“Mum,” he croaked, staggering to where she’d collapsed.
“Christopher.” Her voice, barely above a whisper, mirrored his terror. “Are you hurt, my son?”
“No. I’m okay. Mum, don’t move. I’ll call the guards.” He knelt over her, afraid to touch her. Afraid to put his hands anywhere.
“There was a knife, Pigeon, did they—” She panted a bit, as though trying to catch her breath. “Did they cut you?” Her hands, usually so strong, so sure, feathered over his face, his shoulders, and down his torso.
“A knife?” He shook his head, still trying to clear it. “They didn’t cut me…”
A warm, sticky sensation pooled against his knee and he suddenly wondered if he hadn’t been somehow stabbed. But there was no pain. No cut.
A new dawning horror licked at his soul.
“Throw another log on the fire, Pigeon, it’s so cold.”
The warm liquid slid down his leg as he hastily fetched two small logs and steepled them over the coals. Lightning flashed before the logs caught flame, illuminating the most grim sight of the entire horror-filled night.
Blood. Spreading from the prone form of his mother, threatening each wall of their tiny cell. He cried for help, clinging to the bars and pressing his face as far against the opening as he could. He called out for someone, anyone. Female voices answered from the darkness. Some concerned, some angry.
But no one came.
Breath exploding from his thin chest, he turned back to his beloved mother, now wreathed in the golden glow of their pathetic fire.
“Mum.” He knelt next to her on the side the blood had not yet reached; distressed to see how fast it crawled toward him, the edge of the red pool beveled in the light of the flame. “What do I do?” He groaned, hot tears blurring his vision. “Tell me what to do.”
“Oh, Pigeon, there’s nothing … to be done.” Tears streaked from her own eyes, but she could no longer reach for him. She sounded afraid, which intensified his own despair. He gathered her head against his chest, clutching her to him as though if he held on tightly enough, he could keep her with him.
“Don’t leave me,” he begged, not caring how small he sounded. “I’m sorry I didn’t stay still. I’m sorry. I was angry. I didn’t know about the knife. Don’t leave. I’m sorry!”
“Sing me the lullaby, Pigeon,” she whispered. “I can’t see you anymore.”
He forced the words through a throat blocked with terror and pain.
Hush Hush in the evening,
Good dreams will come stealing.
Of freedom and laughter
and peace ever after …
His mother smiled, though blood leaked from the corner of her mouth and trickled into her hair. Her skin was so cold. Waxy. But the pool in which he sat was warm. Enveloping them both.
Ye’ll smile while you’re sleeping …
And watch I’ll be keeping—
His voice caught on a sob. Then another. He couldn’t go on singing. But he didn’t have to.
She coughed. Her chest heaving. Then it deflated, hot breath hitting his skin like the words she could no longer say. Out and out and out until she was perfectly still.
Christopher couldn’t hear. Someone was screaming. Loud, long, ear-shattering peals of desperation. Screaming like their soul might escape through their throat. Screaming loud enough to wake the gods. Loud enough to be heard over the cacophony of the nightmarish place he’d called home. To be heard over the storm, and the thunder, and the silence of his dead mother.
Christopher wished the screaming would stop. But it didn’t. Not for a long, long time.
Eventually the fire died. The stones cooled the blood beneath him and turned it to ice. The shell of his mother cooled also. As the warmth seeped out of her corpse and she stiffened to a heavy weight in his young, trembling arms, all that was warm leaked away from him, as well. He felt it leaving with a mild sense of curiosity.
It felt … like water. Sitting in pool of water. It was only water. Surrounding him. Covering him. Caked to his skin. Filling the cracks of the stone. The space of his container.
Water. He understood now. He’d learned the lesson Master Ping had been trying to impart to him. There in the stormy darkness he was learning to be like water. Patient. Ruthless.
Laying his heavy mother on the slick ground, he stood, feeling as though he had no bones. As though he didn’t reside in his body. But out of it. Around it. Like the water.
All the water on the stones.
He stood facing the door, still as the stone, and began the forms he’d been drilling earlier in the rain. When the door opened he would go to Master Ping. He would tell him that he understood now. That he was like water.
Ready for death to flow from his hands.
CHAPTER ONE
London, 1877
Twenty-two Years Later
“I don’t kill children,” Christopher Argent informed the solicitor who seemed to be attempting to hire him to do so. “Or deliver them to their deaths.”
Sir Gerald Dashforth, Esquire, perched uneasily behind the desk, and persisted in eyeing the closed door as though he anticipated the need to scream for help at any moment. The man matched the furniture in his Westminster office, expensive, waspish, delicate in an almost feminine manner, and the most offensive shade of puce. He peered at Argent from behind wire-rimmed spectacles perched on ears that had long since outgrown his head.
Argent pondered the few observations he’d made about Dashforth in the minutes since he’d met the lawyer. The man was paid above his station, and yet still spent more than he made. He conducted business with the unscrupulous desperation of someone living well above their means. He was fastidious, vain, intelligent, and greedy to the point of immorality. He’d made a career of being the unassuming absolver of his clients’ malevolent misdeeds by whatever means necessary.