by Kim Newman
The General looked at the other women.
Olympia stepped forward and said, ‘It is a pleasure to meet you.’
Assolant backhanded the doll’s face.
He hurt himself, of course. He should have hit her with his pistol.
‘I hope we shall be the best of friends,’ she said.
Assolant’s white tangle of scars slowly reddened. He sweated cold fury.
Irene was tense. She saw Elizabeth palm a fork from a place setting.
Good girl. Given the choice, a table fork was better than a cake knife against an importuning gentleman. More likely to pierce than break. Though those frog-hides looked too thick for a simple stab.
‘What have you done to this woman?’ asked the General, meaning Unorna.
‘She has been overcome with the vapours,’ said Elizabeth. ‘We are endeavouring to give aid and succour.’
‘Are you now?’
‘If you could alert the medical corps, we’d appreciate it,’ said Kate.
Assolant picked up a spoon with his left hand and looked at it.
For a moment, Irene was worried he’d stab Kate’s with it.
He breathed on the spoon and polished it on his sleeve.
‘Is this silver?’ he asked, handing it to Kate.
She looked at it and said, ‘I don’t think so…’
Suddenly ramrod-stiff, the General aimed his pistol at Kate’s face.
‘You stole that spoon!’ he said, enraged. ‘I saw it! You are a dirty looter! You are all dirty looters!’
As one, the frogmen took a step forward. They squeaked and left ducky footprints, but weren’t at all comical. The trident hovered near the small of Kate’s back.
Assolant thumb-cocked his revolver. He rested the barrel against a lens of Kate’s glasses.
‘It is within my rights to have you executed.’
VI
‘IF YOU SHOOT me, I daresay you’ll receive a strongly worded telegram from the British Ambassador.’
Assolant’s grim mouth didn’t twitch, but he stopped pointing a gun at her eye.
‘You are to come with me,’ he said. ‘All you… women. You are looters and profiteers.’
Kate hadn’t forgotten the private pleasures of General Assolant and his cronies in le cercle rouge. And he hadn’t forgotten she knew about him.
He hadn’t even the smidgen of decency to be ashamed of what he was – a cowardly, blundering sadist. But he did fear what might befall him if his true character were known to the world. He ached to ascend to a position of untouchability, so he might again murder who he fancied with impunity. He’d once had a taste of that power, and quivered with a dried-out drunk’s thirst for the long-abjured bottle.
‘What about her?’ asked Irene, nodding at Unorna. ‘She needs a doctor.’
‘I will judge what this foreigner needs,’ said Assolant. ‘You are to carry her.’
It fell to Olympia to pick up the sleeping Angel. The automaton came in handy for the heavy lifting.
Gustave held the door open. Kate thanked the maître d’ for his courtesy.
Outside, it was night – and snowing, though slush quickly melted to swell the pools around Place de l’Opéra. A few fires burned in buckets and braziers, but the street lamps weren’t lit. The blackout was even more of an affront than the rising river. It was as if Paris had been turned off.
She heard shouts, cries, shots, screams and crashes. Kate recognised the racket. She had been in wars like this before. Small bands fighting street to street, not whole armies meeting on an open battlefield. Pundits envisioned a coming conflict, where the great powers would roll out the wonderful, mechanised weapons – colossal dreadnoughts, submersible destroyers, bomb-dropping airships, heavy guns mounted on automobiles, clouds of poison smoke – they were itching to test on real, bleeding people.
This could be an overture to that grand opera.
The guards by the roped-off chasm were joined by frog-soldiers. They had swept up from below and established a beach-head.
‘You will come to the opera house,’ said Assolant.
‘Will we now?’ said Irene.
Assolant shot at a dead cat floating past. The poor thing exploded with a plop of fur and guts.
The report was just a crack, lost in the open air and night-sounds.
What with everything else, no one came to investigate. Chances are they’d only have saluted the senior officer and let him carry on with whatever he was doing. Had General Assolant gone over to the other side, or was there only one side with two faces?
Thi Minh was first on the passerelle. Kate followed, as indicated by a trident prod. Frog-men waded at either side of the plank, aiming spear-shooting contraptions at the Angels.
They had been taken prisoner. If Assolant had permission to execute them, he would have done it already.
The General had been a small fish in the Légion d’Horreur, a minnow next to sharks like Georges Du Roy or Père de Kern. This action couldn’t be Assolant’s idea – and he certainly wasn’t taking orders from Louis Lépine, Prefect of Police, or Justin de Selves, Prefect of the Seine. The army only grudgingly recognised civil authority at the best of times.
Someone was above Assolant.
Not Fantômas. Kate no longer believed the anarchist had killed the Persian.
A subtler hand was behind this. One of those masterminds Irene went on about. Or just a brute with money and influence.
Frog-men were stationed outside the opera house.
Now she’d seen their diving gear up close, Kate knew they weren’t just freshwater pirates. It took money and resources to equip them.
Regular troops in shabby uniforms did scut-work like shoring up sandbag barriers. Smartly dressed Camelots du Roi strutted like beardless field marshals, not doing a hand’s turn but giving the impression they were high up in the chain of command. Kate hoped Oscar and Max were on the sick list. They’d relish revenge for their dip in the freezing waters.
The co-operating forces – frog-men, soldiers, Camelots – were identifiable by bright green armbands. Kate had noticed Max and Oscar wearing them earlier. The General had one too. On the band was a curlicue motif. A crown of seashells surmounted the letter A.
For Assolet?
Anarchy?
Army?
Antichrist?
L’Action Française?
Irene nudged Kate and pointed at a banner hung above the entrance of the Palais Garnier. That same green A, but huge – and professionally woven, which indicated planning.
Système A hadn’t sprung up overnight.
‘A for Antinea,’ Irene suggested.
‘…or Atlantis,’ Kate countered.
‘Something fishy, at any rate,’ said Irene.
Kate was too weary to groan.
A frog-man shook his speargun in a ‘shut up, you’ gesture, and Kate and Irene got a move on. A signal rocket went up from another quarter of the city. Soldiers and frog-men turned to take note.
A couple of Camelots gallantly helped Thi Minh off the passerelle, though the acrobat scarcely needed assistance. She seemed unconcerned at any probable peril. As an active Angel, it was a point of pride to show no fear. Kate wasn’t sure she could hold fast to the principle. She was retired from the Opera Ghost Agency. Then again, the Diogenes Club didn’t have a tradition of panicking and pleading in tight spots – and she was still on their register.
Unsteady on her feet and with a face frozen from windblown snow, Kate was grateful for helping hands. She thanked a curly-moustached Camelot. He smiled as if this were all a student lark.
All the Angels made it to the opera house without a dunking.
Unorna, as a witch, would presumably float. With the rest of them, things would go less happily.
When Assolant stepped down from the passerelle, the Camelots snapped off salutes.
Only now did it strike Kate as suspicious that so many sprouts of the upper crust had easy access to boats and barges. They had been
waiting for rain.
Under the Third Republic, militarist and monarchist conspiracies abounded. Some faction or other was always on the point of staging a coup d’état. Rogue Jesuits incensed by the separation of Church and State. Stubborn Montagnards awaiting the second coming of Robespierre. Lunatic anti-Dreyfusards who marched on the Presidential Palace at the head of imaginary columns of troops. If the Angels of the day – Christina Light, Marahuna, Marie O’Malley – hadn’t prevented the release of a plague bacillus among the crowds gathered for the opening of the Exposition Universelle, France might have fallen under the dictatorship of the Brass Bonaparte.
Was this another attempted coup? She could see how it would work.
The National Assembly had carried on debating until the last lights went out, then adjourned. Président Fallières was floating about inspecting flood damage and pledging assistance to wet, ungrateful people. If he chanced to fall in the river and drown, a case could be made for instituting martial law. Then, it would be up to the army – which is to say, General Assolant – to decide how long the state of emergency would last.
Just now, she’d be grateful to find Fantômas, the Grand Vampire or the Clutching Hand behind it. Some villain who could be unmasked and brought to book. The Angels couldn’t deal with a mass movement. She wasn’t even sure they’d have the right to.
Given the general hullaballoo all over the city, the coup had already begun. This could be Year One of L’ge d’A.
They were ushered into the grand foyer of the Palais Garnier.
A thousand candles burned, but the small flames did little to cast light around the vast space. Frog-men, Camelots, clerks and scurvy-looking types in fisherman’s wading britches – all sporting the green A – milled around purposefully. Women among them wore sparkly togas and headdresses which set off their armbands. Kate guessed many outfits were filched from the costume department. She was sure she’d seen some of the dresses in Aida and La Juive.
The opera house made a decent headquarters, Kate supposed. But the Louvre offered better pickings for looters and was far less dangerous. Last she heard, the museum was only haunted by an Egyptian mummy. Invading the house Erik took for his domain was a riskier proposition. The Phantom of the Opera knew this huge building better than anyone. Flood or no, he’d hide here indefinitely… and pick off insolent trespassers one by one.
Assolant must realise this. Such an affront would draw out Erik. There would be consequences, casualties, a reckoning.
Great schemes were in motion. But so were petty ones.
In the middle of the foyer, a large-scale map of Paris was unrolled on the floor like a carpet. Candelabra were dotted across it, dripping wax and casting light. Clerks with brooms moved blocks of wood as messages were brought in. Kate recognised an operations room when she saw one. Men in tailcoats crawled over the map of the city with pencils, shading in streets and squares.
Frog-men saw her taking an interest and got in the way.
Mrs Eynsford Hill artfully tripped, fell against a frog-man, apologised, and slipped again, hands scrabbling on his rubbery chest. She did a perfect impersonation of a complete twit, but managed to get a good look at the map.
Kate knew a quick glance was enough. With her trick memory, Mrs Eynsford Hill would know the disposition of the enemy forces – at least until the picture faded in a few hours’ time. Irene was using her noggin. She’d taken stock of the Angels’ individual talents and saw how they could be applied. It was cold and premature to think of such things, but if Erik needed to replace the Persian he should consider Irene Adler. If only so she could relish the daily squirm from Gustave as he showed her to what was now her table in the Café de la Paix. She’d run up a huge champagne tab and expect it to be written off every month.
Alraune had Olympia make Unorna comfortable on an upholstered divan. The witch was still sleeping. The German girl’s glittering eyes took everything in too.
What application might there be for her talents?
General Assolant talked with a small, tubby, balding fellow in a long leather coat. Kate had seen him before. The General directed the pig-eyed little man’s attention to the Angels. He grinned, crookedly. His bad teeth gave him away.
She remembered exactly who he was.
Smiling, the fellow opened his coat… like a degenerate exposing his tiny male organ to a Salvation Army band. The lining of the garment was outfitted with rows of narrow pockets – each sheathing a knife of a different length, width or shape.
Rollo the Knife-Thrower, dismissed from the Théâtre des Horreurs for enthusiastic collaboration with le cercle rouge. An artist with blades, he had somehow avoided the one in the guillotine. Assolant had kept up an association with the little torturer. Kate wasn’t surprised.
There was a commotion. Soldiers and frog-men rattled into action. Shouts went up. Lanterns waved. A blinding, fizzing purple flare soared, illuminating the illustrated ceiling. A volley of shots – rifles, pistols and spearguns – were discharged. The target was a panel above the Grand Staircase. Isidore Pils’ Minerva Fighting Brutality Watched by the Gods of Olympus would need repair. Something had moved up there… or someone had imagined something moving up there.
The flare fell to the marble floor and had to be stamped out. Kate blinked until the after-images went away.
Assolant’s scarred side was the colour of blood.
‘I saw… it,’ whimpered a soldier. ‘Like a giant bird with a human skull for a head.’
‘A ghost,’ said another.
‘The ghost,’ insisted a third.
‘Just a shadow,’ said a rifleman, annoyed that he’d joined the panic.
A frog-man said something indistinct through his breathing apparatus.
‘It’s just a shadow when you look at it face-on,’ said Irene, very loudly. ‘But when it’s behind you – then it’s him. The Phantom of the Opera. He can kill with a mere touch. Stop your heart with a whistle. See into your soul with those yellow poached-egg eyes and murder all those you love. If they were half a world away, he would still smite them dead… because he is a demon from Hell. A demon you’ve enraged by coming here. He loves only this building and music. And you’ve profaned his temple!’
Irene gathered an audience. It was as if the men wanted to be terrified.
Thi Minh used her rain-cloak like the Phantom’s cape and gave the troops a bare-teeth rictus, bugged out her eyes and laughed silently. Swiftly, she shinned up a column, hung upside-down with her hair dangling like a rope for a moment, and twisted around to slide out of sight… a perfect disappearing act.
The girl popped up again, and impishly put her hands around one soldier’s throat, butterfly-kissing his nose… then tipped another’s cap over his eyes with a deft move and ducked under a swiping rifle-butt.
She gestured with long fingers.
‘Watch out,’ said Irene. ‘There’s a Phantom about!’
The little group of soldiers quaked like frightened children.
‘Ignore these foreign woman,’ insisted Assolant, brusquely. ‘They are a danger to morale.’
‘Flatterer,’ said Irene, winking.
Her spook stories would be repeated. Armies were more addicted to gossip and bogey tales than a ladies’ sewing circle. Greater, more fabulous tales of the Phantom’s supernatural powers would spread. It wasn’t as if anyone needed the fear put into them. They already saw Erik in every corner. They’d be shooting at each other soon.
Who knows? Maybe he had been up there.
He must be somewhere in the house.
An electric crackle and an acrid smell startled Kate. She turned to see an elderly man, with a shock of white hair, marching across the foyer with a high-stepping, grasshopper gait. This extraordinary character was strapped into a black carapace-like corset which extended to leather and wire leg- and arm-braces and spiked shoulder-pieces. His belt hung heavy with holstered implements Kate couldn’t name. Like the frog-men, he wore a back-humping pack – but his wasn
’t for breathing. Sparks fell wherever he walked and gears ground in the joints of his braces. Some sort of electric battery served as motive power. She thought he needed his machinery to walk. He had wing-like leather folds under his arms.
‘That’s Falke,’ said Irene. ‘The Black Bat.’
Kate knew his story. A case from Unorna’s watch, when she’d been an Angel alongside the detective La Marmoset and the assassin Sophy Kratides. L’affaire du vampire.
Falke wore an A armband, though he had a batwing insignia on his chest.
‘He’s old,’ said Kate.
‘Not that old,’ said Irene.
‘Not just old, but broken.’
‘He’s compensating well, I’d say. I wonder if those electric britches come in ladies’ sizes.’
Sometimes, Kate wondered whether Irene wouldn’t be happier on the other side.
Then, she asked herself if there really were sides.
‘La Marmoset, a cleverer Angel even than you, broke Falke… and he came back,’ said Irene. ‘You broke Assolant… and he came back. It’s a pattern.’
Alraune cocked an ear. She seized on Irene’s observation.
‘In your grand old days, it seems Angels didn’t break them enough,’ she said. ‘Know who you don’t see here? Any of my enemies. Thi Minh and I have put a lot of them down. You probably don’t even know their names… Frank Braun, Dr Gilson, le Rat, Kilian Gurlitt. The ones we broke stay broken.’
Kate’s hackles pricked at the younger woman’s sneer.
Besides, she was wrong. The old days weren’t always dainty, innocent and amusing.
Georges Du Roy wouldn’t trouble them in this century, for a start. Kate shed no tears for him, or the other cut-up cut-ups of le cercle rouge. Few who’d met Clara Watson or Lady Yuki would think them more merciful than this century’s Angels. Both filled graveyards by themselves. Clara took her own sweet time about it, giving individual attention to each of her enemies – and, Kate shuddered to recall, some of her friends. Many welcomed death as an end to pain.
But a dark light in the German girl’s eyes disturbed Kate. An unnatural light.
If any Angel was ready for the next war – and the war after that – it was Alraune ten Brincken. Intelligence in her Diogenes Club file was vague and partial. One report averred she was seeded in a laboratory, grown from a culture like an Olympia of flesh. She was the Mandrake Maid. Identical sisters might be curled in embryo, nestled inside buds on a hardy potted vine. Ten Brincken wasn’t a family name, but a genus. She was named for the Professor who cultivated her.