Chapter Nineteen
Foxcourt hadn’t been entirely wrong to worry about the effect the smell of the Riverside dockyard would have on me. It was
only for the wrong reason.
Old ghosts stirred as the first waves of the distinct stench of the wharves reached us. It was the perfume I would blend to
capture man’s ambition—tea, gunpowder, cloth, sugar, rum, and tobacco, layered with the sweat of the lightermen and quayside
laborers, and the salted breath of the waiting sea.
As a little girl, I would sometimes slip away from Mrs. Rhodes, who was meant to be watching me, and make my way down to the
docks to see the newly moored vessels. Each yearned to tell their story, of the battles survived and storms weathered. Even
furled, the sails carried tantalizing hints of faraway lands and unfamiliar seas. Of an endless sky.
Now, the scent didn’t bring with it the possibility of escape, but the prison of the past.
A desolate feeling spread through me as we rolled by the worn faces of lodging houses and pubs and market squares. Memories,
agonizing and gray, eddied around me as we approached the entrance to the dockyard, trying to stake their claim on my heart.
The River Temese was as black as an underworld river, throwing off even the moon’s light as it crawled slowly by. It was calmer
than I had seen in some time, as if wanting to have a look back at me. To welcome Riverside’s lost daughter home.
The past is only a backstory, unless you allow it to wield the quill.
I dug deep into myself, until I found that thread of resolve again, the pattern of the new life I was weaving.
I was born here, but I would not die here. I would never belong to it again.
“Second-guessing your decision, Lockwood?” Foxcourt asked lightly.
Surrounded by the soft blue satin of Reddy’s carriage, the intensity of his focus conspired with his black clothing to give his air an edge of wicked intent.
My eyes were drawn to him, even as he threatened to melt away into the darkness.
“No,” I lied. “Only playing through the story again to ensure I have it.”
The man had more than teeth in his head. I knew he wasn’t convinced, but he didn’t press the matter. As the wheels struggled
and clattered against the rough road, the falsehood seemed to fester between us.
I fingered the velvety petals of the white rose in the posy, focusing my attention on its delicate scent and away from the
looming river and its sprawling dockyard. The water teemed with the city’s filth and refuse and, as Arabella had once so eloquently
put it, reeked like the Devil’s own piss.
Arabella. I closed my eyes briefly, fighting a sigh. In the rush of everything that had happened, I hadn’t had a moment to worry after
her. The guilt ate at me now; Riverside had once been her home, too. She’d needed more than luck and a caring mother to survive
it.
The coach stopped short of the gated entrance of the dockyard, cuing the one following at a distance to do the same. Reddy
had hired several of his company’s lightermen to serve as eyes in the nearby warehouses and sheds, in the event of any trouble.
I suspected that fact, and not any of the arguments Reddy and I had made, had persuaded Foxcourt it was safe to allow me to
come.
“This must be the quietest wharf in the city,” Foxcourt noted, lifting the coach’s curtain.
“It’s been like this since the Stone Sloggers claimed it as part of their territory,” Reddy said with a dismissive wave.
I was so startled, there was no hope of guarding my expression. “Since when?”
“A month past,” Foxcourt replied, studying me. “Why? Have you had past dealings with them?”
I forced myself to swallow, willing my voice steady. “Not directly. But the Sloggers have managed to terrify even the Brickbats
into obedience.”
They’d gotten their name from their leader, Greystone, and their proclivity for wearing spiked silver knuckles. But they fought
with whatever vicious, cold bit of metal was available to them: steel-tipped boots, canes, knives, belt buckles. In ten years,
they’d decimated or devoured the city’s other gangs and had claimed tens of thousands of pounds of stolen goods.
“Well, I have had dealings with Robert Greystone, and it’s not an experience I’d recommend, nor an acquaintance I’d wish to deepen,” Reddy
said. “Thought the man would pluck the eyes right out of my head and eat them like grapes when I told him I wouldn’t smuggle
guns for him.”
I swallowed. “I’ve heard it said he’s soulless. That he killed a thousand men last year.”
“How very industrious of him,” Foxcourt scoffed, deeply unimpressed. “He’s certainly been busy mythmaking, at the very least.”
“That’s half the battle in a street war,” Reddy pointed out. “But I wouldn’t take the quiet as a bad omen. Most of us are
routing ships away from this dockyard, knowing the Sloggers skim a neat twenty percent off the top of everything that comes
in under the guise of ‘protection.’ I suspect that’s why Glenmoor is still mooring his hired ships here—cheaper to bribe the
Sloggers than the customs men, and the former has run the latter off.”
At the sound of the other coach pulling away, Foxcourt reached for the door, exchanging another speaking glance with Reddy.
Turning to me, he paused. “If you feel at all uncomfortable,” he began, “do not hesitate to stay in the coach.”
“Oh, Fox,” Reddy said with a mocking swoon, “I didn’t know you cared.”
Foxcourt scowled at him, but that bit of humor had settled my nerves.
“How much time do you think you’ll need?” I asked instead.
His lips curved at the show of defiance. “An hour, if you can give it to me.”
“Anything of value is likely to be kept in the scarrow vault,” I told him, on the chance he didn’t know. “The walls are said
to be as thick as a bull.”
Foxcourt’s brows rose. Apparently, he hadn’t known. “Noted.”
“If you’re caught, we’re leaving you for dead,” Reddy informed him. “And I’m not fishing you out of that godforsaken river.”
Foxcourt pulled the cowl over the lower half of his face, his eyes glinting with silver sparks. They seemed to burn through
my cloak, falling over my skin like stardust.
As he opened the door and leapt out, even the moonlight appeared to bow to him, retreating behind a cloud and allowing him
to disappear entirely into the night’s gloom.
“Dramatic bastard,” Reddy said fondly.
I couldn’t argue with him . . . but neither could I seem to catch my breath. There had been nothing innocent about that look.
That confident excitement that blazed from him, irresistible, as if designed by God for the sole purpose of igniting mine.
My heart gave one of those terrible, portentous flutters as the coach staggered forward and we left him. If he was caught
by one of the quayside laborers, or even one of the Sloggers keeping watch . . .
Not him. Never him.
Horror wound through me, trailing the realization. That voice, that warning, that reminder—it had changed. No longer tinged
with the acid of hatred, it had softened with something that sounded, alarmingly, like fear. I licked at my dry lips, thoughts
unraveling at dizzying speed. When had it happened? How had I let it happen?
I did not need him to protect me, and certainly didn’t want him standing over me as I worked, and yet—
And yet.
I was afraid for him. I could diminish it, call it worry, but the truth was as sharp as a hyacinth note. Somehow, in such
a short amount of time, I had grown accustomed to him and his presence; it had ceased to be infuriating and become a reassurance,
a touchstone as my life reordered itself in rapid, chaotic strokes. As if, after years of flying through life’s winter winds,
he had offered me a safe place to land.
In a cage, I reminded myself.
And that was entirely it, wasn’t it? My hands bunched the soft fabric of the cloak. The cloak he had purchased in the days
between him personally seeing to my arrest and manipulating my time spent at Fairgate. It was unforgivable.
But this was the same person who had saved an orphan from being flogged, sung a fairy ballad to a petulant dog to encourage
her to eat, and taken Mama’s portrait for me.
It was maddening. Confusing. All of it.
All of him.
I glared past my reflection in the cool glass, searching the darkness for an answer it couldn’t give me.
“Your father was a captain, wasn’t he?” Reddy asked into the silence, saving me from the dangerous path my mind was courting.
“The man who raised me, yes.” Thank God this hatred was easy—a simple, snarling thing. “He was, until rigging struck him and he could no longer work, let alone lead a crew. Then he was reduced to a mean drunk.”
How different our lives would have been had he never woken up from the blow. We had passed his favorite haunt on our way in,
the Sea Serpent, and my memory had been callously quick to fill my nose with a phantom of its vomit-ridden stench.
“I’m sorry” was Reddy’s only reply. It came as an immense relief when my bitter words merely settled between us again like
disturbed dust.
He pushed his curtain aside as his coachman made excruciatingly slow progress down the wharves. As the flash of distant lanterns
moved over a ship’s deck like fireflies, a belated question occurred to me.
“Won’t Glenmoor be suspicious that you’re making inquiries with one of his ship’s captains?” I asked. “Your friendship with
Foxcourt is hardly a private one.”
“The only surprise would be if Glenmoor didn’t already know and have eyes on the meeting,” Reddy said. “We have some deniability
with your presence, however, so keep your hood up and wits about you. Don’t let anyone get a good look at you.”
“He wouldn’t try to intervene or alter the plans for his cargo?” I asked. That seemed entirely foolish to me, and the Duke
of Glenmoor did not strike me as a foolish person.
“We’ll find out momentarily, though I suspect Fox wanted him to agonize over the possible reasons for the meeting,” Reddy
said, letting the powder-blue satin fall back into place. “The turmoil of uncertainty is a fine distraction, and something
His Grace bitterly despises.”