The Anubis Gates

He looked up at the remaining beggar lords. Their spider web hammocks were still swaying back and forth across the abyss, though they’d stopped yelling and waving and now just peered cautiously down, their eyes glittering in the smoky red glow from the oil lamps. Horrabin’s gaze dropped to the corpse, and then swung to the thief lords sitting at the long table. Miller, the one who had been loudest in the mutinous uproar, avoided meeting his eyes.

“Carrington,” Horrabin said softly.

“Aye,” said his lieutenant, stepping forward. He still limped from the beating he’d taken in one of the Haymarket brothels, but the bandages were gone, and his look of frustrated anger was tonight especially intense.

“Kill Miller for me.” As the suddenly pale and gasping thief lord kicked his chair back and scrambled to his feet, Carrington drew a pistol from his belt, poked it casually in Miller’s direction and fired. The ball struck Miller in the back of the throat through his open mouth, punching out a hole over his collar.

Horrabin spread his hands as the body hit the stones. “You see,” he said loudly before the tumult could start up again—then went on more quietly, “I’ll feed all of you… one way or the other.”

The clown smiled. It had been good theater. But where was Doctor Romany? Had all his promises, as Miller had insisted, been lies to manipulate the London thieves into furthering some privately profitable scheme of his own? Horrabin, who knew more than the rest about what was supposed to have happened, was concealing a disquiet greater than Miller’s had been. Was the king assassinated yet? If so, why hadn’t any of the clown’s surface runners reported it? Or was the news being suppressed? Where was Romany?

In the silence the unsteady, jarring footsteps from the corridor sounded loud. Horrabin looked up, though without much interest, since it wasn’t Romany’s twanging step, and his eyes widened in surprise when the newcomer stepped into the hall, for it was Romany after all, but he was wearing high platform boots instead of his spring-shoes.

The clown cast a triumphant glance around the company, then bowed grotesquely to the newcomer. “Ah, your Worship,” he piped, “we’ve been awaiting your arrival with, in a couple of cases,” he waved at the two corpses, “terminal suspense.” Then Horrabin’s smile faltered and he looked more closely, for the visitor was pale and reeling, and blood was running sluggishly from his nose and ears. “You’re… Horrabin?” the man croaked. “Take me … to Doctor Romany’s camp… now.” As the clown blinked uncomprehendingly, a voice screeched from the derelict’s corner. “No use going there, Pierre! That whole plan’s as dead as Ramses! But I can lead you to the man that wrecked it—and if you can take him and wring him dry, you’ll have a better thing than just England dead, Fred!” A few of the penny toss crowd had sufficiently recovered their aplomb to cheer and whistle at this pronouncement.

“Carrington,” whispered Horrabin, furious and embarrassed, “get that creature out of here. In fact, kill it.” He smiled nervously at Romanelli. “I do apologize, uh, sir. Our… democratic policies are sometimes too—”

But Romanelli was staring with almost horrified astonishment at the weightless derelict. “Silence!” he rasped.

“Yes, do shut him up, Carrington,” said Horrabin.

“I mean you, clown,” said Romanelli. “Get out of here if you can’t shut up. You,” he added to Carrington, “stay where you are.” Then almost reluctantly he turned to the ruin-faced derelict again. “Come here,” he said.

The thing flapped and jiggled across the floor and tapdanced to a stop in front of him.

“You’re him,” Romanelli said wonderingly, “the ka the Master drew eight years ago. But… that face wound was taken … decades ago, by the look of it. And your weight—you’re nearly at the disintegration point. How can this have happened in just eight years? Or no, since I last spoke with you?”

“It’s them gates Fikee opened,” the thing chittered. “I went through one, and was a long time making my way back. But let’s discuss it on the ride, Clyde—the man that knows it all is staying at The Swan With Two Necks in Lad Lane, and if you can take him to Cairo for a thorough sifting, then nothing since 1802 will have been a waste of time.” The thing turned its eye on Horrabin. “We’ll need six—no, ten—of your biggest and coolest boys, ones smart enough to grab and bind a big man without killing him or denting his precious brain. Oh, and a couple of carriages, and fresh horses.”

There was some snickering from the crowd, and Horrabin said, with a not very confident attempt at bravado, “I do not take orders from a damned… walking cast-off snakeskin.”

Romanelli opened his mouth to contradict him, but the ragged creature in the middle of the floor waved him to silence.