Chapter Twenty-Two

VINCE LAY NAKED on his bed as James dressed—first his shirt, then his breeches, then his boots. He closed the buttons of his silk waistcoat—charcoal grey, embroidered with flowers and little bees—and pulled on his overcoat. He stood before a looking glass and fixed his auburn hair.

“Don’t need to be fussy,” Vince said. “No one knows you round here.”

“I’m not doing it for the benefit of other people. I’m doing it for myself. A tidy appearance for a tidy mind, as my father always says.”

“Never met my dad,” Vince said. “Turned out to be a pirate. Dead now.”

“A pirate? I wonder if he and my father ever crossed paths? He was a noted pirate hunter, as it happens. At sea for most of my childhood. They may well have tussled on the open waves. My mother was left to raise me alone. Much like you from the sounds of it.”

Vince shook his head. “Mum got the local orphanage to do it. Wasn’t any use to her until I was old enough to push a broom or carry a coal scuttle. Runs the asylum now. Worked for her before the Watch.”

James faced him, his eyes softening, his hands open by his side. Crabmeat plodded up the stairs and lay outside the open bedroom door.

Vince fiddled with the corner of his pillow. “Could have anyone you want,” he said. “Came here instead.”

James sat on the edge of the bed. “I have no plans to propose, if that’s what you’re thinking. I find you attractive. I think I’m right in saying the feeling is mutual. Whatever is happening in our professional lives, I see no reason why we can’t enjoy each other’s company from time to time.” He leaned in and kissed Vince on the forehead.

Vince fell quiet for a moment. “Usually the way. Only good for bedding and brawling.”

“And so very good at both,” James said. “But speaking of professional life, what about these gang leaders? Lambshead and the rest? Did you know them from before?”

Vince lay with one arm behind his head. The other on James’s thigh. He nodded.

“I suppose they must have been your lieutenants?”

“Just grunts. Talented ones, mind. Best people I had died when the hurricane struck. Last year. All of us were in a pub called the Dogtooth. Over in Gull’s Reach. Hurricane took a whole tenement building down on our heads. Buried me alive. No light. Just darkness and dust. Like being in my grave.”

James laid his hand on Vince’s and gripped it tightly.

“Thought about just lying there,” Vince said. “On my back. Letting the darkness swallow me. Forever. But started digging instead. Tried to get closer to the noise. Hurricane was still raging. Felt air on my skin. Followed it. Burst through to the surface. Shouted to others. No answer. All dead.”

“That must have been horrendous.” James’s bluster had gone entirely. His voice mellow and soothing, his beetle-brow narrowed.

“Still dream about it sometimes,” Vince said. “Wake up with a weight on my chest. Can’t breathe properly. Anyway. Two other gang members, Penhallow and Palk, filled the void. Useless pair. Schemers. Tried to kill me a few months ago. How I ended up wearing this.” He gestured to his eyepatch. “In the gaolhouse now. Both of them. Crabmeat was theirs first. Liked me better though. Didn’t you, boy?”

Crabmeat wagged his tail without lifting his head from the floor.

“So,” James said, “the current gang leaders were below those two? I’m sorry, I can only think of it all in terms of rank.”

“Not too dissimilar,” Vince said. “Penhallow and Palk went into hiding when I left. Always crowing about taking over from me. Chance came but they bottled it.” He hesitated then, uncertain how much more he should say. But then he remembered the cheering of the crowd at Bezzle Bridge. “Know how the gangs were at war for a while? Celeste, Lambshead, and Littletar came up with an idea–concocted the fanciful notion of a dangerous fourth gang to keep everyone in line. Truth is–the three of them formed what they’re calling a Shadow Council. Controlling everything from behind the scenes. Like I used to.”

“I see.” James rubbed his thumb across the back of Vince’s hand as he spoke. “They’ve done quite a job of it. Since you’re trusting me with this information, are you going to let me see under your eyepatch now?”

“Better leave some mystery,” Vince said.

On his way out, James insisted that Vince sign the portrait he’d drawn. Vince did so with a just simple V.

James then rolled up the portrait and slipped it into his pocket. “A memento of a memorable evening,” he said.

After escorting James out of the house and locking the door, Vince returned to his bed. He should have been at the Watch House, but what was the point? The council was clearly going to give the Night Watch duties over to the Sentinels, sooner or later. And James had been right. Vince couldn’t take orders. He couldn’t traipse around town with greencoat troops who were armed to the teeth and ready to shoot anyone who stepped out of line.

Crabmeat climbed up and made himself comfortable on the end of the bed. Vince rubbed him behind the ear. It would still be a couple of hours until sunset and the start of his shift on the Watch. He rolled over, pulled the blankets up to his chest, and fell into a deep sleep.

THE COUNCIL OF Blackrabbit had gathered around their polished oak table. Above them, the domed ceiling of the council chamber painted with stars. Everyone was in attendance, except for Fox who would be last to enter, as usual.

Rabbit sat bolt upright and fidgeted with her mask. She’d been in politics long enough to feel when there was something new in the air, some change in atmosphere. She cursed the feathered masks they all wore, covering the top half of every face and preventing her from reading the expressions of her fellow councillors. Although perhaps that was part of the point of them. Perhaps their forebears had devised the ideal system to put everyone on equal footing.

Mr Uglow opened the chamber doors to admit Fox. She strode in, unapologetic for her lateness, and took her seat, smiling broadly all the while. She wore white, as she usually did. A stole of rabbit fur. Fox wasn’t given to subtlety.

Swan knocked the table to get everyone’s attention. “I think we all know why we’re here. The Watch’s failure to subdue the uprising in Gull’s Reach must surely be the final straw.”

Rabbit used her most imperious voice. “Mr Knight assures me he was well on his way to solving the tensions without violence.”

Badger laughed and held his hand up. “Surely you jest? Mr Knight doesn’t know anything but violence.”

“He’s trying his best,” Rabbit said.

“This town needs more than Mr Knight’s best,” Swan said. “It deserves more. Which is why I believe it’s time we end Rabbit’s little experiment and hand the duty of keeping this town safe over to Captain Godgrave and the Blackrabbit Sentinels. Day and night.”

Badger and Magpie both nodded in agreement.

Rabbit turned to Fox and held her hands out. “Well? Aren’t you going to speak up? Isn’t the whole point of Fox to be the dissenting voice?”

“It is,” Fox said, “but I think you’re playing my part today, darling. Look, we all admire you for giving Mr Knight a chance—”

“Speak for yourself,” Swan said.

“—but even you must see he’s just not up to the task. He’s had two substantial failures of late, not to mention the fact the public are deathly afraid of him. It was a good and noble effort on your part to try to help him redeem himself, but I think it’s time we wake up to the truth and put the good of the town first.”

VINCE AWOKE TO the furious barking of Crabmeat. And then he started coughing. He rolled out of bed, landing with a thump on the bare floorboards in his smoke-filled bedroom. Staying low, he grabbed his boots and trousers, and scrambled downstairs to his front door. Someone banged on it, over and over. He undid the latch and fell out on the road beneath the bridge, coughing and retching.

On his hands and knees, with Crabmeat licking at his face, it took him a moment to come to his senses. The Watch House burned. A crowd of neighbours had gathered, some carrying buckets of water. Vince rose to his feet. “Anyone come out of there?”

Exeter came running from around the corner and skidded to a stop. “Vince! What’s happened?”

“Supposed to be watching the prisoners!”

“I had to go out. I was only gone five minut— Where are you going?”

Still nude, Vince slipped his wide feet with their stubby toes into his boots. He wrapped his trousers around his neck to cover his nose and mouth and ran headlong into the closed door of the Watch House. It burst under his force, belching out black, acrid smoke. He kept his head down and made his way to the cell doors, banging his legs against the desks as he went. The cells were still locked, the prisoners within panicking. They rattled the bars, shouting at him, swearing at him. Some fell to the floor, trying to escape the smoke choking their lungs, burning their throats. Walter stared at him, tears in his eyes, without saying a word.

Cursing himself for leaving the keys upstairs, Vince fought through the smoke to his desk. He took his cane from the wall and pulled on the octopus handle, revealing a short sword blade. Still coughing, he jabbed the blade into the cell door lock and heaved. The lock popped. The sword’s tip snapped. The prisoners ran for the door, pushing past one another in a rush to escape the blaze. Last of all, Walter fell out and into Vince’s arms.

Clutching the now-sheathed octopus sword in one hand and Walter’s arm in the other, Vince pushed on through the flames. He lay Walter on the ground outside while Exeter brought him some water. The prisoners all scattered and ran. Vince had no intentions of chasing after them.

He stood before the burning Watch House, his naked flesh tigered with soot. The fire wrapped its fingers around his workplace, around his quarters, pulling them down, brick by brick. The warming light of it danced across his bare, inked skin. He roared at the top of his voice, causing the onlookers to flinch.

“Um, I think you should put some clothes on,” Exeter said.

Vince pulled on his trousers, fixing the braces in place over his heavy shoulders.

One of his neighbours had deployed a set of horological bellows by attaching them to a set of pipes on a building across the road. The bellows pumped the water from the pipes through a long, leather hose and onto the Watch House. Other neighbours continued dumping bucket after bucket of water onto the blaze. The flames crackled as they licked from the windows of his lodgings, like angry tongues from angry mouths.

The rest of the Watch had arrived, expecting to report for duty, but instead pitched in to help douse the fire. After several hours, they succeeded. One neighbour had brought Vince a coral-coloured banyan just about big enough to put on but not up to the task of closing over his belly. Under a starry night sky, he stood before the smouldering ruins of his new home. Crabmeat sat against his leg.

“Good of the neighbours to help,” Sorcha said.

“Just worried about their own houses.”

“We spoke to some young lads who were nearby,” Sorcha said. “They saw some people lurking behind the Watch House. They must have waited for Exeter to leave and then set the fire. The boys saw two men. One was bald, had a little purple gemstone earring.”

“Philip Talan,” Vince said. “Warning from the Gunbrides.”

“More than that,” Sorcha said. “You could have been killed. So could Walter and the other prisoners.”

Walter had been propped up against a wall by a neighbour and kindly given a cup of brandy to calm his nerves. He hadn’t budged an inch since. “They knew we were in there,” he said softly. “They didn’t care. They didn’t care.”

“There goes the cache of weapons from the docks,” Exeter said. “I suppose if the Gunbrides couldn’t have them then no one could.”

“Where you will stay tonight?” Sorcha asked.

Vince snorted. “Go back to the asylum, I suppose. Still have a room there.”

“You can’t travel all that way tonight,” Sorcha said. “You can stay with me.”

Vince shook his head. “Can’t put you in danger.”

“This was my workplace too. I could have just as easily been in there. I’m already in danger,” Sorcha said. “Come on.”

THE WATCH GATHERED in the Quick tailor shop. Vince, still in his ill-fitting banyan, leaned on the counter while Frank and Clive squeezed onto a chaise lounge. Mr Norton stood with his back to the door, crossed his arms, stared at the floor, and occasionally shook his head.

“What will you do now?” Sorcha lit another striker lantern. “And don’t just grunt at me.”

“Don’t know,” Vince said. “Sleep here. See what the world looks like tomorrow.”

Clive fiddled with the mechanism in his metal leg. “Well, we can’t go on patrol without our equipment.”

“And I’ve lost this month’s records,” Mr Norton said.

Sorcha hopped up onto the shop counter and swung her legs. “We’ll all have to warn our families to take extra care. In case the Gunbrides attack our houses too. Having you here is—”

“Risky,” Vince said.

“I was going to say extra protection.”

“I’ve had word from a friend who works at the town hall,” Mr Norton said. “The council have officially decided to allow the Sentinels to patrol the town. Day and night.”

“That’s it, then,” said Sorcha. “We’re done.”

Vince cracked one of his knuckles. “James said there was a place for us in the Sentinels.”

“I didn’t realise you were on first name terms with Captain Godgrave,” Mr Norton said.

Sorcha rolled her eyes. “I won’t be signing up to the C.T.C. any time soon.”

Clive raised his eyebrows. “I’ve done my time with them. And I can’t really picture you as a greencoat, Vince.”

“Well, if you’re not going to wear a uniform, you’ll need some other clothes,” Sorcha said. “Stand up straight. Come on. Let me measure you.”

“Have my measurements from the shirt you made?”

“Unless you have a stash of clothes in Captain’s Godgrave’s bedroom, you’re going to need some new trousers.” She produced a tape measure from a drawer, ran it around his generous waist, then up his inside leg.

“Steady,” Vince said.

“Calm down. You’re not my type. I prefer men who aren’t covered in soot and old enough to be my grandfather.”

“Oi! Cheeky brat!”

“What? You are. And the white hair makes you look even older.” She jotted some figures in a book and sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to get used to this. Looks as though Orla got her way. I’ll be working in the family business after all.”

“I thought you hated your sister,” Mr Norton said.

Sorcha shot a look to the back of the shop and gritted her teeth. “Keep your voice down! I don’t hate her. We just…don’t get on the way we used to. And I didn’t want to spend my life running my hands up old men’s legs. But it’s not as if I have much choice now.”

Vince squinted at her before turning to Exeter. “You. Explain.”

Exeter had been ignoring most of the conversation from the corner where he stood. “What’s to explain?”

“Supposed to be guarding the prisoners,” Vince said.

“I was,” Exeter said. “I guarded them all day long, while you were off in Gull’s Reach with your friends in the Gunbrides.”

Vince thumped his fist on the counter.

Exeter raised his voice and avoided looking at him. “I can’t have been gone more than ten minutes.”

“Not what you said when you arrived at the fire. Said you’d been gone five minutes.”

Exeter thrust his hands into the pockets of his overcoat. “Five, ten, what’s the difference?”

“Could have been the difference between the Watch House going up in flames or not.”

“I had to go and see a friend, if you must know.”

“Friend,” Vince said. “Explains why you came back in that state.”

Exeter looked down and tucked in his errant shirt tail. “It was your idea to build cells in the Watch House. Pardon me if I’m not prepared to adjourn my entire life to accommodate your whims.”

“Don’t need to worry about my whims any longer,” Vince said.

“The gangs won’t like them,” Walter said from the corner. “The Sentinel patrols, I mean. You think things are bad now, wait until the gangs start rubbing up against armed officers on their streets. Mark my words, it will be trouble.”

“Well, it won’t be our problem,” Mr Norton said. “Why are you still here, by the way? Why haven’t you run off yet?”

“I’ve got nowhere else to go. I’ve seen what everyone thinks of me. I’m expendable. I’m safer here with you lot.”

Mr Norton lifted his coat and turned the doorknob. “Well, if there’s no more Watch, there’s no sense in my being here.” On his way out he stopped and turned to Vince. “Who would have thought you’d be more of a threat to the Watch by working with us instead of against us?”

Once the rest of the Watch had left, Sorcha fetched a blanket and some pillows for Walter. He settled on the floor by the fireplace. Crabmeat sniffed him a few times before laying with his head on Walter’s lap.

After washing the soot from himself, Vince followed Sorcha to a tiny room on the top floor of the shop decorated with floral wallpaper. She closed the door behind her, leaving Vince alone with his thoughts. He lay on the soft, skinny bed and stared at the ceiling.

He’d been handed everything he’d needed on a silver plate. A position of worth, a roof over his head, a chance to make up for his past misdeeds. And now look. How quickly it had all slipped from his grasp. How poorly he’d handled the situation. How perfectly he’d failed.