Mainspring by Jay Lake Page B

someone shouted. “Every able-bodied man fall in, right now!”
    Hethor scrambled on hands and knees toward the newcomers, eager to be away from the candlemen, no matter what the cost. He tried to get to his feet, but the throbbing in his head made him sick to his stomach. He missed his footing and slid flat on the floor.

    â€œCorne along, vou monkeys, or you’ll be billy-damned sorry,” roared the shouting man.
    Choking, Hethor got to his feet. He staggered forward. “Wait for me,” he gasped. “Please, wait.”
    â€œThis place is scuppered,” said another voice in a thick Scottish accent. “Dinna see what the fewk we come for. Wastin’ our time with them broken old bastards. Dark as yon eclipse in here, ’tis, and them all blind as stones.”
    â€œNo!” Hethor tried to shout, but his stomach heaved so hard the words came out in a strangled cough.
    Hands grabbed at his ankles and his calves, tugging him back into the flickering darkness. A wave of fury and fear drove Hethor forward. They had come for him. He knew it. He fought his tormenters to chase after the lanterns bobbing through the door. “Wait for me!” he shouted.
    The last one in the line paused, the light sweeping back once more into the pit of the candlemen. It caught Hethor in the face. He madly waved even as more hands tried to pull him down. Hethor kicked a candleman in the face, then stumbled into the lantern’s glare.
    â€œWell and you’re nae prize,” said the Scottish voice. A great hand grabbed Hethor’s shoulder and yanked him out the first door, then the second, into the brick corridor beyond.
    â€œIs he fit?” asked the first man, the one who had shouted for the prisoners to fall in.
    â€œFit enough, by the white bird,” said Phelps quietly. The little man stood in the corridor with Sergeant Ellis, a few feet away from the party with their lanterns and staves.
    Hethor tried not to stare at Phelps. His message to the mysterious Malgus at Anthony’s must have gotten through. They really had come for him. His eyes ached in the lantern’s glare. Someone felt the muscles of Hethor’s arms and shoulders.
    Phelps smiled, nodding slowly, acting for all the world like he’d never before laid eyes on Hethor. “He’ll do.”

    Hethor found himself being dragged down the corridor faster than he could walk. He was surrounded by a chatter of voices talking about weight and lift and drag and everything except the most important thing of all.
    What were they going to do with him, now that he had been rescued from the pit?
    THE GROUP that took him from the prison turned out to be six men including the leader and the vocal Scot. They bundled Hethor into an enclosed wagon of the sort used by the bobbies to round up drunks and criminals. But they all followed him in. He noted that the door was not locked.
    Inside the black Mariah with its tiny, high windows, his eyes had a chance to adjust to the light once more. He realized these men with their striped shirts and canvas jackets were sailors. One even wore a gold hooped earring just like the engravings in the Boy’s Own books he’d read as a child. They carried on a multisided conversation that seemed to be all talking and no listening.
    â€œAin’t never seen nothing like that place. Like some demon-hell out of the south.”
    â€œStraddle me and me mum both, you’ve been to the Gambia and Formosa. Don’t bet that’s the worser’s ever been seen by the likes of us.”
    â€œAll right, you stupid arse-licker, but ’tain’t nothing like it in a proper English city.”
    â€œWho the bloody fewk says Boston’s a proper English city?”
    They all laughed.
    â€œExcuse me,” Hethor said.
    â€œWhat ho,” the Scot replied. “New chum speaks.”
    â€œI’m grateful for the rescue, but where are we bound?”
    More laughter. The