Mind the Gap (Hidden Cities #1)

Mind the Gap (Hidden Cities #1) Page 6

There were very fine, very intricate tattoo swirls beneath both ears and disappearing down under the collar of his coat.

"Who are you?" Jazz asked.

"We ask the questions down 'ere," Stevie Sharpe said. "In fact, you don't even talk. Not a word. This is our place, and the walls hear only our words."

Mr. F. pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow. "Don't you think, my pets, that we should hear this girl's story before we start imposing such rules?"

"She could be trouble," a tall girl said.

"She could be, Faith. But weren't you trouble as well when I found you?"

Faith shrugged, still staring at Jazz. "Suppose."

"First thing I wanna know is how she found us," Stevie said.

Cadge remained silent, still pressing her down. Jazz could sense that he was tensed and ready to move should she try anything foolish.

"I really need to piss," Jazz said.

Mr. F. frowned. "We don't swear and curse down here, young lady. Avoid vulgarity, please."

"Right. Pee."

Mr. F. regarded her for a while, expression unchanging.

"She does look a bit desperate," a short, chubby boy said.

"Hmm." The tall man squatted and turned his head so that Jazz could see him straight on. "Well then, Hattie, would you be good enough to take her to the loo?"

"No problem. Cadge?"

Cadge stood from Jazz, gently, so that he didn't hurt her.

Jazz sat up slowly, shifting her foot to test whether she had feeling back in her leg. It seemed better, but she didn't want to collapse again in front of these people. So she waited awhile, looking around, trying not to appear as confused and frightened as she felt.

"My name's Harry," Mr. F. said. "And nobody here will hurt you." Jazz believed him. There was something about his voice that made her suspect that she would believe it if he told her black was white. It was smooth, intelligent, and assured. Mum would like him, she thought, and the thought surprised her. She looked down at the ground and stood, rubbing away a tear as she did so.

Facing them, feeling their attention bore into her, sens-ing the suspicion coming off them in waves, she realized that there was no reason at all to lie.

"My mum's dead," she said. "She was murdered today. And the people who did it are looking for me."

Harry's expression did not change, but the kids around him all reacted in some way.

"Then you're lost too, just like us," Harry said.

Lost, Jazz thought. Can it really be this easy?

Hattie led her to the loos. There was a narrow opening in the end wall of the tunnel, the same place Cadge had gone to switch on the rest of the lights. The walls were bare brick fes-tooned with cables and spiderwebs, the concrete floor damp from several leaks that looked decades old. As they walked past a room off to the right, Jazz felt a draft that could only have come from a vent to the world above. Light from the corridor shone into the room just enough for her to see several clothes-lines hung with drying laundry and an ironing board.

Hattie noticed her looking and laughed softly. "What, didn't think a bunch of tunnel rats would want clean clothes?"

"No," Jazz said, not wanting to offend. Then she shrugged. "The iron surprises me, though."

"Mr. F. likes things neat and tidy," Hattie said. "A bit of cleanup makes it easier to go unnoticed up above."

The passageway went on another dozen feet before opening into a large round room. Jazz knew this place had been built as a bomb shelter but still found the chamber re-markable this far underground. At its center stood three roughly plumbed basins. On one end were two curtained shower stalls, and on the other there were four toilet cubi-cles. The room smelled faintly of piss and shit and, underly-ing that, the stench of old bleach.

"Best we can offer," Hattie said. "'Spect you're used to bidets and people handing you the toilet roll."

"No," Jazz said. "Not at all." She went into one of the cubicles and peed, not minding for a second that the girl was still standing outside.

"Sorry about your..." Hattie said, unable to continue the sentence.

Jazz could not reply. She looked at the floor between her feet, reaching for small talk. "Is Hattie your real name?" she asked at last.

"No. But I like hats, so Hattie it is. What's your name?"

"Jazz." She realized that none of them had asked her this until now, and that was strange. Surely a name was the first thing anyone asked?

"Ha! You like music?"

"I do, but it is my real name."

"Right," Hattie said, and Jazz could hear the smile in her voice. "Well, it's strange enough to keep, I guess."

Jazz finished and flushed the loo. A trap vented into a flowing sewer, then slammed shut again.

"You'll want to use the spray," Hattie said, and Jazz noticed the cans on a shelf above her. She sprayed the air around her, trying to screw her nose up against the stench.

"That is fucking foul," she said.

"Hey," Hattie said, "Harry meant it. We don't swear down here." The admonishment seemed strange coming from a girl her own age.

"So who are you all?" Jazz asked, stepping from the cu-bicle and going to wash her hands. The water wouldn't get hot, and she shivered as she thought how cold the showers must be in the winter.

"We're the United Kingdom."

Jazz stared at the girl, waiting for the teasing smile. But none came.

"Come on," Hattie said. "I'll let Harry tell you himself."

Chapter Four

all the world

"Gather round, my pets. Time to have a chat with our little wandering note, our Jazz girl. Leave off the dinner prep just now, Stevie, and come to circle."

The boy looked up from perusing the contents of the tribe's many refrigerators. He must have been eighteen or so, tall but slender with muscles like whipcords. He wouldn't be very strong, but he'd be quick as the devil. His black hair hung straight to his shoulders, and his eyes were a coppery brown. Jazz couldn't help taking a second glance at him, and a third, and when he noticed, she turned her eyes away.

Now that she'd calmed down a bit and the panic of her urgent bladder had passed, Jazz took a closer look at the nine runaway urchins who made up Harry's United Kingdom. Hattie and Faith seemed like opposites: Hattie a bit odd and wild but happy enough, and Faith with grim blue-steel eyes and suspicion deep as a knife wound.

The boys seemed to lack any real leader aside from Harry, unless the silent Stevie filled that role.

The youngest among them was twelve-year-old Gob, but Jazz couldn't be sure if the nickname came from his lurking in the tunnels like some hobgoblin or from the fact that he never seemed to stop nattering, even to breathe, unless Harry hushed him.

Cadge had a bit of the peacock in him. The prize pupil, he obviously fancied himself a miniature Harry, even mim-icking the man's body language, that particular quality that bespoke an earlier life as a gentleman. Just a few minutes watching him scramble about revealed that Cadge must be the procurer among them, the most adept with his fingers. He seemed also to know where every item in the old shelter had been stored.

"Come, come," Harry urged, gesturing for them to move in closer.

The United Kingdom formed a circle, seated on the cold ground. Somewhere a train rumbled past, and Jazz remembered where they were, how deep, with the whole of modern London looming over their heads and only the echoes of the past around them. She studied Harry's face, searching for guile or cruelty, but saw only a gleaming pride in his tribe, a love for them that seemed simultaneously out of place and all too natural there in the forgotten cellar of the city.

Harry settled down, leaving Jazz the only one standing. He gestured for her to take a place beside him in the circle.

"Small comforts in our kingdom, love, and chairs not among them. Do join us, please."

For a moment, Jazz was struck by the upturned faces of Harry's followers. The word urchins would not leave her head, though surely many of those nine children were far too old to bear the word comfortably. Still, urchins they were. Lost and dirty children, far from whatever homes they might once have had. They looked to her like schoolchild-ren waiting for the teacher to begin reading, eyes alight with the eager anticipation of story time.

I'm Wendy Darling, she thought. But Jazz understood her foolishness instantly, and a tremor passed through her. Neverland did not exist in the rotting belly of London, un-der the feet of the world, and these were not the Lost Boys. Wendy Darling had run off on a girlish whim, heart aflutter with the allure of Peter Pan, and when she'd gotten over her crush, her parents were waiting for her with open arms, ready to whisper happily-ever-afters as they tucked her into bed.

There'd be no fairy-tale ending for her. Not with those words her mother had written in blood.

"Thank you," Jazz said, her voice quavering only a little.

She sat down beside Harry, and a collective sigh of relief seemed to sweep over the tribe of urchins —the United Kingdom. Did that make Harry the king? she wondered.

"The circle is for sharing stories," Harry began a bit cer-emoniously, though his eyes were gentle.

"Whether it be the day's adventures, or the nightmares that wake us in the night, or the longings for times gone by, what's spoken here is never judged, never questioned. We bring only truth to the circle."

The nine apostles nodded their assent and Jazz followed suit.

"A time for proper introductions, then," Harry said, turning to Jazz. "Harold Pilkington Fowler, at your service."

He made a bow of his head and spoke the words with a courtly flourish of his hand. Jazz gnawed her lower lip for a moment, glancing nervously about. Shouldn't she still be running? Or was there simply nowhere left to run? She had no reason to trust this odd band, save that they seemed the utter opposite of the Uncles and their BMW men. Harry Fowler's tribe was the opposite of everything, really. Oppo-site of the world as she'd always known it.

A twitch of a smile touched her lips. Their oppositeness suddenly seemed more than enough reason to trust them. Thieves, ruffians, and scoundrels they might be, but she sensed the nobility in them and a sense of honor she'd rarely encountered among the tidier folk aboveground.

Jazz returned Harry's bow and offered her hand. "Jasmine Ellen Towne, Mr. Fowler. And she's grateful for your hospitality."

Harry beamed. He shook her hand and then adjusted the lapels of his coat as though chairing a meeting of the board of a brokerage or similarly snooty enterprise.

"Now then, my compatriots, my fine filchers, do like-wise please and make yourselves known to our Jasmine —"

"Jazz," she interrupted. "Just Jazz, please."

Hattie sighed, rolling her eyes. "'Course it's just Jazz. I said as much, didn't I? We don't care much for proper names down in the kingdom. No use for 'em."

She wore a pale peach bonnet with faux flowers on the brim and a smear of black grease along one ragged side. Jazz wondered how many hats she had hidden about the shelter.

"Jazz it is, then, and a fitting name. Improvisation is vi-tal to our little enterprise, so I hope you shall earn the appel-lation," Harry said. "But back to our introductions. Round the circle, if you please."

And they began. The boy to Jazz's left had small dark eyes set back in his face above a long thin nose that had been broken more than once. She'd thought his name would be Rat, or some synonym, but he went by Bill, an ordinary enough name. Bill did not introduce himself, however. That task fell to Leela, an Indian girl who sat beside him. Leela's eyes seemed to have their own luminescence, but they dimmed a little when she explained that Bill had no voice of his own. Whether the boy was actually mute or simply chose never to speak, Leela did not reveal, and Jazz hadn't the heart to ask.

Cadge was next, and for a moment the confidence he had when imitating Harry faltered and he gave Jazz a shy smile. The names came too quickly. She'd already marked Hattie, Faith, Gob, and Stevie.

Another of the boys was called Switch, and still another Marco —after the explorer Marco Polo, according to Harry—but by the time they'd gone round the circle entirely, Jazz couldn't recall which was which.

"Good to meet you all," she told them, "and thanks for not running me off."

Some of them smiled in return, but others sniffed at her words and one or two eyed her with open suspicion.

"Nonsense," Harry said with a flutter of his hand. "It's not our way, love. You're a stray. We've all gone astray our-selves, but now we're lost together. Far better than being lost on your own. Now, then, let's have your story. I see it's all still fresh, a bit of glaze in your eyes, but pain needs telling, Jazz girl. Pain always needs telling. The only way to stanch the wound."

Jazz squeezed her eyes shut and a moment of vertigo washed over her. If she hadn't already been seated, she'd have fallen. Was she really supposed to share her story with them all, like some tale told round a campfire?

Nothing's for nothing, her mother had once said. Those that help mostly help themselves. Jazz could hear the echoes of that voice whispering in her head, and she wanted to claw into her brain to stop it.

It felt now as though her mum had been preparing her for this all her life. But Jazz wasn't ready to be alone. How could she survive down here in the dark by herself?

She opened her eyes again and saw those faces, all watching her curiously. Her mother's whispers became more insistent, but Jazz shut them out. After all, her warn-ings had been about people up in the world, people like the Uncles, not about the discarded, like Fowler and his United Kingdom. Even if she told them, how could they hurt her with the truth? They lived down here. Who would they tell?

"My mum's dead," she said. "Murdered, just today." Jazz frowned and looked upward, as though she could see through hundreds of feet of earth and stone and pavement. "Or yesterday. I'm not sure what time it is. I was walking home from school and a queer feeling came over me, and then I saw the cars."