Tenfold More Wicked

by Viola Carr

  Her breath raked her throat. Her lungs stung. Smoke inhalation. She’d prescribe a tonic. But it didn’t matter. Everything was perfect . . . yet so perfectly wrong.

  “I say,” she managed, muffled, “rescued again. It’s an unfortunate habit.”

  “No trouble, I assure you.” His voice was strangely soft and deep.

  “Happened to be passing, did you? Or do you schedule random heroics into your day in a bizarre effort to impress me?”

  “Mr. Finch turned up at François’s telling a most peculiar tale about Sheridan Lightwood. I figured you’d be here.”

  She craned her neck to glare. “That’s it? You decided to dash into a burning building on the off chance I was inside? Honestly. Haven’t we had this conversation?”

  He shrugged, sheepish. “Seemed a compelling idea at the time.”

  “I rest my case. I’m glad we’re agreed you’re a romantic fool, Remy Lafayette.”

  “I’m all kinds of fool where you’re concerned, Eliza Jekyll.” He hadn’t let go. Hadn’t relinquished his embrace. Why would he, with her body flush against his?

  Her fingers curled in his coat. Other ideas seemed quite compelling right now, too. Things she didn’t deserve. Let him hold her. Give in and kiss him. Weep.

  At her feet, Hipp chortled and danced, teasing. “Eh-eh-eh!”

  Flushing, she stepped back and smoothed her claret skirts, which were now charred as well as torn. How she must look. Lizzie would have been proud, once. Lizzie, who’d wanted to die in that burning building.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re safe.” Remy jammed his hat on over tousled hair and glanced at the marching line of Enforcers. “I don’t like the look of that. The streets won’t be safe tonight.”

  Eliza wiped her spectacles on her skirt and replaced them. “Well, I don’t think we can do anything to help here. Might I walk you home? I know you fear for your life, alone in the dark.”

  “Would you? I’d feel so much safer.” His eyes twinkled—haunted, not so bright, but merry just the same—and he offered her his arm.

  Eliza tucked her hand into his elbow, and they headed down the steps towards the fountain. Men ran and dragged hoses, their faces blackened.

  The awful thwock-schllp! of Harlequin’s knife in her guts still echoed, unforgettable. “Last night, the man who stabbed me . . . Lizzie, I mean. He killed Nemo to stop him talking. That was the real Harlequin?”

  “We believe he must be.” He handed her over a gutter, where the Enforcers marched.

  “Nemo claimed to be only an underling. That the war had only just begun. What did he mean?”

  “Who knows? The Incorruptibles have gone to ground, so we won’t hear anything about it until it happens. Nemo had the ill manners to die, so we can’t question him. The Foreign Secretary is furious. François is beside himself. Months of work lost. A mess, in fact.” Remy glanced down at her. “So how was your evening?”

  She explained about Sheridan and Penny, their horrid portrait. “A mess, as you say,” she concluded.

  “And to think I got you into this because some sneaking fey thief stole some pictures.”

  Eliza halted, stunned. “What did you say?”

  “The frame-maker’s shop. Remember? Harry the Hooligan, or whatever his name was.”

  “Haunter,” corrected Hipp importantly. “Invisible. Does not compute.”

  She barely heard. Her thoughts buzzed, a swarm of bees. Magic paint. Stolen art. A sneaking fey thief.

  Lizzie’s memories stirred with her own, green and gold like absinthe and cognac. Wild Johnny’s new girl, drifting in the shadows, trailing a glitter-green wake. Even sharp-eyed Lizzie had trouble following her. Now you see her, now you don’t . . .

  Images wobbled, a speeding cinematograph. That night at the Cockatrice, a purse of gold pressed into Johnny’s hand. Lizzie in the matchlight, the bloodied knife in Nemo’s fist. I really wish you hadn’t seen that.

  Harry the Haunter was Becky Pearce. She’d had business with Nemo that night, and anticipated a big payday. But instead, he’d stabbed her and left her to die.

  Not over nothing. Over a theft Nemo wanted kept secret. An item from the frame-maker’s shop, worth killing for.

  And Nemo was merely an underling. The servant to a dark master.

  “Oh, my,” she said faintly.

  Remy winced. “Don’t say that. It’s never good when you say that.”

  “Nemo killed Harry the Haunter,” she burst out. “Lizzie’s friend from Seven Dials. To silence her about stealing the Mad Queen’s portrait. Don’t you see? Penny said Dalziel wanted to exhibit their picture. He sent it to the frame-maker’s shop! Where Becky Pearce stole it. By accident. Along with the one she was being paid for.”

  “So Harlequin has the Queen’s portrait? Irritating, but hardly calamitous.”

  “Didn’t you say the Empire’s fate rested on solving that case?” She sucked in a breath. “What if it’s imbued with dark alchemy? Destroy the painting, and you kill the subject. Not simply a portrait . . .”

  “But a weapon.” Remy halted, gripping her arm. “Good God. But how?”

  “Penny had access to the magic paint. And she adopted a man’s name for her commissions. People looked at her work every day, she said, but she’d never be famous. Wyn Patten, the court painter! A pseudonym. An anagram! Rearrange those letters, and you get—”

  In the dark, an arc-pistol charged, an ugly purple flash.

  Eliza gasped. Behind Remy loomed the white face of an Enforcer. “Look out!”

  Ever alert, Remy dodged the Enforcer’s swinging brass fist. Zzap! Electricity exploded.

  But not from the Enforcer’s pistol. Current stabbed Remy in the back, knocking him flat. Eliza yelled, and dived for him . . . only to be shoved aside by a slender gray-booted foot.

  Lady Lovelace hobbled from the shadows, a pistol smoking in her iron-jointed hand. Firelight glistened on her metal cheekbone, and she stretched cold lips in a creaking smile. “Take Captain Lafayette to the Tower,” she ordered, that single red eye glittering. “He has questions to answer. About a certain unorthodox condition he seems to have been hiding from me.”

  Horror squeezed Eliza’s lungs. She struggled to get up, to fight, but something hard and cold thumped the back of her head, an evil echo. Her muscles watered, and as light slipped away, the last thing she saw in the shadows was the gloating, vengeful smile of Moriarty Quick.

  Minutes later—or was it hours?—Eliza groaned, and tried to rise. Trafalgar Square was a blur, the gallery still aflame in the night, firefighters running madly like ants. Fumbling, she retrieved her fallen spectacles, straightening their bent frames. Hippocrates poked her ribs with a frantic brass leg. “Awake! Emergency! Make greater speed!”

  “Enough, Hipp. Stop it.” She stumbled to her feet. Quick had betrayed them to the Royal. Remy was taken. Her bag was gone. And Harlequin was planning to assassinate the Queen with a stolen magic painting.

  Just perfect.

  What now?

  Her heart bled at the thought of Remy at Lady Lovelace’s mercy. Those electrified cells, bristling with torture implements and truth drugs. He’d feared this more than anything. Not for his own sake. For hers, Eliza’s.

  Lady Lovelace hadn’t arrested Eliza. Hadn’t known of her “crimes.” Remy had never told. This proved it once and for all. And she couldn’t just abandon him.

  But the Royal were all-powerful. The police couldn’t help her. No one could. She was on her own.

  She grabbed Hipp and hurried for home. “Lizzie, wake up,” she snapped. “I need you. We must get him out of there!”

  Silence. Just an empty, windswept hollow in her heart.

  But as she ran through smoky streets, the ghost of Lizzie’s imagined laughter mocked her, echoing from the dark. You and whose army? Lizzie would say. What will you do, knock on the door and ask nicely?

  An audacious plan, certainly. Break a man out of the most secure fortress in England. Alone. While in
human Lady Lovelace and her half-flesh Enforcers had their evil way with him.

  Not a moment to lose, then.

  I MET MURDER ON THE WAY

  AN HOUR LATER, ELIZA RAPPED ON THE STUDDED door of the Royal’s precinct. “Open up!”

  A single purple arc-light crackled and buzzed, showering her in the thundery scent of aether. Above, the Tower’s vast walls climbed inexorably into the night, and behind her, moonlight streaked the rushing river with silver.

  Wild giggles threatened to betray her—Lizzie’s delight in danger? or just Eliza’s own recklessness?—and she throttled them. Knocking on the door, indeed. As good a plan as any.

  The heavy door creaked open, and a seven-foot-tall Enforcer leaned out. It stared down at her, impassive, one brass hand twitching over its pistol holster.

  Eliza brandished an iron Royal Society badge. “Miss Burton, to see Lady Lovelace.”

  Luckily for her, Miss Burton hadn’t yet found other lodgings. Eliza had shaken her awake, demanded she hand the badge over. Those blue skirts had proved an impossible fit, so she’d thrown the girl’s long black coat on over Lizzie’s dress, the hood pulled up. She was betting an Enforcer wouldn’t notice the difference. To a clockwork, all humans looked alike.

  Miss Burton had offered to accompany her, but Eliza refused. She trusted no one with this task but herself.

  The Enforcer peered at the badge. Cocked its head. Pulled the door open.

  She strode in, a show of confidence. A chilly low-ceilinged room, poorly lit. Machines needed no heat, no comforts. It smelled of mildew and musty stone. Like a dungeon.

  Imperiously, she turned. “Where’s the countess? It’s rather urgent.”

  Solemnly, the Enforcer pointed to a down-spiraling metal stair.

  She descended, shivering in icy damp. The rust-stained iron walls seemed splashed with blood. Plink! Plonk! Water dripped, indefatigable. A queue of rats skittered past her boots into the dark. Somewhere below, voltage sizzled, and a woman screamed.

  Eliza’s courage scuttled into a corner. This was foolhardy. Irrational. She’d never make it out alive.

  At the bottom, a rusted corridor stretched into the dark, lit by flickering arc-lights. A harsh coppery scent assaulted her, some vile disinfectant. Cell doors with tiny observation portals punctuated one wall. At the end, a barred hatch covered a drain or oubliette. She imagined what might languish down there, and shuddered.

  She passed one empty cell. In the second, a wailing creature banged its head against the wall. The next held a figure slumped on the corroded floor, alive by its tortured breathing . . . but not Remy. Sympathy stung her, but grimly, she walked on.

  From the next cell came the sound of pacing footfalls. Click-scrape! Click-scrape! The hitching step of an imperfect machine. She couldn’t hear Remy’s voice. Nothing, bar the buzz and pop! of electrics and that sinister, uneven step.

  Eliza pulled her hood lower and tapped on the door. “My lady. Miss Burton, with a message from Sir Isaac.”

  Click-scrape . . . At the portal, eyes glinted. One red, one black. Eliza held her breath . . .

  Zzap! An electric switch crackled, and the door clunked open.

  Cold light shimmered, a single arc-light trapped in a rusted cage on the ceiling. Eliza edged inside, pulse skipping. Chemical testing equipment waited on a trestle table, a brass calculating machine with columns of cogs, a gleaming microscope and its pile of slides. Test tubes in a rack held bright blood. On the wall, a bank of evil-looking instruments sat ready. Knives, pincers, electric probes.

  Lady Lovelace paced, her crooked hip twitching. And strapped to a bench lay Remy Lafayette.

  Sweating, pale, his shirt stripped off. Bruised and bloodied, half conscious, his breath shallow . . . but alive. From a tall steel array hung a bottle of white fluid that dripped down a tube, to where a steel needle was jabbed into his forearm.

  “Fascinating!” crowed Lady Lovelace. Empty of emotion. A woman with no heart. “Such powerful metamorphosis. I must assess the potential for weaponization. How is the change effected?”

  Remy muttered something incoherent, ending with a muddled giggle.

  Whatever that drug, it wasn’t friendly. Eliza hadn’t much time. She sidled closer, clutching a tiny metal object behind her back.

  Lady Lovelace turned, click-snap! Her steel cheekbone glistened, riveted skin damp with fanatical sweat. “What? Out with it. I’m ready to begin.”

  Eliza charged.

  The half-metal woman screeched, hand flashing for her pistol. But too late. They collided, and Eliza slammed the squirming metal surveillance node into Lady Lovelace’s dead black eye.

  The node had been thwarted. It was hungry. And snap! It reared like a striking spider, and stabbed a dozen wicked wire filaments eagerly into Lady Lovelace’s brain.

  She screamed, clawing for her eyes. Desperately, Eliza scrabbled for the fallen pistol and aimed it two-handed at that cruel face. Hiss-flick! The pistol charged.

  But her hands shook, and her trigger finger cramped, just a twitch from murder.

  Never mind that this woman tortured and burned innocent people. She, Eliza, wasn’t an executioner. This wasn’t justice. She couldn’t just shoot.

  But Lady Lovelace knew about Remy’s curse. He’d never be free of her. Never be safe . . .

  Crrack! Blue lightning erupted, blinding. And it was done.

  Lady Lovelace’s body hit the floor, metal parts clanging. Stray current crackled over her metal cheekbone, her staring eye just a black hollow.

  “That’s for Mr. Faraday, too,” whispered Eliza. Then she dropped the pistol and ran to Remy.

  Conscious, just barely. His skin felt cold and clammy on her palms. Pupils dilated, just a narrow rim of blue. Probably in chemical shock. “Remy, wake up.”

  “’Liza Jekyll. Just th’lady I wanted to see.” He coughed, slurring his words. “Don’t feel so well.”

  She fumbled the leather buckles open. Pulled that horrid needle from his arm, with a bubble of white slime. Soon some Enforcer would compute that gunshot as unauthorized. “We need to go. Now.” She struggled to help him stand.

  “Right. Cert’nly. I can do that.” His legs buckled, and he stumbled against her shoulder. Damp, fevered, fragrant. “Good God, you’re beautiful.”

  “This is no time for foolish flirtations.” She steadied him, wiping blood and dirt from his eyes. Bruises swelled his cheek, ringing one eye. He’d fought hard.

  “Innit? Seems perfect t’ me.” He grinned at her, dopey but lucid. “You’re ’mazing, ’Liza. Y’don’t think enough of y’self. You’re so much the woman I love that my bloody eyes hurt.”

  Her heart sank. But it smiled, too. “Oh, lord. Is that a truth drug?”

  He nodded solemnly. “Want some? ’Cause this conversation’s ’bout to get really int’resting.”

  “No, thank you.” She thrust his shirt and coat at him and grabbed his sword from where it lay in the corner. “Now get dressed, before I drag you up the stairs half naked and get you shot, just to shut you up.”

  A few hours later, Eliza paced in the window of Remy’s Waterloo Bridge house, invisible ants of impatience nipping her skin. Outside, morning threatened, eerily calm and silent. No gunfire crackled, no thunder of electric cannon, no screams or smell of exploding aether. Nemo’s uprising, running battle in the streets . . . none of it had happened. Not yet. But the bright air thrummed with tension, ready to explode.

  She’d managed to get Remy upstairs and almost out of the Tower before the Enforcers raised the alarm. Her singed hair still stank, a shot having missed her by inches. But they’d soon lost the clumsy machines in the festering warren of dockside lanes, and what Remy had lacked in strength, he’d made up for with a bloody-minded determination to escape.

  On the way home, they’d seen barricades, erected with furniture, splintered doors, beams, slabs of broken brickwork. Anything the Incorruptibles could find. The stage was set. Either the city would rise, and the rebels
would triumph, or the rebels would face the dawn alone . . . and the Enforcers would march on the barricades and slaughter them all.

  For the umpteenth time, she peered out between the drapes. Unscrupulous fellows were cashing in on the anticipated chaos. Smashing windows, looting, amidst the clatter of galloping hooves and shouts of “Incorruptible!” and “God save the Queen!”

  A pair of dirty hooligans hurtled by on a tandem velocipede, hooting and pedaling like madmen. A trio of brass-and-flesh Enforcers sprinted in pursuit, their heavy footsteps shaking the ground. Thud! Thud! Pistols cracked, lightning sizzled, a scene from the electric Wild West. The rear-facing hooligan braced an enormous elephant gun on his shoulder. Booom! The velocipede swerved, nearly flinging both riders into the road, and an Enforcer exploded, flesh and jagged brass raining.

  Remy shot her a fondly exasperated glance as he buckled on his weapons. She’d cleaned him up, washed the blood from his bruises. Dosed him with a nerve stimulant, too, and the effect of Lady Lovelace’s horrid drug had started to ebb. He was still subdued, but strong and almost steady. “Will you sit down a second? You’re exhausting me.”

  Her ragged dress still stank of charcoal and smoke. Her blood scrambled, frustrated, rummaging for something that wasn’t there. She needed Lizzie. But Lizzie wasn’t talking. “Are you finished primping? Perhaps it’s escaped your memory, but Harlequin’s about to assassinate the Mad Queen and start a war. We can’t just sit here! We must go!”

  “But to where? And when? Half the country thinks the Queen’s already dead,” said Remy reasonably.

  “I don’t know.” She rubbed her eyes, bewildered. “Let me think. There must be some clue.”

  “Well, if I were a French agent striking Her Majesty down with sorcery, I’d want to do it somewhere conspicuous . . .”

  “In full public view,” she whispered. For maximum effect. “Oh, my. The skyship launch. This very morning!”

  “Genius,” proclaimed Remy. “Well, you did say you wanted to see that skyship fly.”

  “Not precisely what I had in mind.”