and vault rooms and cunning tripwires and ingenious traps she had faced in her career, they could all be relegated to experience now. Merely the practice she’d needed to hone her craft to the level necessary to break into Parliament and spirit away its most valuable symbol of power. Things wouldn’t be the same in a couple of months, after she’d lain low long enough for the hue and cry the newssheets would raise over this crime to fade away. Where would the fun be in facing down the run-of-the-mill protections guarding a merchant lord’s antiquities after this? It would be like a master painter reduced to setting up an easel opposite the capital’s national gallery and capturing the likeness of tourists in charcoal for thruppence a caricature. Well, at least she would always carry the warmth of her memories of having humbugged every one of the honourable members of the House of Guardians. The outrage of this crime a slap in the face to every one of the smug, superior aristocrats … the gallants who in a rightful world would have been Charlotte’s equal in station.
And she could use the time to lay low to avoid the fate the mad ex-parson Jethro Daunt and his hulking, malfunctioning half-steamman friend seemed to think was lurking around the corner, waiting to befall her. Money would help. Money always did. It was amazing how being rich could cushion you from the worst the world had to throw it to you. Charlotte could speak with authority on that. Her shameful memory of having been so hungry as an abandoned child that she had been reduced to eating grass and leaves. Grubby and crawling on her knees, cramps slicing across her stomach like a hundred knives being plunged into her. Bile rising in her throat as she tried to chew down on coarse grass. Real hunger, not just being ready for dinner. That had been close to the time when she had first found Charlotte, taken pity on her … another stab of shame, more deserved this time. The gypsy woman. The gypsy.
Money? No, money wasn’t a family’s love, but it was as much a comfort as Charlotte required. So much money she’d taken over the years. Then, in a fit of irony, she’d spread it out across all of the capital’s major banks and counting houses, just in case there was a run on one of them and Charlotte lost her savings. Security. With enough money she would have security; she would know peace. If she got ill, she could afford to pay for doctors and medicine. If she got hungry, she could pay for food to still the pain of hunger. If one of the people she cared for ran into hard times, then she could help them to survive too. Charlotte just needed a large enough amount of money and then she would be protected, for now and forever. It was strange, how she could fill her accounts with silver and gold and notes of the realm, the amount on deposit curiously swelling on its own account as interest was applied. But it could never grow larger than the fear of what might happen to a young woman all alone in the world. The fear always expanded faster than the money. Perhaps that was the nature of fear. Or perhaps it was the nature of money. Still, having money always helped. There was no doubt about that.
Charlotte’s reverie was broken by the intrusion of the red-coated sentry as she approached the end of the corridor where the Master of Bells had passed a minute earlier.
‘You, I don’t know,’ said the soldier, a ham-sized fist stretching out to halt her.
‘I’m one of the new grease monkeys working on the Bell Tower,’ said Charlotte.
‘Young for it,’ said the soldier, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. ‘Staff in the tower are mutton, not lamb. Letters after their name, with apprenticeships to their machines and a way with cogs. Now you, you look like lamb to me.’
Charlotte sighed. She was tired. Using the jewel, the Eye of Fate, so frequently in such a short space of time was a terrible drain on her, but it couldn’t be helped. Usually she embraced its touch. She became a different person when she used the jewel on the stage. More confident. The fears and worries of life a distant, fleeting thing. Her jealousies and ambitions and fears of failure and loneliness melting away. But too much use and the jewel grew heavy … ice spreading out across her blood as she shifted her blouse, the soft blue nimbus from the crystal reaching out from her chest and drifting towards the sentry as though the fog were the softest of cigar smokes.
‘Look into the light,’ Charlotte urged. ‘There’s no lambs inside the light, no mutton, no apprenticeships or cogs.’
Blinking furiously, the soldier stumbled back, the light splitting into a forest of fractal branches as it caressed the cheeks around his sideburns
‘You have a brother or a sister with children?’ Charlotte asked, trying not to grimace as the cold spread through her veins, sapping away at her strength.
‘A brother,’ mumbled the soldier, ‘with six little ones.’
‘Then you recognize your niece.’ Charlotte tried to smile, even as the pressure of the jewel pressed down against her lungs. ‘The niece who you’ve been showing around the debating chamber now that Parliament is shut for the night.’
‘Yes,’ the soldier returned her smile without any of the pain that Charlotte felt, ‘I know my niece, my Alice.’
‘We need to go,’ said Charlotte. ‘You had better get me out into the square before the colonel of the House Guards finds out that you have been larking about on duty with your family.’
‘Bloody Nora, lass, you’re going to cost me my corporal’s stripes,’ moaned the soldier. ‘Let’s go!’
‘Yes,’ said Charlotte, pushing the jewel out of sight once more. ‘Let’s.’
‘Thank you for showing me around, uncle,’ said Charlotte as the soldier unlocked a sentry door in the high spear-headed railings that surrounded Parliament. ‘I won’t say a thing. I don’t want to get you into trouble.’
‘Off with you, girl,’ said the corporal, nervously glancing behind him to make sure they were unobserved. ‘Don’t say a thing to your ma. You’ll get me into right trouble, you will.’
Charlotte winked at him and slipped away into the night. The force of her mesmerism was similar to a waking dream. Give it a couple of days and the soldier would be hard-pressed to tell if his niece’s visit had been real or a fancy he’d imagined. He was in good company. There would be plenty of parliamentary staff who would be experiencing the same sense of confusion over the next couple of days. But there was one man for whom the glamour she had cast would hopefully last at least a few hours more. She had made sure it was a strong one. The Master of the Bells was sitting in a nearby tavern waiting for his apprentice to join him for a last drink before he wound his way home. And Charlotte did not want to disappoint him. Not with the sceptre of the last king of Jackals wrapped up in rags inside the master’s tool case. That, surely, was worth raising a cup of ale to. She rubbed her arms as she crossed the street, dodging into the shadows of one of the tailor shops that specialized in the robes, wigs, and finery of the myriad positions filled by Parliament’s masters and servants. A warm hansom cab ride to the tavern? No, Charlotte hardly had the strength left to wipe the cabbie’s memory of the journey, and she had come too far to leave a careless trail from Parliament’s railings back to her home. Even the dullards in Ham Yard might get lucky once, and by tomorrow they would be a legion of constables and inspectors crawling over the streets desperate for witnesses. There’s a cheery thought.
Charlotte’s arm was beginning to ache from the weight of the long toolbox and the sceptre concealed within. Just another worker winding her way home through Middlesteel’s streets and lanes after a full day’s graft, nothing out of the ordinary to be remembered by the townspeople trudging their way back from mills and clerks’ rooms. Damson Robinson’s establishment still seemed to be working late, oil lamps visible through the cracks of closed blinds. Of all the things I can depend on, Damson Robinson’s waiting up to take receipt of our crime lord’s share of tonight’s bounty is pretty high on the list.
Charlotte
