“I gots a message fer the Injun princess,” said a reedy voice. Chevie opened the door and there stood a consumptive

boy with blood on his gums and the rattle of phlegm in his windpipe.

Chevie dragged the boy inside then pinned him to the wall for a quick frisk. Garrick would not be above booby-trapping a child. He would probably consider it funny.

“Don’t rip me froat out, miss. I only done it for the sweety.” The boy had nowhere to conceal anything, and there was nothing concealed. In his hand he held a square of brown packing paper and on it was carefully drawn a window.

The message was clear: Go to the window.

Sure, thought Chevie. Like I’m going to the window. But she did, ducking underneath the sill, cocking one eye at the ripped corner of paper, peering out at the sun rising through the pearly fog, scanning the rooftops.

She could see nothing odd. Nothing, that is, odder than a view of the nineteenth century.

Bowed roofs and chimney stacks. A distant spire.

No, not a distant spire. A man on the rooftops, a red light flashing in his fist.

The strange red light sliced through the fog, a hundred years ahead of its time, painting a dot on the paper plugging the tenement window.

“Down,” called Chevie, diving at both boys, dragging them to the floor, and not a moment too soon. Six shots punctured the paper and knocked fist-sized chunks from the brick wall. Dust clouds swirled in the tubes of light admitted by the bullet holes.

Chevie held the boys down until she felt that the attack was past.

“He’s found us,” gasped Riley.

The boards creaked under their weight as though collapse was imminent. The stench of boiled tripe was stronger with their noses to the wood, and through a gap in the floor Chevie could see a dozen figures rousing from their sleep in the cramped murk below.

“If you are well enough to leave,” she said to Riley, “I have had quite enough of the Old Nichol.”

“You try keeping up with me,” said Riley, and commenced crawling for the doorway.

Unto Dust

THE OLD NICHOL ROOKERY. BETHNAL GREEN. LONDON. 1898

Albert Garrick had spent most of the previous night in discreet observation of the house on Bedford Square until one of his stooges sent him word of the Injun princess’s whereabouts. There had also been a Battering Ram keeping an eye on the place, but the man received news from a runner at twelve bells and cleared out of his lurk.

Doubtless Otto has heard of Tibor Charismo’s fate.

So now Garrick was on the border of the Old Nichol with his marvelous weapons.

A few warning shots, he had reckoned, to smoke out my quarry.