Chapter 2 Kane
KANE
KANE DURANTE WAS TIRED OF LARKIN’S COMPANY.
HE’D SPENT days with the man, conducting dark market business like a hired grunt, yet he hadn’t learned anything useful.
Frustration and impatience formed a poisonous concoction in his veins as he tossed the revolver from one hand to the other, marveling at its lightness.
Unlike every other magical firearm he’d seen, it was sleeker, quieter, and if Kane wasn’t mistaken, more deadly accurate.
Magic wasn’t harmful by default, but it could certainly be made that way.
Once laws forbidding alchemology had pushed practitioners into the shadows, the dark market had snapped them up, and now magic was all but synonymous with destruction.
That’s the way it had been for centuries, and he couldn’t see things changing anytime soon.
For his part, Kane had never attempted to create magic. If you wanted to actually do anything with it, you had to understand mechanics and chemistry, physics and mathematics, and his smarts were more of the street sort.
“Put that away,” Larkin said, a hiss that sliced the night. “You heard what she said. Besides, if Saville saw you—”
“No one will see me.” Kane rolled his eyes but stowed the gun in his waistband nonetheless. “As far as I’m concerned, once we deliver it, Saville can shove it firmly up his—”
“Kane.”
Kane gave an easy smile, if a little impish. Larkin was a large man, all broad shoulders with an expression to frighten children, but he wasn’t the fool Kane had hoped for. Rarely did he reveal anything of use.
“You’d best watch your mouth, Hunt,” Larkin growled, saying Kane’s false surname with all the confidence of someone who didn’t know it was false. “If Saville heard you talking this way, he’d have your body in the sewers with a knife in the throat.”
“Your loyalty to Saville is truly admirable.” In fact, it was getting on Kane’s nerves.
Larkin snorted. “What do you know about loyalty? You’ve been working for him for—what? Five minutes?”
“Five days,” Kane grumbled. Five whole days, and he was no closer to finding the necklace.
It was meant to be arriving on a ship from Ireland soon, then to be displayed in the Exhibition in two weeks’ time.
The event had been advertised for months now by posters proclaiming THE GREAT EXHIBITION OF ALL NATIONS—1ST MAY, 1851!
Once the necklace was in the public eye, stealing it would be next to impossible.
Kane needed to work fast. If he failed, Saville would be the least of his worries.
It shouldn’t have been difficult. All Kane needed to know was which ship the necklace would be on and when it was arriving.
Since Saville’s company oversaw the city docks, Saville was the perfect mark.
It had been easy enough to get hired by the lord, but labor at the riverbank had quickly turned to less savory deeds.
They weren’t something Kane was unused to, but running dark market errands gave him less time to keep an eye on the river.
Less time to search Saville’s numerous offices or manipulate his other employees into talking.
All Kane really needed was a schedule—a ledger—something.
But Larkin, Saville’s longtime grunt, either didn’t know shit or was careful not to let anything slip no matter how many times Kane manipulated the conversation to that end.
And right now, Larkin’s eyes were a warning. “He won’t keep you if he finds out you’re talking like that.”
“Who’s gonna tell him?” Kane goaded. “You?”
“I ain’t no snitch, but not everyone’s as nice as me.”
Kane made a sound in the back of his throat.
Larkin may not have been a rat, but he was about as nice as one.
He said nothing, though, as they made their silent way down the street.
The cobblestones were lined with shallow trenches carrying vile liquid matter to the cesspools, and one had to swerve every so often to avoid horse dung or buckets of human piss tossed from windows.
London’s rich could afford brass piping and shower basins, but the only clean water here came from a single standpipe in each building.
This particular slum was known as Devil’s Acre.
It was a place for criminals, and for people so poor their morals had long since fled.
It was also the place they were to meet Lord Saville’s messenger, who would give them money if they showed up and put a price on their heads if they didn’t.
Or, at least, so the rumors went.
Kane preferred to avoid Devil’s Acre at all costs.
No matter the season or time of day, the area was wet, loud, and generally gag inducing.
Unsupervised youths went barefoot as they slunk between the crowded rows of terraced housing, and the overall state of filth was indescribable.
If death could be a physical place, it was undoubtedly Devil’s Acre.
Even being here for a short time was nauseating, and Kane set his teeth as he averted the sunken gazes of its unhoused occupants, a pit forming in his stomach.
The sulfurous stench was overwhelming as he followed Larkin down an alleyway, fighting the urge to cover his nose.
The slum was a good place to conduct business, though, if only because the coppers had long since given up trying to force it into any semblance of order.
The dark pressed in alongside the ammonia-stained buildings, which became tighter and more uniform.
A beggar flung himself at Larkin’s feet, murmuring something about coin and blessings, and Larkin kicked him away.
“Can’t get nowhere around here,” Larkin said as Kane’s hand twitched to the knife in his waistband. “Not without being accosted by scum or guttersnipes, anyway.”
Kane wasn’t sure he shared the sentiment, but he could admit the desperately poor were sometimes vicious. He sidestepped a second man with a dirt-encrusted hat, scanning the shadowy street. “Where is he?”
Larkin shrugged. “We were late meeting the girl. He should’ve arrived before us.”
The alchemologist. Though he was aware of Mendoza’s reputation, it was the first time Kane’d had any dealings with her.
He was still reeling from both the quality of her work and her obvious youth.
He’d been picturing an older woman, not one on the cusp of adulthood.
It was her overall presence, though, that had struck him most. Slim but somehow imposing.
Mousy brown hair and a face like a predator, calculating and fierce. A little hungry.
Kane wondered what, exactly, she was hungry for.
Larkin rumbled, “There he is,” and Kane glanced up to see Fletcher Collins slink around the corner like the snake he was.
Kane knew from experience that rich lords tended to put their trust in one of two types of men: the charming, self-important bastard or the dangerous gentleman with no time for good humor.
Kane played the first type, Fletcher the second.
It had quickly become clear Saville preferred the latter, so Kane’s fellow con man had ended up in the role of confidante.
No matter how hard Fletcher tried, however, he hadn’t been able to get Saville to divulge anything of import.
And now Kane was wasting time fetching dark market weapons, of all things.
He did enough of that as Kane Durante. It was rather tiring to do it as Kane Hunt, too.
“Did you get it?” Fletcher said by way of greeting. He was blond with high cheekbones, his speech stilted to cover his Irish accent. It was a far more believable act than it had been when he and Kane were younger. When they’d pulled cons simply because they’d wanted to.
Things were different now. That was the way it was, Kane supposed, when you were the adopted son of the most feared man in Devil’s Acre. When you were the most loved, trusted, and depended upon of his circle.
But being loved by Alexander Ward, kingpin of the dark market, was like trying to escape the jaws of a wolf. A constant struggle and one you couldn’t possibly win. So you were forced to wait, poised among the teeth, until eventually you learned to use your own.
“Of course we got it.” Kane pulled the revolver from his waistband with a wink. “What are you going to give us for it?”
Larkin’s eyes bulged, but Fletcher ignored the barb. “The real question is, what did you end up giving her?”
“Three.”
There was a pause as Fletcher digested that. “Seems like a lot.”
“Saville gave us five,” Larkin pointed out.
He’d made no secret of his disdain for Fletcher, and frankly Kane couldn’t blame him.
Fletcher had gained Saville’s favor with inexplicable speed while Larkin was still a glorified errand boy.
Much to Kane’s chagrin, Fletcher had been summoned away from the docks almost immediately.
He supposed it was penance for having the build of a bodyguard and the poker face of a politician.
“Besides,” Larkin went on, “Mendoza was being difficult. Said she could sell it for twice as much if we didn’t accept.”
“That’s what everyone selling something says,” Fletcher snapped. He snatched the revolver from Kane’s hands. “You two are fools.”
“You don’t need brains to do someone else’s business” was Kane’s smooth retort. “We got it, didn’t we? And it’s the best of its kind, at least from what I’ve seen. I’ll eat my hat if Saville isn’t proper chuffed.”
Larkin’s face was wary, and Kane didn’t blame him. With his impassive eyes and sharp tongue, Fletcher put on an intimidating act. You never knew he was angry until his fist was already in your mouth.
Kane had a decent punch, but he had an even better smile, so he tended to use that more. He flashed it now, purely in a show of annoying his friend.
Fletcher glowered. “You each get five shillings.”