The Merchant and the Rogue by Sarah M. Eden

Brogan smoothed the front of his shirt, making full certain it was tucked in all around, and adjusted the fit of his rough-spun trousers. He’d assumed any number of false identities over the years. He’d done so when he and his sister had fled Dublin. He’d done so in his work for the Dread Penny Society. When he and Móirín made their regular journeys to the struggling corners of London, they did so in garb meant to blend in.

This persona felt different, though. It felt more uncomfortable, more uncertain. For the first time, he was undertaking a pursuit entirely alone.

Móirín came down the stairs with her usual air of mingled amusement and determination. “I see you’re hoping to make an impression on your first day at the new job.”

“’Tis physical labor I’ll be doing. Wouldn’t make sense to arrive dressed for a night at the opera.”

She looked him over. “You opted for ‘a night at the squalid pub’ instead?”

“I ain’t so scruff as that. I’d wager you have your usual boot accessory.” He eyed her footwear.

“I’ve a knife on m’ person even when I’m sleeping.” She pulled on her plain, serviceable cloak.

“And where is it you keep your derringer when you’re asleep? In your nightcap?”

“Of course not.” She yanked on her bonnet. “The gun’s under m’ mattress.”

Though Brogan laughed, he felt certain she wasn’t jesting. “I suspect if I didn’t love you, I’d be terrified of you.”

She eyed him sidelong. “You ought to feel a wee bit of both.”

“Likely.” Brogan pulled on his wool jacket. “Shall we go for a merry jaunt?” He did his best impression of a proper London gentleman, the effort marred by the unshakable influence of Ireland in his voice.

She answered with a fairly well-executed version of a proper British accent. “A regular pleasure stroll it’ll be.”

They stepped out of their flat and onto the pavement.

“We need to make our way to Maida Hill by week’s end,” Móirín said as they walked on. “I’ve heard whispers of difficulty up that way.”

“The usual sort?” Brogan asked.

Móirín gave a quick, single nod without slowing her step. “Poverty turning people desperate, tearing families apart, pulling people into crime.”

London’s underbelly was as putrid as a corpse on a hot day. Those who ran it and manipulated it were powerful and dangerous. Brogan and Móirín hadn’t come from a particularly peaceful area of Dublin, so they knew all too well the poverty that kept people tied to places like Maida Hill and Somers Town.

They made regular jaunts to those seedier corners, bringing what they could afford to give to those in greater need than they. The poor of this city needed so much more than food and medicines and the meager bits of coin they managed to bring them.

“Think you’ll have time with this new position of yours to keep helping with the deliveries?” Móirín asked.

Helping. He was far more comfortable helping. And, yet, here he was on his way to doing.

Móirín motioned to a street sweeper, leaning on his broom with a penny dreadful in his hand. “Mr. King’s latest,” she said. “That green cover can’t be mistaken.”

Brogan shook his head. “Wish I had the bloke’s knack for writing a top seller. We’d be in fine fettle, Móirín. Fine fettle, indeed.”

“Fine enough that you might not be taking on a second job.” Móirín knew their situation as well as he did. They’d not had near enough since coming to London. They pooled what little they had, barely enough for sharing a flat. “You said you sold a good many copies of your latest tale just yesterday.”

He nodded. “And got m’self a needed job at the same time.”

Unmistakable mischief entered Móirín’s eyes. “Hired on by a woman who has you thinking on her a full day later.”

He knew that teasing tone. “Don’t you go adding more meaning than’s there.”

“You’ve not mentioned any lass to me more than once in years. Yet Miss Vera Sorokina’s name has slipped from your lips more times than I can count in the last day alone. I’ll be adding all the meaning to that I want, and just you try stopping me.”

With his separation from the Dreadfuls, Brogan had no one else to talk with but Móirín. He couldn’t tell her the real reason he’d visited the print shop nor his true motivation in jumping at the work offered there.

He’d spent more than a year telling the Dreadfuls how much he hated lying to his sister. He’d left the Society, more or less, and there he was, still lying. And lying to more than just Móirín.

“She was intriguing, I’ll grant you. Seemed to enjoy her customers, yet she gives the impression of keeping something tucked away from them all. Haven’t the first idea what that might be.” He’d learn more the longer he worked there. That was his current plan. “Intriguing. That’s all that needs saying on that matter.”

“For now,” Móirín said.

They turned a corner, drawing closer to their destination, when, from the shadows of a narrow alley, a man jumped out and grabbed the handle of Móirín’s basket.

Quick as thought, she pulled a dagger from the basket with her free hand and pointed it at him without hesitation, without the slightest tremor. “Let go the basket or I’ll cut you a third nostril.”

“Best do as she says, lad,” Brogan said. “She ain’t foolin’.”

The would-be thief hesitated.

“I’m in earnest,” Brogan said. “She’ll carve you like a block of wood and enjoy the doing of it.”

He must’ve been convincing. The thief took flight, leaving them with both their baskets firmly in their possession.

“‘She’ll enjoy the doing of it’?” Móirín clicked her tongue. “You make me out to be a cold-blooded murderer.”

“You’re an Irishwoman with a temper. ’Tisn’t a large gap between the two.”

Móirín didn’t always allow teasing about her potential for criminal behavior. She did this time, merely shaking her head and smiling at him. He loved his sister, of course. But he also deeply liked her. She was good and fierce and caring.

“Why is it you gave a false name at the Sorokin shop?” Móirín asked. “Seems an odd way to start a new position.”

Heavens, that was a mass of muck he wasn’t at liberty to explain to her. He offered, instead, a reason he could safely admit to. “They sell m’stories there. ’Twould be as uncomfortable as wearing sackcloth underclothes to be lugging and delivering as my own self in a place where I’m meant to have some small bit of prestige.”

“A Donnelly having importance?” Móirín clicked her tongue. “Seems you’ve forgotten we were running from the law only five years ago on account of our being low-down, no-good sorts of people. Tucking ourselves in London didn’t change what we are.”

“Didn’t change us because it ain’t that simple,” Brogan tossed back. “No matter what the Peelers think, you and I know who we are. Let the Dublin police sully our names all they want.”

“And sully them from a distance,” Móirín said with the tone of one offering both a prayer and a curse.

He tucked his hands in his coat pockets, gaze lowered. “I wish I could’ve done more to—”

“Stop it, now,” she said. “You strike that exact posture—hands in the pockets and eyes on the ground—when you’re fretting and feeling lower than the weeds. You’ve done so since we were tiny.”

“You can read me like a book, can you?”

Her self-assured expression was not the least feigned.

They’d reached Great Windmill Street, where he needed to turn off and head toward Soho. Móirín’s job took her farther on.

“Best of luck to you today, Ganor,” Móirín said with a smirk. “I hope Miss Vera proves as intriguing on second acquaintance as she did on the first.”

He needed all the luck he could get. Brogan readily acknowledged he made a fabulous second, but he’d never been one for filling the role of principle. Yet, he’d agreed to do just that. He very much worried the scheme would fall to bits sooner rather than later. Rogue elephants, after all, rarely survived long.

He knew why it had to be done the way it was, but he couldn’t for the life of him sort out why the Dread Master had chosen him, the resident foot soldier, to undertake this assignment when any of the others would have been a better choice.

The print shop was quiet when he arrived. Miss Vera’d not given him a time when she’d wanted him to arrive. Perhaps he’d missed the mark and ought to have been there sooner.

She looked up from the green-covered penny dreadful in her hand when he stepped inside, the bell ringing overhead.

“Morning, Miss Vera.” Brogan popped his hat off. “Hope you don’t mind me calling you that. ’Twas what the customers called you when I was here last.”

“I don’t mind.” She tucked the story on a shelf under the counter. “But when you meet my papa you’d best call me Miss Sorokina. Wouldn’t do to set him against you straight off.”

“Meet your papa?” He assumed an overblown look of horror. “I’d intended to apply for a job. Seems I overshot the mark.”

She smiled at his jest, but in a way that told him quite clearly that she’d not intended to. “My papa owns the shop. Though you’re working for me, you have to meet with his approval.”

Ah. “’Tis why the shop’s called ‘Sorokin’s’ and not ‘Sorokina’s.’”

She nodded. “I’d wager most people will insist it’s an error rather than admit there’s things they don’t know.”

“They can’t all be as well-versed as I am,” he said.

“And what is it you know about Russian?” she asked, a twinkle of amusement deep in her eyes.

“I know that daughters and fathers aren’t always going to have the same surname. Learned that a couple days ago, I did.”

“At least I know you’re a quick study,” she said. “I’ll mention that as a point in your favor if my papa decides he don’t care for you.”

“How likely is he to decide I’m a good-for-nothing?”

“Hard to say.” She studied him, though, again, there was a teasing quality to it he wasn’t certain she meant to let show. “How do you feel about writers?”

For a fraction of a second he couldn’t sort out a response. She was striking far too close to the mark. “How am I meant to feel about them?”

She shook her head. “Ask my papa some time. He’ll spill a whole heap of complaints in your ear.”

“He’s not overly fond of writers, then?”

“That’s hitting far below the mark.”

Oh, mercy. He was in a stickier spot than he’d realized. Fletcher or Stone would’ve known immediately how to navigate this. Brogan was going to have to do some fast thinking.

“Papa’s downstairs working at the printing press,” Vera said. “He’ll need to give you a look over before you start.” She motioned Brogan to follow her toward the back.

He needed to win the approval of a man who despised writers. Might as well attempt to restore hair to a bald man’s head.

A small back room connected them to another door, beyond which were two narrow staircases, one leading up and one leading down. Brogan followed Vera to the basement. The space was not overly large, but was sufficient for the large printing press, the cupboard with equipment, the shelves of paper and ink bottles. It was organized and well-laid out.

At a tall table in the midst of it all, a man near about fifty years old sat bent over a row of metal letters. His sleeves were protected with coverings. He wore thick glasses perched at the end of his nose. His silver-streaked beard was long enough to nearly touch the table.

“Ganor O’Donnell’s here, Papa. The bloke I told you was taking up the job we had on offer.”

For not the first time, Brogan was glad he’d given a false name that he’d used before. He’d be less likely to forget ’twas his name in this shop.

Mr. Sorokin turned slightly on his stool and studied Brogan over the rim of his spectacles. He scratched at his beard. “You are not a very large man. This job requires a lot of physical labor.”

While Vera sounded entirely London, her father spoke with the undeniable flavor of Russia.

“Most of m’ countrymen aren’t large people,” Brogan said. “But we know how to work.”

“Irish?” Mr. Sorokin’s eyes narrowed.

Brogan nodded. “London’s filled to bursting with people from other places.”

“That it is.” Mr. Sorokin returned his gaze to his table. “We’ll give you the day to prove yourself. If you can and will do the work, and you aren’t a drunkard, then you have a job, O’Donnell.”

“A drunkard?” Brogan looked to Vera. “Is that a commentary on m’ origins?” The Irish were often assumed to be in a constant state of inebriation.

Vera shook her head no. “One of the men who applied for the position arrived drunk as a wheelbarrow.”

“Ah.” ’Twas a far better reason for the comment than he’d feared. “I’ve been working since I was a tiny lad, and I’ve never once shown up tipsy as a two-legged cow.”

“See that you keep that pattern, and this’ll work out just fine.”

Brogan followed her back out of the printing room and up the stairs.

“No drinking,” he repeated, “and no writing.”

“Not even mentioning writing or writers is likely a better approach.”

“His disapproval is that looming?” That’d make his position at the print shop all the more precarious.

“He’s miffed that I sell penny dreadfuls in the shop,” she said. “He begrudges having to even step inside now that they’re there.”

“But he’s not bothered by you reading them?” He’d been in this shop twice, and twice he’d come upon her reading one of the familiar pamphlet stories.

Vera didn’t answer directly. Her guilty expression did it for her.

Blimey.Mr. Sorokin disapproved of penny dreadfuls in particular. What had the Dread Master tossed Brogan into?

“Why’s he so set against stories and the folks that write them?”

“That ain’t my history to tell,” she answered. “But we have decades of reasons to keep our distance from the literary set.”

We. Not he. “But you still read the stories.”

A weariness settled over her. “I shouldn’t. I feel guilty every time, but . . .”

She didn’t seem to have any answers.

Heaven knew, he had plenty of questions.