Fall 1816
It takes at least six weeks for cracked ribs to heal, and can take up to two months for patients who don't take care of themselves -- or so the white-haired mort that doctored Kim told her, with a significant look suggesting that Kim ought not be one of those patients. She'd offered to talk to a healer on Kim's behalf, but once Kim smoked that the doctor meant to call in a proper frogmaker, she refused. The doctor insisted she spend the night in the infirmary in any case, and suggested she take a room at Milliways for at least a few days to recover.
Resting in Milliways makes good sense, at least. It's warm and dry and there's nobody from her world -- with the exception of that cork-brained dry-boots Jamie -- and going back with broken bones is just asking for more trouble. So after a fitful night on the strange hospital bed, Kim takes her leave of Kim Ford with a bottle of pills in hand and takes the cheapest room the Bar offers. (And ain't Kim Ford a surprise: a gentry-mort that's a proper doctor, for one, and a mort named Kim, for another. It finally makes that Andrew fellow seem halfway sensible for insisting that Kim is a girl's name when he's from. Kim wonders if she ought to be giving her name as Tom more often around Milliways if she doesn't want to get caught out -- but that's something to think about later.)
A week recuperating at Milliways turns into two. The longer she stays in her little room on the third floor, private and plain and warm, the more tempting it is to just stay there; to do what Andrew and Charlotte have suggested and get an honest job; to turn her back on London, the stews, Dan Laverham, Newgate Prison and the nabbing culls. She has arguments with herself about it every other day, and every other day she decides that tomorrow she'll go ask about work.
That never happens. It's plain homesickness that finally forces her to go back. Milliways is safer than London, certainly, but it's foreign. Half the patrons are from America, or sound like it, and almost all of them are from the future. They're fascinating, but Kim misses the familiarity of her own streets and her own language.
When she returns to London, she keeps her head very low. She visits Tom Correy and Jemmy up by Threadneedle Street, Red Sal in Hungerford Market, John Parry at the docks; there's little news from any of them, but Sal mentions that one of Dan Laverham's boys asked after her. That's enough to convince her to stay close to Hungerford, where she knows her friends among the market-folk will watch out for her.
Jobs hard to find, thanks to her healing ribs and Kim Ford's warnings about not straining herself, but she manages. She works for a few weeks as a link-boy along the Strand; she spends a few days hawking pamphlets that she can't read; she runs errands for anyone willing to give her a few pence. It's not much, but combined with the money she's managed to save from past jobs, it's enough to pay for the occasional night at Milliways and to keep her fed. Mostly fed, at any rate -- hoisting a few rolls from the burn-crusts on Drury Lane keeps her going when the blunt gets tight.
It's closer to eight weeks than six before she can move her left arm without a twinge of pain. It's her own fault, she supposes, but she's not inclined to dwell on it. Being able to move easily means she can take jobs that require more heavy lifting -- and it means she can run, though not too far. She discovers this last when she spots Dan Laverham's silver hair in Covent Garden one foggy day and bolts before he can twig to her.
After a few months, though, things have settled into a routine not unlike the one Kim had before being attacked.
But she's keeping a closer eye on her back nowadays.
Resting in Milliways makes good sense, at least. It's warm and dry and there's nobody from her world -- with the exception of that cork-brained dry-boots Jamie -- and going back with broken bones is just asking for more trouble. So after a fitful night on the strange hospital bed, Kim takes her leave of Kim Ford with a bottle of pills in hand and takes the cheapest room the Bar offers. (And ain't Kim Ford a surprise: a gentry-mort that's a proper doctor, for one, and a mort named Kim, for another. It finally makes that Andrew fellow seem halfway sensible for insisting that Kim is a girl's name when he's from. Kim wonders if she ought to be giving her name as Tom more often around Milliways if she doesn't want to get caught out -- but that's something to think about later.)
A week recuperating at Milliways turns into two. The longer she stays in her little room on the third floor, private and plain and warm, the more tempting it is to just stay there; to do what Andrew and Charlotte have suggested and get an honest job; to turn her back on London, the stews, Dan Laverham, Newgate Prison and the nabbing culls. She has arguments with herself about it every other day, and every other day she decides that tomorrow she'll go ask about work.
That never happens. It's plain homesickness that finally forces her to go back. Milliways is safer than London, certainly, but it's foreign. Half the patrons are from America, or sound like it, and almost all of them are from the future. They're fascinating, but Kim misses the familiarity of her own streets and her own language.
When she returns to London, she keeps her head very low. She visits Tom Correy and Jemmy up by Threadneedle Street, Red Sal in Hungerford Market, John Parry at the docks; there's little news from any of them, but Sal mentions that one of Dan Laverham's boys asked after her. That's enough to convince her to stay close to Hungerford, where she knows her friends among the market-folk will watch out for her.
Jobs hard to find, thanks to her healing ribs and Kim Ford's warnings about not straining herself, but she manages. She works for a few weeks as a link-boy along the Strand; she spends a few days hawking pamphlets that she can't read; she runs errands for anyone willing to give her a few pence. It's not much, but combined with the money she's managed to save from past jobs, it's enough to pay for the occasional night at Milliways and to keep her fed. Mostly fed, at any rate -- hoisting a few rolls from the burn-crusts on Drury Lane keeps her going when the blunt gets tight.
It's closer to eight weeks than six before she can move her left arm without a twinge of pain. It's her own fault, she supposes, but she's not inclined to dwell on it. Being able to move easily means she can take jobs that require more heavy lifting -- and it means she can run, though not too far. She discovers this last when she spots Dan Laverham's silver hair in Covent Garden one foggy day and bolts before he can twig to her.
After a few months, though, things have settled into a routine not unlike the one Kim had before being attacked.
But she's keeping a closer eye on her back nowadays.