Cold air clung to the damp stone walls of the parish mortuary, smelling of vinegar, coal smoke, and cheap lime. I reached into the deep pocket of my wool cassock, my knuckles brushing the cold silver of my flask before I forced myself to let go. My hand was shaking, just a little, the tremor of a man who had not had a proper drink since sunset. Caleb was already standing at the foot of the slab, his thin hands steady on the rough canvas sheet covering the body. He had a quiet, stubborn way of moving that always reminded me of his father, before the fire took the old man. "Is the gray crust normal, Father?" Caleb asked, his voice barely more than a whisper in the vaulted room. He pointed a pale finger toward the dead man's throat, where the black-gold fluid had hardened into a dull, leaden seal that looked like melted solder. "Dampness," I lied, my voice raspy from the cheap gin I had swallowed before the bells chimed midnight. I didn't want him looking too closely at that crust, nor did I want him asking why it seemed to have drawn the moisture out of the surrounding skin. "London air ruins everything eventually. Lift." We hoisted the dead weight into the plain pine box. He was heavy, his flesh already stiffening under the gray wool of his coat, the joints creaking like old floorboards. My left shoulder ached from a five-year-old tear, but I kept my teeth clenched and bore the strain without a groan. Caleb secured the lid, driving the wooden pegs home with three quick, practiced strikes of a mallet. The sharp cracks bounced off the damp stone walls like pistol fire in an empty church. He didn't flinch, but his gray eyes lingered on the seams of the box where a thin trail of gray dust had already begun to sift out. "We aren't using the parish wagon?" he asked, wiping a smudge of soot from his forehead with his dark sleeve. "Too many eyes on the main road at this hour," I said, adjusting my crooked clerical collar with a sharp tug. "The side gate is clear. We use the hand barrow." Iron wheels groaned as we pushed the barrow out into the narrow alley behind the church. Night had swallowed Whitechapel, burying the brick tenements under a yellow-gray fog that tasted of coal dust, horse manure, and stagnant river water. Soot drifted down like black snow, sticking to my wool cassock and Caleb's dark servant's coat. A single gas lamp flickered twenty yards ahead, its light struggling to pierce the soup-thick air and casting long, distorted shadows against the brickwork. My hand drifted to my coat, feeling the reassuring, heavy bulk of Genesis resting in its leather holster against my ribs. That revolver was more of a comfort than any prayer I had muttered in the last ten years. Six heavy chambers, each loaded with a silver-jacketed round that could tear through a wolf's hide or shatter a dead man's skull. It was a sin to rely on steel over faith, but faith had never stopped a blood-drinker from ripping out a child's throat. I rubbed my thumb against the fabric of my pocket, wishing for the warmth of the gin to dull the ache in my joints. "Watch your footing," I muttered, my boots slipping on the greasy cobblestones. "The mud is deep here." Puddle water splashed over my ankles, freezing and foul with the runoff of the nearby tanneries. We walked in silence, our breaths rising in white plumes that vanished into the damp gloom almost instantly. Caleb kept his head down, his lean frame hunched against the biting wind that swept up from the Thames. "Father," he said after we had turned onto a narrow lane lined with shuttered warehouses and rotting timber yards. "The parish registry listed five deaths this week. But I only saw three boxes in the cellar when we loaded the barrow." "Clerks make mistakes," I replied, not looking back at him. My throat was dry, burning with a familiar thirst that made my chest feel tight. I ignored it, focusing instead on the heavy rattle of the iron wheels against the stone. "Two of them were marked for the cemetery at Bow," Caleb continued, his voice persistent, carrying that quiet stubbornness he had possessed since I pulled him from the ruins of the East End. "Yet their names were on the ash yard manifest we received from the bishop's clerk." "Stop counting," I said, my tone hardening. "Your job is to assist me, not to balance the church's books or question where the ledger marks fall." Silence fell between us again, heavy and sour as the river mist. A horse whinnied in the distance, a low, wet sound that carried through the fog from the docks. We were nearing the river now, where the air smelled of salt, rotting coal, and the sharp, chemical tang of the bone-boiling houses. Behind us, the lights of the city grew faint, reduced to dim orange smudges in the yellow fog. I could feel the weight of the city pressing down on us, millions of souls sleeping while we dragged a monster's shell through the dirt. They slept because they believed the church kept them safe with prayers and incense. They didn't know about the lead-lined boxes, or the silver-plated bullets, or the men who died with black fluid in their veins. "Do you think he was one of them?" Caleb asked, his voice low and cautious. "He was a man who died in an alley," I said. "That is all we need to concern ourselves with." "But the throat," Caleb whispered. "I've never seen a wound dry like that. It looked like..." "It looked like gangrene and river rot," I interrupted, my voice dropping to a dangerous quiet. "And if you wish to keep your position at the parish, you will forget what it looked like." Caleb fell silent, but I could see the tension in his shoulders. He wasn't stupid. He had been with me for three years, and he had seen enough to know when I was lying. But he also knew the price of asking too many questions in our line of work. High brick walls rose out of the mist, their tops lined with rusted iron spikes and broken glass to keep out the scavengers. This was the yard, a dead space wedged between a soap factory and an abandoned coal wharf. A single lantern hung over the iron gate, casting a sickly green glow over the wet ground. I knocked three times on the iron wicket, the cold metal biting through my thin leather glove. Footsteps scraped on the gravel inside, slow and heavy. A small sliding hatch opened with a rusty shriek, revealing a pair of watery, yellowed eyes that blinked once before the bolt slid back. A short, pale man stood in the opening, holding a lantern that smelled of rancid fish oil. Ink stains covered his fingers like old bruises, and his black coat was white with lime dust at the cuffs and hem. He didn't speak a word of greeting; he simply stepped aside and gestured with a stiff hand for us to bring the barrow into the yard. Inside the yard, the air was thick with the smell of burning bone and wet ash, a heavy, greasy scent that coated the back of my throat. A massive black horse stood hitched to a long, high-sided wooden cart, its breath coming in thick, ragged clouds that smelled of sour hay. Steam rose from its wet flanks, looking like smoke in the dim lantern light. "Parish of St. Jude," I said, offering the paper manifest I had pulled from my inner pocket. Ink-stained fingers took the paper, his movements stiff and mechanical as he held it up to the lantern. He didn't look at me, nor did he offer the customary prayer for the dead that any ordinary church sexton would have spoken. He simply turned toward his small wooden desk under a canvas lean-to, his boots sinking into the wet gravel. "Leave the box on the ramp," the clerk muttered, his voice flat and thin, devoid of any human warmth. Caleb helped me lift the heavy pine box from the barrow, our boots slipping slightly on the wet wooden ramp of the cart. We slid it onto the back of the wagon, where it joined three other boxes, all identical, all unmarked by any cross or name. As the box settled, the cart shifted with a heavy groan of its leather springs, and the canvas tarp at the front of the bed slid aside. White dust puffed into the cool air, smelling sharply of quicklime and burnt hair. Caleb coughed, covering his mouth with his sleeve, but his eyes remained fixed on the bed of the cart. Under the loose tarp lay a heap of gray ash and charred debris, but it wasn't just the remains of coal. Several large bone fragments protruded from the pile. They were too clean, too white, completely stripped of any soot or char, looking more like polished ivory than the burnt remains of a parish cemetery. They had been scraped down to the marrow, clean of any flesh, but without the blackened cracks that fire leaves behind. "Father," Caleb whispered, his hand tightening on the wooden edge of the cart until his knuckles turned white. "Look at the femur. And the ribs." I grabbed his shoulder, my grip tight enough to bruise through his heavy coat. "Leave it alone, Caleb." "But it's not burnt," he insisted, his voice rising slightly in the quiet yard. "They aren't cremating them. They're... they're doing something else. And look at the tally board on the wall." Across the yard, hanging from a rusted nail on the office door, was a wooden slate with chalked numbers. Caleb stepped toward it, his small leather notebook already in his hand, his pencil poised. Our parish only sent one body tonight, but the slate showed a list of six entries under our district code. The numbers didn't match the burials, and they didn't match the deaths we had recorded in the vestry. "The parish only sent one body tonight," Caleb muttered, his pencil hovering over the paper as he tried to copy the markings. "But the slate says four. And there are six boxes already loaded onto the barge down at the wharf." "Caleb," I warned, my voice dropping to a dangerous quiet. I let my hand fall back to my side, near the heavy weight of my revolver. Returning from his desk, the pale clerk carried a heavy brass stamp and a ledger bound in cracked pigskin. He didn't seem to notice our quiet words, or perhaps he simply didn't care. His eyes were dead, reflecting nothing but the dim lantern light as he pressed the stamp down onto the paper with a dull thud. A sharp metallic click rings through the quiet yard. The clerk stamps the ledger and waves the cart through. Caleb leans toward the tally sheet. I shut the iron gate myself and say, “Stop writing things down, Caleb.” He does not answer.

Chapter 2: The Ash Cart