Rooftops, Soot and Salt

POV: Felix

St. Cinder's Church smelled of onions, candle wax, wet wool, and safety, in that order, and Felix would have liked to bottle it.

It stood at the end of Tallow Street where the cobbles gave out, a squat gaunt barn of black stone with a tall bell-tower leaning a little to the east, like an old man listening. Its windows had been bricked up in the great fire of '71 and never reglazed. Its nave was a long, low, echoing cavern lined with benches, and at the far end, where the altar had been, a cast-iron stove the size of a locomotive roared and ticked and breathed out waves of heat, and on top of the stove sat a pot as big as a bathtub.

"Sit," said Ma Tilly. "All of you. Not there, Felix, you'll catch your death. By the stove. Closer. Closer, lamb, you're blue."

He sat. A bowl was put in his hands. It was soup: thick, yellow, steaming, full of barley and carrot and some unnamed and delicious root, with a slab of black bread on the side, and a spoon stood up in it of its own accord. He looked at it. He looked at the woman who had given it to him, a vast, round, flour-dusted person in a kerchief and apron, with blue eyes as hard as marbles, and who had, he noticed, just put her hand on his forehead as though checking a loaf.

"You'll do," said Ma Tilly. "Eat."

He ate.

It was the best thing he had ever tasted. He told her so, with his mouth full, and she snorted, and gave him a second helping, and went on down the line.

…

They sat in a ragged circle round the stove, in the gray light of the morning, like survivors of a shipwreck. There were a few Soot Saints about the nave, children mostly, sitting on benches with their feet drawn up and their faces turned to the heat. They watched the seven strangers with wide solemn eyes. Nobody asked questions. Ma Tilly had passed word.

Roz had taken Josiah's hands.

She did it without a word, on a stool by the stove, with a basin of warm water and a roll of clean linen. She unwound the bandages. They were stiff with blood, and came away with a small sound, and Felix, who had spent a good part of his life looking at wounds under a lens, could not help but look. The palms were a ruin. Long ragged cuts, from heel to finger, red and angry and clotted; a score of tiny glass splinters, glittering, still in the skin.

"Hold still," said Roz.

"I am holding still."

"You're holding your breath. That's different." She had a pair of tweezers, and a lamp, and an expression of frowning professional calm. "Out for six. Don't look."

He looked. She drew a splinter from the heel of the thumb and dropped it with a tiny tink in a saucer. He did not make a sound. A muscle jumped in his jaw. Roz drew another. Her touch was brisk, impersonal, and so exact that Felix, watching, found himself holding his own hands out in front of him as though to check that they were still there.

"You did this for me," said Roz, quietly, not looking up.

"I did what was needed."

"That isn't an answer."

"It is the only one I have." He was staring at the stove. "Ask me again when I have another."

She said nothing. She drew another splinter. Her mouth had gone soft and rueful, at one corner, as at a joke told too gently to be heard.

Oh, thought Felix. They're talking. They don't know it, but they are.

He lowered his hands.

…

"Give me those," said a voice.

He started. Hollis had dropped onto the bench beside him with a roll of lint in his teeth. His face was gray with exhaustion, his dark hair was matted with coal dust, and there was a long cut across one cheekbone that Felix did not remember. But his eyes, in the light of the stove, were a warm and glinting brown, with those flecks of gold, and they were looking at Felix's hands.

"They're fine," said Felix. "I was only—"

"They're not. You burned them. On the pawl, or the, whatever you used in the corridor. You've got a blister the size of a dollar."

"Oh. Have I?"

"Give."

He gave.

Hollis turned the left hand over. There was indeed a blister, across the palm, white and tender, a glassy bubble where he'd gripped the hot neck of a flask. He could not recall doing it. Hollis cleaned it with a rag and a splash of Ma Tilly's whiskey, and Felix yelped; and then, with great care, with those numb gray fingers that could not feel what they were doing, he bound it up in a strip of lint.

It took him a long time. His hands were slow. He had to watch them as he worked, with the stern absorbed attention of a man threading a needle in the dark. Felix watched him watch. He saw the line between his brows. He saw the way he bit his lip when the lint slipped. He saw, with a sudden warm clutch behind the breastbone, that the clever, deft, steady hands were clumsy, and that Hollis knew it, and was doing it anyway.

"I should be doing yours," said Felix.

"You are."

"I mean, properly. You can't feel anything."

"I can see." Hollis tied off the knot. He did not let go of the hand. "It's not so bad. A man learns."

"Does it hurt?"

"Not the way you'd think."

"What way does it hurt?"

Hollis looked at him. It was a long look. His thumb moved, once, across the back of Felix's wrist, and Felix felt the pressure of it, light as a feather, and heard a very odd sound, which was his own heart, going like a rabbit's.

"Later," said Hollis. "I'll tell you later. Up top."

"Up top?"

"The roof." A glimmer of a smile. "You haven't been up to the roof."

…

The roof of St. Cinder's was reached by a ladder, a trapdoor, and a scramble across a steep slope of broken slate, and it was, Felix thought, the most beautiful place in the world.

The sun was just clearing the east wall of the Docks. It poured over the sea of chimneys and gables and warehouse roofs in long gold bars, and the smoke from a thousand stacks rose through it in slow white pillars, as straight as in a painting. Gulls wheeled. Down in the street, a milk cart rattled by. A woman was shaking a rug from a window. A boy ran past with a bundle of newspapers, shouting something that was lost in the wind. The air was clear, and cold, and tasted of coal and salt, and their breath hung before them in white clouds.

They sat in the angle of the roof, against the bell-tower, with their backs to the warm stone and their knees drawn up. Hollis had brought a loaf. It was still hot from Ma Tilly's oven, and the steam rose from the torn end of it in a soft wreath. They shared it, in silence, passing it back and forth, tearing off pieces with their fingers.

"My father," said Felix, finally, "gave me a ledger."

Hollis waited.

"I told you that. Didn't I? When I was nine, and broke the window." He looked at his hands. "I've been thinking about it. All night. In the, in the Archive. You know, there were cards on every vial. Names, dates, clerks' handwriting. And at the bottom of every one, in the same pen, the same hand, the same tidy little signature..." He swallowed. "A. Whitcomb. Approved."

"I saw."

"I knew he was on the Council. I knew he signed things. I'm not a fool. But I thought they were papers, Hollis. Deeds. Contracts. Things in drawers. I never thought..." He stopped. "He's very careful about his penmanship. He taught me. He said a man's signature should be a thing he's not ashamed of. He said you should always be able to read it."

"That's a hard one."

"It's, yes." He gave a short breathless laugh. "I had it in my pocket the whole time. Did I tell you? I've had it since the day Dex hired me. He gave me a bar of gold. It had MT stamped on the end. I thought it was funny. I stood in my attic and laughed. I thought, how perfect. Father's money, paying for a plot against Father's own Council." He dug in his coat. His fingers closed on something cold and heavy, and he drew it out and held it up in the sun: a stubby gold ingot, dull yellow, with two sharp letters on one face. "It's still funny. Isn't it? Somebody out there has a very good sense of humor."

Hollis looked at the gold.

He looked at it for some time. A kind of wariness had come into his face. It was a thing Felix had not seen before, something narrow and quiet and thoughtful, the look of a man reading cards across a table.

"That's a lot of money to pay a chemist."

"It's a retainer."

"For a smoke bomb."

"It was for the, the whole operation. He explained."

"Who's the client, Felix?"

"I don't, he said it was anonymous. A patron. Someone with, with money who wanted the Stone." He stopped. "Someone with a grudge against the Council."

"Someone," said Hollis, "who keeps their money in your father's bank."

Felix opened his mouth. He found there was nothing in it.

"It's likely nothing," said Hollis, quickly. "Half the city banks with Meridian Trust. It's like saying the man who paid you drinks from a well."

"Yes. Of course."

"I'm just saying."

"Yes." He rubbed his thumb over the letters. "It's very probably a coincidence."

Neither of them believed it. They sat there in the gold light, with the warm loaf between them, and let the thing lie.

…

"I'd shoot him in the leg," said Hollis.

Felix looked up. "What?"

"Your father." He had his chin on his knees, and his eyes on the horizon. His voice was easy, drawling, almost lazy. "If it came to it. Not to kill. Just one clean round, through the thigh. He'd go down. He'd sit there in the road and look up at me. He'd have to think about it for six weeks."

"You can't shoot my father!"

"I'm only saying."

"He's, he's a person!"

"Barely."

"He's my person." Felix was scandalized. He was also, to his amazement, laughing. "Hollis! You can't just say you'd shoot a man in the leg—"

"All right," said Hollis. "All right." He held up a numb hand. "Not the leg."

"Thank you."

"The boot."

"The boot?"

"I'd shoot his boot. Right through the toe. Just so it'd make a hole." His mouth was twitching. "He's got very nice boots, hasn't he? I'd think it'd bother him more than the leg."

Felix stared at him. And then it came over him, an enormous helpless wave of laughter, rolling up from his chest like a bubble up a pipe. He put his head on his knees. He laughed until the tears ran down his face, and he could not stop, and beside him Hollis was laughing too, a low rough rusty sound, as of a hinge that hasn't been used. The gulls shrieked. Somewhere in the street below a woman shouted at a child.

It stopped, as such things do.

They sat in the sudden quiet, panting, wiping their eyes. The sun had risen another hand's breadth. Felix could feel it on the side of his face, warm as a palm.

"Felix," said Hollis.

"Mm."

"I'm going to do something."

"All right."

"I'd like you to tell me if you don't want me to."

Felix turned his head.

Hollis was looking at him. The long dark lashes. The cut on the cheek. The light brown eyes, very serious, very bright, with an expression in them that he had seen before only in the face of a man about to bet his life. Hollis's mouth was a little open. He seemed to be breathing carefully. He lifted one hand, the numb one, the bandaged one, and held it a few inches from Felix's cheek, not touching, and waited.

Oh, thought Felix.

Oh. Oh, I see.

He had read about it. He had read about everything. He knew the mechanism of the thing: the chemistry of it, the flush of the blood, the dilation of the pupil. He had a perfectly good understanding of what was going to happen. It did not help in the slightest. He had never been so frightened or so happy in his entire life.

"Yes," he said. His voice cracked. "Yes. Please. I'd like that."

Hollis kissed him.

It was not skillful. It was clumsy, and dry, and slightly crooked; their noses collided; Felix's spectacles got in the way and tilted sideways and had to be taken off, by a gentle bandaged hand, and set aside on the slates. Hollis tasted of whiskey and bread and coal smoke. His mouth was warm. His lips were chapped. He kissed the way he did everything, carefully, with his whole attention, like a man walking a rope. And somewhere in the middle, with a kind of shiver, he put his hand against the back of Felix's neck, and Felix, who could not feel a thing but that, felt the whole world fall away like a cloth from a table.

When it ended, they stayed there, foreheads together, breathing.

"That was," said Hollis, "I'm not very good at that."

"You're wonderful."

"I'm not."

"I have no basis for comparison," said Felix, "but you're wonderful."

Hollis laughed. It was a startled, delighted, shaky sound. And then, to Felix's horror, he found that his eyes were wet, and a tear was running down his cheek, and the corner of his mouth, and he tasted it. It was salt. It was the same salt as the sea. He wiped at it with the back of his wrist.

"Don't," said Hollis softly. "Don't, that's all right." His thumb brushed Felix's cheek. "That's fine. Cry if you want. I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm not sad," said Felix.

"I know."

"I'm just, it's very, it's a lot of, I've been so alone."

"I know," said Hollis. "I know. Me too."

…

It was while they were sitting there, wrapped in each other's coats, that Felix saw the courtyard.

He had shifted to find a better angle on the sun, and his eye fell on the little flagged yard at the foot of the bell-tower, a stone square no bigger than a room, walled in on three sides, where the Soot Saints' children played at knucklebones. It was empty. Two figures stood in the middle of it, in the long shadow of the tower. A stout woman in a kerchief. A thin young man with a cane.

They were speaking.

He could not hear. They were too far, and the wind blew the wrong way. But he could see, quite plainly, that it was no ordinary conversation. Ma Tilly stood with her arms folded, her round face as hard as a wall, and the boy was talking in short sharp bursts, with his head bent, and the wide flat black bundle held close against his chest. Ma Tilly shook her head. The boy spoke again. She said something brief and flat. Then she reached out, and laid her big floury hand on the back of his neck, and he stood there, bowing, utterly still, as a horse stands to be gentled.

Above them, in the tower, hung the bell.

Felix saw the boy look up. He saw him look at the great black mouth of it, a hundred feet over his head, and at the rope, and at the iron frame. He saw the old woman follow his gaze. And a cold small thought entered his mind, like a pin into a cork.

Who is paying us?

It was not a new thought. It had been there since the attic. But it had been a small thing, a shy thing, a thing that lived at the edge of the lamp. Now it came forward and stood in the light. A rich man with a grudge against the Council. Who keeps his gold in my father's bank. Who says "two of everything." Who sits in the cellar, and holds the books, and never says his name.

Who is the client?

And why does Dex look like that when he's asked?

He did not say it. He sat quite still with Hollis's arm around his shoulders and his own hand closed round a lump of gold, and thought, very quietly: I don't want to know.

…

The boy came at ten.

He was a thin small ragged boy of about eleven, with a cap pulled down over his ears, who came running up the lane from the Docks, panting, and hammered on the church door with both fists. Felix heard it from the roof. He heard the bolt shoot back. He heard Ma Tilly's voice, rough and low, and a thin young voice shouting something about a gentleman, and a coin, and a message. Then the door slammed.

A little later, a window opened in the tower below. A hand reached out. In it was a slip of paper, folded once, and it was passed to the thin young man who had come out into the courtyard, with his cane, and his black bundle, and his pale shuttered face.

Dex read it.

Felix, from the roof, could see only the top of his head. He saw it go still. It was a very particular stillness, the stillness of a hare in a field. Then Dex folded the paper again, with great care, in four, and put it in his waistcoat. He turned. He looked up.

He saw them.

For a moment their eyes met across the whole height of the roof: Dex's, gray and level and calm, and Felix's, wide and brown behind his crooked spectacles. Dex's gaze moved to Hollis's arm. It moved back. A very faint, very strange expression crossed his face, there and gone, like a bird across a window, and it was not disapproval.

"Gentlemen," he called, in a clear, carrying voice. "We have a delivery."

"Where?" said Hollis.

"Pier Nine." Dex's voice did not change. "Midnight, the twelfth."

He turned and went in.

Felix found that his fingers had gone white round the ingot in his pocket. He eased them open. The gold lay on his palm, warm from his body, with its two small clean letters.

MT.

He put it away.

But the thought stayed with him, small and sharp and cold, like a pebble in a shoe: it had taken root, and would not be dislodged.