Firearms was a bit of an exaggeration. They had Barnum’s revolver and six shots only.

The woman barked with laughter, and there was sour gin on her breath. “Bluebottles? I ain’t seen the law in here since ninety-two, when they tried to take in the traitor Giles. What a morning that was. There was enough blue blood in the gutters to wash out the cholera.”

“Have you got a room or not?” Riley insisted.

“I gots the loft spare. Cove gave up the ghost on Wednesday. Someone took him to the heap, I think.”

“How much?”

A crafty light sparked in the stinking woman’s eye. “I would take a sov.”

“I’ll wager you would, if I would be sap enough to fork one over. I have a shiny shilling here, which you can take or not. If it’s not, then we’ll be moving along down the street for ourselves.”

The woman rubbed a finger along a sparsely populated bottom gum. “I shall be taking that shiny shilling, young gent.”

Riley handed it across. “And warn any likely lads about the firearms,” he said. “I hate to waste shots on fellow killers, but if anyone tries to crack our drum, I will make an exception. Also, my companion here is a black-magic witch, and she will set fire ants a-crawling in yer brain.”

The woman flicked the coin with her yellowed thumbnail and listened to it sing.

“Fire ants,” says she, unimpressed. “I’ve had those bleeders inside me head for years.”

•••

Riley and Chevie picked their way down a hallway where the floor could have been removed from a salt-warped shipwreck: the boards jostled with each other for space and rose or fell like the ends of a seesaw, depending on the point of pressure. The passage was lined with young criminals—a collection of snakesmen, smashers, palmers, hoisters, and prowlers the likes of which would rarely be seen this side of Newgate’s watchtower. These boys smoked what they could find, which seemed to be mostly rolled-up strips of wallpaper that burned out after a drag or two and covered the lungs with paste, which made running from the coppers more troublesome than it should have been for a group of young feller-me-lads.

Every one of those boys gave Riley the evil eye on his way past, but they did not know what to make of Chevie, with her shining hair and white teeth.

“You are like an angel to these poor coves,” Riley whispered to her on the stairs. “Seeing as they do not know you like I do.”

One of the urchins had the bottle to clear his throat, calling from the upper landing, “Here, miss. Is you the Injun princess what humbled them Rams?”