Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [60]
“I’m obliged,” she replied. “Can we get out of here?”
They ducked under the jerkily progressing meathooks and picked their way towards the dark exit. They took stairs up towards ground level. The light became less livid as the blue-grey tint of the sky filtered through dirty skylights in the narrow corridor’s ceiling, a long way above.
Benjamin and Derkhan turned into a windowless room filled with a tub, a pump and several buckets. Some tough robes hung behind the door. Derkhan watched quietly as he stripped off his fouled clothes and threw them in a pail with water and powdered soap. He scratched himself and stretched luxuriously, then pumped water vigorously into the tub. His naked body was streaked with oily blood as if he was newborn. He shook some of the soap under the sputtering pump, swirled the cold water to make suds.
“Your mates are very understanding about you just up and taking a fuck-break, aren’t they?” said Derkhan mildly. “What have you told them? Did I steal your heart, you mine, or are we in a purely business arrangement?”
Benjamin sniggered. He spoke with a strong Dog Fenn accent, in distinction to Derkhan’s uptown tones.
“Well, I’ve been working an extra shift, ain’t I? I’m already working over my time. I told them you’d be along. Far as they’re concerned you’re just a tart who’s taken to me, and I to you. That wig, afore I forget, is a marvel.” He grinned lopsidedly. “Suits you, Dee. You look a smasher.”
He stood in the tub, slowly lowered himself into it, goosebumps peppering him. He left a thick scum of blood on the surface of the water. Gore and grime lifted slowly from his skin and billowed lazily towards the surface. He closed his eyes a minute.
“I won’t be long, Dee, I promise,” he whispered.
“Take your time,” she replied.
His head slid below the bubbles, leaving thin fronds of hair to coil on the surface and be sucked slowly under. He held his breath a moment, then began to scrub his submerged body vigorously, coming up and sucking air, then ducking below again.
Derkhan filled a bucket with water and stood behind the bath. As he broke the surface she poured it slowly over his head, rinsing him free of bloody soap stains.
“Oooh, lovely,” he muttered. “More, I beg you.”
She obliged him.
Eventually he stepped out of the bath, which looked like the site of violent murder. He tipped the slimy residue into a sluice hammered into the floor. They heard it slosh through the walls.
Benjamin stepped into a rough robe. He wagged his head at Derkhan.
“Shall we get down to business, love?” He winked at her.
“Just tell me what services you require, squire,” she replied.
They left the room. At the end of the passage, picked out in the wash from the skylight, was the little room where Benjamin slept. He closed and locked the door behind them. The room was like a well, far taller than it was wide. Another grubby window was set into the square ceiling space. Derkhan and Benjamin stepped over the flimsy mattress to the ramshackle old wardrobe at its foot, a relic with a decaying grandeur at odds with the slum setting.
Benjamin reached inside and swept a few greasy shirts out of the way. He reached into the fingerholds drilled strategically in the wardrobe’s wooden back, and with a little grunt, lifted it away. He turned it gently sideways and laid it on the cabinet’s floor.
Derkhan looked into the small brick doorway Benjamin had uncovered while he reached onto a little shelf in the wardrobe and took down a matchbox and a candle. He lit the candle in a burst of sulphur, shielding it from the cool air that wafted from the hidden room. With Derkhan behind him, he stepped through the wardrobe and lit up the office of Runagate Rampant.
Derkhan and Benjamin lit the gaslamps. The room was large, dwarfing the adjoining bedroom. The air inside was heavy and sluggish. There was no natural light. High above, the frame of a skylight was visible, but the glass was painted over in black.
Around the room were dotted tumbledown chairs and a couple of desks, all covered in paper and scissors and typewriters.