Peter nods back.
“Wait,” I say, walking around the car. “Did it talk to you? Is that even a real bird?”
The bird rears back and flaps its wings. There is something off-putting in the way the wings connect to the body. Like the work of a taxidermist.
“Clockwork birds?” I ask. “Surely there’s an easier way.”
“Our methods span centuries, June,” says Peter. “The world has changed, but these emissaries and their ancestors have never lost their usefulness.”
Moving slow, I reach for the bird.
It flaps its wings, talons scraping the hood as it flies away from my outstretched fingers. A hundred yards away, seven other crows lift off the power line at the same time, cawing.
The small flock wings away from the lot, headed toward downtown Seattle. As they disappear, I notice a lone feather lying on the hood of the car. Exchanging a glance with Peter, I pick it up. Putting it under my nose, I inhale.
The feather smells like plastic.
22
LONDON, 1731
“Be careful,” I say to Elena. “Our faces look better, but they are far from perfect.”
In a black silk gown embroidered with silver thread, the girl looks up at me innocently, trying and failing to suppress a smile. With quick movements, she picks a few pieces of lint off my long overcoat. I purchased a coach-load of fine garments from a tailor’s shop on Charing Cross, fashionable enough to allow us to travel anywhere we wish to go in the city.
I push a lock of powdered gray hair over one shoulder, uncertain.
“Don’t worry,” says Elena, giggling. “You really are quite convincing, Peter.”
Though we move only at night, our new faces have allowed an unprecedented level of interaction with the people of London. This has included the ability to spend some of the wealth accumulated from ransoming debtors.
As is her habit, Elena is standing at the window of our new flat, shielding her eyes from the dull morning light. Her impish grin is lost in curls of lustrous black hair. The new room we are renting is an entire floor on a much more respectable street, above a haberdashery, wall-papered in blue florals, furnished, and boasting a substantial fireplace embedded in the wall, unlit.
We have made a flurry of small forays into the city at dusk, exercising the lessons Favorini gave us on blending in with humanity. And though we are accustomed to behaving as people, pretending to breathe and eat and drink, Elena and I have never walked in the daylight.
“Ooh,” Elena breathes, face pressed to the glass. “I can’t wait.”
The girl darts across the room to the doorway, her shoes silent on the thick rugs. She opens the door and leans around the corner, peeking out like a child.
“Our man is here,” she urges me, already tromping down the stairs. “Come on. Let’s finally see the whole city!”
Outside, two men with calves like cannonballs and elaborately armored shoes stand beside a wooden sedan chair with handles sprouting in front and behind. Slightly more expensive than the carriages known as teeth rattlers, these portable booths are the only sure mode of transport over the broken stone of the city roads. Just a rental, our sedan is made of a simple wooden box with gauzy fabric hanging over the windows.
I drop a few coins into the man’s palm and lift Elena into the sedan.
“Stone’s end, sir,” I say, ducking my tall frame into the perfumed, heavily pillowed interior. The law forbids these contrivances on pedestrian paths, but few chairmen take heed of that, shoving past the wooden stumps buried in the stone to stop carriages and shouting at those on foot to make way.
Not yet settled on the rough leather seat, Elena squeals as we lurch ahead. She is sent flying, suspended in the air, eyes wide and incredulous. As she lands, her small hands find my jacket and clamp on tight, a new round of surprised giggles thumped out of her by the next wobble of the sedan.
Outside, our lead chairman shouts “By your leave!” with monotonous regularity. Every so often, he stops to crane his neck, looking for the dome of St. Paul’s cathedral—the only landmark tall enough to help him through this warren of twisting, close-packed buildings. This area survived the great fire and bears the mind-numbing complexity borne of centuries of frenzied building and demolition.
Inside our compartment, thin drapes flutter, filtering the reddish morning sunlight onto Elena’s smiling face. Peeking between folds of fabric, she watches the bustling streets of London with a queer satisfaction—absorbing every detail.
“Isn’t it incredible, Peter?” she asks. “Look at all the people.”
I do not respond. Leaning to the other side, I have my eye set to scanning the crowded street. I keep my face hidden behind the mud-spattered curtain, remembering her words: We are not alone here.
My gaze stutters across a beautiful woman standing in a doorway, black eyes following us as we pass. A thrill of recognition races through me. Turning back, I find her already gone.
A vague unease settles into my mind.
In the last year, I have seen more of the fiery sigils—all of them near the wharves that line the Thames. The slashing letters are terribly familiar somehow, yet I cannot fathom their meaning. And not from lack of trying. Elena has filled our flat with her reproductions of the signs, and collected thick tomes devoted to translation. Watching the street without blinking, I ensure we do not stray near those marked lanes.
“This is the world,” Elena says. “We are finally a part of it.”
“This is their world—” I begin to correct her.
Our chairmen stumble into a ditch and the sedan tilts, nearly collapses onto its side. I clutch Elena and keep her from spilling out as a hackney carriage plows by just outside. The loudly complaining chairmen yank us back upright, shouting hoarsely at the dusty wake of the carriage. My reflexive embrace is all that has kept Elena from being thrown out of the sedan and trampled.
“Their world,” I urge again, holding her close. “We must be vigilant. Do not fall in love with these people or the false Eden they have made.”
“If we do not belong in their world, then where is our own?” Elena implores, pushing my arms away. She grasps a bar bolted beside the door to steady herself and glares at me, her lower lip stuttering with emotion. “We need to seek out our own kind.”
The old familiar argument.
“We did meet another of our kind,” I remind her. “It threatened us. It tried to drag us into a war we have no business fighting. I will not allow—”
“Allow?” she asks, interrupting me angrily. “You will not allow me? I am not your child.”