She spun again, one way, then the other, her hair trailing like a comet’s tail as she snapped her head this way and that. On her lips was a melody only she could hear.
Then she closed her eyes and she laughed, dropping her arms before giving her imaginary partner a deep bow. She muttered something, a string of words with no particular meaning, then turned and smiled into the moonlight, looking up at the windows as though she was an actress standing on a spotlit stage. She took another bow, and then another, and she smiled to her left and her right, acknowledging the applause of the audience inside her head.
Then she stood, swaying a little, the melody returning to her lips. The tune was familiar, it was her favorite, it had been ever since she was a young child, one of three sisters who played together in the long gallery and who sang the song together, over and over, holding hands in a circle as they spun around and around until the gallery went sideways and they went sideways with it.
Dragging her feet on the soft carpet, the woman in silver and white slowly drifted over to the wall. She held her hands out and dropped her fingertips onto the paneling before drawing her body in and pressing it against the wood. The wall was cool, it was solid, it was real. So little was solid and real anymore. The woman in silver and white closed her eyes and pressed her head to the wood.
There. She could hear it. The low rumble of conversation, punctuated by laughter and the clink of glass on glass. Beyond the wall—in the part of the house she hadn’t set foot in for years—the Boyle Masquerade was in full swing.
And the music. Oh, the music. It ebbed and flowed like a tide, and as the woman in silver and white smiled it reached a crescendo, growing louder and louder and louder until she could bear it no longer. Still smiling, she pushed herself from the wall, her hands clapped to the side of her head as she squeezed and squeezed, the music becoming the infinite roar of the ocean in her ears.
She fell to her knees, her eyes screwed shut.
Sometimes the music, it hurt. It was so loud she couldn’t think, so loud she had forgotten who she was and where she was and what she was.
Then it was gone, the silence as sharp as a gunshot.
She opened her eyes and on her knees looked up at the window. The moon was bright, a blaze of silver light that filled her eyes.
“My lady.”
The woman turned toward the voice—a man’s, echoing softly down the long gallery from the far end, the end drenched in shadows as black as ink. The woman in silver and white frowned, her lips moving soundlessly as she repeated the phrase over and over.
My lady… my lady… my lady… my lady…
Then she snapped her head around. On the wall next to her was a picture, a portrait of an old-fashioned man in old-fashioned clothes. The woman in silver and white stared at the picture.
“Was it you?” she asked.
If the man in the painting heard her, he did not reply.
The woman pulled herself to her feet. Next to the first portrait was a second, and then a third. Suddenly, or so it seemed, the walls of the moonlit gallery were lined with paintings, the ancestors silently watching her from across the years.
Had they always been there? Or had they all just appeared, in an instant?
Both possibilities seemed equally as likely to the woman in silver and white. She stood and moved from one to the next.
“Was it you?”
No reply.
“Was it you?”
Silence.
“My lady.”
The woman turned toward the voice, louder now, her lips repeating the phrase again. There, in the shadowed end of the gallery, stood a tall man in a black greatcoat. He was nothing but a shape, a shadow himself, but as he stepped forward she saw his eyes glitter then ignite in brilliant red. She stared at them as he came closer, unable to drag her gaze away.
His eyes were the red of her blood. They were the red of the hate and the anger that burned inside her.
And the red light moved. It flickered, wavering, the light of a fire that burned millennia ago, the light of the fire that ended one world and created another. She saw a figure in the flames. A woman in red, with long red hair, her skin red, her eyes red. She smiled in recognition, and the image of the woman smiled back.
And then she remembered.
Oh, Lady Lydia Boyle remembered.
The man in the coat stretched out a gloved hand. Lydia looked at it, blinking away the purple spots that danced in her vision. She reached out and took his hand, a hand that was as cold as the ice, as the howling winds, as the snowbound tundra.
She tilted her head, staring at her hand in his.
The memories flooded back like a freezing, surging tide. As the cold spread through her body, she felt a veil lift from her mind. Suddenly, sharply, the anger returned. Rage, hot and red.
She tore her eyes away from her hand in his, and looked around. The long gallery of the Boyle Mansion was dark, cobwebbed. Abandoned.
Like her.
She remembered what had happened. She remembered the rage and the anger and the shouting. The sadness at the fate of Waverly, the lost sister, descending like a pall over the mansion. The days—weeks, months, years—that she and her other sister, Esma, spent locked inside, trying to escape from the outside world.
For Esma, the solitude was healing. She found herself, her purpose. The annual masquerade balls were her lifeline, her connection to the world around her, a tether she used to drag herself back.
For Lydia, the sadness, the anger, were too much.
She remembered the shouting. Remembered the screaming. Remembered being dragged away, bound in a straitjacket. Months of isolation, locked in a room somewhere, a white room with soft walls and the smug, bearded face of Sokolov as he tended to her. The admission she overheard, that he couldn’t do anything.
Her mind was gone, moonstruck.
Being brought back to the house by a carriage at night, bound again in the straitjacket. Being locked in a room on the other side of the mansion, and then being let out, only to find that her prison had merely enlarged to include the entire closed wing of the house.
She had not seen anybody for years. Not even Esma.
Oh, she could hear them. Doors opened and doors closed. Food was laid out, her bedchamber made each day. She spent days chasing ghosts, but she never caught them.
Lydia turned back to the man in the coat, and blinked under his gaze. She saw now that his eyes weren’t red, he was wearing red-tinted goggles, and they didn’t shine, they merely reflected the moonlight coming in through the high windows.
She felt cold, so very, very cold. She wrapped her arms around her body and she sank to the floor, shivering.
The man in the coat said nothing. Lydia looked up at him.
“Are you here to help me?” she whispered.
The man cocked his head, regarding her as though she were an insect pinned beneath a lens.
“Lady Lydia Boyle,” he said. His voice was deep and it bounced around the wooden panels of the long gallery. “Do you remember your name?”
Lydia nodded. “I remember everything.” Her expression twisted into a snarl, and she bared her teeth at the stranger, as if she was a cornered animal.
“Tell me,” he said.
Lydia hissed. “My sister. Esma. She did all of this.”
The man nodded. “Yes.”
“She put me in here. Locked me away.”
“Yes.”
“Pretended I didn’t exist. Pretended I never existed.”
“Yes.”
“I… I…” Lydia frowned. What had she been talking about again? She felt momentarily dizzy, then she looked back into the man’s red eyes and her mind cleared.
“You hate her, don’t you?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
“She put you in here. Locked you away.”
“Yes.”
“She said you were moonstruck, that there was nothing that could be done for you.”
“Yes.”
>
“That this was for your own good.”
“Yes.”
“And while you are her prisoner, she has taken control. Not just of the house, but of the family. The famous Boyle dynasty, the fulcrum on which the fortunes of Dunwall turn. First Lady Waverly. Then you. Now Esma Boyle is alone, and she has it all.”
Lydia stared into his eyes. Was that true? Was any of that true? Esma was her sister. A sister who loved her, who looked after her, who was doing this for her own good.
Wasn’t she?
The man’s red eyes flashed and Lydia blinked.
Esma, the conniving, plotting harpy. Esma the betrayer. The sister who wanted it all, if only her siblings were out of the picture.
“I… yes,” Lydia whispered. “Yes, I see it.”
“Tell me, Lady Boyle,” the man said, “what would you do if you could change the past? What path would you take? What would you become if the world was struck on a different tangent?”
Lydia’s lips moved, but no words came. She gazed at the man and he seemed to fade, and in the back of her mind she could hear music and laughter and she could feel the warmth of the fire as people danced and danced and danced.
And then silence, sharp and cold and awful.
The man in the coat returned, and held out his hand again. This time Lydia took it, and allowed herself to be pulled up.
“I can help you, Lady Boyle,” the man said. “I can change it all. I can restore the balance that was taken so cruelly from you.”
“Yes?”
“To do this, I need your help.”
“Yes.”
“Beneath this house is a vault. A chamber built to hold a secret.”
Lydia frowned. A vault? Was there a vault? She struggled to remember. One had been built, perhaps… not so long ago. The memory was fuzzy, but it was there.
“Ah… yes, yes I think so.”
“I need you to take me there,” the man in the coat said. “There is something there that I need.”
Lydia nodded. “And what will you do when you have it?” She stood on her toes as she gazed into those shining red eyes.
The man chuckled quietly. He squeezed Lydia’s hand until she thought her fingers would break.
“Why, Lady Boyle,” the man in the coat said, “I will save the world, and save you along with it.”
Then Zhukov laughed again, and Lady Lydia Boyle found herself laughing with him.
21
BOYLE MANSION, ESTATE DISTRICT
15th Day, Month of Darkness, 1851
“They came at once, out of the dark, out of the shadows! Silence was their skill, murder was their art! The history of the Empire was determined in that great room on that fateful night, the night the Mask and his Companion revealed themselves and saved the City of Appolitis with nothing but the force of their fists and the sharpness of their wits!”
— THE MASK OF APPOLITIS
Extract from a lurid gothic novel,
allegedly based on true events
Corvo made what must have been his twentieth lap of the Boyle Masquerade. Or was it more? He had lost count, but it had been hours. The house was huge, as were the gardens, and with this many guests, his progress was slow. But with his network of agents at the party, he was confident they had the whole event covered.
So far, nothing had happened. Nothing at all.
This is good, Corvo kept telling himself. The masquerade—perhaps the biggest in recent years—seemed a raging success. There was music, and dancing, and laughter. As he returned to the balcony overlooking the ballroom, he looked out over a multicolored sea of costumes and masks as those who occupied the upper echelons of Gristol society passed the night away in their revels, unmolested.
But it was a setback. Corvo couldn’t deny it. Here was the chance to capture at least half of the Whaler’s leadership, with the other taken, he hoped, at the factory, in a single, coordinated action. But no such opportunity presented itself.
Perhaps the information had been wrong. Perhaps it had been unwise to listen to the man, Rinaldo—he was too eager to cooperate, to help out. Perhaps he should have left the Whaler to the tender mercies of Slackjaw and his men.
Corvo frowned under his mask. Perhaps not.
And then there was the strange bonecharm. It was real enough, and there was no reason for Rinaldo to have handed it over—to have taken it in the first place—if he hadn’t had doubts about what the Whalers were doing. About the man in the coat they now looked upon as their leader.
No, Rinaldo was telling the truth. It was just that—
Corvo turned, his eye caught by a masquerade guest standing just next to the ballroom doors. The man was standing alone, apart from the other guests. There was nothing particularly remarkable about him—he wore a black cloak, and he had his head bowed, his face hidden by a large curly-brimmed black hat. Corvo watched him, and found himself willing the man to lift his head and show his mask, but the man didn’t move a muscle.
Moving along the balcony, Corvo headed for the stairs. He wanted that man checked out by his agents. As he walked, he looked up.
The man was gone.
Corvo stopped, and scanned the crowd.
Down on the ballroom floor, the guests participated in a formal dance, male and female partners lined up opposite each other. The dance itself was a relic from an earlier age, a whole lot of bowing and arm waving and walking around in circles, the appeal of which was completely baffling to Corvo. Back in Serkonos, dancing couldn’t have been more different, an expression of movement free of formal rules and steps, the couple’s bodies held close against one another. But he did have to admit, up here on the balcony, looking down on the dance, he could see there was a pleasure in its symmetry, and in the synchronized movements of dancers.
As he watched, Corvo caught sight again of his quarry. The man was standing to one side of the dance floor, but he still had his head lowered, the hat obscuring his face. He had one arm hooked inside his cloak, out of sight.
Then the man turned away and moved quietly along the side of the room, then disappeared through one of the doors that led out into the gardens.
Corvo wasted no time, jogging toward the stairs—and found another man standing in his way. This guest was also dressed in the voluminous black cloak and large black hat. He had his head bowed so the brim hid his face. He bowed. Corvo paused, and bowed in return.
The man didn’t move out of the way. Instead, he lifted his head to show his masquerade mask. Leather and metal and rubber, two circular glass eyes, a cylindrical respirator hanging from the front.
A Whaler. They were here.
Corvo began to lunge for the man when a cry rang out from the ballroom below. He spun around at the sound.
The dancers had paused, and the musicians had fallen silent, all turning toward the garden doors as there was another cry. Then a group of masqueraders flooded in from the garden in a hurry, running from men in long black cloaks. The faces of the newcomers were hidden behind Whalers’ masks.
The attack had begun.
Corvo turned back to the man he had met on the stairs, and found that he had fled. Cursing himself, Corvo pushed his way through the masqueraders on the balcony. They were now trying to head for the stairs on the other side in one heaving, chattering group.
Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned, fists ready, to find himself staring into the mask of the white lion.
“The whole house is surrounded, lad,” the lion whispered. “The bleeders are everywhere.”
Corvo nodded. “Order your men to take their positions. My agents will follow.” He paused, then added, “Find Emily and bring her to me.”
“Right you are.”
The white lion took off, pushing through the crowd.
There were more cries from the ballroom. Corvo moved back to the balcony to see the dancing couples backing into each other as the Whalers formed a tightening circle around them.
There are more of them than we suspected.<
br />
Then, as if following an unseen signal, they shed their unwieldy cloaks and hats, revealing the buckled leather tunics and hoods, pistols and knives at hand. They began herding the guests to each side of the gallery, clearing a space in the middle.
From the far end of the room stepped a masquerader in a simple costume—a big cloak that shone in brilliant gold and the mask of a cat, the metallic fur shimmering and shaking as the newcomer walked forward. The Whalers parted the crowd in front of her.
Then the golden cloak was pulled off, revealing red, buckled leather. Finally the mask came off, and was dumped on the floor. The woman standing in the middle of the room ran a hand through her short, greasy blonde hair.
Galia.
Corvo sped into action. Pulling off his own cloak and the bear mask, he vaulted the balcony rail and landed in a crouch on the ballroom floor, eliciting shrieks from some of the guests, who scattered out of his way. Behind him, the musicians cowered against the far wall.
He stood and stepped toward Galia. The woman was smiling, her eyes not leaving his as he walked forward. Around the room, the Whalers held the guests at knifepoint. Silence fell on the Boyle Mansion.
Corvo glanced around. His agents—and the men in the employ of the white lion—were all over the room, indistinguishable from the guests. They hadn’t made any moves yet. They were waiting for Corvo’s signal.
Good.
Galia’s smile broadened as he stopped in front of her. She held a long knife, which she tossed casually from one hand to the other. She was confident, cocky, even.
It was time to put a stop to the charade.
“Now!” Corvo yelled.
In the alcove under the balcony, one of the musicians—one of Corvo’s agents—reached behind a curtain to a hidden switch, and flipped it.
Immediately the room was filled with a harsh, metallic grinding, so loud as to be deafening. All around the room the masqueraders—and their captors—staggered under the assault of noise as the Ancient Music, played by the Warfare Overseer from his hidden room, echoed out across the ballroom.
Dishonored--The Corroded Man Page 20