The narrow alley behind Fish Street was shrouded in a cold, drizzling rain that smelled of coal smoke, horse manure, and the unending, rank silt stench of the lower river basin. Tavi walked along the slippery cobblestones, his shoulders hunched beneath a heavy canvas poncho. He carried a light metal check clipboard sent through the sky-slit by Imran Bell. Tucked behind his ear was a yellow grease pencil, its tip worn blunt from recording observations in thirty cellar basements.
Beside him walked Sister Merrow. It held a horn lantern whose candle cast a warm, flickering light against the dripping brick walls. In her apron pocket sat three small glass sample vials with punched holes in tin caps, lined with damp peat moss to keep live beetle specimens from choking. Across her arm hung an oilcloth satchel containing a half-eaten loaf of sourdough crust and two tin flasks of boiled tea to ward off the underground damp.
“Station fourteen,” Tavi called out, stopping before the low cellar grating of an abandoned cooperage. “Mrs. Peake’s washhouse. Mortar joints along the north foundation wall.”
He knelt on the wet stones, pulled a narrow brass feeler probe from his leather satchel. Then he pushed in it into a gap where the lime mortar had crumbled away between two courses of dark river limestone. He drew the probe out. Then, five pale, semi-clear larvae were clinging to the brass tip, their glowing belly segments pulsing with a wild, pale emerald soft glow.
