Sparrow Falling (25 page)

They appeared in the Outer Court, among the columns and white marble and bright, smoothly flickering bodies of the tame carp, directly before the gate. The Harp rode upon a form of rickshaw, which Liu had endeavoured to make look as elegant as possible.

“Look,” said the lion.

“I see,” said the lioness.

“He has returned. And brought...” The lion extended a curious claw towards the Harp.

“A gift for Ao Guang, and for him alone,” Liu said. “I request that my presence be announced in the proper fashion.”

“Oh, he does.”

“He requests.”

“That it is done in the proper fashion.”

“How else could it be done?”

“We only know of the proper fashion. Only such creatures as he know of improper fashions. I am not sure such creatures should be announced.”

“Indeed not.”

“Perhaps, then,” Liu said, “it is a pity that the eel who just disappeared through the window up there, has already undoubtedly taken to Ao Guang the news that what he desired is here, but is being unnecessarily delayed.”

“What eel?” said the lion.

“Even if one such was there,” said the lioness, “and even if he should have carried such dishonourable rumours and folly to Ao Guang, our Lord knows it is our function and honour to guard...”

“To protect his court...”

“However, since you are such a feeble little creature, and that... thing seems harmless, out of our great generosity and wisdom...”

“... we will permit you entrance.”

“Now hurry, and do not keep Ao Guang waiting.”

Liu bowed, picked up the shafts, and drew the Harp through the gates.

The Sparrow School

B
ETH OVER-TIGHTENED A
nut, muttered, and undid it again, scowling at the scatter of parts, bolts, housing, tubes, rags and bottles. A low green shimmer came from one of the bottles; a purplish glow, slightly discomfiting to the eyes, from another. She was doing nothing useful. She couldn’t concentrate. Her eyes kept shifting to the window, as though she might see Evvie, or something, or someone...

It’s gone wrong, I know it has. It’s all gone dab, like she said.

“Beth?”

Beth jumped like a scared cat, dropping the spanner. “Oh, Mrs Sparrow...”

“Beth, dear, have you seen Eveline?” Madeleine was twisting her hands together, her hair coming loose from its bun.

“No, Mrs Sparrow.” Beth didn’t like the way Madeleine was glancing around, distractedly, as though she feared something might leap at her from the shadows. She looked too much the way she had when they had first rescued her from the Bethlehem Hospital: anxious and adrift. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know, but... oh, is that the
Sacagawea
’s engine?”

“Some of it,” Beth said. “I know there’s a way of improving her speed without her shaking herself to pieces, but...”

“I’m afraid engines aren’t really my speciality. Octavius...” Madeleine drifted off. “I think I may have been very foolish.”

Beth picked up a polishing cloth and began to clean part of the engine housing. “I’m sure you haven’t,” she said.

“I’ve forgotten how to be a mother, or at least... I knew how to be one when Evvie was a little girl, but now... she’s a grown woman with troubles of her own and oh, dear. I only meant to... I worry so, and now I can’t find her and I’m
certain
she’s doing something dangerous and I think it’s my fault.”

“Tea,” Beth declared, as the safest thing she could think of, and scurried for the kettle. As it boiled, she chewed her lip. Evvie would be furious if she told, but if she didn’t... and Evvie
was
up to something dangerous.

“Thank you, dear.” Madeleine stirred her tea, though there was no sugar in it, she never took any. “You’ve met Octavius, Beth.”

“Yes.”

“Did he seem... I mean, do you think Eveline took a dislike to him?”

“I don’t think so, Mrs Sparrow. She hasn’t spoken of him to me, not really.”

Madeleine put the spoon in the saucer with a decisive clink. “No, she’d have no reason to. But... do you know of our situation? Before?”

“Some. Evvie told me about Uncle James, and how he stole your work...” Beth swallowed. “I think he was lucky he died of the gout,” she declared. “
I
think he should have been hanged.”

“My dear child, how fierce you are!” Madeleine smiled. “I admit, there were times I would have happily
slaughtered
the wretched man myself, brother or no. But I think... well, I know Eveline went through some... some dreadful things, when she was alone, and I
am
grateful to that Pether woman because without her taking Evvie in – I’m sorry, child, I know I’m making little sense. But I thought Eveline excessively suspicious towards Octavius, and I realize that even if she was wrong perhaps she had reason, and now she thinks she can’t trust me
either,
and if you know where she’s gone, please tell me.”

“It’s not that,” Beth said. “I mean, yes, probably, she’s
cautious,
but I don’t think he’s that sort, although...”

“Although?”

“Well, Ma Pether... Ma Pether thought he was a little too well-dressed, for an inventor, because she didn’t know any rich ones. But then Ma Pether mostly knows criminals, really.”

“Yes. And so does Eveline, doesn’t she? Beth, what
is
she up to?”

Beth chewed her lip again, looking down at her cooling tea. “I
promised
,” she said. “It’s not because she doesn’t trust you, only she’s scared. She wanted to be sure that whatever she did, the rest of us were safe. The school – the girls – you. Liu can probably take care of himself.”

“Oh, that boy! He’s a nice enough young man but... oh, what is that to the point? Beth, tell me,
please.
I can’t... I can’t bear the thought that she’s in trouble and couldn’t come to me.”

“She’s gone to the Russian embassy, I think. I don’t know why. And she says it will all be all right but she wouldn’t let me go and now I don’t know...”

“Wait, Beth, please, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“That’s all I know, that’s all she would tell me.”

“Right.” Madeleine leapt to her feet, slapping her mug of untouched tea down on the bench so hard it sloshed over the side. “Is that machine working?”

“What machine?
Sacagawea
?” Beth put her back protectively against the vehicle. “Well...”

“Is it or isn’t it?”

“It will, once I’ve reconfigured the flow and reattached...”

“How long will that take?”

“About a week.”

“That’s no good then.” Beth slumped with relief, which was short-lived.

“We need something else,” Madeleine said.

“For what?”

“To go get my daughter out of whatever unholy mess she’s got herself into, that’s what.”

“But how...”

“Do you know where that woman went?”

“Who?”

“Ma Pether. Do you know where she went?”

Beth frowned. “Wait. I might... she said something... about a place she kept in... Bermondsey? By the river.”

“I think we need her. Can you find her?”

“Maybe. I have... other things. I’ll go. I’ll find her. But I’ll need a compass.”

“A compass? To get to Bermondsey?”

“No. To find Ma Pether.”

I
N
B
ETH’S TOOLKIT
there was a secret compartment that no-one else knew about. It held a small phial of grey shimmering dust that moved like oil, a pale green stone, worn smooth, a feather so white it seemed to glow, and a few small silver charms.

She bit her lip, took out the phial, and scattered a few grains of the dust into a piece of paper, took them to the workbench and working with neat, concentrated speed, began taking the back off the compass Madeleine had found for her.

Ao Guang’s Palace

L
IU AND THE
Harp were kept waiting, of course. Punctuality might well be the courtesy of kings, but such as Ao Guang – and the Queen – did not think it a necessary part of their dealings.

The Harp did not speak, or show any interest in the splendid carvings that surrounded them. Liu bit at his nails. He had involved himself in a hundred schemes, in a lively and interesting life, but never one that relied so much on the cooperation of others. If the Harp confessed his banishment from the Queen, if he refused to play for Ao Guang... everything could go wrong, and Liu had nothing to offer him.

He looked at the gilded creature beside him, so weary and so desperately alone.

Perhaps one thing.

“Listen,” he said. “If you will let Ao Guang think that the Queen most treasured you, and will be furious that you are gone, if you will play for him, even once, if he asks it... I will do my best to get you what you want.”

“There is only one thing I can still desire.”

“I know,” Liu said. “And I will try. Please?”

“You have not the power to do it yourself.”

“No. But... I know Ao Guang. And the Queen.”

The Harp sighed, and even in sorrow and without a word, his voice was beautiful; it shivered in his strings. “I am weary of promises.”

“I know.”

“I am weary of... everything.”

“I know.”

“Will you help me? Truly?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.”

Liu, listening to the sounds of Ao Guang’s musicians, wondered how hard it would be.

Bermondsey

B
ERMONDSEY WAS HORRIBLE.
Beth had come as far as she could on the steam-bus, but once she got off she was almost entirely reliant on the compass, desperately hoping that she’d got it right and that it wasn’t playing tricks on her as it led her into increasingly darker, smellier, louder, poorer bits of London.

And this bit of it was the worst yet. Beth huddled in her cloak and clutched the tool kit tightly, praying that no-one would notice her, as she scurried through the crowds. A man fell out of a pub doorway and almost knocked her over, landed on his hands and knees and started to puke loudly into the gutter. Beth held her breath and hurried on. Two women were shrieking at each other in an alleyway, a small child stood naked and howling in the middle of the street, a man with wild hair and wilder eyes stood on a crate and ranted “Judgement” and “End Times” at the mostly-indifferent passers-by.

She could still hear him when the compass needle stopped, quivering, pointing at what was probably a doorway. The house around it was so grimy and slumped it looked like a half-empty sack of coal.

Beth swallowed hard, and knocked.

She heard footsteps, but the door remained shut. She sniffed...
pipe smoke.

“Ma? Ma Pether? It’s Beth.”

The door creaked open. “How the ’ell did you find me?” Ma Pether said.

“Does it matter?”

“Bloody right it matters. You could be the law. Or various people of unhealthy intentions who might happen to be wanting to find out where I’m hanging my hat. So you tell me how you tracked me.”

Beth slid the compass into her pocket. “Something you said, about Bermondsey. In the corridor that time. Then I... asked.”

Ma looked at her with narrowed eyes. “Good thing you en’t a peeler, is all I can say. So what’re you doing here in such a kerfluffle?”

“Evvie’s in trouble. And her Ma thinks you can help. Well, so do I, only I don’t know if you will.”

“Hah!” Satisfaction exploded out of Ma Pether in a cloud of pipesmoke. “I knew it! I knew she’d overreach herself. Come on then.” Ma went inside. Beth hung on the threshold. She spent her days surrounded by oily rags, but the filthy bits of cloth that sagged across the doorway made those rags look like freshly laundered handkerchiefs.

“Come on, what you waiting for?” Ma’s voice boomed.

Scrunching up her face and protecting it with her forearms, Beth pushed through, convinced the cloth was leaving stripes of some unspeakable vileness on her clothes and hair.

The floor scrunched and stuck to her boots. The corridor was so dim she could not, thankfully, see what she was walking in. She heard a click and a creak, and the soft glow of a lantern outlined a doorway. She scuttled towards it. “Wipe yer bloody feet, was you born in a barn?” Ma said, pointing down to something on the floor that might have been a square of hessian.

Beth wondered what earthly point there could be to wiping her feet in such a disgusting place, but obediently did so. Ma stepped back, and Beth stepped into a room that was so colourful and crowded that at first all she could do was blink, trying to define what she was looking at.

Dresses, cogs, segments of brass housing, hats, bags (beaded) and bags (Gladstone). Copper wire twining amongst perfume bottles and photographs. Shoes, boots, tankards, flasks, and waistcoats both fancy and plan. The brass head of a mannequin apparently in conversation with a bronze bust of a distinctly disgruntled-looking gentleman Beth thought might be Socrates.

It was like finding a dragon’s hoard around the back of a junk shop.

In amongst the shimmering piles were two chairs; one large, squashy version speckled with the small burns of spilled pipe-tobacco, in which Ma settled herself, and one fragile looking item with a blue-velvet seat that Beth lowered herself onto with great caution. It creaked and puffed dust, but held.

Ma repacked her pipe with callused, brown-stained fingers and stared at a point somewhere above Beth’s head. “What...” Beth said, but Ma raised a hushing hand, and Beth subsided. Ma’s eyes narrowed, widened, narrowed; her thick greying brows shifting up and down, the smoke of her pipe rising to the ceiling where it gathered like a storm. Beth stayed silent and tried not to cough.

“So. What’s she gone and got herself into?”

Beth took a deep breath and went through it again.

Ma listened, and nodded, and puffed smoke, and asked a couple of brisk questions.

“Hmm,” she said, when Beth came to a halt, and took her pipe out of her mouth and contemplated the chewed end. “Never had a stab at that end of the market, bit too rich for my blood. Nice takings, but risky. Peelers all over it like a case of the itch, and I heard nasty things about them Cossack guards, too. So. Evvie’s gone to snatch this bantling, then. That don’t sound like Evvie, that don’t.”