"This in't the same," Scuff replied, keeping step with Monk by skipping an extra one now and then. "Them big tunnels wot they're diggin' is upsettin' folk down there. Toshers in't appy."

Toshers were the men who made their living by hunting for and picking up small objects of value that found their way into the sewers, including a remarkable amount of jewelry. They usually hunted together, for fear of the armies of rats that could rapidly strip a man down to the bone if he was unlucky enough to lose his footing and injure himself. And there was always the possibility of a buildup of methane gas given off by the sewer contents, and of course a wave of water if the rain was torrential enough.

"Why are the toshers unhappy?" Monk asked. "There'll always be sewers, just better ones."

"Change," Scuff said simply, and with exaggerated patience. "Everybody's got their stretch, their beat, if yer like, seen as yer a policeman o' sorts."

"I'm a perfectly regular policeman!" Monk defended himself.

Scuff treated that assertion with the silence it deserved. In his opinion Monk was a dangerous novice who had taken Durban's position out of a misguided idea of loyalty. He was miserably unsuited for it and was much in need of the guidance or protection of someone who knew what they were doing, such as Scuff himself. He had been born on the river, and at nine years old-or possibly ten, he wasn't sure-he knew an enormous amount, and was not too proud to learn more every day. But it was a heavy responsibility to look after a grown man who thought he knew so much more than he did.

"Is there going to be a fight over the new stretches?" Monk asked.

"Course there is," Scuff replied, sniffling. "An lots o' folk gotta move their places. 'Ow'd yer like it if some bleedin' great machine came an' crashed your 'ole street down wi'out a word, eh?"

Scuff was referring to the entire communities on the edge between honest poverty, close to destitution, and the semi-criminal underworld who lived nearly all their lives in the sewers, tunnels, and excavations beneath London. To drive a new tunnel through the old was like putting a hot poker into a wasps' nest. That had been Orme's analogy.

"I know," Monk replied. "Mr. Orme has already warned me. I'm not doing this alone, you know." He looked from left to right through the thickening fog to see if he could see the lights of any kind of food or hot-drink peddlers. The cold was like a tightening vise around them, crushing the heat out of their bodies. How did an urchin like Scuff-so thin he was merely skin and bone-survive? The baleful cry of the foghorns was growing more frequent on the water, and it was impossible to place the sound in the distortion of the mist.

" 'Ot-chestnut seller that way," Scuff said hopefully, sniffing again.