“Bloody crazy Yanks,” Campbell muttered through gritted teeth, his electric fists clamped around Kuro’s blade. “Hey Zack, you want to—” But his shouted request would never finish. The ship’s rear leg suddenly stumbled and broke through a weakness in the ice; the craft tipped abruptly backward, turning the deck into a slide. The combatants staggered, fell, and slid into each other, changing the game like the tipping of a chessboard. Kuro caught Brandon Hill in an awkward embrace. Campbell fell into a risqué position on top of Beverly, but she flung him away.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Amboy’s voice could be heard over the commotion. Battle roars turned to shouts of alarm. The boy’s high voice rang out clearly over the rest. Ice around the boat shattered and flaked. Sheila’s other three legs continued to pump, but only squeaked and slid, alternately finding thin ice and water, their multiple joints struggling to adjust to the slippery, unsure surface.
Kuro momentarily lost his opponents, his balance, and his focus, sliding and slamming hard into the stern railing, only vaguely aware of Brandon Hill climbing free. He shook his head, trying to clear the daze, struggling to track the Ministry agents, distantly expecting to feel the burning dig of a bullet or blade into his flesh at any moment. The ticking of his arm sounded thunderous in his head. There was a new timbre to the shouts that cut through his haze, the foreign words making sense again as clarity returned.
“Don’t hurt him!” Was that Hill’s voice?
“Hold on, hold on!” Campbell’s voice. No doubt.
Kuro looked up to his left. Beverly held Amboy’s son in her arms, her pistol against the boy’s temple as her steamsword lay hissing with heat next to her leg. The boy’s face looked just as frightened as on the evening when Kuro and Hideo had stolen him from his father’s island.
“Beverly,” Kuro said softly.
The Ministry agents stood silently nearby, holding their empty hands out to plead calm. The Ushers and Amboy crew around the deck were stock still in place, not daring to move. Ice sculptures for this moment in time.
It was the laughter—the wild cackle of a madman—that grabbed Kuro’s attention away from the tableau.
Zachary Amboy, holding tight to the wheel during the slide, chortled and guffawed at the grey sky above him, then retrained his gaze upon Beverly holding his son. The vacant anger in his grin set a profound disquiet upon Kuro’s soul.
“You will let him go, you know,” Amboy said, laughing.
“Does he deserve more mercy than my uncle?” Beverly shouted, pulling back the hammer on her dozener pistol. “Mikael Scharnusser sends his regards from hell!”
Percy, held tightly against her, sobbed, calling out for his father.
“He’s only seven,” Kuro pleaded.
“Quiet, Samurai,” she hissed, her anger feral.
He swore silently in Japanese, his affections for her reeling amidst the peril and horror of her threat to the child. Campbell and Hill had both inched almost imperceptibly closer. Zachary Amboy was still chuckling quietly, madly, coming down the slight companionway from the bow.
“Beverly, we’ll die here if you do this,” Kuro said. “There will be no honour in these deaths.”
“We have as many men as they do. Don’t be a coward. My family will be avenged…” and Beverly said more, but he’d stopped listening. He allowed a momentary sigh, squeezing his eyes together wearily, then reopening them.
It was a precision strike that he’d have performed in younger days with unthinking, easy confidence, when his sword hand was still flesh and bone. Yet, even with the clockwork uncertainty of his artificial forearm, Kuro moved quickly, flicking his katana tip in close, inches from the boy’s face, nicking Beverly’s fingers and knocking the pistol from her grasp. It fired once over Percy’s head, eliciting a scream from the boy. Shouts sounded out from all around the deck. Beverly clutched her bloody fingers, her expression plummeting from surprise to pain to anger.
Percy wriggled free, sprang toward the security of Bruce Campbell’s knee. Beverly scooped up the steamsword and lunged, but Kuro stepped in the way, easily parrying her strike with his katana. She roared frustration and rounded on him.
The swords locked in an aggressive kiss, her strength and push driving him back; he locked in a stance, rounded his blade free, stepped back toward her. The two exchanged heated blows, sparks and heat flying from each parry. Each knew the others moves intimately from their monastery courtyard practices, although neither had ever seen such ferocity and strength from the other. Beverly’s sword had always been cool; Kuro’s had always been made of wood.
The boat lurched as it found its footing and clambered up to walk the ice again, its systems running automatically, a crewman on the wheel deck now, driving them toward the shore. The Ushers and Amboy crew had not returned to their own skirmish, still entranced by the duel, but had backed away to give the swordfighters berth. The boat’s rocking was gentler this time; everyone managed to remain upright.
“Anyone else feel like we’re eavesdropping on a lovers’ spat?” Campbell asked no one in particular. One of Amboy’s crewmen tried to push past Campbell, who shoved him roughly back into the crowd. Someone responded with a punch, and the temporary calm was utterly shattered. Shouts of surprise and alarm swelled around the decks like turbulent waters preluding a storm.
Kuro and Beverly continued to circle, strike, and counter, unheeding of their surroundings. Their swords drew them in close again, their faces close, their eyes locked, their feet fixed firmly near the railing, neither saying a word. Beverly’s hair whipped forward, brushing the Samurai’s face through his helmet.
Kuro felt a warrior’s instinct to turn around and face a new danger, but dared not take his focus from Beverly’s smouldering blade. “Here goes nothing,” he heard from behind, the Australian drawl unmistakable.
Something large, hard and muscular slammed into him, thrusting him up against Beverly, taking them hard into the railing, momentum spinning them up and overboard. All three of them—as Kuro realised Campbell was with them—hit the ice hard. Beverly skidded a few meters away. Kuro’s heavy armour shattered the ice, plunging him into the frigid waters below. He did not have long to react to the needles of pain surrounding him as a large hand grabbed the Samurai by his arm, and pulled him up to the surface. He lay on his back next to Campbell for two quick breaths, knowing that anything longer would be fatal.
Beverly’s steamsword arced down from above, missing by less than a second as the men rolled apart, carving a channel into the ice where they’d just been. Kuro was soon on his feet, sliding, leaping at her with an off-balance katana counterattack. Bruce scrambled on all fours until he was a safe distance from the combatants, the treacherous surface refusing the purchase of his numb fingers. The Sheila continued its fast-paced tread across the thawing ice surface, moving away from them where they’d fallen, bearing quickly down on the shore. More and more Usher henchmen were pitched over the rails as it stepped onto the narrow beachhead, reflecting the turn of the deck battle in Amboy’s favour.
Kuro breathed heavily, watching Beverly for some sign of emotion, but her face was void of all but anger. Her eyes saw him, but were as lifeless and mechanical as his ticking arm, as if she’d retreated somewhere deep inside, leaving her body to function as a remorseless war automaton. Her breathing was coming as heavy as his, the vapour mingling with the rising mist from her steamsword. Hideo had been right. He knew the path they had chosen led to dishonour and darkness. Kuro understood now, but refused to die by his own hand. He would die for what was right.
End of pause. They fought across the lake’s slippery surfaces, leaping from broken ice plates to sturdy shelves to half-submerged sheets, each as watchful of the treacherous, brittle footing as they were of their opponent. The sulphuric scent of her sword pommel’s boiler was strong in the air; it hissed with each steel touch of blades. Three grunts of effort from Beverly, three strikes, eliciting three parries and three steps back from Kuro. She chewed her
lower lip, immersed in focus, again reminding him of their morning practices.
It was a crack in the ice that finally betrayed him.
She grunted with three forceful high strikes, driving Kuro back. His foot broke through a weak patch in the ice, plunging his backward step into the frozen watery void. He flung his arms up, off-balance, his left boot submerged. His brass arm flung in front his chest, just in time to shield the piercing thrust of her steamsword. The blade tip drove easily through, skewering gears and cords, protruding far out through the other side of his forearm. Kuro pulled his right foot free, adjusted his footing, and fell forward into his arm with a deep-throated cry, the super-heated swordpoint driving unchallenged through his armoured breastplate. Steel dug through cold steel and leather, then flesh and bone beneath.
Beverly gasped, her cold resolve dropping away to panic, awareness dawning of what had just happened.
Kuro had taken numerous glancing sword blows and cuts in battle before, had even lost his arm and endured the surgical attachment of a brass prosthetic; but nothing had been like this. The scalding pain was unlike anything he’d ever experienced, radiating from a core deep inside his breast. Smoke rising, the pungent scent of scorched flesh assailed his nostrils. His right arm remained stuck before him, unable to move, unable to pry the smouldering steamsword from its lodging inside his ribcage. Beverly’s hands let go of the pommel, went to her face in horror, her mouth open in a silent scream, tears falling freely to the surface of the ice. Before her, the Samurai fell to his knees, the sword still lodged in his arm and his torso. Blood flowed freely beneath the cloth and steel of his armour, running crimson rivulets into the ice.
“What have I done, Kuro?”
She fell to her knees to meet him, touched his skewered brass forearm, gently pulling to unsheathe the hot blade from his chest. The katana remained fixed in his grip, but both swords fell uselessly away as the dead arm slumped to his side. She pulled the helmet from his head and touched his face, already gone as pale as the frozen surface below. She leaned her forehead into his.
“What have I done?”
He dropped the gauntlet from his left hand, weakly touched her hand on his cheek. “I have been felled by the most worthy of opponents,” he wheezed, pulling his head back to look at her, to truly see her one final time, her face haloed against the rising sun. “This…is…an honourable death. Arigato, Miss Beverly.”
He struggled to forge a bloody smile, grateful for the compassion returned to her eyes.
A good memory to take with him to the other side.
Bruce Campbell sat a distance from her weeping embrace, not counting the time. The Sheila was gone from the lake now, although the trail it had trampled through the woodland beyond the shore was clearly visible. When the lady turned to him, he knew she was ready. Bruce gently extracted the Samurai’s body from her arms, hoisting the armour-clad man across his shoulders to carry him to the shore. Beverly followed silently after him, weeping abated, her face now a tear-streaked mask of regret.
He laid Kuro inside one of the few mini-zeppelins still able to fly. Bruce drove Beverly’s steamsword into the ground before offering her the passenger’s seat.
“We’re not leavin’ him out here,” Bruce assured her. “We do need to reach my mate on board Sheila. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” Beverly muttered.
The mini-zeppelin’s engine’s spun up, and the three of them were airborne, following the trail left by the walking boat.
His fingers splayed around the pilot’s stick as ahead of them, clouds of dark some mushroomed in the distance. Bruce glanced over at Beverly who was staring out of her own window, her eyes empty, aloof. He saw in the armrest between them a small wireless and connected its leads, bringing a current to the small device. He tapped in the first word of his recognition code, tapped in the second…
“Klaatu…Barada…bugger me,” Bruce grumbled. “What is that last bloody word?”
Again, he tapped in the first word of his recognition code, tapped in the second…
…and he took his best guess at the final word in the sequence.
Their mini-zeppelin glided over where the Scharnusser Fortress had once been. In its place now was a smouldering ruin of bricks, timber, and ash. Sheila stood triumphantly nearby, as a predator stands over its prey. Even after they landed without incident, Beverly barely seemed moved by the destruction of her home. Early evening chill had settled in, dragging the temperature down to below freezing; but she remained standing vigil outside the mini-zeppelin, staring at the Samurai through the window.
Bruce spotted Brandon Hill in the cockpit of an exo-goliath, in spite of the cold, piloting it through slow, awkward dance steps to the delight of some ship’s crewmen on the ground.
“Good Lord, Campbell,” Brandon scolded, climbing out of the machine, “when will you learn that bloody recognition code properly? Nicto! The last word in the sequence is Nicto!”
“The important thing, Hill, is that you recognised enough of it not to shoot me out of the sky.” He motioned at the destruction around him. “So this is how you keep an eye on barking mad Zachary? Where is the yank, anyway?”
“Captain Amboy and his son are safely aboard Sheila, inside the main cabin. I wouldn’t go in there at the moment, though. He’s in a bit of a state. All of this demolition was seemingly for naught, other than the fall of an Usher house,” Brandon said, producing his favourite smoking pipe. “Roderick Scharnusser managed to escape. Probably a private shadow zeppelin. You think Amboy was a madman before? You should have seen him when he found Roddy’s taunting escape note. But my word, Bruce. You should have seen that Gatling cannon take down the fortress walls. It was incredible “
Hill stuck his pipe into his mouth, looked over Beverly, then shot Bruce a non-verbal question. Her eyes remained downcast, unseeing. Campbell only shook his head in response.
“We’ll bring Scharnusser to justice, mate, of that I’m sure. But it’s probably best that he escaped Zachary Amboy’s clutches here.” Campbell noted the snow starting to fall. Beverly still remained stock still outside their mini-zeppelin. He walked over to her, removed his overcoat, and laid it across Beverly’s shoulders. She looked up at them both, noticing them as if for the first time, and nodded slowly, her eyes glassed with fresh tears. “There’s been enough death today.”
Hill lit his own pipe, tingeing the air around them with the sweet scent of his tobacco. “So,” he said, giving his posh Gourd Calabash a few puffs, “we settle things here, then back to London?”
“Not yet. We got to get the boilers topped off on this bird here.”
“Wait just a—” Brandon spluttered, motioning to the remnants of the monastery around them. “You’re going to make me deal with all this alone?”
“You’ll be fine, mate,” Bruce said, slapping Brandon’s chest with the back of his hand. “Go on—would I ever put a fellow Ministry Agent in danger?”
Brandon huffed, placed his pipe back in his mouth, and after a few agitated puffs, disappeared into the settling mayhem, calling out directions, attempting to direct Amboy’s crew to some semblance of order.
Bruce watched the airship crews tending to his mini-zeppelin before returning to Beverly. “Got an errand to run, don’t we?” he asked.
She nodded, her reply tight and strained. “Satsuma.”
A Nocturne for Alexandrina
Tee Morris
London, England
Buckingham Palace
1839
For the first time since becoming queen, Victoria—unequivocally—was not amused.
Today was just one of those days where being queen really was more trouble than the title warranted, and certainly there was a lot of trouble to being queen of the British Empire. First, you needed to look like a queen. That went without saying. Getting up early enough to dress the part. Then there was the pomp and circumstance on the tiniest of life’s most mundane details. Just making it to the table to enjoy a hearty b
reakfast with her beloved betrothed, Albert, practically demanded an act from Parliament. Then came the maintenance of the Empire itself. Petition upon petition from her overseas representatives, all imploring the crown for more money. Many of these “imperative missives” from ambassadors were about as dodgy and as superfluous as a man trying to sell high quality sand to a Persian desert gypsy. This, however, did not try her patience so much when compared to the explorers wanting to “expand the Empire” with her financial help.
Antarctica? Really? Why in the name of God would anyone wish to claim any part of that frozen wasteland?
She then felt a light trickle against the back of her neck. I’m the Queen of the British Empire, she seethed, and with all this technology in my realm they can’t keep this palace cool in the summer? It’s not even two years old! Bloody hell.
Suddenly conquering Antarctica struck her as a good idea. A summer retreat there sounded quite nice. Perhaps this was the price of being “the first” of anything—a sacrifice of creature comforts.
What gave Victoria a real chill of dismay was that she had only been queen for just over two years. And this miserable, droll routine would be her life for the next few decades. No, becoming queen had not come as a complete shock to her. Victoria’s entire life and training had been leading to this, but certainly this predestination did not make the transition any earlier. Good Lord, just the news reaching her had hardly been an easy process. She could still remember that night involving a rather delightful dream of a Scotsman from good breeding, fine manners, and the kind of calf muscles, just visible from his kilt, that promised thighs and accompanying backsides a woman would take great delight in having within reach. She was enjoying a day’s riding and then a lovely tea—and that was when she knew it was a dream, of course, as a Scotsman, no matter how fine the breeding, would not enjoy a tea, nor describe an Assam as delightful. He was about to become quite forward when she was awakened at the break of dawn by Mamma, informing her that the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were in her sitting room, awaiting an audience.
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