Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth Part 6

Behind him, the rest of the enforcers were rapidly melting away and disappearing into the distance at something only a little less than a dead run. I looked thoughtfully at the man standing before us, and his left eye developed a distinct twitch.

"You seem to have a lot of influence over your fellow thugs," I said. "Who are you, exactly?"

"Union representative, squire. I look out for my boys, make sure they've all got health insurance, and I'd really like to run away after them, if that's all right with you."

I'd barely finished nodding before he'd turned and hurried away. There's a lot to be said for a good, or more properly bad, reputation. One young enforcer was still standing in the middle of the street, looking a bit bewildered. He yelled after his union rep, who didn't even look back.

"h.e.l.l with this s.h.i.+t," snarled the young punk, sounding actually outraged. "We're supposed to be hard men! Spreading fear with a glance and crus.h.i.+ng all opposition! We don't turn and run when a couple of serious faces turn up!"

"He's young," said a voice from the shadows of a very dark alley. "Doesn't know anything. Please don't kill him. His mother would give me h.e.l.l."

The young enforcer went for the gun on his hip, but Dead Boy was already moving. Being dead, his body wasn't limited to normal human reaction times. He darted forward impossibly quickly, closing the distance between himself and the young enforcer in a moment. The punk actually got off two shots, and Dead Boy dodged both of them. He crashed into the young enforcer, ripped the gun out of his hand, and head-b.u.t.ted him in the face. He then examined the gun while the young man crumpled to the floor, before finally throwing it aside.

"I take it there won't be any more opposition?" I said, to the general surroundings.

"Not from us," said the voice from the shadows. "You do whatever you feel like doing, sir."

"Thank you," I said. "We will."

I gathered up Dead Boy, and we continued down the street. There wasn't a single soul to be seen anywhere, but I had no doubt we were still being surrept.i.tiously observed. I raised my gift, opening up the inner eye in my mind, my private eye, to locate exactly where Julien Advent was hiding himself in all this hostile territory. I kept my Sight narrowed down to just the task at hand. I really didn't want to See the kind of dark forces that moved unseen in a place like Rotten Row. I was also concerned that I'd recently been using my gift too much. My Enemies were always looking, to send their horror troops after me. I found Julien almost immediately, observing a firm called Dingley Dell from a place of concealment in a tenement building only a little further down the street. I shut down my gift, checked that all my mental barriers and safeguards were securely in place, and told Dead Boy what I'd learned.

"You are seriously spooky sometimes, you know that, John?" he said. "The way you know things. Still, I wouldn't worry too much about these Enemies of yours. They probably won't be able to locate you at all, what with Lilith and her pals on the rampage, jamming the mental aether."

We walked on a while in silence. "Jamming the mental aether? " I said finally. "What the h.e.l.l does that mean?"

"I don't know," said Dead Boy. "But you have to admit, it sounded really good there for a moment. Now then, Dingley Dell... Sounds almost unbearably twee. Probably makes lace doilies, or something..."

We came to a halt before the right building and studied the small cards tacked to the doorframe, beside the row of buzzers. The cards looked decidedly temporary, as though they had a tendency to change on a regular basis. The current occupiers of the three-storey building were Alf's b.u.t.ton Emporium, Matchstick Girls, Miss Snavely's Fas.h.i.+on House, Shrike Shoes, the Stuffed Fish Company, and Dingley Dell.

"Top floor," Dead Boy said disgustedly. "Why do they always have to be on the top floor? And how are we supposed to get all the way up there, past all the other businesses, without anyone noticing us?"

"Firstly, it's only three floors we're talking about," I said. "Undoubtedly because this entire s.h.i.+t heap would have collapsed if anyone had added a fourth floor. And secondly, while I doubt very much that a dump like this has a fire escape, you can bet good money that there's a concealed exit round the back so company executives can make a swift departure un.o.bserved if their creditors turn up unexpectedly. So, round the back."

We made our way down a narrow side alley almost choked with garbage and general filth, and a couple of sleeping forms who didn't even stir when we stepped over them. I found the back door without having to raise my gift again because it was exactly where I would have put it. (Having had occasion to dodge a few creditors myself, in my time.) Dead Boy checked the door out for magical alarms and b.o.o.by-traps, which didn't take long. He only had to look at them, and they malfunctioned.

"My being dead and alive at the same time confuses them," he said happily.

"It's always confused me," I agreed.

Dead Boy went to smash the door in, but I restrained him. There could still be purely mechanical alarms in place that we hadn't spotted, and I didn't want to risk attracting attention and perhaps blowing Julien Advent's stakeout. So I raised my gift for a moment, located the right spot on the door, directly above the lock, and hit it once with the heel of my hand. The lock disengaged, and the door swung open. Dead Boy averted his gaze so he wouldn't have to see me looking smug, and we entered the tenement, quietly closing the door behind us.

There was hardly any light, and the place stank of poverty and misery and blocked drains. Every expense had been spared in the construction of this building, and everything about it screamed fire trap. We moved quietly down the gloomy corridor, alert for any sign that we'd been noticed, but the whole building seemed silent as a tomb. The stairway was so narrow we had to go up in single file, so I let Dead Boy go first, on the grounds that he could take a lot more damage than I. There were any number of magical alarms and b.o.o.by-traps, but they all blew up in silent puffs of fluorescent smoke, rather than try to deal with Dead Boy's presence. On the second-floor landing a monstrous face formed itself abruptly out of the cracks in the plaster wall, looked at us, mouthed the words Oh b.u.g.g.e.r, and disappeared again.

The next stairway was wide enough for us to walk side by side. I was starting to relax when a wooden step sank just a little too far under Dead Boy's weight, followed by a slight but definite click, and I threw myself flat. A metal shaft shot out of a concealed hole in the wall, pa.s.sed right over me, and speared Dead Boy through the left arm. He looked down at the spike transfixing his arm, sighed heavily, and carefully pulled his arm free. I got to my feet again, and we studied the metal spike.

"Why did this work when the others didn't?" said Dead Boy.

"Purely mechanical," I said. "Least there's no harm done."

"No harm? This is my good coat! Look at these two holes in the sleeve. Going to cost a small fortune to put those right. I've got this little fellow in Greek Street who does all my repairs (you'd be surprised how many outfits I go through), but they're never the same afterwards. He calls it invisible mending, but I can always see it..."

"Do you think you could perhaps lower your voice a tad?" I said, quietly but urgently. "We are supposed to be sneaking in, remember?"

He sniffed sulkily a few times, and we continued up the rickety stairway to the third floor, and along the shadowy pa.s.sage at the top of the building. Every room we pa.s.sed was a different business, sub-let presumably, and we caught glimpses of shabby people slaving away, working silently in appalling conditions for nothing remotely like minimum wage. Whole families packed so tightly round rough wooden tables there was hardly any room to move. Fathers and mothers and children, all working intently in dim light in rooms with windows that wouldn't open, making goods for pennies that would sell for pounds to their betters. None of them ever said anything, bent quietly over their work. The overseers might not be visible, but that didn't mean they weren't there. Trouble-makers didn't tend to last long in sweatshops.

I'd never seen such blatant misery before. Capitalism, red in tooth and claw. It was one thing to know that such things still went on and another to see it with your own eyes. I felt like tearing the building down with my bare hands... but the sweatshop workers wouldn't thank me for it. They needed the work, needed the lousy money and the protection that went with it, from whoever was looking for them... And I couldn't risk blowing Julien Advent's stakeout and getting him angry at me. I was going to need Julien.

Dead Boy really didn't like sneaking around. It wasn't his style. "When am I going to get to hit someone?" he kept asking.

"You'll get your chance," I said. "G.o.d, you're like a big kid. You'll be asking if we're nearly there, next."

We finally came to a closed door with a card tacked to it, saying Dingley Dell. I tried the door handle, slowly and very carefully, but it was locked. Dead Boy raised a boot to kick it in, and I pulled him away, shaking my head firmly. I listened, one ear pressed against the wood of the door, but I couldn't hear anything. I straightened up, wincing as my back creaked, and looked around. And there at the end of the corridor was a spiral stairway, leading even higher. I led the way up the curving steps, Dead Boy pressing close behind like an impatient dog, and we ended up in a disused gallery, looking down onto the open room that was Dingley Dell. And there, at the end of the gallery, was the Timeslipped Victorian Adventurer himself, Julien Advent.

He was actually wearing his old opera cloak, the heavy dark material blending him smoothly into the gallery shadows. Dead Boy and I padded forward as silently as we could, but he still heard us coming. He spun round, ready to fight, and only relaxed a little as he recognised us. He gestured sharply for us to crouch beside him. He was tall, and still lithely muscular despite his years, with jet-black hair and eyes, and a face handsome as any movie star's; only slightly undermined by his unswervingly serious gaze and grim smile.

Julien Advent was a hero, the real deal, and it showed. We'd worked together, on occasion. Sometimes he approved of me, and sometimes he didn't. It made for an interesting relations.h.i.+p.

"What the h.e.l.l are you two doing here?" he said, his voice little more than a murmur. "I put a lot of effort into getting silently into place here, and remaining un.o.bserved, and now you two clowns... How do you know you haven't tripped off every alarm in the place?"

"Because I saw them all," said Dead Boy. "There's not much you can hide from the dead."

I looked at the two ragged holes in his coat sleeve, and sniffed. "You don't half fancy yourself sometimes."

Julien shook his head despairingly, then we all looked down into the open room of Dingley Dell, while Julien filled us in as to what was happening, in a voice I had to strain to hear.

It seemed Dingley Dell was a sweatshop for manufacturing magical items. Wis.h.i.+ng rings, cloaks of invisibility, talking mirrors, magic swords, and so on. The usual. I always wondered where they came from... Gathered around a long trestle table were dozens of small s.h.i.+vering forms like undernourished children, with big eyes and pointed ears. Wee faeries no bigger than two-year-olds, with bitter faces and crumpled wings, all of them looking half-starved and beaten down. They would pick up some everyday object with their tiny hands and stare at it with fierce concentration until the sweat ran down their pointed faces. They were pouring their own natural magic into the items, making them magical through sheer force of will. As the faeries gave up some of their magic, they became visibly duller and less special. Dying by inches.

Every single one of them was held in place by heavy leg irons, and chains led from the irons to steel rings embedded in the bare floor-boards.

The faeries were refugees from a war in some other dimension, said Mien, fleeing and hiding from something awful: the Hordes of the Adversary. They were desperate not to be found, by anyone. Looking more closely, I could see they all had old scars, and more recent cuts and bruises. They wore rough clothing made from old sacking, with slits cut in the back for their crumpled wings to poke through. Now and again, in a brief look or a movement, I could see a glimpse of how wild and beautiful and charming they had once been.

And even as we watched, one small winged figure gave up the last of its magic and just faded away to nothing. His clothing slowly collapsed in on itself, and the empty leg iron clanked dully against the floor.

I couldn't remember when I'd last been so angry. It burned within me, knotting my stomach and making it hard for me to breathe. "This is sick!" I said fiercely. I actually glared at Mien Advent. "Why are you just sitting here, watching? Why haven't you done something before this?"

"Because I've been considering how best to deal with that," said Mien. "That is their overseer-the Beadle."

Dead Boy and I were already looking where he pointed. Emerging from an adjoining kitchen was a huge, hulking figure. He was easily eight feet tall-his head brus.h.i.+ng against the ceiling-and his shoulders were broader and more muscular than any human's had a right to be. He was a construct, a patchwork figure of st.i.tched-together human pieces. His only clothing was a collection of broad leather straps, perhaps to help hold him together, or maybe just to give him a feeling of security. He carried a large empty sack in one hand and a roast chicken in the other. He took a great bite out of the chicken breast, and waved the greasy carca.s.s at the faeries, tauntingly.

Two feral children prowled beside him, one to each side, their naked bodies caked in old dried blood and filth. A boy and a girl, they were only ten or eleven years old, but still big enough to scare and intimidate the wee faeries.

"That is one big Beadle," said Dead Boy.

"Quite," said Julien. "I could probably take him, but I didn't want to start something I wasn't sure I could finish. For the sake of the faeries."

The Beadle approached the table, and the faeries all tensed visibly. Some started crying, quietly, hopelessly.

"Now then, have Santa's little helpers been busy, making nice little presents, like they were told to?" said the Beadle, in a harsh, growling voice. "Ho-ho-ho! I see another of you has escaped... but not to worry, my little cherubs; there's always fresh meat to replace the old."

He grabbed a handful of the completed magical items piled up in the middle of the table, and started stuffing them carelessly into his sack. One of the faeries wept a little too loudly, and the Beadle turned on it savagely.

"You! What are you snivelling for, you little work-shy?"

"Please sir," said the faerie, in a small, chiming voice. "I'm thirsty, sir."

The Beadle cuffed the faerie lightly across the back of the head, but it was still hard enough to slam the small face onto the table.

"No water for anyone until you've all made your quotas ! And no food till the end of your s.h.i.+ft. You know the rules." He broke off abruptly to examine a glowing dagger he'd just picked up. He sniffed dismissively and broke the blade in two with his bare hands, throwing the no-longer-glowing pieces aside. "Useless! Spoiled! All because someone wasn't concentrating! Don't think you can pa.s.s off inferior work on me! You all need to buck yourselves up, because the next one of you that doesn't measure up... gets fed to my little pets here!"

The feral children grunted and snarled, stamping their bare feet on the bare floor and making playful little darts at the nearest faeries, who cried out and cringed away as far as their leg irons and chains would let them. The feral children laughed soundlessly, like dogs.

"That's it," said Mien Advent, in a calm, quiet and very dangerous voice. "I have seen enough."

He dropped gracefully down from the high gallery, his open cloak spreading out like the dark wings of an avenging angel. He landed lightly before the astonished Beadle, who reared back. The feral children retreated, snarling. Dead Boy jumped down and landed heavily, the floor-boards cracking under the impact. He smiled easily at the Beadle, who threw aside his bag and his roast chicken so he could close his great hands into ma.s.sive fists. I climbed down from the gallery, taking it one foot hold at a time. I knew my limitations. Mien Advent advanced on the scowling Beadle, and the giant construct actually backed away from the much smaller man, driven back by the incandescent rage in Mien's voice and eyes.

"I thought I'd left the evil of sweatshops behind me, in Victoria's reign. To see such cruelty still thriving in this modern age is an affront to all honourable men. To persecute such innocents, such helpless creatures, in the name of profit is an abomination! It stops now!"

The Beadle stopped backing away, and sneered down at Mien, his deep set eyes suddenly crafty as well as cruel. "I know you, Adamant. Crusading editor, bleeding heart, gentleman adventurer. Moves in all the best circles. But if I were to tell you the names of those who own this little business, and others just like them, I daresay you'd know them. Probably members in good standing of your precious gentlemen's clubs. They know the truth of the Nightside-that at the end of the day it's all about wealth and power. And what you can get away with."

"I'll deal with them, too, in time," said Julien.

"But you're here now," said the Beadle. "Far away from home, in my territory. And no-one plays by gentlemen's rules here. I am authorised to deal with any and all intruders in whatever way I see fit. So... let's see what I can get away with..."

He spoke a Word of Power, and the two feral children suddenly changed. Thick fur sprouted out of their bare skins, and their bones creaked loudly as they lengthened. Muzzles full of sharp teeth thrust out of their dirty faces, and in moments the two children were two wolves. The Beadle laughed and urged his pets forward. The faeries cried out hopelessly, cringing away from the slavering wolves, tugging piteously at the steel chains that held them in place. The wolves stalked slowly forward, and Dead Boy went to meet them, drawing two long silver daggers from the tops of his calfskin boots.

"No," I said sharply. "Don't kill them. I think they're as much victims here as the faeries."

Dead Boy glanced back at Julien, then shrugged and stepped back again. He didn't put the silver knives away. I confronted the two wolves, hoping I was right in my a.s.sumption. The Beadle had brought about their change with a Word of Power, which suggested the boy and girl weren't natural werewolves, that the change had been enforced upon them. So I fired up my gift and found the spell that controlled the change. Then it was the easiest thing in the world for me to rip the spell away, and just like that two wolves shrank back into two dazed children. Only a boy and a girl again, at last. They could feel they were free, and their feral instincts told them who was responsible. They charged towards me, and I made myself stand my ground. The boy and the girl pressed affectionately against my legs, nuzzling me with their heads and faces, pathetically grateful. The Beadle shouted orders at them, trying his Word again, and they turned and snarled defiantly back at him. I patted them comfortingly on their matted heads, and they settled down again.

Dead Boy and Julien Advent and I turned our full attention to the Beadle. He eyed the only door, but could tell it was too far away. He flexed his great muscles, showing off his size and strength. His fists were bigger than our heads. He sneered at us.

"This changes nothing! You're not big enough to bring me down. Not even together. I will eat your flesh, and crack your bones for the marrow, then I'll stick your severed heads on the railings outside, to show everyone what happens when you mess with the Beadle. And don't think your magics will help you against me. The owners made me proof against all magical attacks."

"Good thing I'm not magic then," said Dead Boy. "Just dead."

He went to meet the Beadle, daggers in hand, and the Beadle turned to run. He'd barely made two steps before Dead Boy was upon him, plunging both his daggers deep into the Beadle's kidneys. The giant cried out horribly and fell to his knees. And Dead Boy cut the Beadle up into his respective original pieces, undoing the work that had first put the huge construct together. The Beadle kicked and screamed for a long time. John and I watched in silence, while the two feral children grinned and stamped their feet approvingly, and the wee winged faeries clapped their tiny hands together in joy and relief.

Dead Boy went about his business as methodically as any butcher, until nothing was left of the Beadle but blood and gore and piles of separated pieces, some of them still twitching. When it was over, and the Beadle's eyes had stopped rolling in his severed head, Julien took the ring of keys from the discarded leather belt and set about freeing the faeries from their leg irons. I helped as best I could. The faeries thanked us tearfully, in voices like the singing of birds. The iron shackles had burned the faeries' skin where they had touched, and even after they were freed the faeries stayed on their wooden benches, huddling together for comfort. One of them looked at Julien and raised an uncertain tiny hand.

"Please, sir, we're hungry."

"No problem!" Dead Boy said cheerfully. He gathered up an armful of body parts and a.s.sorted offal, and marched off into the adjoining kitchen. "I know a great recipe for chunky soup!"

Julien looked at me. "Is he serious?"

"Almost certainly," I said. "Fortunately, I've already eaten."

We moved a little away, so we could talk privately. The faeries and the two feral children looked at each other, equally uncertain, but finally the boy moved towards them, one step at a time, and crouched before the nearest faerie. The boy put forward his head to be petted, and after a long moment the faerie reached out a small hand and gently tousled the matted hair. The boy grinned happily, just like a dog, and the girl padded forward to join him. I allowed myself a small breath of relief and gave my full attention to Julien.

"What are we going to do with them?" I said quietly. "All right, we rescued them. Great. But they've still got to live. They can't go back to their own dimension, but they don't have anywhere else to go. And there are things out there in the Nightside that would eat them alive."

"Well," Julien said thoughtfully, "they've got a really good business going here, so why shouldn't they take it over and run it for themselves? Someone has to make all the magic artifacts... They could make a comfortable living for themselves. I'm pretty sure the boy and the girl could be retrained as bodyguards. And I'll underwrite the business to begin with and provide the faeries with someone suitable to act as a front, so no-one will know about them."

"That's very kind of you," I said, and I meant it, "but what about all the other sweatshops in this building? What about all the other people slaving away for pennies, in buildings just like this all over the Nightside?"

Julien met my gaze steadily. "I know. There are hundreds of places as bad as this, if not thousands. But one of the first things you learn in the Nightside is that you can't save everyone. You just... do what you can, save whom you can, and try to be content with that."

"And what about this business's original owners?" I said. "Won't they kick up a stink about being frozen out of their own business?"

"Not after the piece I'm going to write for the Times," said Julien. "I'll change some of the details to protect the faeries, but it will still be fine, loud, incendiary stuff. The owners won't want to be identified with the stink I'm going to generate. May I mention you and Dead Boy by name in my story?"

"I don't mind," Dead Boy said cheerfully, from the kitchen. Something was cooking, and it smelled really good.

"If you think it'll help," I said.

Julien Advent considered me for a long moment. "Maybe I won't mention you, John."

"I quite understand," I said. "Lot of people feel that way about me."

"Why did you come here looking for me?" said Julien.

"Ah," I said. "Now, you're probably not going to like this, Julien, but..."

Six.

Guardian Angel

When you're about to do something really risky, or really dumb, or both, it's nearly always a good idea to do it in company. That way, at least you've got someone to hide behind when it all starts going horribly wrong. So, while the freed faeries gathered happily around a huge cauldron br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with chunky soup, and the feral boy and girl gnawed meat off oversized bones and cracked them open to get at the marrow, I took Julien Advent to one side, for a quiet word.

"I need to talk with you and Dead Boy, somewhere private."

"Does this concern your cunning plan, the one I'm really not going to like?"

"Got it in one."

"I know just the place."

It turned out that Julien had stumbled across the Beadle's private living quarters while he was exploring the building. He led Dead Boy and me back up onto the gallery, to a concealed door at its end, and through that into a loft conversion. The bare-raftered room turned out to be a lot bigger on the inside than it appeared on the outside, but that's a common spell in the Nightside, where living s.p.a.ce is at a premium. The Beadle's living quarters were all hanging drapes and throw cus.h.i.+ons, in a.s.sorted eye-dazzling colours, along with fresh flowers in tall vases, Andy Warhol prints on the walls, and delicate little china statuettes of wide-eyed kittens.