Mission: Improper: London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy

by Bec McMaster

  Just as she lifted the mask to her face, the lordling in front of her tilted his head to the side, as though scenting something, and went deadly still.

  Though the occipital lenses she wore should have hidden her eyes, Ingrid swiftly tied the mask on as he moved off, nudging someone else, who turned to examine her with a cold eye. Both of them had pale silvery-blond hair, as though they were blue bloods well into the Fade. Once upon a time, the Fade had led to a blue blood developing into a vampire, and they'd been executed when their craving virus levels grew too high, but there was some sort of transmutation machine now that helped dilute the craving virus levels in a blue blood's blood.

  No blue blood had to fear the Fade anymore.

  So why hadn't they used it?

  "This way, my dear," Debney said, tucking her hand firmly in his. He stared the pair of lords down, as though daring them to say something to her.

  "You know," she murmured, glancing back over her shoulder curiously, "I'm not quite certain why Byrnes dislikes you so. You are quite a charming fellow when you want to be, Debney."

  The pair of blue bloods had vanished.

  "It's a long story, and I don't take it personally, as Caleb dislikes most people." Those perceptive eyes turned her way. Debney looked like fluff, but was proving to own a shrewd mind behind those insipid blue eyes. "Except, it seems, for some."

  "I don't know what you mean." Fanning herself, Ingrid looked away.

  "He seems quite taken with you, my dear, if one knows him well enough to know what he's looking for."

  A brief spurt of something—hope—flared in her chest, but she swiftly repressed it. That was foolishness of the worst sort. "I'm a challenge to him."

  "Mmm," Debney murmured, but he said nothing more.

  They swept into the ballroom, and she couldn't stop herself from lifting her eyes to the vaulted ceilings, dripping in gold, and the decadent chandeliers. She'd never seen the like. Dozens of servant drones roamed the ballroom with steam hissing from their exhaust vents. More than one young lady's silk dress was ruined in the wake of the steam, and the room was intolerably hot and humid, considering it was October. Ingrid slipped a glass of chilled champagne from the serving platter on top of one of the drones’ heads.

  "Ulbricht used to be a scion of the House of Morioch," Debney murmured, guiding her through the crowd. "Owned two of the London enclaves, and had exclusive shipping contracts with the prince consort. He's practically a new-age Croesus."

  "So he'd have disliked the fact that the revolution stripped his means of revenue so dramatically." Good heavens, there were even girls dressed in watered white silk that barely covered them. Her eyes narrowed as she saw the matching pearl chokers about their throats, complete with a small metal ring at the front. They were very nearly reminiscent of the slave collars that the Echelon used to put on their blood-slaves. "Isn't that illegal now?"

  Debney knew exactly what she was referring to. "Not quite, which basically describes Ulbricht and his ilk. They push every law to the very limit, though they never seem to take that step over the line, leaving the queen with very little recourse. Those girls are most likely paid to surrender to any who desire them for the night. No matter what is asked of them."

  Revulsion burned like acid in her throat. This was what she'd fought so hard to prevent during the revolution. It ached to see that the progress she saw everywhere in London was but a facade to these people.

  "Relax." Debney patted her hand, which she realized was clenched over his. He didn't quite wince.

  "Sorry."

  "Don't be." Behind the mask, his eyes seemed suddenly weary. "It's nothing that I didn't flaunt in my heyday." His gaze seemed to take in every girl, but there was no hunger in it. Only shame. "I never questioned it, as it was the way I was raised, but some of the stories you hear...." His voice lowered, almost to a whisper. "Some of the things that you saw."

  "Or did?"

  "Or did," he admitted softly, and to his credit, did not try to explain away his actions. "You said that you weren't quite sure why Caleb dislikes me." This time he did meet her gaze. "I know. When my father died, I... I found myself lost to freedom for a long time. I never thought of consequences. Not until recently."

  Ingrid frowned. "Freedom?"

  "My father was not a very nice man, and when you consider that I walked among those that surround us and thought them harmless, well... let us just leave it at that. There." Debney tipped his head toward something behind her. "There he is. Ulbricht."

  Applause and cheers tore through the room. Lord Ulbricht appeared at the top of the stairs, impeccable in black, with his pale hair pomaded within an inch of its life. The man wore a thin, well-pruned moustache, and faint lines shadowed his hawklike eyes as he smiled and greeted his guests with a wave.

  Ingrid watched him saunter down the staircase, shaking hands with one young lordling and then offering a smile to another. It was surreal, the way such evil wore a pleasant mask. "I'm going to stop this, Debney."

  For the first time, her mission—and Malloryn's—suddenly made sense to her. She'd fought so hard with the humanists to destroy the prince consort and see his queen in a position of power. The intervening years of peace and subsequent failed trips to Norway might have dulled her ambition, but this moment reignited her quest again.

  Verwulfen, humans, and mechs were free now, but how long would that last? Especially if Ulbricht and his friends had anything to do with it. She was never going to live her life in a cage again.

  "Perhaps you'd best look at me," Debney murmured in a nervous tone, patting her hand. "You're drawing attention."

  And she was. Her stare had become an almost incinerating glare, and from the swift glance that Ulbricht shot her, she knew she'd captured his notice. Ingrid looked away, sipping at her champagne. "Thank you."

  "You're welcome." Debney ushered her through the crowd, and this time Ingrid forced herself to watch everyone.

  Ulbricht reached the bottom of the stairs and a woman stepped forward to meet him. White was always something that debutantes wore to symbolize their purity, if they had never been taken as a thrall before, but the fashion had died out recently. Though gowned in a voluminous gown of pearlescent white, with dozens of pearls embroidering her bodice, this woman looked neither innocent nor pure.

  A pearl choker dripped from her throat and her mask covered the entire top half of her face, with gauze obliterating even the eyeholes. A glorious swan mask, but something... something about her seemed wrong. Perhaps it was the way she surveyed the gathering with the same regard that Ingrid had given to the buffet earlier.

  "What is it?" Byrnes's voice murmured in her ear, which shocked her. She'd forgotten that he was keeping watch, and had no doubt listened to the entire previous conversation.

  She couldn't quite put her finger on it. Exchanging her champagne glass for a fresh one, she put the glass to her lips to disguise the words. "I don't know, but all the hairs on the back of my neck just rose. That woman... on the stairs, in white."

  There was a moment's silence.

  "The swan?"

  "Yes." Ingrid shivered. The feeling quite reminded her of a child's chalk scratching over slate and the resulting sound.

  "She seems harmless."

  "She looks like a predator," Ingrid countered. "Look at the way she's watching all of the blood-slaves in here. It's almost hungry, as though they're naught but cattle to her."

  Silence. "Hmm. You might be right. She's certainly not his plaything. Not with the way she just grabbed his hand."

  Though they might have been an entire ballroom apart, Ingrid felt as though Byrnes stood at her side, watching as the swan caught Ulbricht's arm and reined him to her side, murmuring swiftly in his ear. Ulbricht looked startled, then followed the swan's gaze to something at Ingrid's left.

  When Ingrid turned, all she saw was Debney, clasping hands in welcome with someone in an embroidered green waistcoat.

  Ulbricht's smile sharpened as it l
ocked on Debney, and then the pair of them separated, slinking in different directions through the crowd, as though circling Debney.

  "Did you just feel a cold shiver down your spine?" Ingrid looked away, masking her words with the glass.

  "I couldn't see what just happened." Byrnes's voice had softened. "Someone intercepted me, wanting more blud-wein. But I'll keep an eye on her."

  "Don't. Keep an eye on Debney instead. I have a feeling that Ulbricht's up to something."

  "What do you mean?"

  "It's the way he just looked at him."

  "What are you saying?"

  "What if he's outlived his usefulness?" she murmured.

  "Are you certain you're not imagining things?" Byrnes murmured. "Everyone looks normal to me. And he's safe here, in the ballroom."

  Ingrid looked around. Nobody was focusing on Debney anymore, nor her. People laughed. Ulbricht held court in front of the automaton quartet, and the swan... was nowhere to be seen. She rubbed her arms. "Perhaps I'm on edge. I'm not used to this."

  "Take your glass, ma'am?" someone murmured, and as she set her empty glass on the tray, she realized it was Byrnes.

  His eyes twinkled behind the plain black velvet domino mask he wore. "Calm down," he murmured. "I'm watching over you and Debney. And I have a highly developed recurring pistol in my pocket, packed with firebolt bullets that could tear a blue blood in half."

  "Thank you," she replied, cocking her head and then turning away. It wouldn't do to have someone notice that she knew him. "Who did you knock out to steal that costume?" she whispered, fluttering her fan in front of her face.

  Byrnes moved away from her. "Tall fellow. Punches like a brute, but he went down eventually. Not a footman, no matter what he was wearing. Undercover guard, perhaps. Ex-soldier, back from the wars in France. Unusual type of servant at a place like this."

  "You think something smells fishy."

  "Something is definitely going on. I can't wait to do some breaking and entering."

  "When?"

  "Give me a half hour, then meet me in the hallway that leads to the powder room."

  "And Debney?"

  "Safe here, in public. Nobody would dare touch him, if your little theory proves right."

  A strange little flutter went through her. He'd promised to keep an eye on her, but it was surprising how much it meant to know he was here.

  She'd never needed anyone to watch her back, but she'd never felt more out of her depth. Debney had been correct. Being verwulfen in this place marked her as lesser, and though she could handle herself, she was still outnumbered. Somehow, they knew what she was.

  "There you are," Debney said, making his way through a veritable crush of silk and feathers. "Lord Ulbricht is interested in an introduction."

  "Lead on then, darling." She accepted his arm, playing her part.

  Up close, Ulbricht was even more imposing than he'd first seemed. He eyed her with a flinty up-and-down, taking a considerable pause at her mask, as though trying to see her irises through the eyeholes. Or was that just her imagination?

  "Ulbricht, may I introduce you to Mrs. Inga Miller?" Debney purred, sweeping her forward as though she were a precious gem to display. "Mrs. Miller is a very good friend of mine."

  Ingrid graced Ulbricht with her most pleasant smile, flashing her teeth. He reminded her of Lord Balfour a little, the man who had bought her as a child and locked her in a cage. Perhaps it was the thin, supercilious smile he returned, or the sneer in his dark eyes, as though she were nothing to him. "A pleasure, my lord." The words were breathy and unctuous, and Ingrid extended her hand for him to greet, forcing him to accept it.

  Ulbricht eyed her glove, distaste rampant on his face, but he took it. That enormous hand lifted hers to his lips, his sleeve sliding down, revealing a dark tattoo on the inside of his wrist. "The pleasure is mine, Mrs. Miller."

  "What an interesting tattoo, my lord." As he moved to withdraw his hand, she kept hold of it. "What is it meant to represent?"

  Ulbricht's lips thinned, but Ingrid could see better now. The shape was that of a rising sun. "Something that interested me, Mrs. Miller." This time, he was more insistent upon withdrawing his hand. "If you will? I have guests to entertain."

  * * *

  SINCE ULBRICHT'S EARLIER CUT, most of the Echelon lords seemed to be taking their cues from him and ignoring the pair of them. Girls came and went from the ballroom, vanishing into private parlors with blue blood vultures. Ingrid watched the clock, waiting for time to tick around to her appointed meeting with Byrnes, but she couldn't stop herself from making sure each girl returned.

  "The first time I received an invitation to one of these events, I was thrilled," Debney murmured, staring across the room at Ulbricht in a way that she couldn't quite define. "A chance to restore life as I knew it—one where finances weren't quite strained and a man couldn't find himself in trouble for something he'd always done. The balance would be restored. Smashing, I said. And I came, and I watched as they partied, and it was horrible in a way that it had never been before."

  "What did they do?"

  "There were girls there. 'Do as you wish,' Ulbricht said, as they circled among us. They'd been promised good money for the event, you see. But... telling a blue blood lord to do as he wished meant that her life lay in his hands. Those who remembered what it was once like... they were insatiable. Men who I knew before the revolution who had never raised a hand against their thralls in the past, or some who even disdained the taking of blood-slaves as a necessary evil, were suddenly men that I didn't know. For three years there have been limits to bloodletting, and punishments for those who stepped over the line, and it were as if Ulbricht took our leashes off for the one night and something emerged that wasn’t pleasant."

  "The Echelon were always like that. It wasn't as if you didn't know."

  "I had changed. For the first time I realized what Caleb saw when he looked at me." Debney’s gaze dipped beneath gold-fringed lashes. "A disgrace."

  "And what happened to the girl they'd given you?"

  "I got her out, of course."

  Something didn't quite add up. "Earlier, you said that you'd come to three of these events, and yet they disgust you."

  Embarrassment flashed over Debney's face. "I-I.... He made me come again."

  "Who? Ulbricht?" It was the first time that Debney had proffered any hint of excuse for his behavior, and it rankled. Or perhaps that was the presence of a pair of young blue bloods forcing one of the 'blood-slaves' into a private curtained alcove of the ballroom, despite the flash of fear that crossed her face. "Did he force you into a carriage by chance? Abduct you at gunpoint?" Ingrid swished away through the crowd before her emotions got the better of her. She was struggling to stand there and watch that poor girl be molested.

  And how is this any better than what Debney did? Walking away, because it offends you.... After all, she had no plans to get that girl to safety, even if her instincts seethed within her to do so. Malloryn had even predicted such a conflict when he offered her this job, knowing her nature as he did.

  “Ingrid, can you do this?” Malloryn had asked. “Can you pretend to turn the other cheek for the sake of the greater good? Can you look the other way? For that is the type of work I'm offering you.”

  She was verwulfen, and always prey to her heated emotions. In her ignorance—or arrogance, perhaps—she'd shrugged, and claimed that it was what she had always done in her role with the humanists.

  This was not the same. Then she'd been in the shadows, spying for Rosa and using her strength to run brief skirmishes, but she'd never played an acting role. She'd always been herself, unabashed in her defiance of the very lords and culture she walked among now. It was one thing to lead humanists against the Echelon, quite another to slip through its ranks and pretend to be something she was not.

  "Ingrid, wait!" Debney snagged her elbow, and because she had promised Malloryn she went with him, even though she was feeling a rather violen
t itch to push Debney over the rail.

  "I can do this," she told him flatly.

  "I know." He looked both young and old at the moment, and disappointed with himself. "You never gave me a chance to explain. It wasn't... like that."

  Tamping down the sudden fury within her, Ingrid slipped inside one of the very alcoves that the young lords were currently using to their advantage. She could smell blood nearby as one of them fed. Soft mewls of discomfort—or something else—mingled with the sound of polite conversation and edged laughter. "Then explain."

  "Ulbricht is aware of... some private things about me. He wanted me to invite some of my friends to his gatherings, to enlist them in the SOG, and so he became quite insistent on my attending. I know everybody, you see. That was the one thing I was always very good at. Knowing people, and yet, not really knowing them at all."

  With a cough, he continued. "Nobody else is aware... not even Caleb, but I was somewhat indiscreet a few years ago with one of Ulbricht's cousins, and when the relationship broke off, he told Ulbricht everything."

  He. Ingrid stared at him, her mind absolutely blank.

  "I have certain proclivities," he hurried to explain, seeing her expression, "that are not widely accepted. It's the kind of thing some of these men here would kill me for, if Ulbricht didn't see a use for me."

  "You have relationships with men." How had she not noticed? She was well acquainted with Jack, after all.

  "It's actually quite amusing." Debney seemed relieved that she hadn't immediately cut him, though he was watching her face intently. "Watching Caleb fret over my attentions to you, as though I pose some kind of threat."

  "He does?" He did?

  "Well, yes." Debney laughed, a little shrilly. "I've never seen him behave so with a woman. He avoids emotional entanglements—he always has—so it's quite amusing to see him so tangled up over you."

  There was a faint hint of static in her ear, a muttered curse. Ingrid opened her mouth, then shut it. Debney would probably faint if she told him that Byrnes could hear everything she could through the communicator.