Kit Verrall

The man who holds the Nightstairs Combine’s interest in porterage on London’s undercity stairs. He sells passage rather than violence, and can therefore refuse a company without ever threatening it.

Kit Verrall holds the Nightstairs Combine’s interest in porterage on the undercity stairs. The syndicates keep no roll of members, but the capital knows a few faces, and his is one of them. What he sells is passage: who may go down, by which stair, with what load, and who will carry it.

That is precisely why he is dangerous. Because Verrall trades in access rather than force, he can refuse a company without making a threat — a distinction newcomers find reassuring and experienced men find worse. It keeps him employed by people who would never be seen hiring a fighting band, and lets him move between lawful and merely tolerated work without appearing to change his manner.

In person he is relaxed, almost friendly, and courteous in a way that makes a bargain feel like a favour. Porters on the stairs are said to know his chalk marks better than his face, and his route seals to be honoured further down than most licences.

Companies meet him at the head of a stair they need to descend. The price is usually money, sometimes a service, and occasionally an undertaking not to go down at all; those who agree tend to find the stairs unexpectedly easy, and those who do not tend to find them unexpectedly long.

In person

Verrall is about thirty-five, short and very broad, almost square, with thick black curls cropped at the sides and a dense black beard kept extremely short. His heavy, noticeably asymmetric face has one dark-brown eye and one hazel, a short flattened nose, small brass studs through one eyebrow and a brass-capped front tooth that shows when he smiles, which is often. A thick scar crosses his knuckles. He wears an expensive but roughened waistcoat under a heavy porter’s coat, several belts hung with keys, tokens and route seals, and does not trouble to hide the pistol or the knife.