Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The transformative nature of the ward-bond suggests that any soul belonging to such a bond has reached its final form.
—Emma Hardinge Britten, On the Nature of Wards
Cassius and I trudged through the mud and filth down an alley across from Rats Castle.
Rotting vegetables and piles of garbage lined the walls.
We passed a few blanket lean-tos, inside which faint candles flickered, and eventually found a small wood shack with a fading painted needle on the door.
It was right where Mick had said it would be. I knocked.
The tailor, Owen, opened the door a crack and peered out at us with his one good eye. The other had swelled shut. “I already told Mick—”
“We’re not here for Mick,” I said.
Owen hesitated a moment, then let us in.
His home wasn’t more than twelve feet across, and maybe ten feet wide.
A bed on the left had been neatly made. On the right sat a woman at a small table hemming a dress by the light of a lantern.
It was real fire, not an imitation. Beside her sat a young girl pretending to do the same to a doll. At the far end stood an empty bench.
In the lamplight, the woman’s and girl’s shadows revealed that they were semblances.
Owen’s, though, glimmered with a pattern of gleaming notes like a simple children’s song and had a cobalt rim.
I’d referred to the field manual enough to know that a cobalt rim meant seamster—a thanatist with a gift for thread-making.
On the table in front of the woman were bits of material, tanned leather, and a few spools of thread. Several needles jutted from a pincushion, next to it a thimble, scissors, tacks, ruler, and some chalk. I guessed the empty bench was where Owen must sit to sew.
“What’s your business then?” Owen asked. He’d tried to wipe the blood off his face, but managed only to smear it over his neck and cheeks.
I took a long breath. “We need to find some Orcus thread.” Owen and the woman looked at one another.
“I think you best leave,” Owen said, and started to shoo us out. “Wait, love,” said the woman. “Are these the two who stood up for
you at the Castle?” Owen nodded.
The woman turned to us. “I’m Sarah, and this is Emily. Won’t you please sit down?”
Cassius and I couldn’t both fit on the small bench. So, Cassius motioned me to sit as he leaned against the wall. I took a load off, not realizing how tired I was until I sat down. Sarah put away her hemming, came around the table, and gently inspected our necks. “You’re not Shiguan.”
I shook my head. “I don’t see their mark on you, either.”
“Nor will you ever,” she said. “We may be outnumbered, but many of us in the Strata don’t want war with the world above.” She looked down at her daughter. “There has to be a better way. And perhaps that is why you stood up for Owen and come here now seeking such powerful thread?”
I looked at Emily holding her doll. “I’m going to be honest with you.
I’m not some kind of savior. This is all new to me, and I’m sort of learning as I go.
But some really good people were killed, and it’s fallen to me and my friends to try and stop this revolution from reaching the world topside.
Maybe doing that will help down here, too.
I don’t know. I hope so. But I can promise you this—I’m going to do whatever I can to stop Muster Brach before he makes both your world and mine a living hell.
” Sarah smiled. “Given your current enterprise, you’ve likely not seen
it, but so much of the Strata is a beautiful, joyful place, where we resolve regrets and pursue our passions.”
“And put things right,” Owen added, placing a hand on Emily’s head.
The tailor was crying, which surprised me a bit.
Maybe because I’d never seen my dad cry.
Sarah went to his side and embraced him.
Emily, though, pulled my right hand forward and, while staring at my shadow thrown by the lamplight, tied one of her doll strings around my wrist.
No sigils. Just a plain brown thread. “And what’s this for?” I asked.
“It helps orphans find family,” she replied. I noticed then that both she and her doll wore the same bracelet. Sarah and Owen, too.
I’d never thought of myself that way—orphaned—but the way the girl said it . . .
She was a child caught in the Strata and surrounded by a mounting war between the present and the past. Yet against it all she found hope by wearing a simple brown thread. Her bravery overwhelmed me, and all I could manage was a nod.
“Other than trying to steal it from the Shiguan themselves,” Owen said, “there’s really only one way to obtain Orcus thread, but it might be even more dangerous.”
“And what’s that?”
“Harvest it from inside the Endless Dark.” “You can do this?” Cassius asked.
Owen hesitantly nodded. “I have done it. But I would sooner hold a candle to the devil.”
“We’ll help,” I assured him. “Please.”
The tailor shared one last look with his wife and daughter, then turned to me with his one good eye. “It’s a fool’s errand,” he said. “And I’m a proper fool.”
Cassius clapped one huge hand on the table, causing the seamster tools to jump. “Amor vincit omnia.”
I sighed with relief. “Thank you.”
“Now, then,” Owen said, “Mick will have put the word out on you already, on account of you looking for Orcus thread—anyone doing so
that isn’t with the Shiguan is almost surely against the Shiguan—and if he can pick up some reward money or goodwill with that filth, he won’t bat an eye. So, we’ll need to sneak out of the Dials in disguise.”
He dug into his shoe, pulled out two small coils of thread, and handed me one. “Tie bracelets of this on Cassius. It’ll make him appear like one of the Newgate prisoners just marched into Rats Castle.”
“I didn’t think binding threads could deceive thanaturgic beings,” I said.
“Most can’t. But mine are a cut above.” Owen smiled a bloody grin—missing front tooth and bleeding gums. “That’s why Mick loves me so.
But no thread can change a man’s shadow.
Nothin’ but penance’ll do that. Be quick now, the bobbies will be moving their prisoners to the
Guildhall soon.”
“You mean the Guildhall School of Music and Drama?” I’d jammed with guys who studied there. The music program was internationally recognized. And the drama side had produced more than a few famous Hollywood stars.
“Mick’s goons transport the condemned there for a fee.
They’ll be moving them soon. And if we look like part of the parade, we’ll slip past any of the bounty men that lurk the Dials.
” He cut a few lengths of thread from the other coil and handed me the rest. Then he began lashing his own legs and arms. “This thread’ll help you and me look like bobbies. ”
“You’ve done this before,” I said.
Owen nodded. “In the Dials, it pays to have certain threads at the ready.”
I bound Cassius and myself with the threads and stowed the balance in my catalyst bag. “So we’re not actually going to the Guildhall?”
“That’s Shiguan headquarters. Not a nice place if you’re not one of ’em.
No, we’ll split off once we’re outside the Dials.
” Owen hugged Sarah and Emily, then hurriedly led us out the door.
We shuffled down the alley and slipped in with the mob of released convicts just as they were exiting Rats Castle.
“Behind our time,” Owen announced to the police captain, a fat man with a thick, black mustache. “But we’ve got a ripe one here.” He pointed to Cassius.
The captain grumbled. “Fall in, then.”
We joined the line and walked in silence at the tail end of the group for maybe half a mile.
Then Owen slowed down, dropping us several paces back, and with a few quick flicks of a short knife severed our disguise threads.
Quietly, he turned us north on Fleet Street, blending in with the foot traffic.
For the better part of two hours we worked our way north and west, mostly following the river. The city fell slowly away to trees and fields, until we stood at a stone gate.
“Highgate Cemetery,” Owen said.
We made our way in, winding down a footpath until we’d come to a maze of standing crypts.
A chill fog had settled in, reaching nearly to our chests.
Owen pointed through the haze to a catacomb stairway and led us up into the silky dark space between strata with his own bright lantern.
The old pressure danced in only briefly—it didn’t push as hard going up the Strata.
When we reached the Modern Stratum, he took us through this version of Highgate Cemetery toward an enormous black cloud that stretched out of sight in both directions and upward from the ground into the sky.
Black liquid that looked too opaque to be water pooled with increasing frequency as we approached it.
“Oil?” I asked, pointing at a puddle between two old gravestones. Owen shone his lantern on it. “These are collections of the Endless
Dark that have liquefied.”
I pointed toward the great cloud. “This is the Endless Dark?” Owen whirled. “Wait a minute. You a virgin to the Dark?”
Obviously, that was going to be a problem. “Yeah, but I’m not as green—”
“And you”—Owen jabbed Cassius’s chest with his finger—“you were going to let us march in there with a tenderfoot, were ya?”
Cassius held up his hands. “Honestly, Owen, I had forgotten how new Jack is to his calling. He has absorbed a vast amount of information quickly, and he does not conduct himself like a novice.”