Tenfold More Wicked

by Viola Carr

  Swiftly, he checked the charge on his pistol, fumbling only a little. Sweating and pale, but collected. Never at a loss. “One’s almost forced to admire Harlequin. She dies, a victim of sorcery; the Royal are shown to be powerless to protect her; and it’s the perfect occasion for a riot.”

  She stuffed her stinger into her bag. “He’ll get the bloodbath he wanted. And the Philosopher won’t be able to stop him . . .”

  It’ll be quite something, whispered sly Sir Isaac in her ear. London’s never seen the like.

  “. . . even if he wanted to,” she finished, thinking of that addle-brained Prince of Wales, locked away out of sight in electric-fenced Buckingham Palace. “If the Queen dies, who becomes Regent?”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “With the Queen defying the Philosopher to pursue her own diplomacy? I’m deadly serious. It’s the perfect opportunity for him to secure his power. We really have to go.” She fumbled for her cape.

  Remy helped her arrange it. “One could do worse.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  He grabbed his hat. “He is the cleverest man in England, my love, and a hereditary ruler makes about as much sense as a hereditary doctor. Ought we to have a simpleton in charge, just because his mother was Queen? Who died and put these so-called royals in power, anyway? Five hundred thousand Englishmen in the civil war? Oh, wait. I see a problem.”

  She flashed a smile. “Careful, Captain. Your radical side is showing.”

  “Is it? Damn. And here I thought the badge was covering it up.”

  Hippocrates clattered after them to the front door. “Destination,” he trumpeted. “Information please.”

  “Moriarty Quick’s shop, of course,” she said. “He’s up to his neck in it. The magic paint’s his invention, and his upstairs windows have a perfect view of the skyship. Timing will be critical. Harlequin must strike at precisely the right moment.” She shared a warm glance with Remy. “Do you think Quick could be Harlequin?”

  “Perhaps there is no Harlequin. Just a mythical name they use to spread fear. Shall we ask him?”

  “Let’s do that.” She was already halfway out. “Hipp, stay behind.”

  A disconsolate whine, and a rattle of brassy feet.

  “Don’t whine.” Firmly, she pushed him back inside. “Telegraph Captain Lafayette—the other one—and ask him to meet us at Quick’s. And tell him to make Marcellus stay put. I don’t want him punching Quick’s lights out before we can question him.”

  LET OUR NAME BE VENGEANCE

  AT TEN MINUTES TO TEN, SPECTATORS CRUSHED into Piccadilly, a throng of black hats and parasols. People thronged the street, hung from casements, clambered on rooftops to secure a better view. Soldiers and Enforcers lurked, weapons bristling. Food-sellers cried their wares, children tumbled hoops, jugglers juggled and sword-swallowers swallowed.

  “Like an execution party,” she muttered. Then she thought of Mr. Todd in Newgate, and wished she hadn’t.

  Across the street, the silvery skyship bobbed and strained against its ropes. Heat haze shimmered above the twin engine exhausts. Metallic sails glinted in the smell of aether and hot metal, and engineers and crew scrambled like insects in the rigging. Scaffolding had been erected in the park to hold the royal party, and a frilled sunshade protected the dais where Her Majesty would sit. Ribbons and rosettes fluttered, blue and red, a change from the usual mourning black of state occasions.

  Would the Queen really appear? After five years in seclusion, a virtual prisoner? Eliza found herself doubting it. Perhaps it was all a hoax.

  She checked her watch. Nine minutes to go. Everything was in place. The perfect killing jar.

  Remy waved above the crowd. “François, ici!”

  The elder Lafayette pushed through. In dress uniform, long blue coat with a captain’s golden brocade, white breeches, tricorne hat. “I hope you realize I’m giving up a perfectly good invitation to the Lord High Admiral’s breakfast. ‘Frankie, you old seadog,’ said he, ‘you simply must come for the launch of my new flagship. We’ll have a blast! Flog a few seamen, recite the Articles of War, choke down some gin and sauerkraut. It’ll be just like old times . . .’ Good God, Remy, what happened to your face? You’re a living bruise.”

  Remy shoved him. “So sorry. Did we interrupt your social schedule to stop a royal assassination?”

  “All most inconvenient, my lad.” François tilted blue-tinted glasses. He wore an old-fashioned powder pistol at one hip, black cane in his hand. “Still, I’d expect nothing less from you cavalry poseurs. Good morning, Doctor. Still haven’t kicked him to the gutter?”

  “No accounting for taste.”

  Another figure wormed through the crush, beaming. “Let’s get on, say what? Time’s wasting, eh?”

  Eliza’s heart sank. “Marcellus, what are you doing here?”

  Finch tipped his top hat. She’d rarely seen him properly dressed, instead of wearing an apron and dirty shirtsleeves. His dapper black coat reminded her of Henry Jekyll’s funeral. “Assassination, dark alchemy, gratuitous gore! Wouldn’t miss it for the world. I say, sir,” he added, narrowing vague eyes at Remy, “not planning to arrest me, are you? Those chemicals in my shop aren’t mine. Never seen ’em before in my life. Planted, eh? Blasted spies—”

  “Relax, Marcellus,” murmured Remy. “Shan’t persecute you today.”

  “Glad to hear it. Not that you’d have anything on me. God-rotted Royal investigators, you’re all dimwits. Idiots, I say!”

  François covered a cough. “Doctor, tell me my brother isn’t inventing this nonsense about magic paint just to impress you.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “I told you,” said Finch crossly, “it’s all perfectly possible. You morose military chaps. Lost your sense of wonder, eh?”

  Eliza pointed to Quick’s shop. Parliament had declared the day a holiday, in honor of the Queen’s appearance, and the place was closed, drapes drawn. “This is it.”

  François peered into the bay window. “‘Beautiful for Ever,’” he read. “For twenty guineas, no less. How droll.”

  “Most of the shops are renting out their top floors for the view,” observed Eliza. “Perhaps Quick hasn’t yet arrived.”

  “Or he’s skulking in the dark,” muttered Finch, a vengeful glint in his eyes. “We’ll winkle the stinky weasel from his burrow and strangle him with tooth floss. After we’ve arrested him, of course. Justice, all that.”

  “I agree with Finch.” Remy glanced left and right, hand on sword. “Police everywhere, Enforcers bookending the street. Guarding the skyship against long-range gunfire, not searching for assassins, but he wouldn’t risk being stopped. If Harlequin’s coming, he’s already here.”

  “You’ve a lot of faith in him,” remarked François.

  “He’s played us for fools so far.”

  “I daresay.” François lapsed into coughing again.

  A glow of blue concern. “Brother, are you sure . . . ?”

  François cocked his pistol. “Belay your mothering, lad,” he ordered hoarsely. “We’ve hunted L’Arlequin for months. Think I’ll miss having the fellow at our mercy?” He gestured grandly to the door. “Stand aside, monsieur le capitaine.”

  “After all these years you’re pulling rank?”

  “With Her Majesty in grave peril, and the chief French spy in England within our grasp? Absolutely.”

  Remy flipped an ironic salute and drew both weapons, swish-click! “Aye, sir.”

  Crash! François kicked the door in. Wood splintered, the lock cracking open. Eliza followed François inside. Then Marcellus, with Remy last of all.

  Four minutes to go.

  Dim, cool, the polished counter gleaming softly. Eliza ignited her electric light, bzzt! Shadows leapt. Somewhere, water gurgled. Drapes whispered. The flowery perfume of soap and bath salt drifted on an undertone of sour corruption.

  “Pagh,” muttered Finch, holding his nose. “Charlatan. I’ve always sai
d so. Aconite, lead, tincture of mercury salts. Paste that brew on your skin and you’ll be sorry.”

  Efficiently, Remy and François searched the room, leading with weapons and tugging curtains aside. “Clear,” whispered Remy. “Shall we get on?”

  The stairs lay in back, beyond a bathtub of cold chalky water. Enamel paste and white putty filled a row of jars, beside a tray of sponges and needles. Enameling your skin like a porcelain shell, no doubt engendering all sorts of boils and pimples underneath. Eliza wrinkled her nose. The things women did to stay “beautiful.”

  Crick! Crack! Up the stairs, the air growing mustier. It smelled dead, empty, inhabited by dusty ghosts. Wind whistled in distant roof tiles, whoo! whoo!

  On the landing, a door hung ajar. Remy’s pistol glimmered purple in the gloom. Eliza gripped her stinger. François sidled up to the door, and they burst in.

  A study-cum-laboratory, with wooden benches holding steel surgical instruments, gas burners, flasks of powders and solutions in rainbow colors. Three windows yawned open, drapes fluttering in warm breeze. Below, the crowd ebbed and swayed, awaiting the Queen, and the skyship glittered in dazzling sun. A perfect view.

  Two minutes.

  Shelves lined the walls, books and stacks of paper and . . .

  Eliza’s stomach crawled. Jars of preserving fluid. Specimens. But what abnormal creatures were these? Misshapen, abortive limbs, limpid skin, horns and hooves and mangled faces . . . and they were alive. Fleshy coils tightened, bloodshot eyes blinked . . . and they made noises. Plaintive cries, agonized groans, yelps of wretched terror.

  Quick’s souls. Which jar had she been trapped in, when Lizzie drank that potion?

  Sick, she tore her gaze away. The Mad Queen’s stolen portrait was pegged to a wooden easel. Freshly painted, new varnish gleaming. The figure wore a fine black gown and diamonds, her expression startled. Just a solitary woman, gaunt and approaching middle age, graying hair pulled back.

  Over the far casement leaned Moriarty Quick. Breeze danced in his boyish blond curls. In one hand, a pocket watch. In the other, a long steel dagger. Perfect for slashing canvas.

  “Grand,” he exclaimed, “you’re here. Just in time!”

  Somewhere, a clock chimed the hour.

  Eliza rushed to the closest window. Below, the crowd flung their hats high, erupting into cheers . . . and a figure in white edged onto the dais. She leaned weakly on the Philosopher’s arm, her veil fluttering. His ageless face was twisted into a smile.

  The Queen was alive.

  Flanking her, like silent sentinels, four hulking Enforcers. Impassive fleshy faces, brass joints, staring red eyes. For her protection, or her imprisonment?

  The hurrahs fell to a murmur. The Queen’s tremulous voice rang out, but her speech was snatched away on giddy breeze.

  Remy and François advanced, two pistols and a sword leveled at Quick. “Step away from the artwork,” ordered Remy, “or get what’s coming.”

  Quick laughed, pocketing his watch. “Marcellus Finch, as I live and breathe. Come to see if your hellbrew really works?”

  Finch spluttered. “Mine? Curse your oily hide.”

  François gestured with his pistol. “You heard him. Away.”

  Quick just raised his hands, standing firmly between the brothers Lafayette and the painting. No one could get a clean shot at him. Bullet or electric bolt, the Queen would be just as dead.

  Outside, the skyship’s engines whirred, and superheated aether ignited. Crack-boom! The crowd gasped as the skyship juddered and groaned, straining at its ropes for freedom.

  But Eliza licked dry lips. “Marcellus, what does he mean?”

  Finch advanced, gripping a glittering shiv. “How dare you call that abortion mine?” he snarled. “You poisoned my formula, Dorry. It was supposed to recombine transcendental identities, not sever them completely!”

  “You haven’t changed, Marcellus,” Quick sneered, and in that one sentence, his Dubliner’s lilt was gone. Upper-class London tones, slick and mocking. “Still a sniveling coward. Call yourself a scientist? You’re a disgrace.”

  “That awful business twenty years ago with that fellow who painted you was all your fault. I warned you.”

  “Nonsense,” retorted Quick. “I told the lovesick idiot what would happen, but he couldn’t bear for me, his beautiful boy, to grow old and grotesque. He got what he asked for. It’s hardly my fault it ended in tears. And you did such a sterling job disposing of his body, old thing. Not a hair left behind.”

  Remy circled, eagle-eyed. “Finch, back off. Resolve your feud later. We need him alive.”

  But Finch ignored him and closed in. “You were meant to fix the new formula, not try it on Sibby. I hadn’t finished it. How could you?”

  A grin split Quick’s face. Not the pleasant smile from her consulting room. A vile, ruthless leer. Eliza shuddered, recalling Lizzie’s premonition of wrongness. Not a circus act. Soulless. Evil.

  Quick threatened with his dagger at the Queen’s portrait. “Sibby was nineteen. Her whole life ahead of her. Die pretty, or live as a monster? She begged me.” He mocked a girl’s high-pitched voice. “‘Don’t let me die, sir, I’ll do anything.’ And you know what? She did.”

  With a mindless yell, Finch shoved François aside and launched at Quick.

  They grappled. Quick slashed at Finch’s throat with his dagger. Finch stabbed his shiv at Quick’s face. They tumbled backwards towards the painting, blades flashing . . .

  Eliza ran forwards. The easel teetered. “Marcellus, stop it!”

  Outside, the crowd’s cheers erupted as the sailors cast off the ropes, and on a shimmer of boiling gas, the skyship groaned upwards.

  The picture toppled, exposing the painted Queen. Finch and Quick stumbled against it, fighting furiously as they fell. At last, Quick yanked one arm free, and the gleaming dagger knifed down . . .

  Thwock! François’s cane cracked into Quick’s ribs, arresting his fall. The dagger glanced harmlessly from the easel’s wood, missing both Finch and the painting. Remy slammed his boot down on Quick’s wrist. Crunch! Quick screeched like a mad monkey, and let the dagger go.

  In a blur, François dropped his cane, yanked Quick up by the shirtfront, and jammed that pistol into his jugular. “Enough out of you.”

  “Good job, old man.” Remy dragged struggling Finch away in an armlock.

  Finch’s face purpled. “Let me at him! Tear his nose off, say what?”

  Quick chuckled, best he could with a gun shoved under his chin. “Piss on you, Marcellus,” he said, dropping back into his false Irish lilt. “Never could take a joke.”

  François’s glasses had fallen in the scuffle, and his eyes blazed. “‘Beautiful for Ever,’ is it?” he hissed at Quick. “Is that your secret? A portrait squirreled away, keeping you young?”

  “Not anymore. You’ve seen how it works. It makes you too vulnerable. I’ve other methods now—”

  “Good,” said François coolly, and fired. Boom! Blood and bone splattered his gold-trimmed coat. And high on the bookshelf, at the very top, a writhing white creature in a jar screeched in mindless agony.

  Remy didn’t hesitate. Crrack! Blue lightning stabbed, and the jar exploded in a hail of fluid and pale flesh.

  Eliza’s stomach rebelled, but it was too late to look away. Half of Quick’s face was obliterated, a mess of meat and splintered bone. François made a moue of distaste, and dropped him, tossing his empty pistol aside.

  Quick slumped. Dead.

  Grudgingly, Finch subsided. “I say,” he muttered, “you could have let me.”

  Remy powered down his pistol, swiping back damp hair with his forearm. “Not ideal, François. We could’ve questioned him.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter now.” Eliza reached for the portrait, to roll it for safekeeping . . . but a bright sting under her chin halted her in her tracks.

  François leveled his sword unwaveringly at Eliza’s throat. His eyes glittered, consumptive fever take
n hold. “I can’t let you do that.”

  At his side, his left wrist twitched. A miniature lady’s pistol clicked from his sleeve, and in a blue-coated blur, he fired.

  The bullet drilled a tiny hole. Right between Her Majesty’s painted eyes.

  Eliza yelled. Remy made a strangled gulp, and his pistol dropped from nerveless fingers, clattering to the floor.

  Outside, in a wumph! of exploding aether, the skyship burst into flame.

  THE KING OF TERRORS

  BOOM! RADIANT HEAT BLEW ELIZA’S HAIR BACK. Burning aether stung, the rich, stormy scent of thunder. The skyship was burning, and the Empire’s new model navy along with it. And on the royal dais, blood trickling from a hole in her forehead, the Queen lay dead.

  Along his shining blade, François shot her a crooked smile. A sword stick, like Lizzie’s. She should have recognized it. His aim was unwavering, fanatical.

  Warily, she raised her hands. With a flick of wrist, he edged her backwards, towards the window. Her ringing ears subsided, and in filtered the chaos of a riot. Yells, commotion, crack! and zzaapp!, as Enforcers and soldiers fired their guns, hoarse shouts of “Incorruptible!” Dignitaries scrambled on the dais, ladies shrieked, and in the common crowd, people trampled each other in their haste to escape.

  “You sabotaged the skyship,” whispered Eliza. “Right under our noses. While we watched.”

  François winked. “Knew you were too clever for my baby brother. Back against the sill, that’s it. No, Remy, stay back. I should hate to have to kill you. Drop the saber, too,” he added. “Don’t try anything. You either, Mr. Finch. Not if you’d rather keep your witty doctor’s blood in her body.”

  Speechless, Remy let his blade fall, and François kicked it and the pistol away.

  Remy’s face had drained, a sick green. His voice, too, because barely a sound emerged. “Why, François? Why would you . . . ?”

  “Because we can’t fight sorcery,” snapped François. “I met some people in Paris, soon saw the error of my ways. Besides”—he twitched his blade under Eliza’s chin and watched her flinch—“what’s science done for me lately? I’m done playing the hero. Best to join the winning side.”