It was, Lachley decided, just possible that Morgan was telling him the truth. Paying his tutor to translate his Latin and Greek at University was very Eddy-like. So was paying the man to translate his love letters, God help them all. He caught Morgan’s chin in one hand, tightened down enough to bruise his delicate skin. “And how much did Eddy pay his tutor to keep the secret that he was writing love letters in Welsh to a male whore?”
“He didn’t! Tell him, I mean. That I’m a boy. He told Mr. Stephen that ‘Morgan’ was a pretty girl he’d met, from Cardiff, said he wanted to impress her with letters in her own native Welsh, so Mr. Stephen wouldn’t guess Eddy was writing to me. He’s not so very bright, Eddy, but he doesn’t want to go to prison! So he convinced Mr. Stephen I was a girl and the gullible idiot helped Eddy write them, I swear it, Eddy said he stood over his shoulder and told him all the right Welsh words to use, even for the dirty parts, only when Eddy wrote out the second copies to me in private, he changed all the words you’d use for a girl’s body to the right ones for a boy, because he looked that up, himself, so he’d know—“
“Second copies?”
Morgan flinched violently. “Please, Johnny, please don’t hit me again! Eddy thought it would be funny, so he sent me the first copies attached to the ones he wrote out especially for me . . .”
His voice faded away as Lachley’s white-faced fury sank in, mistaking Lachley’s rage honestly enough. My God, the royal bastard is stupider than I thought! If it would do any good, I’d cut off Eddy’s bollocks and feed them to him! Any magistrate in England would take one look at a set of letters like that and throw away the bloody key!
He no longer doubted Morgan’s sordid little tale about Welsh translations. Eddy was just that much of a fool, thinking himself clever with such a trick, just to impress a money grubbing, blackmailing little whore not fit to sell his wares for a crust of bread, much less royal largesse.
Morgan was gasping out, “It’s true, Johnny, I’ll prove it, I’ll get the letters back and show you . . .”
“Oh, yes, Morgan. We will, indeed get those letters back. Tell me, just where might I find this Polly Nichols?”
“She’s been staying at that lodging house at 56 Flower and Dean Street, the White House they call it, rooming with a man, some nights, other nights sharing with Long Liz Stride or Catharine Eddowes, whoever’s got the doss money for the night and needs a roommate to share the cost . . .”
“What did you tell Polly Nichols when you gave her the letters?”
“That they were love letters,” he whispered. “I didn’t tell her who they were from and I lied, said they were on his personal stationery, when they’re on ordinary foolscap, so all she’ll know is they’ve been signed by someone named Eddy. Someone rich, but just Eddy, no last name, even.”
“Very good, Morgan. Very, very good.”
Hope flared in the little fool’s wet eyes.
He patted Morgan’s cheek almost gently.
Then Lachley brought out the knife.
Chapter Five
The reporters were waiting outside his office building, of course.
Senator Caddrick stepped out of his chauffeured limo and faced the explosion of camera flashes and television lights with an expression of grief and shock and carefully reddened eyes.
“Senator! Would you comment on this terrorist attack—“
“—tell us how feels to lose your sister-in-law to terrorists—“
“—any word on your daughter—“
Caddrick held up his hands, pled with the reporters. “Please, I don’t know anything more than you do. Cassie’s dead . . .” He paused, allowing the catch in his voice to circle the globe live via satellite. “My little girl is still missing, her college roommate has been brutally murdered, that’s all I know, really . . .” He was pushing his way through the mob, his aide at his side.
“Is it true the terrorists were members of the Ansar Majlis, the down-time organization that’s declared jihad against the Lady of Heaven Temples?”
“Will this attack cause you to re-open your campaign to shut down the time terminals?”
“Senator, are you aware that Senator Simon Mukhtar al Harb, a known Ansar Majlis sympathizer, is spearheading an investigation into the Temples—“
“Senator, what do you plan to do about this attack—“
He turned halfway up the steps leading to his office and faced the cameras, allowing his reddened eyes to water. “I intend to find my daughter,” he said raggedly. “And I intend to find the bastards responsible for her disappearance, and for murdering poor Cassie . . . If it turns out these down-timer terrorists were responsible for Cassie’s murder, if they’ve kidnapped my only child, then I will do whatever it takes to get every time terminal on this planet shut down! I’ve warned Congress for years, the down-timers flooding into the stations are a grave threat to the stability of our up-time world. And now this . . . I’m sorry, that’s all I can say, I’m too upset to say anything else.”
He fled up the steps and into his office.
And deep in his heart, smiled.
Phase Two, successfully launched . . .
* * *
Ianira Cassondra regained consciousness while Jenna and Noah were still packing. The faint sound from the hotel bed where she rested brought Jenna around, hands filled with the Victorian notion of ladies’ underwear, which she’d purchased specifically for Ianira with Aunt Cassie’s money. Jenna would be going through to London in disguise as a young man, something that left her shaking with stage fright worse than any she’d ever experienced. Seeing Ianira stir, Jenna dumped corsets and woolen drawers into an open steamer trunk and hurried over to join Marcus. Noah glanced up from the telephone, where the detective was busy scheduling an appointment with the station’s cosmetologist. Armstrong wanted Jenna to go in for some quick facial alterations before the gate opened, to add Victorian-style whiskers to Jenna’s too-famous, feminine face. Noah frowned, more reflectively than in irritation, then finished making the appointment and joined them.
Ianira stirred against the pillow. Dark lashes fluttered. Jenna discovered she was clenching her hands around her new costume’s trousers belt. The leather felt slippery under the sweat. She realized with a sinking sensation in her gut that it was one thing to carry the prophetess on earth unconscious through the station’s basement. It was quite another to gaze eye-to-eye with the embodiment of all that Jenna had come to believe about life and how it ought to be lived. Then Ianira’s eyelids fluttered open and Ianira, Cassondra of Ephesus, lay gazing up at her. For a breathless moment, no intelligence flickered in those dark eyes. Then an indrawn breath and a lightning flicker of terror lashed at Jenna. Ianira flinched back, as though Jenna had struck her. Marcus, who knew Ianira better than anyone, surely, pressed the tips of his fingers across her lips.
“Hush, beloved. We are in danger. Cry out and you warn them.”
Ianira’s gaze ripped away from Jenna’s, met her husband’s. “Marcus . . .” It was the sound of a drowning soul clinging to a storm-battered, rocky shore. His arms went around her. The former Roman slave lifted her trembling figure, held her close. Jenna had to turn aside. The sight of such intimacy tore through her, a bitter reminder of the emptiness of her own life before Carl, an emptiness which had brought her, shaking and sick in her heart, into the Temple in the first place. The Temple, where she’d found real friendship for the first time in her life, friendship and Carl . . . The loss tore through her, still too new and raw to endure. Across the hotel room, Marcus was speaking, voice low, the words in some language other than English or the Latin he’d used earlier. Greek, probably, since Ianira had come to the station from Athens.
Someone touched Jenna’s arm. She glanced up and found Noah watching her. “Yeah?” she asked, voice roughened, uncertain.
“She’s asked for you.”
Jenna’s pulse banged unpleasantly in the back of her throat as she crouched down at the edge of the hotel bed. Ianira’s dar
k, unearthly gaze shook her so deeply she couldn’t even dredge up a greeting. When the prophetess lifted a hand, Jenna very nearly flinched back. Then Ianira touched Jenna’s brow, slowly. “Why do you Seek,” she murmured, “when you already know the answers in your heart?”
The room closed in around Jenna, dizzy and strange, as though voices whispered to her from out of a shimmering haze, voices whose whispered words she could not quite hear. From the depths of the blackness which filled her mind, a blackness which had swallowed nearly all of her childhood—which was far better forgotten than relived in aching emptiness again and again—a single image blazed in Jenna’s mind. A woman’s smiling face . . . arms held out to her . . . closing around her with a sense of safety and shelter she had not felt since her mother’s death, so many years ago, now, it was blurred in her memory. What this sudden memory meant, Jenna wasn’t sure, but it left her gasping and sick on her knees, so violently shaken she couldn’t even wipe her burning eyes.
Someone crouched beside her, braced Jenna all along one side, wiped her face with a warm, damp cloth. When the stinging, salty blindness had passed, she found Noah gazing worriedly at her. “You okay, kid?”
“Yeah.” The fact that it was true shocked her. She was okay. Then it hit her why: she wasn’t quite alone any longer. She knew almost nothing about Noah Armstrong, not even the most basic thing one person can know about another—their gender—but she wasn’t alone, facing this nightmare. Noah might not be going with her when Jenna stepped through the Britannia Gate a couple of hours from now, but Noah cared. Somehow, it was enough. She managed to meet the enigmatic detective’s eyes. “Thanks.”
“Sure.” Noah gave her a hand up, steadied her.
Jenna turned slowly to face the woman whose presence, whose touch and single question had triggered . . . whatever it had been. “Did—“ Jenna had to clear her throat roughly. “Did Marcus tell you what’s happened?”
She studied Jenna gravely. “He has told me all that he knows.”
Jenna drew breath, trying to find the words to make sense of this. “My father . . .” She stopped, started again, coming at this mess from a different direction, trying to find the words to explain to a woman who had never seen the up-time world and would never be permitted to visit it. “You see, lots of people don’t like the Temples. The Lady of Heaven Temples. They’ve got different reasons, but the prejudice is growing. Some people think Templars are immoral. Dangerous to society. Perverting children, that kind of garbage.
“There’s this one group, though . . . down-timers, mostly, coming up-time from the remains of TT-66. They formed a cult to destroy us. The Ansar Majlis hate us, say it’s blasphemous to worship a goddess. Rather than their idea of a god.” It came out bitter, shaky. The expression in Ianira’s eyes left Jenna gulping, terrified to her bones. She got the rest out in a rush, trying to hold onto her nerve. “As long as the Ansar Majlis were kept bottled up in the Middle East, where they started coming through the down-time gates, they were pretty much harmless. But a lot of people would like to see the Temples destroyed, or at least hurt badly enough they’re not a political threat, anymore. Some of the lunatics who live up time have been helping that murdering pack of terrorists . . .”
“Your father,” she said quietly. “He is among them.”
Jenna didn’t have to answer; Ianira knew. Jenna bit one lip, ashamed of the blood in her own veins and furious that she couldn’t do anything besides smash Ianira’s world to pieces. “He gave the orders, yes. To a death squad. They murdered my mother’s sister. And my . . . my best friend from college . . .” Jenna’s voice went ragged.
Ianira reached across, touched Jenna’s hand. “They have taken him from you,” she whispered, the sympathy in her voice almost too much to bear, “but you have his final gift to you. Surely this must bring some consolation, some hope for the future?”
Jenna blinked, almost too afraid of this woman to meet those dark, too-wise eyes. “What . . . what do you mean?”
Ianira brushed fingergips across Jenna’s abdomen, across the queasiness which had plagued her for nearly a full week, now. “You carry his child,” Ianira said softly.
When the room greyed out and Jenna clutched at the edge of the bed in stupid shock, the prophetess spoke again, very gently. “Didn’t you know?”
Someone had Jenna by the shoulders, kept her her from falling straight to the floor. Dear God . . . it’s not fear sickness, it’s morning sickness . . . and I am late, oh, God, I’m going to Victorian London with Daddy’s killers trying to find me and I’m carrying Carl’s baby. . . . How long would they have to hide in London? Weeks? Months? Years? I can’t go disguised as a man, if I’m pregnant! But she had no real choice and she knew it. Her father’s hired killers would be searching for a frightened girl in the company of a detective, not a lone young man travelling with several large steamer trunks. When she looked up, she found Ianira’s dark gaze fastened on her and, more surprisingly, Noah Armstrong’s grey-eyed gaze, filled with worry and compassion.
“You’re . . . sure . . . ?” Jenna choked out.
Ianira brushed hair back from Jenna’s brow. “I am not infallible, child. But about this, yes, I am certain.”
Jenna wanted to break down and cry, wanted to curl up someplace and hide for the next several decades, wanted to be held and rocked and reassured that everything would be all right. But she couldn’t. She met Ianira’s gaze again. “They’ll kill us all, if they can.” She wrapped protective arms around her middle, around the miracle of Carl’s baby, growing somewhere inside her. A fierce determination to protect that tiny life kindled deep within. “I’d be in a morgue someplace, already, undergoing an autopsy, if Noah hadn’t dragged me out of that trap where Aunt Cassie died. I’m not going to let them win. Not if I have to spend the next forty years on the run, until we can find a way to stop them.”
“And they have come here,” Ianira whispered, fingers tightening around Jenna’s arm, “to destroy the world we have built for ourselves.”
Jenna wanted to look away from those too-knowing eyes, wanted to crawl away and hide, rather than confirm it. But she couldn’t lie to the prophetess, even to spare her pain. “Yes. I’m sorry . . .” She had to stop for a moment, regain her composure. “We can get you off station, make a run for it down time. I don’t give a damn about the laws forbidding down-timers to emigrate through a gate.”
Ianira’s gaze went to her children. Mute grief touched those dark eyes. “They cannot come with me?”
Noah answered, voice firm. “No. We don’t dare risk it. They’ll find a way to follow us through every gate that opens this week. If we put your children in the same trunk we smuggle you out of the station in, and their assassins get to Jenna . . .”
Ianira Cassondra shuddered. “Yes. It is too dangerous. Marcus . . .”
He gripped her hands hard. “I will guard them. With my life, Ianira. And Julius has pledged to help us escape. No one else must know. Not even our friends, not even the Council of Seven. Julius only knows because he was using the tunnels to run a message from one end of Commons to the other. He found us.”
At the look that came into her eyes, a shudder touched its cold finger to Jenna’s spine. Ianira’s eyelids came clenching down. “The death that stalks us is worse than we know . . . two faces . . . two faces beyond the gates . . . and bricks enclose the tree where the flame burns and blood runs black . . . be wary of the one with grey eyes, death lives behind the smile . . . the letters are the key, the letters bring terror and destruction . . . the one who lives behind the silent gun will strike in the night . . . seeks to destroy the soul unborn . . . will strike where the newborn bells burn bright with the sound of screams . . .” She sagged against her husband, limp and trembling.
Jenna, too, was trembling, so violently she could scarcely keep her feet where she crouched beside the bed.
Marcus glanced up, eyes dark and frightened. “I have never seen the visions come to her so powerfully. Please, I be
g of you, be careful with her.”
Jenna found herself lifting Ianira’s cold hands to warm them. They shook in Jenna’s grasp. “Lady,” she whispered, “I’m not much good at killing. But they’ve already destroyed the two people I cared about more than anything in the world. I swear, I will kill anything or anyone who tries to hurt you.”
Ianira’s gaze lifted slowly. Tears had reddened her eyes. “I know,” she choked out. “It is why I grieve.”
To that, Jenna had no answer whatever.
* * *
Dr. John Lachley had a problem.
A very serious problem.
Polly Nichols possessed half of Eddy’s eight letters, written to the now-deceased orphan from Cardiff. Unlike Morgan, however, whom nobody would miss, Polly Nichols had lived in the East End all her life. When she turned up rather seriously dead, those who knew her were going to talk. And what they knew, or recalled having seen, they would tell the constables of the Metropolitan Police Department’s H Division. While the police were neither well liked nor respected in Whitechapel, Polly Nichols was, despite her infamous profession. Those who liked and respected her would help the police catch whoever did to her what John Lachley intended to do to anyone who came into possession of Eddy’s miserable little letters.
God, but he had enjoyed carving up that little bastard, Morgan . . .
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