Chapter Eleven

SORCHA HAD BEEN tasked with repairing some of the spare striker-lanterns. The delicate mechanisms had become jammed, and she carefully took them apart and laid them out before her. She wore about her head a band from which hung a magnifying glass. “I hear the council are having some fancy dinner in Frost & Thaw tonight.”

“No doubt we’ll read all about it in the newspaper tomorrow,” Mr Norton said. He sat at his high stool, nose in his record book.

“Why would you want to?”

“Because it makes a change from reading about the gangs.” Mr Norton directed his comment at Vince before leaving to relieve himself in the water closet.

“Not one for subtlety.” Vince sat beneath his silver octopus-handled cane, legs up on his desk, frowning as usual.

“He almost hit the ceiling when we were told you were going to take over,” Sorcha said, examining a cog. “He’s been the de facto commander of the Watch for years.”

“Soldier, I take it?”

Sorcha removed the magnifying glass and set it next to a pile of gears. “How did you know?”

“Can spot them a mile off.”

She drew closer, lowering her voice. “He’d been with the Chase Trading Company for years before an injury confined him to the land. We get a lot of former soldiers in the Watch. It’s something close to a military life, I suppose. All regimented hours and being told what to do.”

“Certain folk thrive on routine.”

Sorcha pulled her chair close to Vince’s desk. “Mr Norton said there were no gangs in Port Knot before you appeared.”

“Plenty of gangs back then,” Vince said. “More than there are today. But smaller. Worked differently. The town was carved up, backalong. North was one gang, the south another. East, west, centre, docklands, the Reach. Lots of little pockets. Under Jack Kneebone, I brought them together.”

“Who’s Jack Kneebone?”

“Crook. Before your time. Mudge came along after Kneebone died. Had plans and wanted my help to realise them. Two of us had the town in the palm of our hands for years.”

“We always thought you were the brains behind the gangs. But you worked for Kneebone and then Mudge?”

Vince waggled a finger in the air. “With. Not for. Provided a service. Want to ship goods, go to the C.T.C. Want to commit crime, come to me. No different.”

Sorcha tried not to laugh. “Well, now, come on, it’s a bit different. Shipping a load of tin to the Continent doesn’t usually involve breaking anyone’s legs.”

“All changed now though. Never known gangs to work like this before.”

“It might have something to do with the fourth gang. The Cream. We’ve never seen them, mind. The ones working in the background, keeping everyone in line. I don’t suppose you have any ideas who they could be?”

“Some.”

“Well, by all means, be mysterious about it,” Sorcha said.

“No point saying anything until I know more.”

“I know the Pennymen have the numbers, but honestly, it’s the Gunbrides who worry me the most. Ah, they went very strange, very quickly, so they did. Do you know why they call themselves Gunbrides? They actually have little handfasting ceremonies where they marry their guns.” Sorcha shook her head. “I’ve never heard the likes of it. Absolutely out of their minds, the lot of them. Apparently, they think it strengthens the bond between them and their weapon. Although quite how bonded a person needs to be to a flintlock pistol is beyond me. They have one spouse—their pepper-box muskets with all the extra barrels—and then their children are ordinary flintlocks.”

“Children?”

“Out of their minds. I told you. That’s what those pistols we took from the Dancer of Belgrade were destined to be.”

“Made them orphans,” Vince said.

It might have been a joke. Sorcha found it hard to tell with Vince. “I was terrified of you, you know,” she said. “I’d never seen you before the day you walked through our door, but you haunted my life—all our lives, really. We picked up after you. Your people would brawl in the streets, and we’d have to try to stop it from getting too out of hand. You’d have someone beaten to a pulp, and we’d have to make sure they got to a doctor. The people who worked for you talked about you like you were a force of nature. The man upstairs. That’s what they called you when you started working from the library bar at the Lion Lies Waiting.”

“Heard that, did you?”

“And we knew you were working from the Dogtooth pub in Gull’s Reach for years before that.”

“Never came after me.” Vince didn’t look at her.

“What would have been the point? To make it easier for you to snap our necks? Sure, we’d never have gotten near you.”

“True.”

Sorcha played the braces over her shoulders. “Did you ever… Were you ever worried about us? About the Watch?”

“Not for a second.”

“I’ll give you a moment to think about it and break it to me gently,” she said.

“Worried about the greencoats. Why we bribed them.”

She scrunched up her face. “You never bribed us.”

“No need.”

“Again, take all the time you need to answer.”

Mr Norton returned and took his seat. As he was about to speak, a great peal of thunder broke overhead. From the night sky, rain fell in sheets, drenching the road outside.

“At last,” Mr Norton said. “The storm should clear the heat. The Watch will be back for their coats soon enough.”

Sorcha stood by the door as water dripped from the gable overhead. “I used to hate this place when it rained. The town, I mean. There were always plenty of bridges to sleep under, but the water flowed like a river beneath them.”

“Slept on the streets?” Vince asked.

“For a while. When we first got here. When I was about ten or eleven, meself and Orla ran away from our mother and her family in Dublin. They were…not kind to us. Orla sneaked us onto a boat, and we came here.”

“Don’t seem like an obvious fit for the Watch.”

Sorcha’s gaze flicked to Mr Norton, who had donned his little spectacles and returned to his note-making. “We spent the first month sleeping under Rumbath Bridge,” she said. “It has these huge lobsters carved on either side of the arch, and their claws touched at the capstone. I always thought they looked like guards at a castle gate. They made me feel safe, I suppose. Orla knew how to sew, and she did it well. She’s as fast as anything at it. Fingers move like lightning. She managed to get some work at a local tailor. The owner, Mrs Quick, took a shine to both of us and gave us a little room to live in, barely more than a pantry, really, but better than nothing. She gave us meals too. She even let Orla make clothes for us from whatever scraps were left over at the end of the day. I started fixing leaks around the shop, got a taste for working with my hands like that.

“One day, Mrs Quick was stopped on her way home from the market by three robbers. They took whatever coin she had on her, the food she’d bought, her shoes. She didn’t fight them; she just did what they asked. And then they slashed her cheek open. Just like that. For no reason. No one helped her. She hobbled home, bleeding and crying, and no one helped her. That’s not right. That’s not the way the world is supposed to be.”

Vince faced her, still frowning.

“She passed away a couple of years ago and left the business to us,” Sorcha said. “Well, to Orla, really. I’m not much of a seamstress. I haven’t the patience for it. Besides, I thought my time would be better spent here.”

Vince nodded and grunted his agreement.

Every time she thought about Mrs Quick coming into the shop in distress, it upset her. She could still see the blood stains on her pretty periwinkle gown. The look of terror on her face. She quickly wiped her eyes.

Vince drummed his sausage fingers on the desk. “Time to arrange a meeting.” He bolted from his chair, grabbed his tricorne and coat and dashed out into the rain.

Sorcha took her coat and raced after him. They picked their way along a slick road, ignoring the stench of discarded vegetables lying in the gutters. The rain showed no signs of easing up and tiny streams raced over the cobbles, back to the sea.

Sorcha pulled her collar up. “How are you going to find them?”

“Don’t need to. Only need to get word to them.”

“By finding someone from a gang? We’ve got plenty of those in the Watch House cells.”

Vince grunted. “Not about to let any of them out. Probably don’t even know where the Cream are.”

“So we’re just going to walk around until we find trouble?” She hopped over an overflowing gutter and under a sloping roof.

Vince led her down an Entry and pointed to an unmarked door in a damp stone wall. “Always know where trouble is. Means it can’t sneak up on you.”

The wooden door, already infected with rot, crumbled when Vince kicked it. He barged into the little gin house and grabbed the first person he saw. He slammed the man over a table and pointed at his face.

“Get word to the Cream. Want a meeting. Tomorrow night.”

The man, slack-jawed and sweating, nodded. Vince let him go and surveyed the room. Sorcha, staff in hand, stood behind him. A bar no longer than a man’s leg stood at the back of the room and held some bottles. Behind it, a woman wearing an apron gawped. Not a single person made a move against him. No one objected. No one so much as whispered. Half a dozen people in the room and they all watched him and held their breath. Half a dozen people all frozen in place, wide-eyed. Vince snorted and left.

When they were far enough away, Sorcha dropped her shoulders. “I had no idea there was a gin house there.”

“First rule of gang recruiting—know where all the best troublemakers drink.”

“I think you made the poor fella wet himself.”

“Better have,” Vince said. “Else I’m losing my touch.” He stopped suddenly and spoke quietly. “Going to be trouble soon. Can smell it in the air. Need to ask you a favour.”

A BLINK OF lightning lit the room as thunder rolled in from the sea, chased by sheets of rain. The town became roofed in clouds the colour of old chicken bones. The masts of ships docked in the harbour rattled and shook. Rainwater poured from guttering and gathered first as puddles, then as ponds. In a matter of minutes, the roads of Port Knot turned to brooks.

Agatha Samble stood by the crescent window in her office. Rain ran down the glass, obscuring her view but doing nothing to stop the surge of petrichor. She breathed deeply of it. While she had been the first to complain about the unseasonal heat of previous weeks, she didn’t relish the approach of this delayed autumn weather. After a showery night, a fairly dry morning had given way to another brutally thunderous lashing. Ever since the hurricane of the previous year, people in the Pell Isles became skittish with the onset of any storm.

On the other side of her office doors, her assistant, Mr Uglow, raised his voice. “Sir, please you can’t just…”

“Think you can stop me?” The doors banged open, and Vince Knight barged in, red-faced and ready for a fight. He held up a copy of the morning newspaper. “Can’t do this.”

Rabbit sat down and composed herself. She set her jaw, absolutely determined not to show any fear. “I know how it sounds, Mr Knight, but—”

“Ridiculous! Hobbled, we are. Hobbled!”

“You can go, Mr Uglow. Please, Mr Knight, sit down and take some water. You look fit to burst.”

He rubbed his huge hand over his mouth, flattening his snowy white beard. The laces of his shirt were undone, revealing a slice of his brawny chest and the tattoos thereon. His trousers—not breeches made from thick linen as befitted a worker—were rumpled. Evidently, he’d come straight to her office from his shift with the Watch. He likely hadn’t even slept yet.

“Greencoats patrolling in the day makes the Watch look weak. Like we’re not up to the task.”

“From what I hear, you needed Captain Godgrave’s forces at the docks the other day.”

“Would have taken care of it ourselves.” He paced the floor, jostling the paper every now and then as though trying to shake loose the words printed upon it.

“But you didn’t,” Agatha said. “And the public knows you didn’t.”

“Thought you didn’t want us working with the greencoats?”

“I don’t.”

“But you don’t mind them having their own Watch?”

“You are the Night Watch. The clue is in the name. If the C.T.C. wants to patrol during the daytime, there’s nothing you or I can do about it. It’s their money, their time, their resources. Anyone is free to enforce the peace in the town. You’re just lucky up until now no one else has wanted to.” She took a deep breath. “Look here, Mr Knight, I am no happier than you are about the situation. But it does confirm my suspicion that Swan is vying for control of the council.”

“Swan wants your position?”

“I believe so, yes. I believe she arranged all this in advance. I believe it’s the sole reason Captain Godgrave is on Blackrabbit. And I believe he’s here to stay.”

He stopped pacing for a moment, considering his options. His heavy brow knotted, his eye darting. Agatha wondered if the eye covered by the patch moved with it? Did it move at all? Was there even any eye present?

“Opening salvo, then,” he said. “Give them the town during the day. Make my Watch look weak. Swoop in and take over our duties.”

“We see it the same way, Mr Knight. Once the C.T.C. controls law and order in the town, it strengthens Swan’s position. She’ll garner greater public support, and support from the rest of the council.”

He stopped and tutted. “People won’t stand for it,” he said. “Armed soldiers on the streets? Watching their every movement? Be riots.”

“At the moment, their choice is armed soldiers or armed gangs,” Agatha said. “Which would you prefer? On second thoughts, don’t answer. I’d rather not know. I put you in charge because I thought you could convince the gangs to stand down. Or at least would know how to bust them. It appears I was wrong. Have you even tried talking to them?”

“Have a meeting with the leaders tonight.”

“Make it count, Mr Knight. For all our sakes.”

He threw the newspaper onto her desk and marched out, brushing past Agatha’s husband.

“Was that…?”

Agatha nodded and greeted him with a kiss on the cheek. The tip of his waxed moustache tickled her.

“He’s so big!” Aldo said. “He had to duck on the way out. How did he go about the town for decades without being seen?”

“I dread to think,” Agatha said.

Aldo sat at her desk and took the newspaper. “Word has gotten out, then.”

Agatha sighed and sat in her leather chair. Rain slashed against the window. “I hoped we’d get another day or two to prepare.”

“You’ll be fine,” Aldo said, taking her hand. “You’ve been Rabbit for a long time. The people support you.”

“For now.” Agatha squeezed his warm hand. “Sooner or later, every tide must turn.”