The Girl Who Wasn't Min

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The Girl Who Wasn't Min - book excerpt

Chapter 1: The Game

A tight-laced whale-bone corset meant that she had no choice but to sit bolt upright in the polished leather side-saddle of her fine bay mare. The beast was beautiful, glossy and lean - sleek, nimble and small - as a town horse ought to be. Her russet and brown riding attire was made from top-grade damask and lace; most likely authentic Alendrian lace at that. These elegant, slightly understated women were always dressed in the finest fabrics. She had a pile of thick mahogany hair swept high on to her head and held there by three or maybe four glittering combs. Most likely paste rather than diamonds, but still worth more than a sneeze to the sifters on the Black Market.

If that was her real hair colour and her actual nose or chin, then Luce would happily have eaten her hat - if she'd had a hat to eat. They'd really done their homework on this one. She was Lady Something, Duchess of Somewhere - the names were unimportant. She was had been widowed during the Summer of Fire and rumour had it she had once been desperate for children. Perfect. Luce doubted that she would think so well of children tomorrow.

Luce had quite literally fallen into the Guild Below six or seven years earlier, through an open sewer hatch in the Trade District. No one seemed bothered by her loss, so the Guild kept her. She vaguely remembered a very large family, an empty belly and a bad-tempered mother but she didn't miss any of them at all. Lying in the shadows of the roof, she didn't give think about the past, she just kept her eyes on Min.

She really had to hand it to Min, the girl was a true artist. How she got her nose to run on cue like that Luce had no idea. The grubbiness was real, as was the suggestion of a bruise of her cheek and the lice were an unavoidable occupational hazard. But whilst the whole package made Luce and the others look like something you would leave town to avoid, it made Min look beyond vulnerable in an absolutely heart-breaking way. As far as Luce knew, Min was the youngest. She had been dumped, swaddled and squalling, in a tavern in the Government District, not so much a foundling and a leftling.

The Quizzical Cat was well-known for having no connection whatsoever to the Guild Below, and the tavern keeper, a very stout, short man called Harald, was not in any way a Guild sympathiser, nor did he have a hatch in his back-room under two surprisingly light ale barrels that lead straight down into the sewers. His scrawny wife Ruby had taken one look at the child and pragmatically decided that this wasn't the miracle she had been praying for; this was someone else's disaster and the Guild could deal with it. They had paid her to care for the child until the little girl was old enough to care for herself and then Min had gone to live Below. Harald had named her Mini because she had been tiny even as a baby, and even though she was at least ten still looked only six or seven. Luce watched as Min wandered, barefoot, out of the end of alley way straight into the path of bay mare. She heard the expected whinnying and refocused herself on the job in hand.

A waxed fish-line garrotte was the most easily concealed physical weapon in the City. It was light, and small so it didn't affect the line of your clothes, plus it could be safely swallowed if you knew how to knot it. Luce's garrotte had been adapted slightly with a strip of chamois. Whatever Luce was, she wasn't a murderer. She peered over the edge of the low roof, careful not to be seen. Down on the street, she could see Angel preparing the cotton cloth with knock-out vapours.

Angel was perhaps the most tragic of the four of them. She was white blonde, milky pale and grey-eyed. She had a face like a porcelain doll - admittedly a sour-looking one that had been sitting in a gutter for a month - but still. Unlike the others, she clearly remembered her life before the Guild. She had been snatched by slavers as a small child and sold to an odious woman she only ever referred to as Mistress, although she spat the word with such venom that it made Min shudder. She had been traded to the Guild as part of a settlement on the Mistress' debts. Luce sometimes wondered if one of the reasons Angel seemed so bitter was that she'd been only part of the payment. She'd never dared ask.

Min's performance was reaching a crescendo; she was whimpering and clinging to the woman's skirt. Luce was relieved to see that the mark had dismounted from her horse - unlike the previous two who presumably didn't have enough compassion to spoil their shoes, only to not kick out at the wailing, snotty urchin hanging on to their saddle strap. This woman was actually crouching down, one hand on Min's shoulder when Luce and Angel made eye contact, counted to two and sprung.

Once the woman had been downed and dragged into the alley, Clara appeared from a puddle of darkness across the street. She was ostensibly the brains of the operation; meaning that she had most of the ideas, the biggest mouth and hated climbing up on to roofs. She had been orphaned sometime shortly before the Summer of Fire, and had been living in the Trickster Temple when it had burnt down during the invasion. She had been found by Lady Iona, Duchess of Pringle, who had forced her to wash and taken her to the Guild Below for what she styled as 'further' training. She liked to make sure people knew she'd had contact with Lady Iona, as she was convinced it helped her standing in the Guild Below. It didn't.

Clara was in charge of gathering up their harvest greedily and shoving it into four potato sacks that she had brought for this very purpose. She had a good eye for what would sell.

“I feel almost bad,” said Min tugging the combs out of the woman's mahogany locks, “She was actually lovely.”

“You're not turning soft I hope?” grunted Angel who was trying to heft the woman's skirt free without touching the body.

“I said almost,” returned Min, looking a little wounded. Angel didn't notice.

“You know what,” said Luce, cutting the lacing on the corset with a single run of her blade, “this is the best scam yet.” She watched the whale-bone and fabric relax as the tension suddenly released.

“They silk?” said Clara distractedly pointing to her stockings. Angel gingerly ran a rough finger over the sheer white fabric and nodded,

“She's even got matching garters, with pearls on.”

Angel sounded disgusted. Of all of them, she was the only one who actually despised the rich. The other three just saw themselves as wealth farmers, harvesting the ripe pickings from whichever unwitting soul came their way next.

“Right,” said Clara, “let's have 'em. She'll do in her chemise and bloomers, unless they'ze silk an' all.”

“Nope, just cotton,” snorted Min, as she took the fine gold chain from around the slender neck, " She can find out what it's like to walk in this alleyway without any shoes on." Min had been quick to shove her own feet back into the stiff boots she had proudly re-appropriated during the last plague.

“I swear,” said Luce, checking that nothing had been missed before they dragged her further down the alley, “if Min ever grows breasts we're in trouble.”

“If I ever grow breasts,” retorted Min handing three rings to Clara, who stuck them in the least wholly sack. “I'm going on the game. It can't be much different from this.”

“Luring people into alleyways, taking their clothes off and leaving them well and truly screwed?” said Angel dryly, making them all laugh as they rolled Lady Whatnot, Duchess of Thing on to her back and watched as her sagging and suddenly unrestrained bosom wobbled to a stop.

They didn't hang around contemplating the pros and cons of prostitution versus street robbery for very long as they were well aware that they needed to be swift in retreat. Leaving Lady Whosit, Duchess of Whatyacall sleeping soundly on the damp alley floor they disappeared down the sewer hatch not ten feet away. Each one dropped in to the darkness with a sack slung over one shoulder and headed off without a pause. It was straight to the Black Market with this lot. Then, when they each had their share, they could peel off and spend it how they wished.

Chapter 2: The Other Guild

Aberddu was a renegade city free-state that ripped had itself from the clutches of mother Albion only a few years previously. In such an anarchic and treacherous place, where the laws only really existed to let the ruling council prosecute the people they didn't like, it was small wonder there was a rich and thriving underworld.

In fact, underworld was an extremely accurate term for it because the Guild Below were exactly that. Beneath the city were several complex networks of caverns and tunnels, chambers and hidey-holes that had sprung up almost organically like a clutch of hollow octopuses, tentacles running into every corner of the city.

Any passer-by haplessly opening a sewer hatch would be forgiven for thinking that this world must be foetid and desperate and at a glance, they would be correct. The first layer of the tunnels were a catch-all for the rainwater, slurry, blood and other detritus that washed from the streets of the city. Here the rats grew fat on the pestilent effluent and the bloated cadavers that floated in it. The cloying sweet-sour smell of waste and decay made the air unpleasant. Strong tidal surges swelled the water, if you could really call it water, backing it up and pushing it to the surface in spewing plumes. Heavy rain filled them up so they raced and roared around blockages, carrying the worse of the city out to river Ddu and on into the unsuspecting delta.

The practical minds of the Guild Below never ever sought to change this. It was the perfect barrier between the city and their world below it. They never lingered there - unless they were desperate, or worse lost. They simply cut through it, dropping down to the layers below using cleverly placed slips and tunnels, ropes and ladders - all designed to keep the water from getting any further down.

Even though they were in a part of the sewer was firmly Guild territory, the girls didn't take their safety for granted. Guild loyalty in a Guild with only one real rule doesn't stretch very far - particularly not when that one rule is basically 'don't get caught'. (In truth it wasn't the only 'rule' but it was the only one that actually mattered). Whilst some people were protected by status, like the Guild heads or some of the more prominent assassins, no-one would question the disappearance of four sewer brats. It would probably be weeks before anyone noticed they'd gone and even longer before they could find anyone who cared.

The girls didn't splash far through the muck before they found a narrow slit in the top of the tunnel - a recent favourite of theirs. It was narrow enough that only someone the size of a child could use it and it was a safer route than their last cut through. Luce still had the grazes from the altercation that had occurred the last time they used the previous gap and after that the girls had learnt about the importance of varying their behaviour.

Deftly, Min jumped up and grabbed the brick, and hung from the gap by one hand. A moment of acrobatics and she had wedged herself securely in front of the gap. Reaching out a hand, she pulled Angel up so that she could check for any unwelcome company on the other side. After a brief glance, Angel slithered through the gap feet first. Quickly, Min posted the sacks through to her one at a time. Once all of their takings were on the other side, she helped Clara and then Luce up to the gap. They wriggled through frantically, Luce's rapidly developing frame was almost too large for it now. Carefully, each girl dropped neatly on to the pile of stolen clothes below. Min was the last through, she hit the brick floor moving and they carried on without a pause. This new tunnel wound down towards a hatch and monkey-rope that would put them well on the way to the Black Market, or it had done three days ago at least. Hopefully no-one had decided to slash the rope, that would mean a substantial detour.

Mulligan watched with a self-satisfied leer as the girls shimmied down the heftily knotted monkey-rope, dropping sacks of takings to one another, staying alert all the time. They were pros, no question. He'd heard about them but he had to admit he'd been sceptical. It hardly sounded like a slick criminal outfit; four foundling girls working a tired old angle fleecing rich women. However, as they scuttled off down the tunnel away from him, their eyes darting everywhere, he could see that this was a million miles from hanging around barefoot the rich district with your shoes hidden in an alley whining 'ere missus, spare us a florin, I aint eaten for days and my feets is cold'. They were exactly what he was looking for. And if they were the pros they appeared to be then it should be easy to sell the plan to them. It wasn't like he wasn't paying well. He treated himself to an indulgent snort and dropped noiselessly down from his perch in the tunnel roof. They were heading for the Black Market and so was he, but he had no intention of going the same way they were.

Mulligan was not quite arrogant enough to see himself as a criminal mastermind, but he did like to flatter himself that he was a cut or two above a simple petty crook. He had had, in his career, one or two ingenious plans that had made him quite a lot of money, and more importantly were still being talked about by people who couldn't put any of his names to his real face. As he trudged down the tunnel he congratulated himself that this scheme was in fact his best yet. These girls were perfect.

When he'd first hit on the idea of using a small girl as a patsy to gain access to the finer homes and gardens, he'd originally intended to pop along to the Temple District and see who he could find at the Life Temple Orphanage that looked the part. For all their caring, the overstretched Sisters could be remarkably gullible when it came to well-dressed benefactors looking to adopt. A few silvers and a kindly smile and they'd hand over a girl, no trouble at all. But he had abandoned that plan when he'd first heard about these girls, reasoning that a bath, some clothes and an elocution lesson or two were far easier to organise than a crash-course in cat-burglary. He could also pretty much guarantee that as long as their cut appeared to be generous, these girls would have no qualms about doing pretty much anything he asked of them.

The Black Market was not nearly as exciting as it sounded. Clara had never quite recovered from the disappointment of that. Held in one of a handful of locations, the market was like a giant back room of a very dodgy bar except that the beer was worse and it had significantly fewer on-duty prostitutes. People didn't come to the Black Market looking for that kind of entertainment, and the hookers that did come down here were looking to trade in entirely different commodities. In fact, Clara had been most disenchanted to discover, that people didn't come to the Black Market looking for any sort of entertainment at all. This was just as well, because there was none to be had, it was very strictly business.

She had imagined a bustling bazaar with stalls peddling all sorts of dark curios, cages of strange looking and undoubtedly poison creatures and exotic characters of every stripe. She had entertained dreams of jugglers and mummers and fortune-telling gypsies with talismans and curling nails, plumes of incense and flashes of magical light. Too much time listening to the bards had left her with a highly-coloured view of the underworld.

In truth it was a subdued gathering of people whispering in corners, showing each other surreptitious suitcases and exchanging cash purses on the quiet. No-one set out their wares, except the food vendors, with good reason – pretty much all the clientèle were skilled pick-pockets. It also didn't do to let people know what you had unless you knew they wanted to buy it. If you wanted to buy something, you had to know who was selling and you had to hope they were in the mood to talk to you.

Clara had been to the Black Market four times before she managed to find anything other than pastries for sale. It had been quite intimidating, even though she would never have admitted it. Several years on and the four of them knew nearly everybody and people knew them. They had a regular fence, Johnny (almost certainly not what anyone else called him) who paid fair prices for 'finely-made ladies' essentials'. None of them were completely sure what he did with them when he'd bought them and Angel didn't care. Luce had once told Clara that he sold them to the poshed-up hookers in the Government District, which Clara had found hilariously funny until Min pointed out that they had better hope that none of the girls tried to service a gent whilst wearing his wife's stolen pearls. Angel had merely grunted at this comment, which had stopped the others flat in the middle of a howl of laughter.

A good fence was two steps from point of sale making them, as his source, a fair way from being collared if one of the posh doxies was unlucky enough to get caught. Johnny whatever-his-name-was probably not a very good fence, the girls had no real way of know, but he was happy to deal with street-robbing sewer brats and they hadn't been caught yet.

The girls let Angel do the deals with Johnny. She got the best prices, they didn't ask how. While she was negotiating the other three bought some food and found a corner to crouch in, although they did keep their eyes on Angel as she made the transactions. It wouldn't do to have her snatched - particularly before she'd handed over their share of the cash.

Mulligan was happy to wait for the opportune moment. He had thought this whole thing through carefully. The other advantage of finding the girls down here was that he didn't have to pretend to be a kindly uncle type. These girls had all been down here a couple of years or so and were as hard-nosed as any. They would be more likely to try to do him over if he came across as unctuous or in away well-meaning than if he were mean to them. He had considered that very carefully, kidnapping after all being one of his options - but that also had its drawbacks - four of them versus one of him where not odds he fancied. Better to offer them a deal, a percentage. Willing partners were more use than prisoners for a start, gold being a much more inviting master than fear or charity. And if it turned out that they were as clever as he thought they were, then he'd just have to make sure that he paid them their cut fairly. Almost.

It was the sound of Luce's voice raised louder than usual, cutting the buzz of the market, that caught Angel's attention.

“Piss off mister,” she almost shouted. “I aint going on the game,”

Angel looked over and was unsurprised to see the man who was trying to talk Luce down from her growing anger. She couldn't hear him, or even see his lips - his face was in shadow - but she knew exactly who he was. Actually, in one context that wasn't true at all. She had no idea of the man's name, or his profession or intentions but she did know that the man she was looking at, with his nondescript …everything, was the same man who'd been tailing them for three days at least.

At first, she had been scared that he was going to snatch one of them - but as the days past, fear turned to curiosity. If it had been a straight-forward abduction, then surely he'd have picked one off as they dropped down a hatch or rounded a corner. An ether rag in the mouth and ten seconds later you'd have a neat bundle over your shoulder. Who misses a street brat right? She'd stayed alert, even given him an opportunity to try it. When he didn't take it she had at first been confused, then intrigued. If he wasn't simply looking for a quick take, then he must have something else in mind.

Two days later, she'd seen him as they approached their last mark and she had been wondering all afternoon what exactly he was playing at. She doubted very much he was just a dockland pimp - they didn't spend nearly as much time observing their girls. However, she did have a gut feeling that this man had some kind of business proposition for them, which may or may not survive Luce shrieking that she 'aint no bleedin' docklands doxy,' at the top of her lungs. Angel snatched the coin purse out of Johnny's outstretched hands and, skipping their usual post-transaction badinage, jogged over to the others.

Twenty minutes later, Luce was shovelling butcher's pudding, pease pottage and gravy into her mouth so fast that you had to concentrate to see the spoon move. Apparently, she wasn't bothered if you were a pimp or not if you were paying for lunch. The others were a little more circumspect about their would-be benefactor, who had taken them up top to The Bird and Bottle for a 'spot of grub'. Judging by the way Luce was putting it away, it was going to be a very large spot. Min, who was the one of the four that could most accurately be described as shy of strangers, sat in one corner picking over a large bowl of stew that had been served with a lump of rock hard bread almost the size of her face. She wasn't going to speak to anyone in front of Mulligan, but she was listening.

Once he'd explained and they'd eaten everything in sight, including what seemed like a bath-tub of custard, Mulligan left them for an hour 'to mull things over'. It took the girls less than half that time to make a decision about his offer. There was no denying that his plan was certainly very clever and if he was telling the truth about their cut, it stood to take them into the big league. Well not the big league exactly, just a slightly bigger league with more sophisticated locks and fewer knocked-off ladies' undergarments. As Clara put it so eloquently and succinctly, if it took off the 'dockland strumpets will 'ave to steal their own bleedin' pearls'-.