by Rod Rees
When Burlesque thought about it later, all he could remember was the vaguest recollection of being thrown across the hall oh-so-very-slowly. It was as though he was moving, rolling and tumbling in a great tub of hot treacle. Time for Burlesque slowed. He heard the huge bang when the bomb – the bombs, rather: the other five had exploded in sympathy – had detonated and then … nothing, everything went silent. He had the vague sensation of his hands – which he’d somehow managed to raise to protect his face – and his hair burning. He watched in a disinterested fashion as his trousers caught fire, as one of his boots was blown off …
Then, abruptly, as though a switch had been thrown, everything speeded up. A wall came towards him in a rush and with a sickening, bone-shaking bang he was slammed into it. It was a hard, hard landing. The wind was knocked out of him and as he felt his head bang into something unyielding, a jagged scream of light flashed before his eyes. And then everything went black.
He must have been knocked unconscious, but it could only have been for a second or two. When he came to, he found bodies crashing around him and debris raining down from the ceiling. He tried to curl into a ball, but the weight of a dead NoN lying across his legs prevented him moving, so he was forced to watch helplessly as roof girders, shaken from the ceiling by the explosion, began to spear down, smashing to the ground. But although he could see, he couldn’t hear much: the explosions seemed to have done for his right ear. Yet burnt and half-deaf though he was, Burlesque took comfort in the realisation that he was still alive. He might be racked by pain, he might be covered in a patina of dust and vaporised SAE, but he was alive.
Tentatively, carefully, he tried to move his body, testing it for broken bones. His right wrist was busted for sure but miraculously, except for that, a splitting headache and a skinned arse, he seemed in remarkably good shape. After much pushing, kicking and cursing, he freed himself from the NoN, staggered shakily to his feet, blinked his eyes gingerly, trying to wash away the grit and the grime, and looked out into the hall. He could hardly see anything; although some of the gas mantles were still alight, the air was heavy with a thick, choking dust. But what he could see told him the Fermentation Plant was no more. The bombs had destroyed everything.
Everything apart from one of the Amazons. He saw her advancing towards him with a sword in her hand and murder in her eyes. He knew he was dead meat: with his gimp arm he wouldn’t be able to use his sword to defend himself.
That was when he was suddenly aware of a soiled and stained Odette standing beside him, holding out her hand. ‘I’ave no more of the bullets, mon cheri, so I would be mostly obliged to ’ave the use of your sword.’
Like a man in a trance, Burlesque drew his sword from its scabbard and handed it to his woman.
Burlesque’s sword, cheap and clumsy though it was, had a satisfying heft in Odette’s hand, and the deadly practicality of the blade seemed to clear some of the fog from her bomb-shocked mind. She turned to face the Amazon, crouching down as she did so in her favoured fighting stance, but even as she pirouetted on the ball of her right foot, she winced in pain. The ankle was sprained, but that was the least of her problems. There was a numbness radiating out from her left shoulder where she had been hit by a flying brick, and the paralysis seemed to be drifting down along her arm, making it difficult for her to balance herself properly. And balance, she knew, was the most important thing for any sword fighter.
‘Stand aside,’ snarled the Amazon as she pointed her sword towards Burlesque. ‘It is unseemly for a Femme to defend such offal. Have you no respect for your gender?’
Odette dragged a sleeve across her eyes, trying to free them of dust. ‘Know this, mostly ‘orrible Amazon lady, I am Odette Aroca and thees ees my man, Burlesque Bandstand. For ‘im I will fight to the last of the breaths, so to kill ‘im you must first of the all kill me.’
Yeah, she was buggered if some Amazon would kill her beloved Burlesque without a fight. She shook her head in a vain attempt to clear it, then, as best she was able, she tried to relax herself, setting herself poised ready to receive the attack from the Amazon.
The soldierFemme came at Odette in an untidy rush, her contempt and her hatred making her careless. With a strength developed from hauling meat to and from her market stall in Paris, Odette blocked the woman’s roundhouse slash with a casual flick of her own blade, steel snarling on steel, a parry that matched the Amazon’s own strike for speed and power. The ease with which she fought off the cut gave her opponent pause and now the Amazon was warier, circling her more cautiously, searching for a point of weakness.
Watching her, Odette tried to ignore the pain hammering in her head and the numbness seeping insidiously along her left arm. She made herself concentrate only on the Amazon’s blade as it danced back and forth.
The lunge the Amazon made was lightning-fast and Odette only managed to avoid the razor-sharp point by a hair’s breadth, jerking her chin away as the sword whisked past her face. But the effort was almost her undoing. She was pushed onto her back foot and although she instinctively made to compensate for the move by stretching out her arm for balance, her arm refused to obey. Caught off balance, she staggered, and seeing her opponent’s guard falter, the Amazon was on her, her sword flashing in and out as she sought to end the duel.
The power of the onslaught was simply incredible. It took all of Odette’s strength to parry the blows and even as she was forced to retreat, she could sense her strength ebbing away. It was desperate work: her left arm was now almost useless and she could feel the cold starting to spread across her chest and along her neck. In a matter of moments she knew she would be helpless to defend herself.
So she attacked, hewing her blade at the Amazon’s face, aiming for her eyes, driving her back, trying to ignore the ache in her sword arm and the scorching light that shot before her eyes. Her blade flashed and slashed, as she tried to cut through the Amazon’s guard, making her retreat, the Amazon rattled both by the ferocity of the onslaught and by Odette’s raw skill. Encouraged, Odette marshalled all her remaining energy for one last attack, but groggy from her wound, she failed to see a broken wooden beam beneath her feet. She tripped, sprawling to the hall’s floor.
And as Odette tumbled, with a triumphant shriek the Amazon was on her, slicing her sword down. Only by a miracle was Odette able to parry the strike, sparks flashing off the blades as the impact of the two swords sent judders of pain shuddering along her arm. She rolled away, then crab-crawled as best she was able out of reach of the next inevitable strike. She knew she was done for.
Then Burlesque attacked.
He blindsided the Amazon by springing at her from behind, wrapping his one good arm and both his legs around her, gouging at her eyes with his fingers and biting down on her neck. He grappled hard and he had surprise on his side, but it did no good. The Amazon lifted a hand behind her, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hurled him away as though he weighed nothing at all.
And as she did so, Odette, still on her knees, lanced Burlesque’s sword into the girl’s belly. The soldierFemme buckled and the colour drained from her face.
‘No …’
Odette hauled the blade out of the Amazon’s body and watched as she slumped to the ground.
But even as she knelt gasping and spent, Burlesque limped over to her. ‘Yous gonna stay there all fucking night, Odette,’ he panted as he woggled a finger in his ear, ‘or is we gonna ’ave it away on our toes before them LessBiens come and see wot a fucking mess we’ve gone an’ made ov their factory?’
Dong E staggered out of the laboratory into the panicked chaos of the Castle. The explosions that had done for the Fermentation Plant had persuaded the hundreds of Femmes and screaming NoNs who lived in Hereji-Jo Castle to run for cover, but as none of them seemed to know where ‘cover’ might actually be, mayhem had ensued. The fortunate thing was that in the confusion no one seemed remotely interested in her.
Thinking how she should make her escape, she remembered h
earing the vampyre talking about a postern gate and horses, so she turned south, skirting the Castle’s walls, searching for this mysterious way out. She knew she had to hurry, realising that soon someone would take control of the situation, but her wounded leg was painful, so despite her best efforts she made only slow and tortuous progress. When she eventually found the gate she was nigh on spent, but, after shoving her way through the ivy blocking the gate, her spirits were revived when she found the horses tethered in a small copse of trees a hundred metres beyond the Castle walls. Dong E had never been so happy to see a horse in her life, which was remarkable given that she had never ridden before in her life. Fortunately, the nag she clambered aboard was tractable.
Chazaqijal hung back in the shadows. There were now so many Amazons milling around the courtyard in front of the laboratory that if he stepped away from his hiding place he would be immediately spotted as an interloper and in his damaged condition even a Grigori such as he would not be able to fight off so many opponents.
That was when he saw the tiny Chink girl who had bested him slink out of the door and limp in the direction of the postern gate. He knew instinctively that the bitch must have heard him giving instructions to Borgia about where the horses were hidden.
Suddenly there was an explosion from Ptah’s laboratory and as the Amazons rushed to take cover, Chazaqijal seized his chance, hobbling after the Chink, his hatred making him oblivious to the pain racking his body. He would have his revenge.
It took thirty minutes before the temple spire was in sight and Dong E knew that she was close to the SheTong’s safe house. Very gingerly she urged the horse on – she didn’t like the way it had been wheezing for the last couple of minutes – and finally came to the door of the house. She dismounted and tethered the horse then looked around anxiously: she had the troubling thought that she’d been followed.
Before Dong E realised what was happening, the vampyre was on her, his enormously powerful hands closing around her neck, crushing the breath out of her. In an instant she was struggling for her life, his fingernails gouging into her skin, his thumbs pressing down savagely onto her windpipe. He was like something from the depths of Hel, his face horribly scarred and his right eye red and blank.
‘So I have you, bitch. Now you must suffer the fury of the Grigori.’
With that the man redoubled his efforts to throttle her. Desperately she grappled with him, trying to pull his hands away, trying to claw at his eyes, but he was too strong … amazingly strong. A red mist shaded her sight. She heard a rattle in her throat. She knew she was losing her fight for life.
There was the crack of a rifle shot. The Grigori sagged like a deflating balloon, his hands relaxed and then he sank to the ground. As Dong E collapsed to her knees in choking confusion beside his body, she felt a dark presence at her elbow. Looking up, she found herself peering into the face of Su Xiaoxiao.
‘Su Xiaoxiao?’ she gasped. ‘But how did you find me?’
‘Don’t you know, Dong E, that a mother always knows when her daughter is in danger?’
39
Hereji-Jo Castle
The Demi-Monde: 76th Day of Summer, 1005
There is much controversy relating to the death of Empress Wu, with those with a liking for conspiracy conjecturing that her demise was not caused – as the official record would have it – by her choking on an overly large river cucumber but rather that she was poisoned by Lucrezia Borgia. Admittedly, the short and inglorious reign of Empress Borgia has made her the butt of many scurrilous rumours which the scant and fragmented written records pertaining to the final days of the Wu dynasty have done little to illuminate, but in this HerTorian’s view, Borgia acted in a loyal and exemplary fashion with regard to her Empress. Borgia was no poisoner.
The Last Days of Empress Wu: Mary Godwin, ForthRight PaperBacks
Behind her, Hereji-Jo Castle was being consumed by fire, but Lucrezia Borgia gave it not a thought. She simply yanked the horse’s head towards the Forbidding City and lashed its flanks with her whip.
The past was of no interest to her, all that mattered was the future … her future.
Just as dawn was breaking she was striding – wet, cold and travel-soiled – through the corridors of the Forbidding City, her mind racing as she weighed strategies and options, balancing risk with gain. Events were moving rapidly and it behoved any who desired power – and none desired it as fervently as Lucrezia Borgia – to grasp the opportunities presented by those events. Mao’s assassination had elevated her to the second-highest position in the Coven and given her access to the Forbidding Palace, and the appointment of Amina Zaria as the replacement for the traitor Trixie Dashwood meant that she had effective control of the Covenite army: Amina was a very obedient lover.
Yes, now was her moment of destiny.
She turned to Imperial NoN Wang Jingwei, the NoN who had replaced Mao as Guardian of the Imperial Bedchamber, who was trotting along whimpering and fretting at her side.
‘NoN Wang Jingwei,’ she asked, ‘do you wish to live?’
Wang Jingwei gawped at her and then twisted his head from side to side, checking that their conversation wasn’t being overheard. ‘Of course, Imperial Administrator,’ he whispered.
‘Project YiYi is no more; the Plague weapon has been destroyed.’
‘You are sure?’ There was a distinct tremble on the NoN’s bottom lip as he imagined the awful consequences of that piece of news.
‘Saboteurs detonated bombs in the Fermentation Plant. I was there; I saw and heard the destruction.’ She stopped and stared at the NoN. ‘You realise the implications?’
A nod from Wang Jingwei. ‘The ForthRight will triumph.’
That was now a certainty and there was no point, as Lucrezia Borgia judged it, in denying what was inevitable. The ForthRight would conquer the Coven and so the best ploy would be for her to align herself with Heydrich and, of course, Crowley. Better to reign in a Coven that was a mere satellite of the ForthRight than to commune with her ancestors.
‘Indeed. But before that I expect the Empress to purge all those she thinks are responsible for her defeat. The Empress Wu is nothing if not vindictive and I think she will blame the remaining NoNs in the Forbidding City for her failure.’ Wang Jingwei had the courtesy to blanch at the prospect. ‘So I ask again: do you wish to live?’
The implications of this simple question were stark. The NoN did not hesitate. ‘Yes.’
‘Are the guardFemmes who protect the Empress loyal to you?’
‘No … but they will obey Noble Consort Yu Lang.’
‘Really? But they are oath-bound to sacrifice their lives to protect the Empress.’
‘Oath-bound or not, the Plucking of all the Fresh Blooms, following the treachery of Dong E, was a fearful thing and many of the guardFemmes had lovers amongst them. They doubt an Empress who orders such a purging can retain the Grace of ABBA, and hence suspect their oaths have no validity.’ Wang Jingwei shuffled his feet nervously. ‘But even so, Imperial Administrator Borgia, I doubt whether they would put their souls at risk by assassinating the Empress.’
A laugh from Borgia. ‘I am not asking them to do something so … direct. You should advise Noble Consort Yu Lang that I do not require them to harm the Empress, merely not to intervene to prevent her being harmed. Will she do this?’
There wasn’t the merest hesitation in Wang Jingwei giving his reply, ‘Yes.’
A strange calm descended on Lucrezia Borgia as she walked across the floor of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. This was the moment when she would grasp her destiny and become all that she should become. This was the moment when she would step out of the shadows and into the glare of the limelight of HerTory. She would become Empress or she would die in the attempt.
She stopped at the kowtow line, but before she could perform her devotions, the Empress interrupted. ‘Is it true? Is it true?’ she squawked. ‘Is it true what the semaphore messages tell us? Is it true that Hereji-Jo Castle has been
attacked and the Plague weapon destroyed?’
As she walked towards the Dragon Throne – the Empress seemingly oblivious to the contravention of Li this entailed – she could see the Empress was wide-eyed and nigh on hysterical. Disgusting … in her opinion, an Empress should never display weakness or emotion. But such weakness and emotion did offer opportunities: the stupid Femme would not be thinking straight.
Borgia bowed. ‘Yes, Your Majesty. I have just returned from Hereji-Jo Castle where I saw with my own eyes the destruction of the Fermenting Plant.’
The Empress seemed to wither, sinking back into the Dragon Throne looking old and broken. ‘Then what is to be done?’
‘Your Majesty … this is a dark moment for the Coven, but I believe we have an opportunity even at this late hour to snatch victory from defeat.’ She looked around at the courtiers gathered in the room as though assessing their trustworthiness. ‘Unfortunately, Your Majesty, there are traitors to HerEticalism everywhere.’
‘Clear the room! Clear the room!’ the Empress screamed and she waved her hands around urging her courtiers and servants from the Hall. Only when the room was emptied of everyone apart from her guardFemmes and the Imperial Administrator did the Empress signal that Borgia should continue. ‘So what is this secret intelligence, Imperial Administrator?’
‘If I might approach the Dragon Throne? Even the walls in the Forbidding City have ears.’
The Empress gave an impatient nod and Borgia quickly ascended the steps leading to the throne. As she drew nearer to the Empress, the toll the stress and strain of the last few weeks had levied on her became more obvious. There were deep – though skilfully disguised – shadows under her eyes and her hands were trembling: she was a nervous wreck.
With a smile Lucrezia Borgia leant closer to her Empress. ‘Your Majesty, I have learnt through my own cryptos that traitorous NoNs have been poisoning the river cucumbers of which you are so fond.’