Page 81 of Hexbound
"Precisely," Lady E nodded.
There came a faint scratch at the door, and Lady E's butler cleared his throat. "This just arrived, my lady." He offered a letter to her on a silver salver, then crept out quietly.
"One of your little pigeons by the look of it," Marie noted.
Lady E flicked the letter open and scowled down at it. When she looked up her gaze speared Verity, who set her spoonful of coddled eggs down.
"What is it?" Verity asked, a nervous flutter starting in her chest. Not the Prime, please no. She barely knew the man, but Bishop's heart would break if his father died, and he already carried far too much on his shoulders as it was.
"Drake is fine," Lady E assured her, reading it on her face, and Marie patted Verity’s hand. "Driving his son halfway to Bedlam with his insistence that he doesn't need any help at the moment. Bishop is most vexed."
Bishop's telepathic bond with his mentor made Verity feel a little left out, but at least it seemed as though he and his father had made amends.
"This is a report from someone I know in East London. I asked him to watch the docks for me, following Bishop's little tip-off that someone there was wielding the Grave Arts."
"And?"
"He's spotted something he thinks I should know about. Foxby swears he saw a dead man walking last night, heading toward Dock Number Five."
"A flesh construct?"
"Indeed." Lady E tapped the letter against her lips. "What say you? Do you want to join me in a little exploration of the docks?"
"What about Bishop?"
"He's arguing with his father right now. Let's not distract him. Besides, we don't know if this is actually a sighting, or someone imagining things. You can pop in and out at whim, and I've got the magical wherewithal to back you up should push come to shove." Lady E's chair scraped back as she stood.
The decision had clearly been made.
Verity exchanged a glance with Marie. "Can you let Bishop know when he gets back here?"
"Of course she will," Lady E interrupted. "Now step lively, gel. Let's go ferret out this flesh construct."
The coach disbursedthem near the docks, and Verity helped Lady E down from the step as she looked around. Fog filled the nearby streets and the sun had long since vanished behind dark clouds. It was only midday but it felt like night in some respects. A nearby lamp had even been lit.
"Perfect place for an ambush," Verity pointed out, her background in the Dials making her wary.
"Perfect place to hide something you don't want others seeing," Lady E countered, brushing out her skirts as the coach turned around. John Coachman would meet them in an hour back by the Pig and Thistle pub they'd spotted up the road. "And if it is an ambush, well... this old dame has a few tricks up her sleeves yet. Come along."
In the distance, sailors and dockhands shouted as they used cranes to haul heavy crates off a docked ship. Ships lined the docks, and they bustled with activity. Verity focused on making herself very small and unnoticeable as she trotted at Lady E's side, far too used to the rough sort of men that lived and worked in these areas. Nobody would give a damn about the crow tattooed on the back of her hand here. Most of these workers were completely non-magical, and a woman alone—or perhaps even two of them—might look like easy pickings to the wrong type of man.
Several of the dockworkers glanced in their direction, but a single fearsome glance from Lady E served to send most of them scurrying back to their duties. "Amateurs." Lady E sniffed.
Verity decided she'd have to learn to mimic that precise expression. It could be useful in future should men ever give her grief in the streets. "You managed that well."
Lady E hauled out what looked like a compass as they left the main thoroughfare and wandered further along the foggy docks. The fog distorted the sound of men shouting, until it seemed as though they were miles away. "I spent a year in Cairo tracking a demon through its slums. The London docks pale in comparison."
"What are you doing?"
Lady E unwound the directional hands of the compass, revealing a hole inside. She poured a small handful of dirt into it from a pouch she'd been carrying. "There," Lady E said, winding the device back together. Tiny little runes gleamed golden as she breathed power words under her breath, and Verity felt the stir of sorcery as the compass hands began spinning.
"What is it?" Most of the hexes or spells she'd seen cast in the Dials were simple things, but this looked like a knot work of spells, all combining to perform something quite complex.
Lady E turned as the spinner came to a rest. "Grave dirt," she said, staring down the docks toward the hulking warehouse at the end as the compass jerked her toward it. "The compass is keyed to pick up trace amounts of Grave magic through the link with the dirt. The dirt has absorbed the trace amounts of power that leave a body following death. You can use anything: ground-up bone, blood from a dead man's body, chips of headstone... they all contain trace residue of the power spike preceding death. And right now, my compass is quite strongly convinced we need to go this way."
The compass pulled Lady E toward the warehouse like iron toward a magnet. Verity scrambled along in her wake, her skirts fluttering about her boots. She'd worn Marie’s sensible charcoal cambric dress today, thank goodness, so at least any dirt wouldn't show.
Ahead of them, a shadowed flickered.
