A boy stepped forward, his pants damp and brown and reeking of sewage. He dropped some odd bits of iron and thread on the table.
“Orphan tosher with a handful of crap,” said Mick with a chuckle. “It’s information I’m selling, Uncle,” said the boy.
Mick rolled his hand. “Go on, then.”
“Folks what live in the drains and workhouses”—the boy lifted his chin—“don’t all see salvation in Shiguan doings. And they’ve started learning to use iron and thread.”
“An uprising inside an uprising, then,” said Mick with a wink. “I’ll warn the knickerbockers. Milk and bread’s in the kitchen.”
The kid dashed off as Mick made a note in his ledger, and an elderly woman slouched forward and untied a shawl. An assortment of bones clacked onto the table.
“A bag of upright bones comes to me a bone grubber,” said Mick, sighing. “Old women slouch unchallenged in topsidecemeteries,” said the woman. “And you can be glad of it. These bones was Emmeline
Pankhurst’s, they was.”
Mick laughed. “The suffragette? You think my buyers want to let the women vote?”
“Your buyers, Uncle,” said the woman, “want revolutionaries. And by that measure, potent bones are these. As I hears it, she’s still setting fires up Parliament way.”
Mick’s eyes glinted as he touched an old yellow jawbone. “Pork stew. Two bowls for your trouble. Next.” He made another note in his ledger. When I was six, my dad gave me an old, rusted wagon. It was the first present I could remember him giving me. But it turned out he wanted me to drag it around the neighborhood, collecting cans and bottles.
Redeem them for him. Said I’d be safe from getting jumped because of my age. He was wrong.
I started toward the table. Cassius patted me on the shoulder and cut into line. A half dozen ragged, scar-faced men leapt from their chairs to intercept him, daggers up.
Mick looked up from his junk-laden table with a wide, yellow-toothed grin. “Cassius, my good friend! Let ’im through, will ya? But watch his friend. Him we don’t know.”
The ragged men inched back to their seats. All save one, whom Mick motioned over and whispered in his ear. The guy nodded and ducked down the back hall out of sight.
“Welcome to Little Ireland,” said Mick, mostly to me. “Or as we like to call it, the Holy Land. And I’m the king rat, don’t you know? King of the beggars.”
“It is good to see you, Mick,” said Cassius.
“From anyone else that’d be a lie.” Mick took up his pipe from the tray and puffed it deeply. “From you, my friend, it’s practically enough to coax me onto a reformer’s couch, mend me woe-begotten ways.”
Mick stood, and he and Cassius exchanged a firm forearm grasp. Then he looked not at me but at my shadow. “You’re towing a new thread-binder, Cassius.”
“Jack Solomon.” I put my hand out. “Glad to meet you.”
“Stupid thing to say until you know who I am.” Mick took my hand. “But I’ve never missed a chance yet to shake hands with a dead man.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The dispossessed body of a thanatist will remain pliable and incorruptible, ready for the return of its spirit,until its soul has moved beyond the mountain of fire.
—The Care of Flesh: A Guide for the Wize
Everyone inside RatsCastle turned their eyes on me as Cassius’s friend gripped my hand in a painful clench. The fiddler stopped playing.
Chatter subsided. In the dim light of a few gas lamps, the king rat looked me up and down.
“Nothing on you but a khopesh,” Mick finally said. “You’re fresh fish, indeed.”
I squeezed his hand as hard as I could. “I’m new maybe, but not stupid.” Mick laughed. “Word’s out, lad. Strata Chancery’s after you. Men twice as mean and half as guilty have gone by the way under their judgment. Bloody hell, Captain Burton holds our chancellor’s seat, and he once killed a boy for watching him take a piss.”
“That is hardly a fair or accurate distillation of the man,” Cassius said. “Ah, but my dear Cassius,” said Mick, “Burton is no longer a man, is he? Rather, he is a judge in a forever seat, who is spoken of poorly in the mouths of mortals.”
“Truth will defeat accusation,” Cassius argued.
