Chapter 5 #2
“A barber surgeon in another life.” She wagged her needle.
“Much easier at the time for a woman to be accredited for surgery if she was willing to do it in battle. I learned to fight while treating the fallen. Good training, too, since here I’m part of Henry’s crew—a wize, as we say.
I fight when I’m needed and see to the well-being of those in his care. ”
“Your nickname ‘Lady’ have something to do with that?” I asked.
Her eyes became distant. “Boys in the war took to calling me ‘Lady of the Valley.’ They believed I’d walked into the ‘valley of the shadow of death’ to try and pull them out alive.”
She returned to stitching Cassius’s neck, mending the torn flesh with the same gentle care she showed when sewing on a band patch. Loved her for that.
I turned to Church. “What about you?”
“Oh, heavens,” the big man said, casting a hand over his bald head, “in most of my lives, I was a glorified clerk—once in Parliament and, of late, looking after Henry’s affairs.
Suits my sense of propriety. This was after my time in the British Expeditionary Force at Verdun and the Somme.
” The Parliament thing made sense. Church’s words always had a kind of weight to them.
Felt damned good hearing them used on your behalf,
which he’d done for me more than once.
I pointed at his bag. “You took your satchel?”
Church chuckled. “With some thanaturgic folk, there is no substitute
for hard-copy documentation regarding rights and ownership. I like to be prepared.”
“Am I going to see these patterns in everyone’s shadow, now that I’ve come back?”
Chuey marched back to the table, scratched at his buzz cut, and looked me in the eye. “You’ve said that twice now. What exactly do you mean by you came back?”
I’d been struggling to make sense of it myself. “Like . . . a near-death experience, I guess. I got shot, same as Henry. Then, I fought my way back to my body. Woke up in the alley, right where they hit me.”
Chuey made the sign of the cross. “Bro, if you’re being straight, that’s pretty metal.”
“Pretty metal?” Cassius frowned, as Lady pulled the thread through his neck. “Do you mean polished metal hand mirrors?”
“No, man. Metal,” Chuey repeated. “It means awesome.” “Metal means awesome?” the centurion asked.
I half smiled. “Like admirable. Noteworthy.”
Cassius shook his head. “Modern English is not intuitive.”
Church gestured to quiet us. “We’re just glad you made it back, Jack.
Right glad, indeed.”
“So, I really am alive?” I asked.
“Very much so,” said Church. “You’re simply . . . more than you were before.” I’d read about people dying and coming back. But this whole second world? “This is insane. I’ve known you both for almost five years. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Not our place,” said Church.
“Henry planned to tell you,” Lady added. “He was just waiting for the right moment.” She finished her stitching. “And speaking of right moments, how did your friend here happen to be available just when you needed him?”
Cassius gently took Lady’s wrist in his massive hand and traced her gold-threaded bracelet with his finger. “For much the same reason I suspect you and Mr. Church first came to Mr. Wilkinson—to serve a
kinder master.” There was obviously more to Cassius’s story, but neither Lady nor Church pressed him on it. “I do regret the timing of it, though. If only I had come a minute earlier . . .”
Cassius told them what he’d seen and how I’d renewed his bindings. I barely heard any of it, though. I was looking from him to Lady to Church, a hundred questions running through my head. “Henry was a thanatist, then. Which means he could have crawled back to his body, like I did.”
Chuey pulled up a chair, laid the cleaver in front of him on the table, and crossed himself again.
“I pray he has,” said Church. “But whoever did this to him would be expecting as much. And while it would be a violation of thanaturgic law to try to prevent his return, thanaturgic law also prohibits attacking a thanatist in the first place.”
I could still smell Henry’s Bournemouth longleaf. Still see his easy smile. Still feel his hand on my shoulder. Only minutes ago, I’d been singing for him.
“But I believe I know why someone would try and kill Henry.” Church stood and took up his cane. “Would you all please follow me?”
He led us into the venue side of the Iron Horse and to the right side of the chest-high stage. He keyed open a lock and lifted a hatch that I’d always assumed was for side-stage gear storage. It led to a descending wooden stairway.
Church pointed down into the dark. “The Abyssal Steps. The only staircase in London that descends the Strata to all its levels.”
I stared down into the black, then looked up at Cassius. “You said ‘Strata’ earlier?”
The centurion nodded. “The Strata are several long periods of London history that have coalesced to form layers of the past. In them, thanatists, vestiges, and semblances reside, as do things altogether dark.”
“Like the thing that took a bite out of your neck?” Chuey asked.
I held up my hand to stop them, clenching my eyes shut against this dizzying new reality and the hot adrenaline still surging through me.
“Are you telling me that if I go down these steps, I can actually travel into the past?”
“A version of the past,” Lady clarified. “And there are, in fact, other stairways across London into the Strata. But as Church said, only these go all the way down, and only a thanatist can use any of the Strata steps.”
I opened my eyes and glanced at the gold rim around my shadow. “Like me? Like those two Ren-faire goons with the lanterns in the alley?”
“Just so,” said Church. “Technically, certain specialized members of a thanatist’s crew can travel the Strata unaccompanied.
What’s key to understand, Jack, is that there are hundreds of thanatists in the Strata, just as there are in the world you know.
More than a few of whom might be willing to kill in order to gain control of these steps. ”
I stared down into the darkness again. “What’s down there worth killing for?”
Lady took my hand. “Lost wisdom, Jack. Powerful wisdom. And those who control the Steps have sole access to the lowest levels of the Strata to seek that wisdom.”
“More than that,” said Church, “the past is not content. Some of it, anyway. Against the present world it holds certain . . . resentments.” He tapped his cane on the floor.
“In recent years there’ve been a few Strata thanatists who’ve sought access to the Abyssal Steps in order to seize that wisdom and use it to punish the topside world, whether by influence or violence. ”
“Are we still talking about those cosplay thugs in the alley who were getting up in our face?” Chuey asked.
“I can’t be sure,” said Church.
“Regardless”—Lady squeezed my hand—“the Iron Horse is protected by the ward you felt near Stacey Street. It’s neutral ground.”
“Henry said something like that right before he was shot.”
“No one can be harmed or compelled inside the ward,” Lady explained. “It likewise prevents use of the Steps without permission.”
My mind was racing again. “Then why all the concern about anyone getting access to these steps?”
Church removed his cigar. “Because a week ago, the ward extended beyond St. Giles, well past Henry’s flat.”
Henry had raised his hands to the barrier well short of his flat. That must have been why he didn’t want to sleep at home tonight. “But if the ward is failing anyway, why would they try to kill Henry?”
“To hasten its collapse,” Lady said. “Henry is the ward’s steward.
Removing him makes it more vulnerable to attack.”
I took one last look down the Abyssal Steps. I wanted so bad to climb down and see it for myself. History and lost wisdom. I’d been a history buff since my Westmont library days. But even if I’d been prepared for whatever was down there, I was spent.
Church led us back into the pub, then disappeared into the back office for a moment before returning with an armful of books.
“There are a great many more things we should discuss, Jack. But before we do, you need to decide if you intend to embrace your new reality as a thanatist. It’s not required that you do.
Many choose to simply live much as they did before.
That said”—he tapped the books—“if you choose to learn and develop the thanaturgic skills now available to you . . . well, your eyes will be further opened, and you won’t be able to unsee what they show you. ”
The hot energy swirling in my chest suddenly waned, and I started to fall. Cassius caught me by the elbow. “You need rest. The first rebirth is the most disorienting.”
I had no strength or desire, just then, to ask what “first rebirth” meant.
There was so much to process. The events of the night were already blurring together, and I was exhausted.
One thing, though. I knew what a gateway choice was—being unable to see everything you were signing up for when you joined a cause or group.
And I sensed that the road beyond this gateway stretched for miles.
But I could also hardly bear to think that Henry might not make it back.
I took the books from Church’s arms. “I’m a pretty fast reader.”
Church smiled. “Based on the ward’s contraction, your flat should be safe for three, maybe four days. You get some sleep, lad. You’re of no help to us if you can’t even stand up. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
It would feel good to finally go home.
“I’m going to suspend live performances here,” Church added, “until we know what we’re up against.”
That hurt. Silencing the Iron Horse felt like silencing Henry. This was his life . . . or at least I’d thought it was.
Cassius and Chuey walked me to my apartment.
Chuey promised to check in the following day.
Cassius said he’d patrol the nearby streets.
Just before dawn, I stumbled into my apartment and dropped onto my couch, fully dressed, bone-weary, and praying Henry’s soul had made it back from the fields of stone.