Chapter Text
The Fourteenth of October, 1899.
The cobblestones were slightly damp underfoot. It was a miserable Tuesday. Drift was having, possibly, the worst day of her life.
Miserable Tuesdays were not uncommon in the Neath. In fact, they were exceedingly common. It could’ve been one of the laws down there, right along with ‘Don’t make eye contact with the Rubbery Men’ or ‘If you see the Gentleman With the Hat, No You Didn’t’- written in large, blocky text on one of the law pamphlets published with the turning of the year.
BY ORDER OF HER ENDURING MAJESTY, TUESDAYS, it would read in stark, deep black, WILL ALWAYS BE MISERABLE. IF YOU ARE ENJOYING YOUR TUESDAY, DO NOT WORRY. YOU WILL NOT BE FOR LONG.
It made sense that it would be a Tuesday. Still, Drift thought as she ran, she really wished that it wouldn’t be. Maybe if this hadn’t happened on a Tuesday, then things would be fine. Maybe Jack wouldn’t be like this, or she wouldn’t have gotten the flowers, or she would have noticed it all earlier and then-
Something behind her moved, darkness against darkness. It wasn’t a nice kind of move. It was the movement of a predator, trying not to be seen. Drift neatly hopped the fence separating the pavement from the riverside and not-as-neatly plummeted into the silt-and-stone bank of the Thames. It hurt. It didn’t hurt as much as getting stabbed, though, which was a win in her book.
First win of the day! Which is a good sign to have when it’s getting near midnight.
As quickly as she could, she scrambled towards the nearest scrap of cover, water soaking through the cheap material of her trousers and sticking uncomfortably to her skin. It was the underside of a bridge only a couple of metres away, and as soon as she was under, she held her breath and waited. The water was rushing unpleasantly around her ankles. Given that even devils didn’t like touching the Thames, she was pretty sure that wouldn’t look good in daylight.
One beat. Then another. Footsteps echoing over the bridge above her, a long cackle. Jack-of-Smiles was a nasty customer at the best of times, and it was not the best of times when he had body-hopped into a bodybuilder with a collection of viciously serrated knives.
The cackling grew more distant, further away. Drift sighed and sagged back against the wall of the bridge, taking a second to catch her breath. In and out. She wasn’t dead yet.
Hey, if she really tried, she could probably finish the case! She didn’t actually get a good look at Jack’s body this time around, so even a glance would help her get a description and maybe some of her pay. All she had to do was step out from under the bridge.
Her legs didn’t move. Her hands, when she looked at them, were shaking.
He can’t even kill her! Well, not permanently. It would hurt like hell, and she hadn’t died before, and he had a giant serrated knife and who really wanted the description of the guy with the giant knife and does she really need the money and she doesn’t want to get hurt and-
Alright. Alright. Drift swallowed dryly and tried to look at the bridge around her instead. Maybe that would… help, somehow. Maybe there would be… a sign, or a convenient scrap of paper or something that would mean she wouldn’t have to head back out there and start running again.
Cowardly, as always. She braced her hands into fists.
Then: another shifting in the darkness. As quickly as her fumbling hands could allow, she lit one match and lifted it high. If Jack could see her, he wouldn’t hesitate. He would come down, and he would have his knives and he would have his laugh and he wouldn’t flinch at getting his feet wet, because he was a monster and he was brave. All she had was tepid, flickering light, and a heart that could not stop panicking.
The light revealed a person, lying face down in the water. A small, slight young man, wearing a puffy shirt and a vest that covered his entire torso from his neck to his wrists. His skin was pale and battered. His hair was water-logged and spread out in the water around him like a jellyfish. He was clearly dead, washed away by the tide, and was hooked to one pillar of the bridge by a long, thin strip of cloth that had torn and then snagged on the stone.
His arms were soaked to the elbow in blood, curling in thin, red ribbons through the water.
The patch of skin revealed by that tear was covered in long, thin, intersecting scars. They looked like letters, somehow. She stared. It gave her a headache. She couldn’t take her eyes away, and her mouth started to taste like brimstone, and her eyes started to water, and-
There was the sound of footsteps, and Jack’s long, smug cackle. She looked away, towards the pavements surrounding the bridge. Towards escape.
Drift could leave the young man here and hope someone else could get him. It seemed like an awful place to return to- the underside of a bridge in an off-alley in the shadiest part of Veilgarden- but it would give her an opportunity. She could get that description of Jack. She could tell the constables that she was the one responsible for wearing him down and demand payment, like she had seen so many other brighter, braver people do. She could leave him here with his water-logged hair and his bruised skin and his ragged clothing, and she could finally get that payday she had been chasing for weeks now. She could leave him.
Drift swallowed, looked to see if Jack-of-Smiles was still around, and made a decision.
While Drift didn’t know this at the time, this decision would come to be another symptom of the Tyranny of Tuesdays. It would inarguably ruin her life; it would cause her countless worries and stresses; it would be directly linked to the development of her first grey hair at twenty-five. It would be the reckoning that would lead to her inevitable death, and then the reckoning that would lead to the deaths of a great many other people immediately afterwards.
However, when Drift fished one very, very dead Avid out of the river and onto the slightly drier banks of Thames, she wasn’t thinking about any of that. She was mostly thinking that he seemed like he might need a friend.
Somewhere, very far away, a military scout was realising she wouldn’t be able to return home the same way she left. Somewhere else, a bitter, bitter man was burning a warehouse to the ground with a group of workers still inside. Far to the south, the Ministry was building a god; to the North, something dreamt and dreamt and waited to be awoken.
That isn’t the story here. But, like the rising of the sun, or a matchstick burning itself out, some reckonings can only be postponed for so long. And some reckonings come sooner than others.
+++
The Twenty-Seventh of December, 1899. Two months on.
“So, the bees.” Shelby says easily. She hefts the cage a little higher on her back, ignoring the angry buzzing coming from inside. “It feels a little mean to do this to them, but I guess it’s what the Embassies want, so!”
They gesture in the air vaguely with one of their hands. Drift blinks a couple of times. They’re all on their way back from Old Newgate, her and Shelby and Avid, on the short trip from the doorway to the Depositing Office. The Neath-stars blink above like a thousand watchful eyes. The sounds of London begin to fade in as they leave the university grounds- the perpetual cacophony of screaming and horses and fires and suspicious chittering noises that Drift has grown, over her last three years here, to consider as home. Shelby hums faintly as she walks. It’s cute, if a little distracting.
She’ll be the first to admit it- she doesn’t really get a lot of Shelby’s university stuff. All of it kind of blurs into one big mess of bat sighting reports and overly competitive cricket games and complaining about the students over at Somerset even though they share the same grounds, but Shelby seems to enjoy it well enough, so Drift doesn’t much care. Sometimes she wonders what life would be like if she had pursued higher education. She doesn’t think she’s really cut out for it. She’s never really been very athletic, and from hat she’s gathered, university is mostly about dodging nefarious insects and trying not to be killed by your colleagues.
Drift is bad enough at not making people want to kill her when they aren’t disagreeing academically! She’s pretty sure that she’d get poisoned day one. Honestly, it’s a miracle that hasn’t happened, and Drift doesn’t even try to get into arguments with people.
Mostly, that’s Avid. It doesn’t win them a lot of clients, but he’s her friend, so she doesn’t mind. Much.
Avid, where he is keeping step next to her, elbows her sharply in the side. Drift flinches. “Hey!”
Avid whispers, “She’s waiting on you to ask her something. Ask her about her classes.”
Drift straightens up, clearing her throat and flushing. Was she really that out of it? “Didn’t one of your professors quit recently? How’s that been going?”
Shelby groans. She sounds slightly relieved though, so maybe Avid was right. “We’ve had to combine classes with Sommerset until the new professor shows up. I didn’t even know you could quit working at the university! I thought it was a lifetime position!”
Ah. A glimmer of sense. “Is that why they keep on trying to kill each other?”
“No, I think that part’s just for fun.” Shelby frowns. “But the whole other class is so annoying, so I can’t really blame them.”
Avid reaches into one of his pockets, pulling out a stake. “What kind of annoying?”
Drift reaches over and grabs the stake, scanning for any constables. None here so far. There’s a Rubbery Man blorbling sadly on one corner, and the lights down one alley are flickering ominously, but they won’t get in trouble for possession of weaponry. Drift doesn’t have the rosygold for a bribe. “Not the vampire kind. I’m still not convinced they’re real.”
Avid throws his hands in the air. “You can accept the- the devils, and the masters, and the guys covered in tentacles, but not vampires?”
He’s very loud. The Rubbery Man on the corner looks at them and bursts into warbling, tentacle-waving tears. Drift gives what hopefully looks like a consoling smile and hurries all three of them along more quickly. Surely it isn’t that far to the Office? Shelby rolls her eyes. “Yeah! I mean, there’s precedent for the other stuff. Vampires just seem a little… far-fetched, you know?”
Avid lets out a long groan. “You can accept Irem, but you can’t accept vampires?”
“Irem has evidence!” Shelby replies. “Had evidence! Will have evidence! Irem tenses are weird! You know my Dad went there once. I’d go too if I could.”
“Of course, I get that! I’m just saying that if you can accept- well, that- then evil people who drink blood aren’t that out there.” Avid says defensively.
Drift sighs to herself. It’s another thing she doesn’t really get- Avid and Shelby believe the more conspiratorial theories of the Neath, hence all the talk of islands outside of time and blood-sucking monsters. They believe, and she tries to keep them out of trouble. It’s how they work. “It isn’t the people drinking blood that’s the worry; we know that happens. It’s just that we already have giant bats, so the vampires don’t seem all that… important?”
“Unimportant?” Avid hisses.
Drift fully prepares herself to backtrack. Shelby however, seems to have decide that this will be the hill that she dies on, because she nods. “I’m literally delivering bees to devils from hell right now.”
Avid’s eye has started to twitch.
Deciding to defuse the situation before it gets too loud, Drift turns to Shelby and says, “Is there anyone in particular that’s bothering you?” She puts on her best impression of one of the bouncers at the honey-dens at Veilgarden, all gruff and sarcastic and rough-and-tumble. “Me and Avid can sort them out for you, if you like.”
“Just this one guy. He has the nerve to tell me that my essay on the Zee-Bat’s migration patterns was poorly researched!” Shelby says, face wrinkling up into a frown. “He didn’t even say how! Or give me counterarguments or anything!”
“Can’t imagine that.” Avid says out of the corner of his mouth, and then Drift elbows him. He jumps a little. “What’s the guy’s name, anyways? We need a name to find him and then…” He pauses ominously. “…do what we must.”
“It’s… Pyre? Biro? Pyro! That’s the name!” Shelby says. Then she blinks and starts waving around her hands. “Not that I want you to do anything! He isn’t that bad! I haven’t even seen him for a few weeks anyway!”
Drift laughs. “Don’t worry, we won’t.”
Avid winks cartoonishly. “Yeah. We totally won’t.”
“Avid.”
“What? That’s what you said!”
Shelby chuckles. Then her face falls slightly. “Honestly, I don’t think you should bother him. He’s… pretty involved with the Dynamite Faction.”
Drift makes a little ah noise and starts looking around for constables with more determination than before. Avid frowns and lowers his voice conspiratorially. “Like the revolutionaries?”
“Yeah.” Shelby smiles, but it’s a quick and sharp thing. “I mean, kind of? I’ve seen him around all types. There’s the ones that talk about securing better pay at the docks, and there’s the ones that talk about… you know. Plunging the Neath into eternal darkness and all that. So.”
Avid keeps his voice low. It isn’t low enough. Noise carries through London like disease, and rumour catches like wildfire. “I mean, half of that doesn’t sound so-”
Drift says, with a forced brightness. “Shelby, do you guys know the exchange rate on the bees today?”
Avid squints at her. “It’s the same. They never change it.”
The constable on the corner isn’t looking at them yet, but he might be. He slowly shuffles away, leaving them with the much more easily-avoided threats of scheming devils and nefarious rats and the tomb-colonists with strange and unspecified grudges. Drift lets out one long breath and tries to ignore her rapidly beating heart. “There. I don’t know whether we should be talking about that quite so loud.”
“What, the revolutionaries?” Avid says. He tucks in a little closer next to her and pulls up his collar. “Everybody knows already.”
“That doesn’t mean we should just- ugh.” Drift pinches the bridge of her nose. When she opens her eyes again, the Office is at the end of the road. “I’m sorry. I just really don’t want more trouble.”
Shelby smiles at her. Her heart slows a little, softens. “It’s fine.”
Avid claps her on the shoulder. Drift grins a little at that, but her hearts not really in it. All three of them come to a stop at the base of the building.
Already, the reek of sulphur reaches into the air and taints the surrounding cobblestones. The one lamp glows a warm yellow against the thick and perpetually coiling fog. Shelby stands in the doorway like they’re waiting for something, bent slightly forwards at the waist, already one cobblestone step up.
Drift clears her throat. “We should probably get going back to the agency now. Maybe someone’s dropped something off for us?”
“Maybe someone’s going to ask for a case!” Avid says cheerily.
“Maybe.” Drift replies.
“Maybe,” Shelby says, “as thanks for doing me the kindness of walking me here, the incredibly brave detectives of Infinite Detective Agency would accept payment?”
In her left hand, she offers them a mixture of rosygold pieces and moonpearls, shining invitingly in the lamplight. Ten of each. Avid flushes and stutters. “It was a favour to a friend! Really, Shelby, you don’t have to-”
“I want to.” Shelby says. She meets Avid’s eyes, then Drift’s. Her eyes are as wide and kind and bright as ever. “Please.”
“I guess…” Avid glances at Drift.
She feels… guilty, about accepting money from Shelby. She really does care for them, and in the years that she’s knows them they have never been anything but loyal and constant and kind, but the idea of accepting it makes something stick in her throat. She nods. It’s twenty moonpearls and fifteen rosygold in all- a little more than the money for a good night at Veilgarden, or three mid-to-low-quality breakfasts. She doesn’t want their relationship to be transactional.
They really do need it. If they could just get a little bit more money, then they could take bigger risks on jobs, maybe spend something to get in on the docks and pick up some work that way. Avid hates the ocean, but Drift doesn’t mind the water as long as she isn’t drowning in it. It could give them time to rebuild the agency, get everything together, get Avid his own bed rather than having him just crash on her couch. She could buy him better bandages, maybe an actual doctor’s appointment.
She could make herself an actual proper person again rather than whatever she is now, shuffling around form job to job, rudderless and-
Drift accepts the small payment and swallows her pride. “The Infinite Agency deeply appreciates your donation.” She pastes on a smile. “Good luck with the bees, Shelby.”
“Good luck with getting more cases.” Shelby says easily in return. She waves with one hand. The other slings the bee cage off her back and swings it roughly around to her front. “You guys are so smart, I’m sure you’ll get one in no time!”
Avid nods sharply. “Of course!”
Drift says nothing at all.
Shelby waves her goodbyes and walks into the office. Behind her, the door closes, and the yellow gas lamp goes out. Drift and Avid are left to the darkness and the false-light of the Neath stars, the fog curling up and into their shoes.
“Home, then?” Avid says.
“Yeah.” Drift says, unsteady. “Home.”
They start walking. The streets of London are dangerous at all times, but more dangerous when it’s late, when the general romance of nighttime criminality begins to get to people and the drinking at assorted bars turns from heavy to leaden. As they get further from the Office and more into the city proper, it grows increasingly packed with people. Tomb-colonists sharpen knives in back alleys. Urchins scuffle across rooftops. Horse carriages run rampant through the streets. One nearly hits Drift, but Avid tugs her neatly out of the way by the lapel of her blazer.
“Are you alright?” Avid asks her in a quiet voice. “You’ve been kind of out of it all day.”
“I’m like, so in it.” Drift replies, brushing some imaginary dust off of one trouser leg. “I’m very present.”
“Did you even notice the carriage?” Avid quirks one eyebrow. “Normally, you’re a lot better at dodging.”
Drift tugs down her top-hat to cover her eyes, which is as much of an answer as he needs. A note of concern slips into his voice. “Is this about Shelby paying? We can send her the money back right away. I’m pretty sure that we could get the Old Postmaster to deliver it straight to her dorm, and he’s reliable enough that he won’t steal it. Do you have her address?”
“It’s not that, Avid.” Drift says quietly.
“Really? Cause that money is going, like, pronto.”
“Well, not only that. We can give it back in person next time we see her.” Drift adjusts grudgingly. She looks around her and sighs- low London Streets, the sign cheerily announcing that they’re coming closer to the Embassies of Hell, the sound of glass breaking in some local pub- and one hand tucks itself tightly into a fist. Avid navigates it all so easily. She just… doesn’t. “I guess this place still kind of bothers me a little.”
“You’ve been here longer than I have!” Avid replies. He sounds almost affronted at the thought of her uncertainty.
“I know, Avid. But things aren’t really looking up for us?” She tries to supress the childish upwards lilt of her voice at the end, and fails. “I mean, I messed up the Jack case a few months back, and that was kind of a breakthrough that we just didn’t get, and the whole detective thing isn’t really coming through and I know the constables are suspicious of me because I let Jack go and isn’t like I can pay them off like everybody else does because we don’t have the funds and less people want us to work with them now and we haven’t had a good case since so we’re mostly relying on your hunting at Watchmaker’s and that only makes the suspicion worse and-”
Avid stops walking abruptly, and Drift stops herself just before she topples into him. “Do- do you need me to do more, then? If it would help you, I’m sure Pearl would let me pick up more bounties-”
“No, I mean, I know that you get nervous when I’m not around, I don’t want you to deal with-”
“I can, though, it would be the least I could do, I think she’ll give me some extra work-”
“That isn’t it.” Drift says, a little sharper and a little louder than she meant.
Avid steps back and raises his hands. For a second, it’s only the two of them in the world, looking at each other in a dark, dark void, something unnameable spooling away beneath them. Then reality closes in again, and Drift remembers, with a crystal clarity, who could be watching them from the dark alleyways and the shadowy windows, or from the trundling horse-carriages, or even from right behind them on the street.
Avid’s sleeve falls down slightly, revealing raised, red scars in unnameable patterns. There is feeling like a hundred eyes suddenly turning. Probably her imagination, but if it isn’t-
“I- can we talk about this a little closer to home?” Drift tries weakly. She starts off at a quick trot, head down, eyes glancing from side to side.
“It’s me, isn’t it?” Avid says. His face is subdued and miserable. Drift doesn’t know what her face does in response, but it’s enough to get him to flinch.
“Closer to home, Avid.” Drift replies, the long string of tension in her chest pulling itself tighter, tighter. “We don’t know who might be listening.”
“That’s why we haven’t been getting as many clients.” Avid mutters. His voice has the dull tones of someone who has just realised that they have spent the last year cheerfully dragging an iron around their legs and never knew why people stared before. “It’s these- is it the corrospo-”
His hand goes, instinctively, to tug at his sleeves. Beneath them lie his scars, an alphabet carved into his skin that none can read but is understood on a deep, instinctive level as dangerous. Drift grabs one of his hands and pulls it away from his wrist. “Home first.”
Avid nods his assent. As they pick their way through London, his hands keep on returning, like a compass, to his arms, then the stakes in his belt, then his high, starched collar. Eventually he settles for picking the bark off of the more roughly-carved stakes, getting splinters all under his fingernails.
Drift looks at him and says, quietly, “Don’t worry. I don’t blame you. It isn’t your fault.”
Avid doesn’t respond. An awkward silence falls over them both. They make it up to their shared apartment- a tenuous thing two floors up just off Ladybones Road, just above a honey-den of some ill repute, with a little plaque on the door declaring it to also be a detective agency. The silence stretches thin as the skin on the wings of a moth, but as tense as spider silk in a web. It’s claustrophobic. Drift can feel the tension rising, wrapping her hand and foot, clogging her throat.
However, before she can break the silence or fish the keys from her pocket, they hear a shout from the street below. “Hey!”
It’s Martyn, their neighbour. A somewhat over-enthusiastic man who came down from the surface a couple of years ago, he never tells the same story of why he came twice. Avid likes him well enough, while Drift thinks he could stand to be a little less intense. Still, he’s more than welcome, as he scrambles up the ramshackle stairs to their door and then flops against it at the top.
“Hey!” He starts, wheezing faintly. “God, I haven’t ran like that since my Zee-faring days.”
“It’s Zee-faring now?” Avid says with a faint grin.
Martyn jabs the air with one finger. “And don’t you forget it! But really, guys, I do have something to tell you.”
He hunches over, hands on his knees, heaving in deep breaths. Drift is starting to get a little concerned for him when she says, “Are you...alright, or...?”
He stands, easy as anything. It’s entirely possible, Drift thinks with one eye twitching, that he was never that tired to begin with. “Of course! Just be a little more patient! Jeez, people these days.”
“I think we’re being patient.” Avid mutters. “Drift, aren’t we being patient?”
She smiles, despite herself. “Very patient.”
He clears his throat dramatically. “Okay, okay! Apokuna- that’s a friend of mine from the docks- came here while you guys were out. She wanted,” his voice takes on an insufferably smug pitch, “a case.”
Drift’s eyes widen. A case. An actual case. If he means it, it could be their ticket back into actual work- respect from broader society, a better house, something new.
Avid seems just as awed as her, eyes wide. “You mean an actual case? Like, not catching cats for secrets, but an actual, proper case? Where is Apokuna? Can we meet her?”
Then Drift’s mind catches up with general events. “Wait, you’ve been telling people about us?”
Martyn preens. “Only a little bit! And you’ll have to meet her to discuss details, all I did was tell her that you did good work. Good, discreet work.” He winks. “So keep in mind who gave her your names.”
“Are you telling them about Miss Militia?” calls up another voice, belonging to their other downstairs neighbour.
Renhardt is Martyn’s… something, and the purveyor of the downstairs bar-and-honey den. They live together, except when Martyn leaves to his mysterious other houses, and they work together, other when Renhardt goes out to his mysterious other job. It seems to work well enough for them, whatever it is, so Drift broadly wishes them luck. She likes Ren. He seems nice enough.
Martyn yells back down, “Yep!
“Apo left a letter! Ignore everything he says about owing him!”
Martyn sheepishly hollers, “Wasn’t saying anything of the sort!”
Avid, clearly getting into it a little, shouts “He was!”
“Don’t tell Ren that!”
“Come on, Martyn! They’re our friends, don’t you know?”
Martyn rolls his eyes. He then turns back to them and says, “Well, that’s that ruined. Got to go. The Missus is waiting for me downstairs, and I can’t disappoint him.”
“I heard that!”
Martyn laughs as he scampers back down. There’s a few seconds of slightly louder than usual conversation before their door slams shut and they enter their house. Drift spends a second regathering herself. Conversations with those guys tend to do that to a person.
She manages to find her keys and unlocks the door. The room beyond is small, opening directly into a tight kitchen with a table haphazardly stuffed in and almost scraping the walls. There is a couch on the far side of the room, and a side-room where Drift sleeps. In the entire house, there is very little decoration. It was always meant to be temporary, a place where Drift could land in the Neath and then get back up on her feet.
She still isn’t there yet. She’s starting to think it might never happen.
When she turns to him, Avid is practically shaking out his skin with excitement. “A case. It’s a new case!”
Drift can’t stop herself from grinning. “I know!”
“That’s- that’s incredible!” Avid laughs out loud, cheery and bright. “We don’t even need the money from Shelby, we can just make more!”
“I know!” Then Drift frowns. “But we should probably keep it.”
“What? Why?” Avid replies.
“Insurance policy in case things go south.” Drift says by way of explanation. She takes off her coat and throws it haphazardly on their table. Then she realizes how it might sound and clarifies. “Well, it probably will work out! Just in case, you know?”
“Yeah.” Avid says in reply. He hops up onto the table himself, swinging his feet. A strange expression takes over his face. It’s a little wistful, a little sad, and very, very bitter. “…When you meet this Apokuna person, should I stay home? Or I could do Watchmaker’s. It’s only a little bit further.”
“Why would you want to do that?” Drift hunches in front of the cupboards to get out something to eat. Stale biscuits will have to do.
“Well, you know how I have those, uh…”
“Correspondence sigils.” Drift fills in. It’s safe to talk about it out here, with no one watching them, but saying the words out loud is still uncomfortable. It makes her feel like her skin is crawling with a thousand tiny bugs.
Avid gestures with one hand. “Yeah, those! And I know they make people uncomfortable, and I’m just wondering whether you want me… gone for the process of negotiations. It might make things easier.”
It’s true. Drift knows that taking Avid under her wing was probably the thing that got her locked out of so many cases. People mess up with Jack-of-Smiles everyday- it’s practically a rite of passage among detectives on Ladybones Road, it’s so common- and running away from surface ties isn’t even common, it’s near obligation to live down here- but picking up an amnesiac covered in illegal writing in the middle of the Thames? Not so much.
The Correspondence isn’t only illegal, it’s detested. Scholars of the Correspondence are shunned. Strange people who talk about vampires and have the words of a forbidden language scrawled into their skin? Proximity isn’t only frowned upon, it's breaking quarantine. It’s honestly incredible that Ren and Martyn even talk to them. Maybe Drift should get them a weasel some time.
Avid shrinks a little further into himself. “I just want you to be safe, you know? And if the way you get safe is by getting away from me, then-”
Drift sets her jaw. Avid might be an abomination against the laws of London and of the Neath itself, and maybe she gets nightmares almost every night now he lives with her, and maybe he is costing her cases, but he’s her friend first. He deserves someone in his corner. “If anyone has a problem with you, then they have a problem with me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah!” Drift replies. “You’re my detective partner, dude. I got you.”
Avid’s eyes are wide, and his nail are digging small crescents into the wood of the table. “Even if Apo’s weird about it?”
“Then we won’t take their case.” Drift says with a certainty she doesn’t really feel. “And then we’ll- well, we won’t be mean to her back, but we’ll give Martyn a strongly worded letter about having better friends.”
Avid smiles widely. “All right! Do you think I should ask her about the vampires? Martyn mentioned she worked at the docks, she’s probably seen some stuff-”
“Maybe don’t bring up the vampires?” Drift says with a grimace. “I don’t think that would make her more likely to hire us. Or want to see us again. At all.”
Avid sighs petulantly. “Alright, then. Maybe when we get the payout, I’ll finally be able to cure the whole Correspondence thing.”
She resolutely walks over to the table. “Maybe. Also, where is that letter they apparently left?”
Avid pats around vaguely under Drift’s discarded coat and lifts a scrap of yellowed paper into the air. “Right here.”
“Awesome.” Drift reaches up and grabs the envelope, squinting at it and bringing it closer to her face. “Avid, where is my reading monocle?”
Avid hands it over. “Why don’t you just wear glasses?”
“It’s not as cool.” Drift says. “Shush, I’m reading.”
Avid rolls his eyes but complies. She opens the envelope.
Drift wrinkles her nose. Some areas of the letter are spotty- smeared with a shaky hand or bled through with the general dampness of the Wolfstack Docks- but it’s mostly legible, with only a few crossed out words. Good signs all around. If it was a practical joke from the Knotted Sock or the Regiment, two urchin gangs popular in this part of the city, there would be a lot more spelling mistakes.
Dear Infinite Agency, it begins,
Martyn told me that you were good at this sort of thing and there’s very few peep people who I know who would help, so I think I need you. A friend of mine is in trouble. I can’t tell you what kind of trouble over letter, but they are in trouble and I think they need help very badly or they’re going to do something they can’t really come back from. Come to Wolfstack, two streets left from the Blind Helmsman. Don’t worry about the price for getting in. Just ask for the Doc. There is fifty rosygold included in this letter, more to be negotiated on arrival. Meet at 9am, sharp, tomorrow.
Hoping Martyn was being honest when he said you were good-
Apo Apokuna
Drift can feel a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She turns to Avid, who is looking at her expectantly. When she shakes the envelope over the table, there is a clatter, and many, many small ruby-red pieces of rosygold come falling out.
“Avid.” Drift says triumphantly. “I think we have a case.”
He lets out a little whooping sound. The world is, for a moment, right.
+++
Avid falls asleep on the couch quickly. There are still crumbs from the biscuits on his clothes. Drift knows, from experience, that he will not stay peaceful for long- his dreams are always interrupted with shouting and yelling and occasional, awful crying- but she’ll take the silence where she can get it. She eats her fill, makes a couple of notes on potential work she could pick up in the area (expansion of local urchin gangs and strange decrease in number of tomb-colonists) if her reputation improves. Then she goes to bed, which is cramped between a shelf and the next-door’s chimney stack.
Her dreams aren’t pleasant.
She walks through a city that has been drowned underwater. There are grand, unbelievable shadows passing above her, cutting through the watery sunlight like an eclipse, but she doesn’t look up for fear that seeing them will mean that they see her. Curiosity curls under her skin and she beats it back with trained expertise.
There is someone else in the ruins with her. She tries to keep an eye out for them, catching only glimpses- a collar, a set of golden eyes, a wicked and sharp smile- but it’s impossible to do that and keep her eyes safely down, on the floor, until there is a strange pressure on her back and her neck and keeping her eyes on the floor becomes no longer a matter of whether she wants to and simply becomes the product of not falling over. Something is pressing down on her neck, like a noose or a chain. She keeps on walking. If she stops walking, the pressure will crush her.
On one of the ruined, cracked flagstones that make up the doorsteps, there is the flower of a single orchid plant. Drift can’t-
The shadows loom. The person laughs. The water all around her rushes forwards- NORTH NORTH NORTH screams her thoughts, WE ARE GOING NORTH- like someone has pulled a plug on the ocean itself, and the city reveals itself to be a mouth, all the buildings teeth and teeth and teeth, and the person is laughing and the shadows are so so so close-
When she wakes up, it’s with a scream bottled in her throat. The bells outside chime for 5’o’clock in the morning. There are bats screeching outside, which is as close to singing birds as she’s going to get down here. She can remember what it sounded like on the surface. She will never hear it again.
Drift ignores her dry mouth and her shaky hands, peels herself out of bed and gets to work. She doesn’t have much time, and Wolfstack Dock is half of London away.