Chapter Ten

They headed out, down Cable Street, in silence for a few hundred yards, until Stephen let out a very long, shuddering breath. "Hell, hell, hellfire ."

"Don't panic. It's fine."

"No, it isn't!"

"Yes, it is," Crane insisted. "Mrs. Gold knows everything she needs to know about Rackham. You're not hiding anything relevant. I will gladly serve up anyone else Rackham was blackmailing on a plate. Just keep your head."

"Keep my— Do you realise what I said in there?"

"What?"

Stephen clutched at his hair. "I began to tell Esther you're resistant to fluence and had to invent a load of rubbish to cover that up."

"Why should she not know that?"

"Because," said Stephen, with tenuous patience, "the Pied Piper is likely to be someone with latent or undetected talent. Someone with innate resistance to fluence would be exactly the sort of person we're after. Given the way you're tangled up in the middle of this web, she'd be mad not to look at you. And the closer Esther looks at you, the more likely she is to find out about you, and the more likely she is to find out about me. Damn it!"

"No harm done." Crane wasn't entirely sure that was true.

"Esther is not a stupid woman. She knows you're hiding something."

"That's my problem, Stephen."

"No, it really isn't." Stephen had led them down to the river with rapid strides. They paused now, looking across the broad sweep of the churning brown Thames. "Lucien, do you know what I have? In life?"

"What?"

"My profession. That's it. I've no family, except my aunt, and she'll never speak to me again. I live on the pittance they pay justiciars. My friends are all justiciars, or married to them. Everyone else hates us. If I couldn't be a justiciar, I… God, I don't know what I'd do. If I lost that, I'd have lost everything."

"I'm here," Crane observed, without inflection.

Stephen propped his elbows on a bit of wooden fencing. Crane joined him, and they both stared out at the turbid waters.

"You're going back to Shanghai," Stephen said at last.

"What? I'm not."

"Yes, you are. One day. I'm not an idiot, Lucien. You're bored. You had this wonderful life of adventure and excitement and living the way you wanted, and now you're here, no ties, nothing to do, supposed to be in the House of Lords or making a suitable marriage, having to hide how you are, how we are— No, let me finish. I'm not complaining. I…like you, I like spending time with you, but you're not going to tolerate this life forever, or even for much longer. Why would you? I wouldn't stop being a justiciar. And that's the point. You have your life in China, and I have my profession. So I have to make sure I don't lose that profession, and my friends, over this. Over you. I don't want it to come to a choice, but if it does, then I have to choose with the rest of my life in mind."

Crane stared out at the churning waters. A breeze brought a tang of salty air to his nose. He felt oddly calm, but with an unpleasant quivery sensation in his stomach.

He wanted to pull Stephen into his arms, hold him, kiss the fear and the loneliness away, and then fuck him till he forgot any ideas he might have of ending things between them. But he couldn't even touch him, because of the bloody laws of this bloody country that, yes, bored and irritated him beyond bearing.

Could he really say he wouldn't leave?

It didn't matter if he said it or didn't. It would have to be Stephen's choice.

He took a breath, kept his voice level. "I understand. And I've no desire to see you hurt. What do you want me to do?"

"Perhaps we shouldn't…be together. For a while. Till this is over and Esther stops wondering about you and watching me."

Crane looked at his hands, long fingers entwined, so close to Stephen's on the salt-crusted rotting wood, so far from being able to touch him. "If you insist. If you think it would help."

"It might."

Crane nodded slowly. Stephen glanced at him, gnawing his lip. "I'm sorry. I realise this is tiresome. But Rackham's death, and you in the middle of it, and Esther—it's too much, too dangerous. My fault, for bringing you in, but I needed someone who spoke Chinese and could talk to shamans, and I don't think there's anyone in London who fits that bill except you and Rackham, and I had no idea how far this would run out of control." He gave a little involuntary gasp. "I know what it's like to lose everything, you see. I don't want to do that again."

"You won't. Not through my agency. Not at all." Crane hesitated, but it needed saying. "Do you not think that you should talk to Mrs. Gold?"

"About—"

"All of it."

"No."

"She might understand. She might even not be as surprised as you might think."

"No. I can't, Lucien. I can't risk it. It wouldn't be safe."

"Because you don't trust her to know about the power, about me?"

"Exactly."

"Liar," said Crane. Esther Gold's fierce rectitude burned as brightly as Stephen's. He could well understand how the pair of them were so disliked by less upright citizens. There was no doubting Stephen's desire to keep the Magpie Lord's power a secret, but Crane would have put serious money on his lover's trust in Mrs. Gold, and on that trust being well placed. "Try again."

Stephen was silent for a long moment, looking out over the Thames. When he spoke, he addressed the words outwards, as if continuing an argument with the river waters. "You see, my friends aren't all people who've lived in China where nobody cares who you share your bed with. My friends live here, where it matters, where it says what kind of man you are. And I don't want them to know that."

"God's sake, Stephen. They're your best friends. This is your life ."

"It's my life, and my decision," Stephen said sharply. "And until I have a damned good reason to make that decision—"

Being forced apart? Isn't that a good reason? Crane pressed his lips together. Clearly, it wasn't. Stephen wasn't going to gamble with his closest friendships for the sake of a lover he didn't believe would stay around. It made sense.

Stephen's shoulders dropped slightly and he sighed. "It must be nice to be able to talk to your friends."

Crane accepted the change of tone. "Mmm. Leo Hart guessed about you."

"She's never met me!"

"Not you personally. That you exist. That there is someone, for me." Is? Was? He didn't want to think about that. "She wants to meet you."

"Um—"

"I said no, don't worry." Crane rolled his shoulders, aching from the stooping position that brought his mouth close to Stephen's ear. "She's the other victim."

"The other… Rackham? He was blackmailing Mrs. Hart?"

"He was, the little turd. That was why I went round to have it out with violence."

"I have to ask…" Stephen said.

"I have no reason to believe she knows anything about any of this. I'm quite sure she doesn't. And if she wanted Rackham dead…"

"Yes?"

"Oh, if she wanted him dead, she'd have asked me to kill him," Crane said lightly, recalling that she had done precisely that. "I'll go and tell her the news now. Did you need anything from me regarding the Traders?"

"Not really." Stephen straightened up, indicating that they should walk again. "Dr. Almont is very dull, isn't he? He was so happy to have an audience for his theory on the Javanese anitu , or migratory possessive spirit." He mimicked Almont's precise tones. "But he had nothing at all to say on rat cults so I'll spare myself a further lecture."

"Wise," said Crane, as they headed westward, towards town. "What did Peyton say to you?"

"Peyton. Medium height, fifties?"

Crane would have described Peyton as a runt, but since the man stood a good five inches taller than Stephen, he refrained. "And a face like a weasel eating unripe gooseberries."

"Him," said Stephen reflectively. "Yes. He followed me down to the conveniences and told me some rather bad things about you."

"Did he. What sort of things?"

"Apparently, you like to bed men. I was shocked by that, I can tell you."

Crane grinned. "My secret is out. What else?"

Stephen flicked a glance up at him. "He was rather uncomplimentary about Mr. Hart. He had some strong words about Mr. Hart's business dealings, and you for supporting him in them."

"Tom was a thoroughgoing rascal, no denying it. I smuggled for him, and on my own account. I told you that."

"Mmm." Stephen paced on. "He called him a murderer."

"Did he."

"That's not news to you," Stephen observed.

"Tom had men killed," Crane said. "Whether you'd say murder —well, we differ on that."

"We do. For example, in my view, if you kill someone for reasons other than self-defence or preventing acts of evil…"

"Yes, very virtuous, but you're not in China."

"Morality is different there?"

"You bloody know it is." Crane saw Stephen blink. "And life is cheaper. Especially in the disreputable quarters of Shanghai. But if that spiteful little worm led you to believe that Tom Hart was some kind of criminal mastermind, or that he and I went around murdering willy-nilly, he's a damned liar."

"There I'll agree with you," Stephen said. "He reeked of malice. Dr. Almont was lethally dull, that man Shaycott managed to make a story about giant rats boring even under current circumstances, and on the whole, I cannot believe you made me put on a fancy suit for that experience."

"It would have been more interesting if you were badly dressed?" Crane asked, striving for his usual tone.

"I'd have felt less like a silk purse in a pig's ear," Stephen retorted.

They bickered amicably back to Ratcliffe Highway, both forcing a lightness neither felt, and if that meant skating over blood and fear and the prospect of parting, Crane was happy with that, but the nauseated feeling in the pit of his stomach was still there when they parted in Oxford Street and he headed westwards to call on Leonora Hart.