to his lapel. Taking his ratty satchel in one hand, he tipped his hat to Aaron. “Ready to go.”

In the muddy London daylight, Nicholas could finally see the Engine Ward in all her glory. For the briefest time he’d once called that neighbourhood of handsome churches and soot-cloaked workhouses home, but now he could only regard her with the awe of an architect confronted with the greatest masterpiece of his time. The Engine Ward had tripled in size since Nicholas had last seen her, her smoky expanse engulfing the surrounding tenement blocks, pushing the bulge of black smoke further out across the city. The surrounding wall — built slapdash of riveted iron plates — did little to hem in the continual hiss and slam of beam engines, the roar of the furnaces or the hammering of metal, but seemed instead to amplify it, so the very streets trembled with a furious energy.

As they walked toward the Ward, the city changed. The streets were empty of people — those who did go out darted between buildings, their faces and clothing stained with soot. They passed block after block of tenements, the windows smudged with a black slime so thick the tenants must live in constant darkness. The usual city noises — hooves clopping against the cobbles, street vendors yelling the daily specials, clerks scribbling away in stifling offices — fell away under the hum and belch of the Engine Ward.

The thoughts drifting in and out of Nicholas’ head had been the usual cacophony of city animals — horses thinking about warm hay, pigs wondering what the nice man with the knife would be getting them for lunch, pigeons scouting out the perfect gentleman’s hat to use as a convenient latrine. But one by one they too fell away, and he was left with a humming chorus of voices — rodents, all thinking together. Not rats, like in Paris, but something even more intelligent.

As they neared the wall, they passed blocks of abandoned tenements, their crumbling walls streaked with filth and gutted by fires. So thick and poisonous was the air not even the poorest people in London would live in the streets surrounding the Engine Ward. His eyes stinging, Nicholas pulled his kerchief from his pocket and held it to his face.

“Do you hear it?” Aaron asked. “The choir?” Nicholas nodded, instantly understanding. The rodents’ voices rose in volume as they neared the gates, the thoughts coming to him in waves, rising and falling in pitch like the chorus of an opera. Their thoughts — harmonious, like a song — sent complex messages, and Nicholas saw maps of the rodents’ tunnels impressed in his thoughts.

“It’s the compies — they took over from the rats about five years ago. They’re the only creatures who feel at home in the Ward. Besides us Dirty Folk, of course.”

As Aaron had said, the towering iron gates were locked tight, and a crowd of engineers and acolytes blocked the street, their brightly coloured robes flapping about their bodies as they banged on the doors and yelled insults at the guards on the wall above. Aaron grabbed Nicholas’ hand and began pushing through the crowd.

As people realised it was a Stoker trying to push through, they stepped back, tripping over each other to avoid having to touch him. “Oi, Stoker!” called an Aether engineer. Aaron looked up, and the engineer spat in his face. “You ought to wash your face,” the Aetherian smirked. A man wearing the purple robes of the Isis Sect swept his hand along Aaron’s arm, then folded it into his sleeve and pretended it had fallen off. His companions sniggered.

Aaron kept his chin high, and did not acknowledge their taunts. Nicholas stared at the Stoker’s blackened overalls, his ears burning as the crowd whispered to one another about the shabby gentleman being led by a Stoker.

Once through the crowd Aaron pulled Nicholas into an alleyway, and pushed open the door to an empty tenement block. He motioned for Nicholas to enter.

“Aaron, those engineers back there. They—”

Aaron shook his head. “C’mon Nicholas, you can’t have thought things here would be any better? You’re lucky — you’re a stranger to them. You have freedom men like me can only dream of. You could be
anything
. Are you sure you want to get in with Isambard and the Stokers?”

Nicholas looked into Aaron’s eyes — gleaming against the blackened skin on his face like two orbs of hard, cold marble.
He hears the voices. All my life I thought I was the only one.
“I am no more free than you are,” he said, and ducked inside the tenement. Aaron closed the door behind him.

Aaron led Nicholas down a pitch-black staircase into the cellar. He pulled a rotting doorway off the wall, picked up an Argand lamp that lay abandoned beside the wall, and shone the dim light behind the door, revealing a low stone tunnel. “I presume you remember the existence of these tunnels below the Ward,” he said. “The Stokers use them to move between areas of the Ward. Now we have some, like this one, that stretch beyond the Ward – we use it when we need to move outside the Wall without being harassed. If the Council were to discover these tunnels, we’d be in a lot of trouble. So don’t be surprised if folk down here aren’t friendly to a stranger, do you understand?”

Nicholas nodded. As he peered into the darkness, the chorus of compies turned into a roar, thundering against the sides of his skull with such force he cried out and jammed his fists into his ears.

“It comes in waves,” Aaron said. “You get used to it. Follow me. You got that Stoker pin still?”

Nicholas nodded, and followed Aaron into the tunnel, ducking his head to avoid scraping it on the low stone ceiling. The tunnel sloped sharply downward, and Aaron’s Argand hardly penetrated the gloom. Nicholas held onto the bare brick walls, trying to keep his footing on the damp slope.

Down they went, ’till the tunnel widened out into a round antechamber, lit by flickering Argand lamps and a faint shaft of light from a ventilation shaft above. Aaron met a guard, and both he and Nicholas displayed their Stoker pins before being ushered into the hall beyond.

Here the stone walls were barely visible behind bank after bank of machinery. At one end of the long room, four men took turns shovelling coal into two Cornish furnaces, while another stood ready to rake the coal flat over the fire. Hundreds of pipes crisscrossed the expanse of the cavern — nearly more than a hundred feet long in all and sixty wide, with at least twenty men swarming about on two levels, pulling levers, checking gauges, and yelling at each other in an incomprehensible language.

“One-twenty for boiler seventy-two, C Quarter. Better pump her up!”

“Wheel’s shot out in D quarter — get Oliver on it!”

‘Williams!” a croaking voice called. Nicholas turned to see a hunched man, his face pinched and crumpled with age, leaning over the gangway leading to the upper level of the galley. He gestured for Aaron. “Don’t stand there like a useless Navvy. We’re losing pressure in seventy-two—”