Ring. Sister. Piano (Book 4 of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Thirty Seven: Barriers and Gateways

It wasn't as bad as Jack had expected. Bazalgette's sewers were a thing of beauty. They were wide and airy – if anything could be called 'airy' in the vicinity of all that stench – and they were tiled with lovely, geometric patterns, seemingly put in place just to please the eyes of the rats and repair-crews that ventured down here. 

Still, it wasn't easy. By the time Jack had been down there an hour, the darkness and the stink had compressed the air he walked through into a kind of clay. It took a supreme effort of will just to move forwards. He didn't have much to spare for observation. 

He trailed his hand against the tunnel-wall as he walked, in case he missed an alcove or a side-tunnel that might have marked the entrance to the demon realms.

But when he saw it, he couldn't have missed it – or even mistaken it for something else, which seemed odd, because presumably the engineers had seen it when they'd built the place, and had thought of it as – what? A natural rock formation? The remains of an old church or temple? A pile of debris too big and inconvenient to move away?

It was a branch in the river – or rather, an island tall enough to reach the tunnel roof, where stalagmites and stalactites met like clenched teeth: a pale, milky grin of a place, like – well, like the smile of the Cheshire Cat.

Jack gasped – which involved taking in more of the foul air than he wanted to all in one go. He knew immediately that this was where Sita had got in to the demon realms, though he didn't quite see how.

He jumped off the walkway and splashed through the thigh-deep water until he was close enough to touch the stone. It didn't reflect much of his lantern-light. There was a curious sense of depth, as though there was an ocean of space back there, sucking in the light and the splashing sound of his footsteps. It was solid to the touch, but felt more... organic... than the tunnel-walls.

Was this like the entrance to the fire-mines, he wondered? Did you have to be a woman to get through? Or something else? Maybe you had to be under ten, or a virgin, or no more than five feet tall? Magic was so bloody whimsical.

He found the nearest sewer-grating, and very carefully measured the number of paces between it and the milk-white stone. He tried to judge the direction too, from the angle of the daylight that filtered down through the grating, but that would probably be easier once he was up in the fresh air. And it had been a long time since he'd thought of London's atmosphere as 'fresh air'.

Then he waited some minutes for a lull in passers-by and hauled himself up.

He was in Farringdon Road – the broad avenue and sooty stucco was unmistakable. It was a slightly nicer district than Camden, but this turned out to work in his favour, because the well-dressed pedestrians gave him a wide berth for fear that he might soil their clothes.

In truth, he didn't smell much worse than the average vagrant or night-soil man, but he wanted to wash before he even ventured into the same city as Ellini. 

He went to the Turkish Baths in Covent Garden. A few eyebrows were raised – and a few noses wrinkled – when he turned up in the foyer, smelling like the bottom of the Thames, but money could be very persuasive. Money always scrubbed up nicely, no matter where it had been.

He went into the opulent, tiled interior and watched the other bathers scurry for the door. Then he scrubbed himself until he was practically shining. He even paid an errand-boy to buy him new clothes, and dispose of the old ones. In London almost everything was sold on, re-packaged, broken up and made into something new, but Jack was guessing those clothes weren't fit for anything except the furnace.

It was expensive, but he felt a little better as the train chugged back towards Oxford, and the spires drew back into sight, like a spiky ceiling that was slowly but steadily being lowered on top him.