"Gin's a whore's drink, Mick."
"Everybody likes gin," he said. "And you're no whore, Sybil."
"Dollymop, bobtail." She looked at him sharply. "What else d'ye call me, then?"
"You're with Dandy Mick now," he said. He leaned his chair back, jabbing his gloved thumbs through the arm-holes of his waistcoat. "You're an adventuress."
"Adventuress?"
"Bloody right." He straightened. "And here's to you." He sipped his gin-twist, rolled it over his tongue with an unhappy look, and swallowed. "Never mind, dearthey've cut this with turpentine or I'm a Jew." He stood up.
They left. She hung on his arm, trying to slow his pace. " 'Adventurer,' that's what you are, then, eh, Mr. Mick Radley?"
"So I am, Sybil," he said softly, "and you're to be my 'prentice. So you do as you're told in the proper humble spirit. Learn the tricks of craft. And someday you join the union, eh? The guild."
"Like my father, eh? You want to make a play of that, Mick? Who he was, who I am?"
"No," Mick said flatly. "He was old-fashioned, he's nobody now."
Sybil smirked. "They let us wicked girls into this fancy guild of yours, do they, Mick?"
"It's a knowledge guild," he said soberly. "The bosses, the big'uns, they can take
all manner of things away from us. With their bloody laws and factories and courts and banks They can make the world to their pleasure, they can take away your home and kin and even the work you do " Mick shrugged angrily, his lean shoulders denting the heavy fabric of the greatcoat. "And even rob a hero's daughter of her virtue, if I'm not too bold in speaking of it." He pressed her hand against his sleeve, a hard, trapping grip. "But they can't ever take what you know, now can they, Sybil? They can't ever take that."
Sybil heard Hetty's footsteps in the hall outside her room, and the rattle of Hetty's key at the door. She let the serinette die down, with a high-pitched drone.
Hetty tugged the snow-flaked woollen bonnet from her head, shrugging free from her Navy cloak. She was another of Mrs. Winterhalter's girls, a big-boned, raucous brunette from Devon, who drank too much, but was sweet in her way, and always kind to Toby.
Sybil folded away the china-handled crank and lowered the cheap instrument's scratched lid. "I was practicing. Mrs. Winterhalter wants me to sing next Thursday."
"Bother the old drab," Hetty said. "Thought this was your night out with Mr. C. Or is it Mr. K.?" Hetty stamped warmth into her feet before the narrow little hearth, then noticed, in the lamplight, the scattering of shoes and hat-boxes from Aaron & Son. "My word," she said, and smiled, her broad mouth pinched a bit with envy. "New beau, is it? You're so lucky, Sybil Jones!"
"Perhaps." Sybil sipped hot lemon-cordial, tilling her head back to relax her throat.
Hetty winked. "Winterhalter doesn't know about this one, eh?"
Sybil shook her head and smiled. Hetty would not tell. "D'ye know anything about Texas, Hetty?"
"A country in America," Hetty said readily. "French own it, don't they?"
"That's Mexico. Would you like to go to a kinotrope show, Hetty? The former President of Texas is lecturing. I've tickets, free for the taking."
"When?"
"Saturday."
"I'm dancing then," Hetty said. "Perhaps Mandy would go." She blew warmth into her fingers. "Friend of mine comes by late tonight, wouldn't trouble you, would it?"
"No," Sybil said. Mrs. Winterhalter had a strict rule against any girl keeping company with men in her room. It was a rule Hetty often ignored, as if daring the landlord to peach on her. Since Mrs. Winterhalter chose to pay the rent directly to the landlord, Mr. Cairns, Sybil seldom had call to speak to him, and less with his sullen wife, a thick-ankled woman with a taste for dreadful hats. Cairns and his wife had never informed against Hetty, though Sybil was not sure why, for Hetty's room was next to theirs, and Hetty made a shameless racket when she brought men homeforeign diplomats, mostly, men with odd accents and, to judge by the noise, beastly habits.
"You can carry on singing if you like," Hetty said, and knelt before the ash-covered fire. "You've a fine voice. Mustn't let your gifts go to waste." She began to feed individual coals to the hearth, shivering. A dire chill seemed to enter the room then, through the cracked casement of one of the nailed-up windows, and for a strange passing moment Sybil felt a distinct presence in the air. A definite sense of observation, of eyes fixed upon her from another realm. She thought of her dead father. Learn the voice, Sybil. Learn to speak. It's all we have that can fight them, he had told her. This in the last few days before his arrest, when it was clear that the Rads had won againclear to everyone, perhaps, save Walter Gerard. She had seen then, with heart-crushing clarity, the utter magnitude of her father's defeat. His ideals would be lostnot just misplaced but utterly expunged from history, to be crushed again and again and again, like the carcass of a mongrel dog under the racketing wheels of an express train. Learn to speak, Sybil. It's all we have