by Kat Ross
“Such as?”
“Clarence stayed quietly at the asylum for nearly a month. Something set him off.” He stared unseeing at the garden. Just a few feet away, beyond the warmth of the greenhouse, everything lay dead and dormant, waiting for spring. “On our way out, one of the inmates whispered the same phrase to me, Viv. They’re here.”
“Barrett said he had no visitors. Could it be something inside the asylum?”
“I don’t think so. He went straight out the window, even though the cell door was open. Heading for London.”
“Well, that narrows it down.” She picked up a figurine of a squat woman with pendulous breasts. Vivienne still believed in the old goddesses. She kept a small shrine to them in the conservatory. Mami Natu, who had made humanity from the flesh of her left buttock. Vengeful Kavi of the nine flails. Innunu, her crocodile-skinned patron, the goddess of justice. Alec thought it quite possible that Vivienne was the last person on earth who remembered their names.
“Thank you, Quimby,” she said, as the butler returned with a silver tray bearing a pot of coffee and yesterday’s mail.
“You have a letter from Lord Cumberland,” he replied, pouring them cups—black for Vivienne, cream and two sugars for Alec. “Does her ladyship care for anything else?”
She gave him a warm smile. “That’s all for now.”
The butler nodded and withdrew.
“How’s Nathaniel?” Alec asked, as Vivienne scanned the letter.
“Sounds happy. He wants to know if we’re coming up for Christmas.”
“Two weeks from now? Unlikely.”
Vivienne began to uncoil her braid. Freed from its prison, her hair puffed up like a black thundercloud. “Nathaniel says he won’t speak to me if I miss our anniversary again.” She sounded amused.
Nathaniel Cumberland, the dashing young Marquess of Abergavenny, had proposed to Vivienne on Christmas Eve two years before in a burst of enthusiasm fueled by mulled wine and the dire state of his bank account. They had been close friends for several years, though not romantically involved (Nathaniel discreetly but emphatically preferred the company of men). Like much of the old aristocracy, he was rich in land and poor in actual money.
Vivienne, on the other hand, happened to be very rich and the match appealed to her. Titles opened doors that would otherwise be closed, especially for a woman of African descent. So they were married, with Alec’s blessing, and Vivienne became Lady Cumberland. She and Alec took possession of the St. James townhouse while Nathaniel promptly returned to his family seat of Eridge Castle, a gothic pile in Sussex.
Everyone assumed that Alec Lawrence was Vivienne’s lover, although she claimed he was her personal secretary. It was all more than a bit scandalous. But once the dust had settled, and Nathaniel put it about that Vivienne was descended from the last of the Malian emperors, invitations began to roll in. Hence the ball gown. She’d been at a soiree hosted by the Earl of Lindsay earlier that evening. Alec had stayed home. He wasn’t much for parties.
“I’ll tell him we have a complicated case,” she said. “It’s the truth.”
“You’re taking this awfully well,” Alec said.
Her slightly tilted eyes narrowed a fraction. “What does that mean?”
“It means I thought you’d hold a grudge for being overridden on Clarence.”
“It’s not my style.”
Alec laughed. “Right.”
Vivienne stood up, annoyed. “I’m going upstairs. This corset wasn’t mean to be worn for nine hours straight.”
Alec put his leg up on the chair she’d just vacated.
“Think I’ll stay down here for a bit. Can I read Nathaniel’s letter?”
“Go ahead. He asked after you.”
Alec smiled, pleased with himself. She knew he liked Nathaniel, although not in precisely the same way Nathaniel liked Alec. It was an old joke between them.
Vivienne retired to her large bedroom on the second floor. Her maid, Claudine, helped her strip off the evening gown and undergarments. She knew she should go to bed but couldn’t stop thinking of Henry Pyle.
We did that. Brought a monster into their midst with no warning. He never stood a chance.
“Shall I draw a bath?”
“Not just yet. I’ll take the black tunic and trousers.”
Claudine smiled, one side of her mouth lower than the other from the scar there. “Going a round with Mr. Lawrence?” she asked in a lilting West Indian accent.
“If I can lure him into it.”
“Ah, he’s always game, isn’t he?”
“Because he’s a show-off.”
This wasn’t fair and Vivienne instantly regretted saying it. Despite the fact that Alec was stronger and faster by several magnitudes, he never used it against her. Quite the opposite. But he’d always been able to read her. In fact, she was angry at him for not taking her side about Clarence when it might still have mattered.
“I’ll wait,” Claudine said, suppressing a yawn. “In case you want the bath after.”
Vivienne squeezed her hand. “Go take a rest. I know you were up all night waiting for us. I can see to myself.”
Claudine protested but not too strenuously.
“Everything all right, milady? You tore out of here in a terrible rush earlier.”
Claudine knew some of what Vivienne and Alec did for the S.P.R. Vivienne had rescued her from a dockside brothel six years before and there was an unquestioned loyalty between the two women. A shared understanding of what it meant to have brown skin in a white country. The English were perfectly civilized except when it came to women, poor people and foreigners, and God forbid one happened to be all three.
“Not all right, but nothing we can do about it now,” she said. “Just leave the lavender salts by the tub, would you?”
Claudine did and said goodnight. When Vivienne finished dressing, she lit a lantern and went downstairs to the pantry. She pushed aside burlap sacks of flour and sugar and pressed a hidden panel in the wall. It swung open soundlessly, revealing a winding stone staircase. She padded down, the stone cold against her bare feet.
The space below had last served as a wine cellar. Before that, Nathaniel had told her with some glee, it was a secret chapel where Catholics held Mass during Elizabeth’s bloody purge. The current mansion had been built atop a much older structure that dated at least to the 16th century. Upon taking possession, Vivienne shipped the wine off to Eridge Castle and converted the space to a more useful purpose. Now, she held up the lantern and surveyed the rough walls.
Light glinted on a dizzying array of weapons, neatly arranged in metal brackets. There were swords for stabbing and clubs for bludgeoning, wicked half-moon axes and wooden poles of every length, some with daggers attached to the end. There were weapons you fired, and weapons you threw.
Vivienne’s first sword had been a scimitar, but she’d lost it in the sea a long time ago. After, when she and Alec were bonded, she’d done a great deal of traveling. These were her souvenirs, and she’d learned to use every one of them.
The Japanese samurai had their iron fans, the Madurese dueled with sickles, and 14th-century German knights favored the spiked mace called a morningstar. Vivienne picked up a set of bagh naka, which resembled knuckle dusters but with five curved blades like tiger claws affixed to a crossbar. The Rajput clan of India would poison the tips and use them for assassinations. Each culture devised their own unique style for killing, she reflected, though the end result was the same.
Her gaze paused for a moment on a macuahuitl, a wooden sword whose sides were embedded with jagged blades of obsidian. Too nasty, she decided. She wasn’t that angry. No, they were both tired. Better to stick with a weapon they knew well.
She went to the far end of the cellar and lifted a Japanese katana sword from its bracket. A slightly curved blade with a single cutting edge, the katana was made of steel that had been folded and beaten four hundred and forty times by a master swordsmith. This one had taken five
weeks to forge and polish. She’d commissioned a custom-made pair from Nagasone Kotetsu, a famous swordmaker, when she and Alec had passed through Edo. The steel derived from iron sand, and ghouls despised it.
Vivienne admired the lacquered wooden sheathe but didn’t draw the blade yet. There was an entire art devoted to that too—and to flicking your opponent’s blood from the edge.
Alec would know she was down here by now. He’d sense it through the bond. An invitation.
Will he come?
Vivienne stretched like a cat. A moment later she heard Alec’s light tread descending the hidden staircase. She moved to the clear space in the center of the chamber.
“I thought you were going to bed,” he said, lingering on the stairs.
“I changed my mind.”
He studied her a moment, inscrutable. Then he took his jacket off and hung it from the tip of a harissa pike. He set his cane against the wall.
“What do I get if I win?” she asked.
“You never win.” This was said with a grin to take the sting out, although it was true.
“But if?”
“How about a groveling apology for Clarence?”
“That suits.”
Alec unbuttoned his waistcoat and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He was slender, a middle-weight at best, but Vivienne knew it was no indication of his true strength.
“I’ll need to hold the power,” he said. “It helps my leg.”
“As long as you just hold it.”
He limped over and selected a second sword from its bracket. He drew it in one fluid motion and returned the scabbard to the wall mount.
“I don’t cheat,” he said.
Vivienne drew her own sword, gripping it with two hands but leaving a fist’s breadth between them. Lamplight shimmered on the edge of the blade, which she kept polished to a mirror-like sheen with choji oil.
“First cut wins,” she said.
They began to circle each other. Alec’s sword wasn’t even up. He looked deceptively relaxed, sleepy almost. Waiting for her to make the first move.
Vivienne flicked her wrist and the blades met in a blindingly fast exchange. It sounded almost musical, the gentle plinking of rain on a tin roof—nothing like the clashing of broadswords designed for crude hacking. The katana was a slender blade, fearsomely sharp and light.
Rather like Alec Lawrence.
He wielded his sword one-handed as a handicap, but it still took everything Vivienne had to keep him at bay. They broke apart, circled, then met again. Sweat rolled down the back of her tunic.
Just once, O Cunning and Frightful Innunu, Mother of Battles. Let me beat him just this one time.
The swords swept together again, edges kissing and parrying with little flicks. Alec’s power swirled at the edge of her consciousness, but he kept his word and didn’t touch it. His only weakness was his leg. A small, evil part of her was tempted to exploit it, but that would be unforgiveable. So she mustered every scrap of skill she’d acquired, every trick she’d learned from the old masters.
Had Vivienne faced a mortal opponent, blood would have been spilled at first contact. With Alec, she was always half a beat behind. Even so, she suspected he was holding back on her. Irritated, she leveled her blade for a slashing sweep—and Alec spun neatly inside her guard and punched her in the side with his hilt hand. They both heard the crack as a rib snapped. She dropped to one knee, muttering oaths in the liquid tongue of her homeland.
“Are you all right?” He crouched next to her.
Vivienne drew a painful breath. “Been worse.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you so hard. I must be tired.”
Alec placed his hand on the curve of her hip. Searing heat rushed through the damaged tissue and bone. Vivienne rolled to her back, trying not to gasp. No matter how many times he healed her, she never got used to it.
“Drink plenty of water.” He staggered to his feet and found the cane propped against the wall.
“You always say that.” She felt suddenly angry and didn’t know why. Or perhaps she did and didn’t want to admit it. When bonded touched each other, the sensation could be…intense. Vivienne was careful to avoid it, except in emergencies. He hadn’t even asked her if she wanted to be healed.
“Because it’s true.”
She stared at him stubbornly. “That was a cheap shot.”
Alec turned away, sheathing the swords and returning them to their brackets. “I didn’t feel like bleeding you, Vivienne.”
“Call it a draw then.”
“Fair enough.” He studied her, the faint lines beneath his eyes betraying his exhaustion. “Are you coming up?”
“In a minute.”
Vivienne watched him limp up the stairs. He moved like an old man again. She touched the cuff around her wrist and felt her anger dissipate, followed by the familiar savage bite of guilt.
He lives this way for you. How much longer can you let it go on?
She lay there, unmoving, until Claudine came down and coaxed her into the bath.
4
Alec changed into a clean set of clothes and made himself a pot of Darjeeling. He couldn’t shake the feeling that things were changing. Rearranging themselves in ominous new formations.
The problem of ghouls coming through from the Dominion had improved markedly since he and Vivienne managed to close the last of the twelve Greater Gates. The ones they faced now were summoned by necromancers—humans as old as Alec himself who knew the Art. They were a scourge too, but the terrible, endless flood of undead had abated. Until now.
Perhaps Clarence was an anomaly. A ghoul that happened to be more intelligent than the others.
And impervious to iron. And able to work fire.
It didn’t bear thinking about.
Alec rarely slept, and he felt too restless to read a book. He piled the tea things on a tray and made his way upstairs. He spent much of his time at various London clubs and societies related to the advancement of science, but his laboratory was where he studied the elements, manipulating them in the service of devices driven by earth, air and water.
A cavernous space, it occupied the entire fourth floor of the townhouse. Large windows looked out on the neighboring mansions of Park Place. He preferred to work in daylight, without the distraction of gas lamps.
A gleaming pair of metal wings attached to a leather harness leaned against one wall. Others held shelves of beakers and retorts, coils of copper wire and bits of inscrutable machinery. But it was not simply a workspace. The décor reflected Alec’s love of nature. Bright, sensuous paintings by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues hung above the tall windows. A Thistle and a Caterpillar. A Linnet on a Spray of Barberry.
Alec felt most at peace when he gave himself over to the ebb and flow of elemental power. He knew this was his nature as a daēva, as much a part of him as the flesh and bone of his mortal body. Hours passed like minutes when he was in the Nexus, and days like hours. On such occasions, Vivienne would come with a plate of food and gently remind him to eat something.
Now he stood at one of his work tables, breath coming in deep, even inhalations just short of gasps. A light breeze ruffled his hair. Rotors spun, pneumatic chambers filled, then emptied. He had ideas about an air-driven motor for a submersible and was studying a set of schematics when a scrap of wet black fur sprung up to the table. Alec poured some milk from the tea tray into a saucer and set it down. The cat gave him a yellow stare, pushed it around with one paw for a minute, then curled her tail over her paws and began lapping at the milk.
He’d never named the cat since she wouldn’t answer to it anyway. But they were friends. She came in and out as she pleased, most often on rainy days, when the slick, sooty rooftops were not to her liking. Now, she sat on the windowsill and watched him work through slitted eyes.
Cats fancied elemental power, he’d discovered. They weren’t afraid of it as dogs were. Alec thought cats might even have a spark of the power in them but couldn’t be tr
oubled to use it. Too lazy.
He knew Vivienne was still awake. It was a side effect of the matched cuffs. Things bled through. Emotions, even physical sensations like pain or hunger. Vivienne felt frustrated because she wanted to act, to do something, and there was nothing to do but wait.
Thirty-six years they’d been in England. He thought of her as Vivienne now, although they’d both gone by other names. In Paris, Hélène and Michel. In Damascus, Amira and Qasim. In St. Petersburg, Tatiana and Aleksander, though everyone called him Sasha. Back and back it went. He was fairly sure even Cyrus didn’t know Vivienne’s true name. She’d only told Alec once. He had laughed, and she’d gotten angry. Alec had a talent for making her angry.
Zenobia Zumurrud bin Qindah.
She’d changed it to Tijah after she ran away from home. Zenobia was simply too ridiculous. Alec had agreed that Tijah—which meant sword in her native tongue—suited her much better.
He forgot other details but he remembered the names.
Now they were Vivienne Cumberland and Alec Lawrence—as English as one could get. It always paid to blend in.
Alec worked through the day, making little progress on his engine. His thoughts kept returning to Dr. Clarence. The finger marks burned into the iron bars. Not a ghoul. Something else. What?
Dark came early and Quimby came in to light the lamps at four-thirty.
“Is Lady Cumberland still asleep?” Alec asked.
“She is, sir. Shall I have Claudine wake her?”
“No. Let her rest.”
Alec sat by the window for a while, watching a large flock of starlings wheeling in the air above Green Park. He was tempted to try out his new wings, but perhaps the starched neighborhood of St. James was not the ideal location for such an experiment. He would have to take a trip to the countryside. The Ruabon moors in Wales, perhaps. Wild and desolate and covered with purple heather. The thought cheered him.
Alec’s reverie was broken by a knock on the front door, four floors below but still audible to him. He was halfway down when he met Quimby on the stairs.