The Transference Engine

by Julia Verne St. John

  But, could that be just one of his disguises? Which was the real man and where were his true loyalties?

  He knew too much about the Persian sorcerer and the book about Persian necromancy. He had handled the book last before I noticed it missing. I’d expect him to know about those since he investigated the cult for the archbishop. But he’d quoted a passage from the book correctly, as if translating from the original, not the Latin or English mangling of the text.

  I wondered if he’d done those translations himself, deliberately distorting the words to keep European practitioners from using the book, or possibly to set himself up as the only authority on the subject for his own purposes: to recruit warped or bored young men with a fascination for death and magic.

  “I can see your mind spinning, Madame Magdala,” Ish said quietly. “What plots do you weave?” He placed his warm hand atop mine, comforting and comfortable. We’d been good friends as well as lovers for several years.

  Was I ever this comfortable with Drew? Not really. Intimate yes, but the spark and sizzle of our bodies always kept us from settling into familiar routines that worked well together without making demands upon each other.

  “No plots, just trying to make sense of puzzle pieces.” I smiled at him, grateful for his concern.

  “Do any of the pieces fit together better for the deep mulling you do?”

  “Some. Others keep flying off into other puzzles that don’t belong, and yet I know they would fall into a proper place if I could find the missing pieces.”

  “Perhaps when we find the crystal, more will make sense.”

  “Perhaps. But it also opens the question of where Stamata found it and whether she knows how to use it as either a weapon or an artifact of necromancy.” A chilling thought—colder than the wind at this elevation—almost buckled my knees as I gazed far into the distance seeking answers. “What if Lord Byron found the crystal and used it upon himself? What if he inhabits the crystal?”

  “You said she needed the Leyden jars for that,” Jimmy added.

  “The wires led from the dwarf to the jars and they sparkled blue with electricity. But she claimed the dwarf contained the soul of Percy Shelley, not Lord Byron. And she clutched the crystal most possessively. Proof to me that Lord Byron’s soul had never resided in the dwarf. So many of her actions were merely a ruse to frighten me into revealing the design for the original transference engine, the only certain way to keep a soul in another body without a blood connection.”

  “From what I know of the poet king, he would die once and for all rather than accept the imperfect body of a dwarf,” Ish snorted in disgust.

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “Miss Elise?” Jimmy said hesitantly, pointing toward a flurry of movement on a bit of open road below us. “Looks like we’ve been spotted. I’m taking her up!”

  He pulled on the lever to send more hot air into the balloon. At the same time, Ish released more sand from the bags.

  “More!” Jimmy said as misty clouds enveloped us.

  A musket ball whizzed past my ear at the same time the cracks of several high-powered guns exploded beneath us. I ducked to a crouch within the basket.

  Ish followed me, clutching his upper left arm. Blood oozed through his coat sleeve and between his fingers. His dusky skin grew pallid, and his eyes rolled up.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “DON’T YOU DARE COLLAPSE on me. There’s no room!” I shouted to Ish, forcing my voice to penetrate his instinctive retreat from the unexpected that brought pain and an unbalance to his logical life.

  “Them were no muskets, Miss Elise,” Jimmy muttered, frantically working the ailerons and the burner.

  “A lucky shot?”

  “Aye. Fired from one of them new American guns. A long barrel with rifling for accuracy and smokeless powder.”

  Six more shots followed in a rapid barrage.

  I crouched lower, ducking my head between my knees. Ish’s head lolled right and left.

  “Damme! A repeater. Heard about experiments with them,” Jimmy said. His body stretched to peer over the side of the basket without loosing his hold on the now flapping and out-of-control ailerons.

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” I reminded him.

  “Aye.” He twisted ropes and pulled levers. The burner flared, and we rose higher into the obscuring clouds.

  But we didn’t rise as rapidly as I expected from the height of the flame.

  Then I heard it. A low-pitched hiss buried beneath the sound of the hot air rising into the balloon.

  “Three holes from big bullets,” Jimmy muttered. “We’ll fly a bit longer on a different tack. They’ll not find us when we land.”

  “Stay alert, Ish.” I slapped his face lightly.

  “It . . . it hurts,” he moaned.

  “Of course it does. You’ve been shot. But not mortally.” I rummaged in the lidded boxes built into the insides of the basket. In the third one I found whiskey and bandages that looked like they might have started life as a lady’s fine petticoat. I folded one into a tight square, soaked it with the whiskey—took a sip for myself—and tied the makeshift bandage over his coat so that it applied pressure to the wound. I’d not get the garment off him in the tight confines of the basket. The pressure would have to slow the bleeding.

  “Looks like a flesh wound. The bleeding is already slowing.” I looked at the flask, took another sip, and forced a few drops of precious amber liquid between Ish’s now chattering teeth.

  “Cold,” he said. Then his eyes opened wide and the pain glaze faded.

  “Another sip and you’re good to face dragons or Thuggees, or whatever awaits us on the ground.”

  He took that mouthful more readily.

  “Did you see who they were?” I asked Jimmy as I ministered to Ish.

  “Red uniforms around a cart. Possibly smugglers. They probably thought we were part of the ring come to take the goods elsewhere.”

  Jimmy’s eyes were sharp. That was a lot more information than I thought possible from a thousand feet up, even for him. I suspected he or his kin did their part to aid that bit of smuggling.

  We lost altitude with a jerk. I gasped. Ish groaned and clutched his wound. The shrouding clouds lost density.

  “Sorry ’bout that, Miss Elise.” Jimmy didn’t sound sorry at all. At least not on my account.

  I glared at him. His attention fixed on the circle of small holes in the silk balloon.

  Was the hiss of escaping air stronger than the burner’s ability to push more into the silk?

  “I’m going to believe that you are shedding altitude quite rapidly because we have reached our destination.” Ish looked a little less pale. Maybe the thicker air below the clouds was easier for him to breathe.

  “Close enough.” Jimmy continued to play with his controls, sensing the mood of the wind before the wind knew what it wanted to do.

  And then the sun burst through, shredding the clouds like a cheese grater taken to a fine round of cheddar. Warmth caressed my face. I drew a long lungful of air in and out.

  Ish mimicked my reaction to sunlight. “Is that a promise of a happier ending than the beginning?” he quipped, the corners of his mouth tugging upward.

  I peeked over the edge of the basket and wished I hadn’t. The ground rushed toward us at an alarming rate. Copses dotted a broad meadow full of grazing horses. The stallion looked up as we flew past his curious nose. Bare inches above his nose by my reckoning.

  A bump, a drag, a bounce. Then another bump and drag. No bounce. We careened right and left, then settled squarely on the lush pasture. Mr. Stallion meandered over, curious and alert but not menacing. This was, after all, his pasture full of lush grass and his harem of mares.

  “Out we go,” Jimmy ordered. He grabbed my upper arm and heaved until I tumbled half out with the basket rim pre
ssing hard on my belly.

  Indelicately, I swung a leg up and managed to land with both feet flat and my balance swaying only a little. I grabbed the basket to steady myself even as I looked around to pinpoint our location.

  The stallion sniffed and then lipped my coat pocket.

  “And here ye be, Master Thor,” Jimmy said holding an apple in the palm of his hand. “Sorry ’tis only one of last year’s that lasted through the winter. A small and pitiful offering it be, I know, to the god of thunder. Next time I’ll bring you a carrot.” The horse chomped down on the dried and withered fruit, nearly taking a finger with it. Satisfied with the offering, he strutted off, bragging in horse language that he’d gotten a treat and the others hadn’t.

  “Out now, afore the mares decide we are their missing snack.” Jimmy helped Ish to his feet and over the barrier of the basket with more gentleness and care than he had shown me. But then, Jimmy knew I could take care of myself and Ish couldn’t.

  “Where are we?” I asked, helping hold Ish upright until his head and feet started talking to each other again.

  Jimmy reached back to turn off the burner before speaking. The balloon slowly collapsed in on itself. “Road’s about one hundred yards to the west. From the latest reports, I expect you’ll find your Greek lady within a mile or so.” He went about his chores, tending to his balloon with the same care as a well-paid groom gave to a hard-ridden horse.

  I scanned the line of trees that marked the edge of the road and the hilltops for sign of a house. “Whose land do we trespass upon?” I urged Ish into movement toward our destination. He stumbled on an imperfection in the grass but righted himself without assistance.

  “Someone who turns a blind eye while he be in London. Done a bit of outlawry in his day, knows the rigors of the road.” Jimmy fingered the bullet holes in the balloon. “I need to patch this and then keep the burner simmering in case we need to fire up in a hurry to leave ahead of yon redcoats.”

  I wondered briefly if the absent lord was the same outlaw who’d tried to kidnap Miss Ada near a Rom campground ten or more years ago. A lot can change in a man’s circumstances and title in that amount of time. Did I know him in this life?

  I didn’t think so.

  Still, I kept a wary eye on all of our surroundings.

  By my reckoning, the soldiers with the smugglers were miles behind us. But they had horses and accurate repeating rifles.

  Unless the smugglers were actually Stamata and her cohorts and their cargo was Leyden jars filled with souls stolen from innocents, all in a vain attempt to keep alive the genius—and perversions—of George, Lord Byron, sixth baron of that title.

  Ish appeared a little steadier on his feet, now that the shock and pain of his first bullet wound wore thin. I wondered briefly that his life had been so free of violence that this was his first encounter. I hadn’t time to dwell on it.

  Stamata and that all-important crystal demanded our attention.

  “Catch up if you can. Keep the burner going and the balloon ready if you can’t,” I called back to Jimmy. Checking to make certain I had weapons about my person—including the tightness and fit of the bulletproof corset—I tromped toward the road.

  When we reached the tree line, I paused and peered along the road, north and south. Sure enough, I heard shouts around the next bend in the road to the north. Then came the sound of someone kicking wood, thumps and bumps of moving crates or barrels. And the grunts of men lifting something heavy. A piercing descant of a female voice rose above all that.

  Jimmy must have circled south while we were in the clouds, to avoid the skirmish.

  We approached cautiously, keeping just inside the line of trees where we could see the road, but the shadows obscured us. Unless our clomping feet in the underbrush and our movement attracted attention, I doubted the army men or the smugglers would notice us. Few military enlisted men, in my experience, were that observant.

  Before I could formulate a plan for getting the crystal away from Stamata, we caught sight of the red-and-white uniforms. We crept through the woods until we stood level with the wagon.

  Half a dozen enlisted men pawed through trunks of clothing and laboratory equipment, ripping and smashing it all. Broken crates and traveling trunks lay scattered across the road, the pieces of one mixed liberally with another.

  As I watched, a corporal used the butt end of his firearm to break a crate into even smaller pieces so that it might kindle a fire but would never protect and contain scientific instruments again.

  As I expected, Stamata huddled on the bench, shoulders folded down, all the while she clutched at the gold chain around her neck. She kept her back to the sergeant who stood beside a civilian clad in fine hunting clothes, tweed knee breeches, tall boots, leather patches on the elbows of his matching tweed coat. He reached with his left hand to yank the gold chain until it broke, near strangling the woman in the process. He came up with a fine deep purple crystal held aloft for the summer sun to penetrate and send intense prisms arcing over the man’s head to land just short of my feet.

  His right hand remained cradled against his chest, encased in a black leather glove.

  Now that I knew what to look for, I saw the lump of his right arm beneath the coat where the fine tailoring could not hide it.

  “You can come out now, Madame Magdala,” he said, not looking toward me.

  Since he hadn’t mentioned my companion, I gestured Ish to retreat toward Jimmy and the balloon before stepping onto the sunlit road.

  “What are you calling yourself today?” I asked.

  Three long rifles—modified from the American design that had cost Britain two wars—turned away from Stamata and aimed for my heart.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “WHATEVER YOU WISH to call me, my dear,” Rigby replied, still holding the crystal aloft.

  “You must be on a mission from your primary employer,” I said, trying desperately to figure out if I should trust him or not. The archbishop’s name would gain him command of a military patrol. But if he truly worked for Archbishop Howley, why did he need the guise of the withered hand?

  He threw back his head and laughed. “As if I would stoop to truly working for anyone but myself.” Finally, he turned to face me, his visage bland.

  I could determine nothing from his expression or body language.

  A snapping twig deeper in the forest sent the aim of the menacing rifles toward the sound.

  Silently I cursed inept Ish. Inside his laboratory with books, and arcane equipment and mathematical formulas scrawled on every viable surface he was a genius. Out in the real world he was more helpless than the youngest of my guttersnipe army of spies.

  “Sorry I can’t stick around to help, Mags. I have an appointment that can’t wait.” Rigby palmed the crystal and marched up the road to where a black lumpy shadow resolved itself into a black wicker basket straining at the ropes of a huge, black, hot air balloon.

  I hadn’t noticed it. I hadn’t even looked for it!

  I should have known better. But, like most people, I focused on the action on the ground, not the hovering presence above.

  Instead of uselessly kicking myself, I dashed after the chameleon. He heard my footsteps and increased his pace, diving into the basket as Sir Andrew Fitzandrew stood up from the depths of the basket and loosed the ropes. He worked hard at keeping his face turned away, never meeting my gaze.

  I knew him too well.

  I leaped to follow. My fingernails scraped the side of the basket as it rose quickly. The brittle reeds embedded sharp splinters deep into the quick. I squelched a squeak of pain. I’d endured worse and would again to prevent that crystal from being used in a light-cannon, no matter the target.

  Ish screamed.

  The basket rose higher, beyond my reach.

  I had to help Ish, a babe in the woods with no defenses
.

  I picked myself off the road where the basket had dumped me and ran toward Ish. The patrol of six enlisted men surrounded my poor friend, their red coats appearing dull and dirty in this light. Ish cowered on the ground, raising one hand above him to ward off another blow. The sergeant raised his rifle to slam the butt into Ish’s head.

  Without thinking, I drew my pistol and a throwing star, shot both guards and tackled the sergeant. My clawlike fingers yanked off his poorly sewn-on stripes. His weapon fired as we landed heavily on the ground.

  “Get out of here!” I called to Ish as I slammed my fist into the jaw of the false soldier.

  Three down, three to go. I jumped up and whirled to face my next opponent.

  They grabbed their comrades and dragged them off, deeper into the woods to the south of us. Not true soldiers. Probably hired bullies outfitted with used and hastily dyed clothing.

  Ish staggered upward, clutching his injured arm and his ribs. A dirty boot print marred his side beneath his uninjured arm. Leaf litter and twigs stuck out of his tangled hair. A bruise reddened and darkened on his left cheek.

  His grimace turned to sneering outrage and he lashed out with his own foot into the sergeant’s ribs. The man on the ground groaned and rolled, flailing in his stupor to prevent another attack.

  I inserted myself between Ish and his target.

  “Don’t stop me Magdala. Don’t keep me from giving this dog the punishment he deserves.” He tried to sidle around me.

  “No. Ish, think. Do what you do best, think, damn you. He’s down, damaged, and deserted. What more can you do to him?”

  “Kill him.” He turned fever bright eyes on me.