When Gods Die

“By his bulk and by his size,” sang the crowd, their voices swelling toward the punchline, “by his oily qualities…”

Slipping between a fishmonger and a tattered begger, Sebastian reached the corner. The side streets here lay in shadow, the shops already shuttered out of fear of the restive throng. Without looking back, Sebastian darted down the lane.

“This or else my eyesight fails,” roared the mass of voices. “This should be the Prince of Whales!”

Sebastian heard a shout go up from behind him, followed by a chorus of angry protests from the crowd as his pursuers pushed their way forward.

Chapter 61

The cobbled lane stretched straight before him. Throwing a quick glance over his shoulder, Sebastian took the first alley that opened up to his left. Already he could hear the sound of running feet behind him. He quickly ducked down another byway.

He hoped to lose himself in the warren of mean streets that ran between Bedford Street and St. Martin’s Lane. But the area was unfamiliar to him. Dodging the low-hung, swinging sign of a shuttered gin shop, he rounded a corner and found himself in a cul-de-sac. Ancient, soot-stained brick buildings rose around him three and more stories. He was trapped.

He spun around, his breath sawing in and out of his heaving chest. Several doors opened onto the pavement, but all were padlocked from the outside. The slap of running feet grew nearer. Impossible to go back now.

His gaze fell to the arched entrance of the culvert at his feet. Once, the arch had been barred by an iron grill, but now the grill was rusted and broken, the bars twisted apart to make a space wide enough for a man to slip through.

He’d heard tales of men who made their living by scavenging the honeycomb of ancient viaducts and sewers that ran beneath the streets of London. Toshers, they were called. The work was dangerous. The vaults flooded quickly with the rising tide of the river into which they emptied, or even from a heavy storm that could pass unnoticed by those toiling away belowground. There were deadly gasses, too, that could overcome the unwary. Sometimes the floor of one tunnel would collapse into an older vault that ran below it, the sinkhole covered by deceptively flat expanses of silt that only betrayed themselves when a man stepped onto their smooth, deadly surface.

“This way,” someone shouted.

“Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian.

Rolling into the gutter, he squeezed his way through the grill, the rusted bars scraping his wounded side as he lowered himself into the shaft. He felt his coat catch on one of the bars and pulled it sharply, swearing again when he heard the cloth rip.

Scrabbling around for the iron rings driven into the brickwork of the shaft, he lowered himself into the darkness. Some six or eight feet down, his legs plunged into the void of a vault. He let go, dropping the last four or five feet into a noisome stretch of mud and muck that splashed beneath his feet as he landed.

The close, foul stench of the place pinched at his nostrils, roiled his stomach. Panting heavily, he paused to give his eyes time to adjust to the darkness and heard a voice from the street above say, “Where the devil did he go?”

Sebastian held himself very still.

“There,” he heard Portland say. “He’s gone down the culvert. See—” There was a dull twang of metal. “He’s torn his coat. You, Rory, fetch some lanterns, and be quick about it.”

“Sweet bleedin’ Jesus,” said a man’s gruff voice. “I ain’t goin’ down there. People die down there.”

“You fool,” spat Portland. “If we don’t find him and stop him, we’ll all be dead. Now get going!”

Setting his teeth against the stench, Sebastian slipped away from the shaft. He could see better now, his eyes growing accustomed to the dim light that filtered down through the occasional grates. He was in a brickwork tunnel that arched so low over his head he had to stoop to keep from scraping his crown against the curving roof. A slow trickle of water ran down the center of the tunnel, but he suspected it wouldn’t be enough to wash away all trace of his footprints. If Portland and his men could find lanterns, the direction Sebastian had taken would be all too easy to see.

The uneven, muck-covered bricks were treacherous beneath his feet. Moving as quickly as he dared, he followed the water downhill, hoping to come across another open grate that would give him access to the streets above. But he’d gone no more than a few hundred feet when he heard the sound of splashing and men’s voices behind him, followed by a wavering gleam of light. Rory had found lanterns far quicker than Sebastian would have expected.

“Devlin.” Portland’s voice echoed through the shadowy tunnel. “Devlin? I know you can hear me.”

Sebastian paused, listening.