Ink and Bone

CHAPTER ONE

Present Day

The first clue Jess had that his hiding place had been discovered came in the form of a hard, open-handed slap to the back of his head. He was engrossed in reading, and he’d failed to hear any telltale creak of boards behind him.

His first instinct was, of course, to save the book, and he protectively curled over the delicate pages even as he slid out of his chair and freed his right hand to draw a knife … but it wasn’t necessary.

‘Brother,’ he said. He didn’t take his hand off the weapon.

Brendan was laughing, but it was a bitter sound. ‘I knew I’d find you here,’ he said. ‘You need some new hiding holes, Jess. No telling when Da will sniff you out of this one. What are you buried in this time?’ They no longer looked quite so identical, now that they were older. Brendan wore his hair in a shaggy mess, which half-concealed another scar he’d got during a run, but they’d grown at the same pace, so their eyes were on a level. Jess glared right back.

‘Inventio Fortunata. The account of a monk from Oxford who sailed to the Arctic and back hundreds of years ago. And Da won’t find this place unless you tell him about it.’

‘Sounds boring.’ Brendan raised one eyebrow. It was a trick all his own, one Jess hadn’t been able to master, so Brendan used it all the time, just to be irritating. ‘So make it worth my while not to sell you out.’ Brendan was already as ruthless a deal-maker as their father, and that was no compliment. Jess dug in his pockets and came up with a sovereign, which Brendan took with evident satisfaction. ‘Agreed.’ He walked the coin back and forth in an expert ripple over his knuckles.

‘Damn you, Scraps. I was reading.’ Jess only called his brother Scraps when he was really a

Scraps.

If Brendan minded the use of that once-loathed nickname, he hid it well. He just shrugged. ‘Like Da always says, we deal the stuff, we shouldn’t use it. Waste of time, what you get up to.’

‘As opposed to what you do? Drinking and gambling?’

Brendan tossed a wet copy of the London Times on the floor between them. Jess carefully put down Inventio Fortunata to take up the flimsy news-sheet. He wiped the beads of water from the page. The top story had an artist’s illustration of a face he recognised – older, but he’d never forget the bastard’s leering grin. Or the blackened teeth, chewing up priceless words written by a genius thousands of years before.

Brendan said, ‘Remember him? Six years late, but someone finally got your old ink-licker. Mysterious circumstances, according to the official story.’

‘What’s the real story?’

‘Someone slipped a knife between his ribs as he was coming out of his club, so not as mysterious as all that. They’re hushing it up. They’ll blame it on the Burners, eventually, if they admit it at all. Don’t need a reason to blame Burners.’

Jess looked up at his brother and almost asked, Did you do it?, but in truth, he really didn’t want to know the answer. ‘You came all this way to show me?’

Brendan shrugged. ‘Thought it might cheer your day. I know it always bothered you, him not getting his due.’

The paper was the morning edition, and it must have just turned evening, because as Jess handed it back, the newspaper erased itself, and filled line by line with new words. The ink-licker stayed front-page news, which probably would have pleased the vile, old creature.

Brendan rolled the sheet up and slipped it in his pocket. He was making quite a puddle on the floor, and Jess tossed him a dirty towel he kept for wiping his own boots. Brendan sneered and tossed it back. ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘You coming home?’

‘In a while.’

‘Da wants a word.’

Of course he did. Their father didn’t like Jess’s disappearances, especially since he’d hoped to train him up to inherit the family business. Problem was, Jess had no real love for it. He knew the smuggling trade, but Brendan was more eager, and a better choice to take on Callum Brightwell’s mantle. Hiding himself away gave Jess freedom, and it also gave Scraps a chance that younger sons didn’t usually get.

Not that he’d ever admit, to Brendan or to anyone, that he was doing it as much for his brother as himself.

‘Stuff him. I’ll be home when I want to be home.’ Jess sank down in the chair again. It was a dusty old thing, discarded from some rich banker’s house, and he’d dragged it half a mile to this half-collapsed manor off Warren Street. Too much of a wreck for buyers, and too flash an area for squatters. It was a good place to hide out, with no one to bother him.

Especially sour, then, that Brendan had found him, because, despite the sovereign, Jess would need to find himself a new reading room. He didn’t trust his brother not to drop hints … for his own good, of course. That meant dragging the chair with him. Again.

Brendan hadn’t moved. He was still dripping freely on the old boards. His eyes were steady and fixed now, and there was no humour in him. ‘Da said now, Jess. Shift it.’

There was no arguing when Brendan took that particular tone; it would come to a fight, no holds barred, and Jess didn’t particularly want to lose. He always did lose, because deep in his guts, he didn’t want to hurt his brother.

Brendan never seemed to have the same limits.

Jess carefully wrapped the fragile book in waterproof layers, then put it into a smuggling harness. He stripped off his loose shirt and fastened the buckles himself with the ease of long acquaintance, only half-thinking about it, then put on the shirt and a vest carefully fitted to conceal the secrets beneath. No longer the ragamuffin cutter he’d once been: his shirt was linen now, and the vest well sewn with silk embroideries. He added a thick leather coat, something to keep the rain off, and tossed a second coat at his brother, who fielded it without a word of thanks.

Then the two of them, sixteen years old and mirror images, yet worlds apart, set off together across the city.

Brendan peeled off as soon as they arrived at the family town house; he ran upstairs, past a startled housemaid who shouted at him about muddying the carpets. Jess tidied himself in the foyer, handed his wet coat to the parlour maid, and made sure his boots were clean before he stepped off onto the polished wood floor.

His mother was coming out of the formal parlour, though the visiting hours were long past. She gave him a quick head-to-toe assessment. He must have been dressed to her satisfaction, because she glided over and delivered a dry kiss on his cheek. She was a neat, pretty woman approaching middle age, with streaks of silver at her temples barely visible in her ash-blond hair. She smelt like light lavender and woodsmoke. The dark-blue dress she wore today suited her.

‘I wish you wouldn’t vex your father so much,’ she told him, and put her hand lightly on his arm. ‘He’s in one of his moods again. Do try to be civil, for my sake.’

‘I will,’ he said, which was an empty promise, but then so was her show of concern. He and his mother weren’t close and never had been, really. In this, as in so much else in his life, Jess was alone.

He left her standing there, already engrossed in adjusting a fresh arrangement of daisies and roses, and walked down the hall to his father’s study. He knocked politely on the closed door, and heard a grunt that meant permission to enter.

Inside, the study was all dark wood, warmed by the fire blazing in the hearth. Prefilled books with the seal of the Library on the spine lined the shelves, colour-coded by subject; his father favoured biographies and histories, and the maroon and blue leather bindings dominated. He’d purchased a dispensation to have a permanent collection in his home, so most of the books would never expire, never fade or go blank again.