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“Wot are you doing to me, you witch!” Fowlson screeches.
“You brought this on yourself, Mr. Fowlson,” I reply. “You are to leave my brother alone.”
Fowlson strains to free himself. “Turn me loose, or I’ll tear you apart!”
“That’s quite enough. Promise me.”
He grins, and his defiance infuriates me. “The only thing I’ll promise you is this: I don’t care about any of it now. It’s you and me. I’ll come for you, you little witch. You’ll beg for mercy.”
The magic sours inside me. I can’t quite feel myself anymore. I feel only a rage so fierce it blinds. I want to hurt him, to bend him to my will. I want him to know who has the power here. You’ll be sorry….
Fowlson’s eyes open wide with a new fear. Slowly, he falls, his face lowering ever closer to the watery muck on the floor of the sewer. He cannot speak; my rage won’t allow it. My eyelids flutter. Kartik speaks reason to me but I do not want to hear it; I want only to bathe in retribution.
Something darts across my soul. The boy in the kitchen. The angry woman rolls up her sleeves. The little boy cringes before her terrible rage. You miserable bastard, she curses, I’ll show you respect. I’ll tear you apart. She plunges his head into the pot of water and holds it while the boy thrashes. You’ll beg for mercy! The boy comes up gasping and she plunges him under once more. I feel his fear as he comes up, again and again. He is near to collapsing, and for a moment, he considers it, considers flooding his lungs with that water to make her happy, to make her right. But he cannot do it. He fails. She pulls his head up an inch, and he manages to sputter one word: mercy. She hits him hard and her ring cuts his cheek. He curls up in the corner, pressing his hand to the deep cut, but he doesn’t dare call out. Tomorrow he will try harder. Tomorrow she will love him. Tomorrow he will not hate her so very much.
It’s as if I’ve been hit. The magic wavers; I stumble, slamming my palms against the wet wall to stop my fall. Fowlson’s face is an inch from the filthy water. Stop, I tell myself. Stop. The magic settles inside me, dogs circling down to sleep. My head aches and my hands shake.
Fowlson springs up, gasping and trembling.
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice raw. “Your mother…she hurt you. She gave you that scar.”
Fowlson struggles to speak. “You shut it about my mother! She were a saint!”
“No,” I whisper. “She was a monster. She hated you.”
“You shut it!” he screams, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” I protest. “Believe me.”
“You’ll be sorry for that, luv.” He turns to Kartik. “I ’ope you learned a lot during your days wif us, brother. You’ll be needin’ it.”
Fowlson swings at me, though I am out of reach. He needs to do it; it’s all he has left. “I’ll crush you, you bitch!”
I should slap him for it, but I won’t. I can see only that little boy in the corner of the kitchen.
“The magic won’t last long. An hour, maybe two at most. And once you’re free, you’re not to come after us, Mr. Fowlson, or I shall unleash my powers again.”
Kartik takes my hand and leads me out of the sewer. We leave Fowlson, swinging and cursing at the dark, behind us.
Walking along the dirty Thames is a relief. The river air that seemed so foul an hour ago is sweet compared to the suffocating odor in the sewer. The wracking coughs and the tuneless songs of the mud larks float through the fog like phantoms. A sudden shout cuts the mist. Someone has found a lump of coal, and the news is greeted with excitement and a great thrashing of water as every one of the mud larks rushes to find the sweet spot. But it turns out to be nothing more than a rock. I hear the heavy plink as it’s tossed back into the Thames riverbed, that graveyard of hope.
“I need to sit,” I say.
We wander down by the wharves and rest for a moment, looking out at the boats bobbing on the river.
“Are you all right?” I ask after a long silence.
He shrugs. “You heard what he said. And think less of me for it.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “Amar said…” I stop, thinking of my recent encounter with Kartik’s brother in the Winterlands. But I’m not ready to disclose that just yet. “In your dream, he said you’d be the death of me. Is that why you’ve kept your distance?”
He doesn’t answer straightaway. “Yes, that is part of it.”
“What is the other part?”
Kartik’s face clouds. “I…it’s nothing.”
“Is that why you didn’t want to become part of the alliance?” I ask.
