“The Court’s greatest failing goes by many names. Whitechapel. Bishopsgate. The Rookeries East End. But only one name captures its depravity, its lawlessness, the mark that’s been cut into that poor borough’s flesh. And that is the name Nocturni know it by: Ratcatcher’s Hermit Kingdom.
There are no cops in the Kingdom. No priests, no doctors, nothing of progress and chivalry and grace. This is the land of the Christ-Killers, and here their vices rule. Prostitution, miscegenation, base violence and petty thieving. The people live in misery and squalor, but don’t rush to pity. They chose their fate like they chose their ‘Harav’. Ratcatcher addicts them to his blood, and they in turn barricade our roads, loot our wealth, and spy on us as Watchers. For Keaton might have ten-thousand faces, but Ratcatcher has ten-thousand eyes.
That this monstrosity was allowed to form is a disgrace; that it has festered for centuries is nothing short of a crime. But the Magisters will never act. ‘Too many Reeves lost’ they say, or ‘Too fetid to be our concern.’ As if the mere presence of these degenerates does not sully all of England!
Enough! I am Curator now, and I will not let this illness breed a moment longer. Our German brothers have started the fight to retake our homes and daughters! We must join them.
Until the rot is cleared.
Until the streets are clean.”
Excerpt from a letter by Curator Britannica Lianna Stirling, to fellow members of the British Union of Fascists. October 3rd, 1936, the eve of the so-called ‘Battle of Cable Street.’
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
August 2004
East London
The twelve-year-old squeals. His arm is held painfully behind his back, his cheek squished against the brick. It leaves his backpack ripe and open for her to reach in, with claw-like fingers.
“Stop it!” The child keeps whining. “Me mum- argh!”
“You fink I give two shits!?” She pulls on his arm, tighter and tighter, until tears flood down his face.
“Please! I need it! I’m not doin’ good in school!”
“Then learn to fookin’ cheat!”
Her fingers curl around a tiny bottle, and her eyes spark. She thrusts it from the pack. Adderall. Sixty beautiful white capsules of pure dissolving mist. She salivates at the mouth. It’s a smaller dosage, sure; fifteen milligrams, not twenty. But that’s okay.
She’ll just take two.
Still pressing the writhing boy down, she undoes the top, pours out a few pills, and slams them straight in his mouth. God, these ‘ADD’ twats get twitchy, but whoever invented that term, she owes them a bloody pint. Feels like half the East End are ‘hyperactives’ at this point, and im-yirtzeh hashem, when she finds one, they give this shit out like candy!
Thirty seconds. Long enough. The boy starts really struggling when she reveals her fangs. But that’s the thing with kids, you’d get more fight from a juicebox. The blood is sweet, like all childrens’ blood. Flooded with Red Bull and Jaffa Cakes. But she doesn’t care, she needs the hit! It should be in his bloodstream now, right? So why’s it taking-
Oh. There it is. She moans, the high hitting like a freight train. She revels in it, her muscles lax, her eyelids fluttering. Eventually, she realises that the kid is limp in her arms, that she’s draining him to the brink of death. Oh, no. That won’t do.
Mortal are like cattle. The beef is nice, but there's investment in milking.
She leaves the boy on the cobblestones, staring into the rain. Her mind feels like fire, her senses sharp, her heart near bursting. How this helps anyone focus in school, she has no idea. But then, she never went to it!
But then her phone cuts her off, mere seconds into it. Fuck. She knows immediately who it is. He set his own ringtone to Root Manuva.
“Ah what the fuck, man? We can’t stay bruk, man. We never stuck, man, we on the-”
“JAYDEN!?” she barks.
“Bird. We’ve gotta fahkin’ problem-”
“No SHIT we’ve gotta problem! I told mans not to call!”
“T’ere’s a man ‘ere, bruv! Rolled up in a bait-ass whip and drove slow ‘round the ends!”
“So fookin’ rob ‘im!”
“Ain’t no fahkin’ wasteman, man. T’is bum be a fahkin’ ‘mmunity ‘velepor!”
Her expression falls. Community developer? “You’re takin’ the piss.”
“Bet.”
She seethes. “... Movverfooker.”
“Innit!? So get youse squawky ass in the clouds-”
“Fook ‘at. I walk.”
“Bird?!”
“I just tweaked, Jayden! Why the fook else I’d say ‘don’t call me!?’”
She slams her phone shut, and gives a shrill cry. A distant caw soon follows. Her darling Nance, soaring over a food bank. Good. Girl can scout. She takes out her prized possession, her Shrek-green iPod, the one with all her serious songs. She’s gotta get into that grown-up mindset.
Gotta listen to fucking Weezer.
Finnerty’s about to run along when she remembers the boy, still unconscious, leaning against the wall. She glances at the pill bottle again. He said he needed them.
… nah. School’s a scam.
Honestly, she’s doing him a favour.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Bum bum bum. Ba-dum bum bum. Bum bum bum. Ba-dum bum bum.”
She runs with the music. Her eyes closed. Her iPod in hand. Her lungs filled with air cooled by the rain.
“When I’m stable long enough, I start to look around for love,
See a sweet in floral prints, my mind begins the arrangements.”
She knows the buildings by heart. The Tescos and the churches and the Oxfams and the schools. Barbershops and karate halls and more Indian restaurants than there’s any right to be.
But she doesn’t see them. She sees the streets once clogged with vendors. Stairwells full of shit, and backyards rank with bile. The flats weren’t clean brick or steel then. They were misshapen, haphazard, layers stacked up piecemeal. The signs read Cephas Street, and Darling Row and Stepney Green and Killick Way. Two worlds united only by the street names.
“But when I think I’ve found a good-old fashioned girl, then she puts me in my place."
She runs through a home she’s lost, though she never left.
“If everyone’s a little queer, why can’t she be a little straight?”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1867
The sky was red that night. A blazing furnace of factories and bin fires, that hide the rest of London in a wall of smog.
The children of St Hilda’s live on cheap beds. Loose threads, snapped springs, and edges always nibbled by vermin. They dress in rags, eyes sunk from the meagre meals offered by charities, or the creatures they scrounge, half-dead birds and starving dogs. One can see the cracks in the floors here, and the ways the bricks in the walls bend and lean. Nothing is sturdy here, homes and shops and churches always smashing against each other. There’s a single latrine for all eighteen kids, and none of them wear shoes.
Still, they laugh. Taunt and tease and jostle. But as the lanterns dim, and a woman marches through the door, they all fall silent. Ruth isn’t like the other sisters. Attentive, and sweet, and always sparing of the rod. She takes her seat in a squeaky old chair. Tries her best to ignore the stench that infects every part of London, and opens her book, worn and well-loved, with a gentle smile.
“Good evening, little ones. Shall I begin?”
No one dares to speak as she clears her throat. The children pile onto each other.
“Chapter 33: Of the Happy Life He Found There.”
Far above them, in the half-rotted rafters, is another girl. Older, perhaps, but still in rags as torn as theirs, with a tichel over her hair. Watching the matching with searching yellow eyes. She’s not worried about them seeing her cracked and mottled skin. Her nails growing into claws. Her chest, just starting to sprout feathers.
They’re all too enraptured with the story, and Sister Ruth, with telling it. It’s impressive how quickly the kids’ eyes fill with wonder, over a book whose name they can’t even read.
But then, in those rare moments where she’s willing to admit it, she feels the same way. The story captures her.
And she’ll never read a thing.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Whitechapel Rookery
The Heart of the Hermit Kingdom
The streets are always small, and narrow. Two horses could walk through it side-by-side, if it weren’t always filled with carts and vendors and people. Costermongers and shoe-shiners, vagrants and labourmen. Children stumble from the factory floors, covered in ash, missing limbs, and brush elbows with the shitmen who come out at night and rake clean the sidewalks. Everything’s pale and brown and covered with dust. From the street it would be impossible to find a face in this crowd of patched coats and flat caps.
But that’s what makes a raven so useful. Through Nance, she sees differently.
Aisling Finnerty marches through the streets with a look lets the smart ones know to piss off. She hasn’t changed her form, for in Ratcatcher’s Freehold, the mortal’s all fear. And while she’d love nothing more than to join her darling in the sky, cutting through the smog as a winged black mass, she knows she has to see the other girls.
It’s Collection Day.
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Everyone can feel it. The street vendors most of all. As the dawn gets closer, they always get more yippy.
“Foygl!” “Foygl!”
“Got collars, lots of collars. Know your master likes the collars!”
“Salt circles ‘ere! Don’t want your young ones snatched by the bogeys!? ‘En get yourself a salt circle!”
There’s dozens of them, all packed in, on every side of every street. They sell unlaced shoes and rusted tin. Rat soup, spare candles, even clumps of hair. Anything to keep them off the line. A ny means to secure themselves a loaf of stale bread.
“PLEASE!”
Finnerty twitches. A particularly ragged man grasps her arm, throwing himself to his knees, babbling on in Harav’s speech.
“Bite, foygl, bite!”
He wears a torn kippah, yellow teeth. The grip grows tighter. Her breaths grow sharp.
“‘Ey stole my gelt from poorhouse. A few more days, please! Ikh hab garnisht-”
“Shtey avek!” She throws him to the ground, lands a kick in his ribs for good measure. She’s about to tell all the desperates off, beat them if she must, when she’s interrupted by a chorus of slurred singing and broken glass.
“HERE’S A HEALTH TO THE LASTING PEACE!
FACTION END AND WEALTH INCREASE!”
Nancy caws as she turns around. A massive omnibus trundles through the street before her, tearing through the crowd with the threat of thrown bottles and long, sharpened sticks. A half-dozen men holler atop it, all drunk out of their minds and layered in youthful finery. They get tourists like this every few days. Boys from the West End, tired of fancy living, who pay the toll to throw stones at cripples and hump whatever ‘prizes’ can’t squirm away from them.
They’ve already found one.
A girl of maybe thirteen, with a swollen black eye and running makeup. Her shirt’s torn, her breasts hanging. There are seven men for that one girl. Six when one drunkard jumps off to claim another as his own. She trembles as she hugs herself, meeting Finnerty’s eyes.
That harsh breathing, before Aisling turns away. A thousand thoughts flood her mind, pushing the cart far, far away. She must have been a whore. Looking for attention. Or maybe she’s just stupid, who cares? She deserves it. She has to deserve it.
She deserves it, she deserves it, she doesn’t fucking matter and she deserves it.
Finnerty breathes. She can see the white steeple of St. Mary Matfelon, its chipped paint and lost roof tiles, rising haphazardly on a tombstone-covered hill. Beneath that half-torn wall sits her Harav, king of this city. And beneath the busted gates and clumps of grass…
“GIRLS!” Finnerty sprints towards a half-dozen girls in maid crowns and black dresses. Curly hair, freckled faces, Irish all. She can tell her stench reaches them when they curl their noses. They snap to attention, eyes on the cobbles.
“AISLING!”
“Oi. Le’s make ‘is quick.” Finnerty folds her arms while the girls grab their dress hems. “Loose.”
The girls shake their clothes, red in the face. After a moment, tiny, sparkling gems fly from the seams. Ambers and garnets and sapphires. Finnerty eyes it all hungrily.
But on one dress, fewer gems fall. And stop far earlier than the others. As the vampire approaches, the woman shakes her dress more frantically, before switching to frantic babbles. “Fan, fan! I’m sure t’ere’s still more!”
“A Mhaighdean, Cadí!”
“The lady a’ the house was watchin’!” The girl folds her hands. “Glacann tú an iomarca, Aisling. The Sassanachs talk among ’emselves! T’ey know ‘ey’re bein’ robbed!”
Cadí screams as Finnerty slams her fist into old bricks. Plaster falls on their heads. Tears speck the girl’s eyes.
“You say it like its my fault.”
“I’m sorry, Aisling, I’m sorry!”
Finnerty growls. Less jewels means less money. And Ratcatcher doesn’t like less money. She always gives him more. The MOST. Because she’s the best. She’s the absolute fucking best.
Cadí squeals as Finnerty pulls her close by her shirt collar. “More.”
“T’ere isn’t more. Aisling! I need t’is job-”
“Who gotchu the fahkin’ job!?”
“What do ye wan’ me to say!?”
A squeak. Cadí’s lip quivers as Finnerty sniffs and strokes her hair.
“Nuffin’. Say nuffin’.”
The vampire puts her hand on the dress, revealing a hint of skin.
“Just wait for the master to get home, an’ use what God fahkin’ gave ya.”
Cadí seems ready to sob, but a shout pulls both back. It’s male, loud, and echoing from some forgotten corner. Nancy dives for it, and Finnerty’s tempted to follow. But Harav wouldn’t want her to check right away. Not without his Eyes.
There’s a street sweeper, on the block’s other end. He wears a ragged flat cap, old hands shaking against a crooked broom. Normally he’d tail rich folk, sweeping the cobbles ahead of their feet for crumbs or a bit of change. But now he stares at Finnerty with an intensity that’s hard to describe. Tilts his head towards one of a dozen alleys.
Pft. Amateurs. They come to the Rook on Collection Day, and don’t even pay the toll.
Finnerty throws a small pouch to the ground and barks at her girls to fill it. She has no doubt some will try to keep gems for themselves, but she’ll chase them all down later. The alley’s just like the chimneys of her youth, tight, dirty, and hard to squeeze through. One of the buildings has literally collapsed upon the other, forcing her to crouch and shrouding her in dark. Three men stand in the courtyard that follows, two cracking knuckles, the other pleading in Harav’s tongue. Dockworkers all.
“Das iz nisht ams. Ikh hab gevaudan!” The Jew sees her fists, and folds his hands in reverence. “Foygl. Foygl, please. They lie. I won fair and-”
He screams as they kick him in the gut. As he sprawls across the cracked stone, one worker starts to laugh.
“Get outta ‘ere, lass. Just teachin’ ‘is ol’ rat not to cheat wiff cards.”
“But you didn’t pay.”
“Wazzat?” The docker approaches, scowling.
“You’re goyim, an’ not a Mick. You wanna walk in ‘is town, beat one of ours? You gotta fahkin’ pay.”
“Pay to walk in me own fahkin’ country?”
“It’s not yours anymore.”
“Say that again, Mick!”
The other worker laughs, even as Finnerty stands her ground. “No. She ain't no mick. I’ve ‘eard of you.”
She stiffens as he approaches. He’s easily twice her size.
“Chapel girl,” he tuts. “Are the remours bout what he does to youse true?"
“Everyone seems to want 'em to be."
“I’ll make ‘is clear. We’s not payin’ ‘im. Though…” he chuckles. “For a piece like you…”
He squeezes her shoulder, and her instincts flare.
“... Maybe you’re open to anovver offer?”
Finnerty looks at his hands, his eyes.
“Sure.”
She matches his growing smile.
“‘Ow much for your fahkin’ life?”
He doesn’t even have time to respond before the knife in her boot is three inches deep in his ankle.
“YAAARRGHH!”
Finnerty climbs onto him. Claws out. Scratching wildly. Her nails dig out skin, scrape against the bone. Suddenly, a heavy fist. She feels a rush of force, her head flying over the cobbles. She lands hard in a wall, spinning and dizzy. A fist rises through the haze, and she barely blocks it. A second time. A third.
The fourth hits her gut. She feels the brass knuckles on five. Blood seeps from her cheek, teeth fly from her mouth. Then a kick in the chest. More blows. More blows.
“TWO OPTIONS, GIRL!” She hears one shout. “WRAP YOUR LIPS ‘ROUND OUR COCKS, OR-”
A crash. An explosion of red dust. Finnerty coughs and scrambles from the wall, where one of the worker’s legs now dangle three feet from the ground. His upper half’s gone, fully sunk in the wall. She watches as a gargantuan arm reaches in…
… and Cappie pries out the man’s coin-purse.
The other dockworker freezes as the enforcer’s veins glow, and Cappie pries a brick free. The mortal sputters, tries to run. But he’s quicker, and slams the brick on the docker’s head so harshly that the clay shatters. He grabs the man’s neck, lifts him five feet off the ground, and launches him through one of the windows. The collision is joined by a family’s screams.
“Really,” Cappie kneels down, and grabs the second purse. “It’s easier to jes’ pay.”
“Schvantz!” Finnerty hisses. “I fahkin’ had ‘em!”
“Maybe, but ‘at means missin’ out on me bloody payday.” Cappie throws something small in the air. “‘Ere.”
It lands by her feet. The pouch of jewels. She seizes it, frowns at its weight. Must be half-empty. She spits out rogue blood. “You stole!”
“I don’t steal.” The Jewish man crawls towards Cappie, thanking profusely. Cappie shoves him down, takes his purse too. “Consider it tax collection.”
Finnerty growls. If this costs her…. “Bit far from your leash, guard dog. You an’ your wife fightin’?”
Cappie doesn’t respond, for a few seconds too long. “Keep your crow off Mags.”
“Not a crow. Raven.”
"Whateva." He sighs. “Harav wants you.”
“Why?”
“Does ‘e ever say?”
She huffs. “Always ‘as me runnin’ ‘is fahkin’ errands. Me cartin’ ‘is little shits. Where’s Above, Below? ‘Ey getta loot while I’m struttin’ ‘round? What do 'ey do, sit wiff thumbs up ‘eir arses?”
“Don’t ask questions when you don’t want ‘eir answers,” Cappie shrugs. “Now-”
He’s cut off by a gargantuan sound. It rattles the Earth and stirs the dying streetlights. Finnerty’s eyes shoot to the sky. A plume of smoke joins the factory smog, flames licking at the reddened clouds. A rush of screaming soon follows. An avalanche of stone.
“Fahk.” Cappie’s jaw hangs open. “Ain’t at Rothschild’s-”
She’s gone before he turns.
“Aislin’!” Cappie races after her. “The fahk you goin’!?”
“To the one who did this!”
“Ain’t no one did it! ‘At’s not cannon smoke! Some fireworks musta-”
“‘OSE LOOK LIKE FAHKIN’ FIREWORKS TO YOU!?”
Cappie curses under his breath, uses aether to catch up. “... Bank’s… under…” He speaks between breaths. “... our protection. So who…?”
“The Unbound.”
Finnerty gives him a boiling look, before she scowls.
“Who the fahk else?”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Concrete and dust and bits of burning paper. The front entrance is a rubble field, along with the fountain, the street carts, and half a dozen homes. Women sob, soot on their hands, blood on their knees. The firemen - or what passes in these parts - watch helplessly beside now homeless-children. The howls of those trapped inside echo beneath the stones.
And atop it all, on the roof’s still-standing half, is a boy. Small and pale and scrawny, with heavy boots and a beige greatcoat. Keaton gives each of his men red-tinted goggles, but they do nothing to hide the fire in this one’s eyes. When Finnerty lands on the roof, he turns, and bows.
“Ah, Fionnachta! I was told t’at would get yer attention.”
"Fionn Ó Conaill.” She spits. “I should’ve guessed.”
On his shoulders are two different sashes. One is bright green, with gold lettering. The other a bandolier, but not filled with cartridges or spare rounds.
Just little sticks of red.
“An féidir linn ár máthairtheanga a labhairt?” He speaks with a singsong lilt. “Fágann an carn aoiligh seo as cleachtadh mé.”
“Sea,” she replies. “Más féidir leat stop a labhairt portach.”
“Portach? Really.” He puts a hand on his heart, but she can see the contempt through his goggles. “But their language makes me feel so dirty.”
There’s a rush of air, the crushing of tiles. Cappie’s joined them on the roof, and his scowl is instant. “You. The fahk are the Fenians doin’ ‘ere?”
“‘Fraid I’m not Brot’erhood business, Sassanach.” Fionn pulls a flask from his jacket.
“‘En whose?”
He shrugs, and takes a swig.
“Ah.” Finnerty folds her arms. “He sends a message from ‘is master.”
“Getter, Fionnachta!” Fionn points. “Keaton merely rebirthed me. In the Unbound, we’re free men.”
“I’m sure.”
Fionn offers his flask to the others. When nobody moves, he throws it over his shoulder, and off the road. It adds to the flames.
Finnerty rolls her eyes. “Issat really what you tell yourself, Fionn? To stomach workin’ for a Prod?”
“Keaton’s done more fer us t’an anyWest Londoner.” He makes the words bite as he digs again in his pocket. “He helped ‘48. He helped Wolfe Tone. He gave me the weapons to make t’is…”
He throws something at her feet. A sealed strip of white parchment.
“... and the tools to make far more.”
She picks it up. “What’s ‘is?”
“Ask someone who can read.”
“A summons,” Cappie studies it. Frowns. “You callin’ us to war?”
“No. The world calls. The billions crushed beneath the bourgeoisie’s hooves!” Fionn pulls a red stick from his sash, waves it about. “Ye see ‘is before, Kiley? Know what it is? Dynamite.” The boys’ eyes gleam. “Some Swede made it to help clear the feckin’ mines! Can ye imagine? Heh, I like the way I use it more.”
Before either can react, Fionn’s lit the wick. He howls with laughter as he watches the sparks, before throwing it high in the air. It explodes before it lands, a burst of smoke and yellow flame. As the others cover their ears, the boy lifts his hands, smiling wide, basking in the mortals’ screams.
“That is the sound of freedom. That is the sound of Éire! An’ t’rough Aubrey Keaton, Sassana will hear it ten t’ousand times more! The rich get richer, the poors’ lives get shorter, an’ to that we say, ENOUGH! Together the Unbound number six-t’ousand strong! It is time for revolution. Time for the Eighth Revolt!”
Something ruffles the back of Finnerty’s feathers. Something quite like fear. “The Seventh was only twenty years back.”
“An’ we almost won!”
Cappie growls. “You were almost crushed-”
“We were BETRAYED!” Fionn’s voice grows harsh. “Sold out an’ backstabbed, by class traitors an’ PIGS! But no more. Now, Keaton comes to the Freeholds. Each and every one. To determine if they’ll march with us, or if they’ll be the first that we march against!”
“You’re mad,” Cappie shakes his head. “You’ll get us all killed.”
“A price I will gladly pay! I lost three siblings to the Hunger! Another to the mines. Two more on ships to Australia! If I can join them in hell with the heads of a million English, I will do so, smiling.” Fionn struts. “But ye are English, Marcus Kiley, so ye wouldn’t get it. Not like you.”
He pauses right in front of her. Staring through his goggles, into her rank yellow eyes.
“Join us, Fionnachta.” He smiles. “You’re better than petty thieving for scraps of coin. Yer crafty. Resourceful. And you still bear our peoples’ scars.”
He touches her arm. Instinct demands that she should tear it off.
Instead, she pulls his goggles back. Studies eyes that flicker the same shade. “You wanna know why I hate Fenians, Ó Conaill? Why I see ‘em pass an’ wanna spit in ‘eir eyes?”
Fionn frowns. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone pacifist.”
“Of course not, but at least when you mug you get whatcha want for it. The violence has its fahkin’ point.” She scowls, feathers rattling. “Which seems more likely, bogboy? ‘Ose little candles spook the Brits into freeing our homeland? Or ‘ey come back, twice as hard, an’ sic ‘eir ‘protection’ on every woman an’ old folk an’ child wiff a head of red?”
He seethes. “We don’t save our country by doing nothin’.”
“But ‘at’s what you’re doin’! Same as ‘em! Beatin’ the world, an’ beatin’, an’ beatin’, until what’s left starts makin’ sense, an’ you can tell yourselves you feel better.”
They stare at each other for a long time. To his rare credit, he seems to be considering her words. Or perhaps, figuring the best way to kill her. With Fionn, one can never tell.
She spits on the ground and struts away. Fionn turns, pulls the goggles back over his face, and takes one final item from his coat. Grapnel, and long rope. “Very well, Fionnachta.” He launches it towards a roof. “Ye can keep to yer small self, and yer tiny little world. But there’s a problem with being small.”
“An’ what’s ‘at?”
His words linger in her mind well after he’s gone.
“Yer Ratcatcher’s Kept. Ye know it already.”