When the stub tore through the paper and squealed on the boards below, I reached across and prised it gently from his fingers.

Chapter Thirty-two.

The pounding came again. The violent blows hammered on the door with such a force behind them that the panes in the second-floor parlour window rattled. I turned the oil lamp down, went to the shutter and pulled it open to a crack.

Through the gap I watched Fitzy stagger down the steps and out onto the street. He stared up at the double doors to The Palace like he couldnt believe they were closed to him. He squinted and rolled his massive head on shoulders padded like a couch. It was evening and cold for the dying day of April. I could see steam fug the air around him as he breathed out his fury like a tethered bull.

He took a step back and scanned the windows. He was looking for me.

Shaking his head, he slammed a fist the size of a roofers mallet into the palm of his hand. He was itching to strike out at something. His days as a bare knuckler on the streets were never far below the surface. The fancy suits in unlikely colours and the over-patterned waistcoats gave him the air of a genial, but I knew he was a brute. It was why Lady Ginger employed him and why I kept him on. I needed him.

'I see you watching me, girl. Dont think I dont know youre there.

I flinched and narrowed the opening between the shutters as the bellow echoed off the stones. 'Its a fucking wreck do you hear me? The Gaudy is a smoking pit in the ground, so it is. Hed been drinking. His accent was thicker than treacle and his words were bound together in it.

'Youre a cowardly bitch, so you are. Hiding behind your shutters with your cat-faced yellow men when people need to see you. All day theyve been waiting for you wanting to know whats going to happen. If you havent got the balls on you to speak to me now, how are you going to face them? All the people who rely on you. Tell me that, eh?

He put a foot on the lowest step and steadied himself on the rail. He swayed a little as he craned his head back.

'Shes gone. My lovely girl is gone. I heard something catch in his voice, something like a sob. Christ! He was talking about The Gaudy like he was married to it. He looked up again.

'What are you going to do now? How you going to pay them all a fair wage like you promised when the only hall you still got open is no more than a pimple on the Citys arse? Call yourself a Baron, do you? Youre no more a Baron than Im a fucking prince of the realm.

He swung back from the rail onto the cobbles and pulled at the shoulders of his jacket, like he was attempting to prove his sobriety. He twitched his head to one side and scanned the building once more, his little eyes sweeping the bricks from the top to the bottom. He wiped a hand across his mouth and called up again.

'But Ill tell you what I call you, Kitty Peck, and Ill tell you it for nothing. Youre a Jonah, so you are. Youve brought nothing but misfortune to us all.

He spat on the step, turned and lumbered away towards the end of the passage. I watched his bulky shadow trail along behind, moving against the greasy stones of the wall opposite.

I pressed my forehead against the shutter, feeling the ridge of the wooden panel dig into the cuts in my skin. Of an instant I was minded of that time when it was me standing out there bawling up at the closed doors. I knew she was there, my grandmother, watching me, listening to me spill my heart out on her steps. Like Id just done with Fitzy.

But I couldnt face him now. I couldnt face any of them. I glanced at the note on the table beside the couch where Lucca sat staring blankly into the fire. A pain shot across my temples.

Not now, not today of all days.

The heavy fabric of my finest dress was tight around me. The high collar and long sleeves trapped me like a moth bound up in a silky purse on a web. The ruffles of the collar scratched into my neck. Beneath the stiff satin I felt the absence of Joeys ring and his Christopher like a dull ache in my chest.

Lok had filled the tin bath in my room with steaming water and Id tried to scrub the night from my skin. It didnt work. No matter how hard I scraped and how much geranium I poured into the water I couldnt shift the stink of the sewer in my nostrils. I didnt think Id be able to smell anything other than shit ever again. That and Mishas filthy lemon and church cologne.

After a while I threw the cloth aside and lay there, staring up at the ceiling. By rights it should have made me drowsy, but every part of me was crying out loud and not just at the thought of the evening ahead.

Della was wrong. Joey wasnt going to turn up in Hamburg. He was here in London somewhere and he was in danger. Overhead a spider with a fat body and long match-like legs probed across the plaster. I knew there was another just like it, snug in a shroud of web in the corner above the linen press. Id meant to take a dust stick to it.

I watched as the spider above reached the centre of the ceiling where a crack ran across the plaster. It stopped there, waving its front legs around like it was taking stock of its position, and then it turned and scuttled back to its own corner. There were two of them waiting to set their traps up there, both of them killers and both of them barely aware of the others existence.

Two of them.

As I stood at the window I pulled the blue sleeves lower so the lace cuffs covered the burns and scratches on my hands. I wasnt going to let them think I was damaged goods.

I wrapped Nanny Pecks shawl around my shoulders, folded my arms beneath it and pulled the shutter open a little wider. I stared down at the rain-slicked cobbles again, but it wasnt Fitzy I was looking for.

A few minutes before the hammering started up there was a rattling sound on the panes of the parlour window. Id thought it was raining again and Id gone over to look out. Down below someone was bent double in the passage outside. I watched as a hand stretched out, sweeping the cobbles to gather up another handful of stones to patter against the windows.

My heart leapt under the plaid. It was Joey. I was sure of it. He was trying to catch my attention. I threw back the shutters and stood in the lighted window as the man straightened up. When he saw me he paused and moved his cloak aside to hold out a hand. He opened his fist and let the pebbles fall to the ground. The movement revealed the cane held in his other hand at the tip the vicious hawk head glinted in the soft light from the window. The hooded man bowed once, turned and walked slowly away.

My spine felt brittle as ice as I watched him melt like a huge black cat into the mouth of an alleyway off Salmon Lane.

It wasnt Misha he was rat meat at the bottom of a sewer so who was it? Who was the man who killed Old Peter? Who was the man who smelt of leather and spice when he tore the earring through my flesh in The Gaudy, the man who mistook me for Joey?

Where is he, Josette?

I brought my hand to my ear and touched the rip in the lobe. He hadnt mistaken me for Joey, and he wasnt asking about Robbie Lennox. He was asking me where my brother was. I should have known that all along.

'There were always two of them. I turned to Lucca who was staring into the fire like he was watching a story there. I reckoned I knew what he was seeing running it through again and again, punishing himself.

'Did you hear what I said? I moved away from the window and went over to the couch. Since wed come back to The Palace earlier that day hed closed in on himself, folding up tight like a jack-in-a-box forced back into its painted home. But I knew he was going to burst out soon and when he did hed bring all his fury and his sadness with him. That was why I asked him to come to stay at The Palace with me.

God knows I didnt need protection not with all the locks and shutters and bolts Lady Ginger had installed about the place. No, Lucca needed protecting from himself.

The clock on the mantle chimed twice for the half. It was a delicate little thing, gold set with china panels painted with shepherds and shepherdesses frolicking among flowers. I couldnt imagine my grandmother choosing such a thing, but it was there in the parlour when Id thrown back the shutters that first day, sitting on a mantle in a finger of dust, tented over with a loom of cobwebs.

Less than two hours to go. The pain shot through my head again, so sharp this time it made the skin around my left eye twitch. I sat down heavily next to Lucca and placed my hand over his.

'If you want to take any comfort from this, Lucca, you need to know that it wasnt Misha who killed Old Peter.

When he didnt react I repeated myself. He dragged his eyes from the flames and turned to me. 'Who was it then?

I bit my lip and felt a cut there from the exploding glass of the mirror open again. I could taste blood on the tip of my tongue.

'I . . . I dont know.

'Then why is that a comfort?

I couldnt answer. I rifled through the papers on the table.

'Will you stay here tonight? When I get back it would be good to know youre here.

Lucca nodded. 'S of course, but I dont understand why I cant come with you. After what happened . . .

'You cant thats all I know. I squeezed his hand and wished he could come with me, wherever it was I was going.

'I have to go alone. No one can come with me, not even the Beetle. Its the law.

Lucca raised a brow. 'A strange word to use, under the circumstances, Fannella.

I took up Telfermans note again. It had been waiting for me on the hall table when I returned with Lucca earlier that day. If Tan Seng noticed the state I was in when he opened up to us both he didnt show it. Instead, he bowed and gestured towards the package of papers.

'For The Lady, it came an hour ago.

Telferman was brief and to the point.

Miss Peck, The Barons meet this evening. The Vernal session will begin at one oclock.

You will be summoned before midnight. I regret that we have not been able to prepare as thoroughly as I would have wished. I was not made aware until the latest moment that the session would take place so very early in the month.

I trust, however, that the information enclosed with this letter will enable you to offer your parable. I believe the financial resume on the third page will be deemed sufficient for your first session.

You have a keen mind, Katharine, use it. Offer nothing, but pay close attention. Speak little, but listen well. Watch, but do not act.

Choose carefully.

His name crept across the bottom of the page. There were tiny spots of ink where the nib had leaked over the paper. I noted that my hand trembled as I held the paper closer to the lamp.

None of that, girl, I told myself. You master it now, or theyll master you.

I took up the pages enclosed with the letter and scanned them again.

Telferman was thorough, but there was nothing set down there I didnt already know. The dens off Glass House Street were turning a decent profit. The customs officers at West India, St Katharines and London Shadwell were satisfied with their cut. The tail parlours off Narrow Street were clean Id had the girls checked by a crow and they were turning a tidy sum along with tricks. Three of the screwsman parties had done good trade with the brokers on the Commercial and no one had made a provable link between their jemmy raids up west and the pawny shops in the east. One of my toolers had been taken by the law, but Telferman was paying to see it right.

I nodded to myself. I had it all clear. Id gone through it all a hundred times over the last few weeks. If a vicars wife farted in Paradise Id know it. I turned the page. The accounts of The Gaudy, The Comet and The Carnival were listed in columns. Only one of them was making a fine profit and now it was a smouldering wreck. I flipped over the page and stared down at a list of every soul in my employ.

I ran down the page looking for a name. I found it, but it was crossed through Peter Ash. I brushed the tip of my finger over the words. There was a pantomime where a China boy had a magic lamp. Every time he rubbed that lamp a genie came to life. I touched the letters, but the ink came off on my skin, blurring the writing.

I moved on, pausing at 'D. Amit and his brother Ram were both there. I blinked and took up the next page. Near the end under 'S little Edie Strong was listed with her mother. Jesus, I didnt even know if she was still alive.

Fitzy was right, I was a Jonah.

They were all here in my hands, not just the crews on the streets and the warehouses, but everyone who worked for me in the halls, scores of them. All the people Id made a promise to. A fair wage thats what Id told them. Where were they going to work for that wage now?

I heard a cough and looked up. Tan Seng was standing in the doorway. He bowed.

'It is time, Lady.

Chapter Thirty-three.

The square black carriage stood at the end of Salmon Lane, its lamps unlit. Two dark horses nodded in the traces and up top I could see the stooped shape of the driver. He didnt even turn to nod at the sound of my heels tapping on the stones as we came alongside.

Tonight, for some reason, the lamp boy hadnt lit the gas in this part of the lane. The globes were blind, like the windows of the waiting carriage. Now I was up close, I could see the curtains were pulled across inside. The only light on the cobbles was cast from the lamp carried by Tan Seng. The golden glow bounced off the lacquered sides of the carriage and showed that the wheels were felted over. Even the horses hooves were muffled with rolls of black cloth that reached up over their fetlocks like the woollen socks Nanny Peck used to knit in the winter.

Luccas hand tightened on my arm.

'You cannot go alone, Fannella.

Now the driver moved. He shifted about and the carriage creaked and bounced on its springs as he leaned over. He pointed down at me with his whip.

'No one else. The rough voice was muffled by the scarf covering the lower part of his face.

Tan Seng raised the lamp. In the dim light he looked even older than usual.

'It is always this way, Lady. We will be ready to welcome you, when you return. He bowed and gestured to the door. Lucca didnt release me.

'You cant- 'I have to. Its not a matter of choice. When I agreed to take on Paradise I agreed to this. Its just a meeting. The words sounded hollow as they echoed in the deserted street. I turned to Tan Seng. 'Thats right, isnt it?

The old boy bowed again, but he didnt catch my eye. 'We will be ready for you, Lady.

Lucca muttered something in Italian. I pulled away and moved towards the carriage.

As I reached for the handle I paused. 'You dont . . . judge me, do you, Lucca?

He glanced down. I saw him twist his fingers together and then he looked up.

'You must do what you believe to be right. Its all you can do. But I think, he stared at me, his eye round as an owls, 'I think you are not playing a game any more, Fannella. After tonight you truly will be a Baron, whatever that means. You will be changed, tell me you dont feel that?

I didnt have time to answer. The driver cracked his whip and the horses bucked and pranced, their hooves bumping on the stones.

'Its late. The muffled voice came down again. 'Weve a way to go.

I stood back from the carriage. 'And where, exactly, are we going? I think Ive got a right to know that.

I waited, but he didnt say another word. I took a breath, caught the handle of the door, pulled it open and clambered up inside. The carriage rocked and jolted forward. The door swung shut as the movement jerked me back into the leather seat. It was black as a tomb in there. I felt to the side to pull back the curtains to let some street light in and to see where I was being taken.

'Good evening, Katharine.

My hand froze as the cracked, familiar voice sliced through the dark. A point of red glowed up opposite and of an instant my nose filled with the smell of her disease and opium, foulness and sweetness coiled together.

I yelped as an invisible hand slammed suddenly and with a deadly accuracy across my right cheek. I felt the jewel from one of my grandmothers rings cut deep into the flesh.

'That is for The Gaudy.