Free Dreadfully Ever After by Steve Hockensmith Page B

soldiers, she noticed, let them stroll by without question. “Your name. Even if, by your reckoning, it is not required, it would still be nice to know.”
    The young Asiatic who’d met her at the gate—surely another of the Japanese servants Lady Catherine so favored—pulled an envelope from his coat pocket and handed it to her.
    This is Nezu
, the note inside read.
He will guide you in my absence. You will find him to be an invaluable tool. Trust him in all things
.
    This time, Elizabeth wasn’t caught by surprise when the paper began to smoke. She let it drop to the ground, and within seconds it was but more swirling soot in a city that produced it by the ton.
    “If you have any further messages from Her Ladyship, I’d appreciate knowing so in advance,” Elizabeth said. “I should like to have a bucket of water at the ready.”
    “There will be no more notes from the mistress. Anything else you need to know will come from me.”
    “Wonderful. You’ve been so loquacious so far.”
    Nezu said nothing.
    A dark barouche was waiting just beyond the gate, and, upon reaching it, Nezu opened the door and motioned for Elizabeth to climb in. As she started to oblige him, her eye caught sight of something odd: a grotesque parody of the very carriage she was stepping into. It was a squat black box, perhaps four feet high, careening around a corner up the street. Pulling it were two small, scruffy dogs in harness.
    “Did you see that?” Elizabeth asked.
    “See what?”
    He didn’t even bother following her gaze.
    “Never mind,” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps I didn’t see it, either.”
    Once she was seated, Nezu hauled himself up next to the driver—another stone-faced Asiatic who seemed no more garrulous than he—and with a snap of the reins they set off down the narrow streets of Section Fourteen North.
    Years ago, before the partitions were erected and London was sliced into perfect squares like some colossal cake, the area had been known as Camden Town. Once an unimportant district on the fringes of the growing metropolis, it was now more or less a rampart protecting the affluent sections of the interior. Only the meanest sorts of shops—most of them for “used” (that is, stolen) clothes and jewelry and Zed rods and swords—would take up residence where, so many times, the dreadfuls had broken through. Indeed, the buildings looked as though they’d been burned down and rebuilt before the charred planks had finished smoking. The other elegant barouches and phaetons and landaus coming through the gate shot down the filth-poked avenue with teams at full gallop, the whip-snapping drivers desperate to reach Four Central or Six East before their passengers could peek out and have their delicate sensibilities bruised by the sight of such squalor.
    More than once, Elizabeth had made this same mad dash through North London, bound for the Darcys’ town house in Mayfair (now Two Central). The route they followed was the old familiar one she knew well until they reached the City Road, at which point they turned abruptly east rather than continuing into the heart of socially acceptable London. Soon they were winding their way through the side streets of what Elizabeth guessed to be Section One North, formerly Islington. It was by no means the most fashionable part of town, but the long rows of tidy white-terraced homes was evidence that the merchant class, at least, was willing to make it their own.
    The coachman finally brought the barouche to a stop in front of a house that was identical to its neighbors in every respect but one: scale. The bay windows were taller, the front door wider, the stucco entryway arches higher, the ironwork balcony broader and more ornate. It was the very picture of size substituting for style; the perfect London home for a vulgarian parvenue from the hinterlands. As “Mrs. Bromhead,” it seemed, was supposed to be.
    Nezu climbed down and opened the carriage door.
    Elizabeth remained in