And he was aware that his foot was already extended, and could with only the most modest effort be moved to the side. Just a little bit, like that, and…
The intruder with the spiked club collided with his foot and went sprawling. His head hit the coal stove with a loud splorch! Thaddeus grimaced and looked away.
That left two more people, both of whom were now halfway into the room. One of them held a club, a bit less extravagantly menacing than his still-twitching companion’s but solid and serviceable nonetheless. The other carried a dagger.
Four murderous assailants in one day. A new personal record, Thaddeus thought mirthlessly. Plainly he was moving up in the world.
He launched himself up from the bed, straight through the window next to the door. This was a lot less dramatic than it sounded, as the window was little more than a hole in the wall covered with a scavenged bit of oilskin that tore easily. Thaddeus felt a pang of sorrow for the tuppence it would cost him to replace it, then he was swinging over the wooden railing onto the stairs leading up to the room above. Best not to try to run straight down the street, he thought. Not in these shoes. Two men in practical footwear against one in aristocrat’s shoes? Those odds didn’t look good.
The two remaining assailants pounded up the stairs after him. Thaddeus took the stairs two at a time, careful to skip over the stair just below the top landing.
The closer of the two pursuers hit the step. It collapsed. He let out a brief cry and disappeared, plunging to the cobblestones below. His cry ended with an unpleasant crunching noise. A gleeful, giddy laugh came from inside the top-floor room.
Two down, one to go. Thaddeus breathed a silent thanks to good old Randall and his broken stair. Post-stress disorder of the trauma had made him paranoid—a healthy and eminently sensible attitude, Thaddeus believed.
Thaddeus paused on the landing in front of Randall’s door. There was a crude wooden ladder, hardly more than slats of wood nailed to the side of the ramshackle house, leading up to the roof. Thaddeus started to climb. Don’t look back. That was important, when men were chasing you with murderous intent. Look forward. Find an escape route. Never look back.
He was just crawling over the edge of the roof when the final pursuer started climbing. That was worrisome. The man should have been at least halfway up the ladder by now. He was smarter than his recently departed accomplices and had become more careful. Very worrisome indeed. Thaddeus preferred recklessness in his adversaries.
He slipped as he started up toward the top of the roof. His knees came down hard on the rough shingles. He cursed. The roof was steeply pitched, its peak almost level with the flat roofs of the buildings on each side. A broad plank of wood, barely visible in the dark, connected the peak of the roof to the roof of the tannery next door.
Thaddeus scrambled up toward the plank, cursing the aristocracy and their vagaries of taste. He reached it just as the dark shape of his pursuer appeared over the edge of the roof.
Thaddeus ran out onto the plank. Something whistled past his ear. He ducked. A second something whirred over his head. The man chasing him swore and began to scramble up to the peak, racing to reach the plank before Thaddeus could make it across to the other side.
It was a race he could not win. Even shod as he was, Thaddeus was still far faster on the flat plank than his assailant was on the steep roof. Thaddeus hopped onto the tannery roof. The man pursuing him was still only halfway across the plank.
Thaddeus turned. He placed one foot casually on the end of the plank. The other man, realizing his predicament, stopped instantly. He was little more than an inky outline against the dark, overcast sky.
“Well, this is awkward,” the man said.
“Three against one,” Thaddeus said. “Hardly seems sporting.”
“You’re right,” the man agreed glumly. “We should’ve brought more.”
“Don’t suppose you would mind telling me who sent you? Or perhaps why you’re trying to kill me?”
“I’m a dead man if I do.”
“Consider your options.”
The man looked down over the edge of the plank. It wasn’t that far down onto the roof of the house. The pitch of the roof was steep, sure, but still, he might be able to keep from rolling down off the edge and onto the ground below…
“Sorry. Professional confidentialism and all.”
“How much did they offer you?”
“Two hundred shillings.”
“And my mum said I’d never amount to anything,” Thaddeus said. “Payment in advance?”
“On completion.”
“Creepy guy, bony hands? Voice that sort of crawls into your ear and turns your brain inside out?”
The man remained silent.
“Watch yourself with him,” Thaddeus said. “He’s fast with a knife. And he doesn’t like to pay his bills.”
“So notated,” the man said. “Thanks for that. Listen,” he added after a time, “I don’t suppose we could just call it a day? Pretend this whole thing never happened?”
Thaddeus considered this. “I doubt your friends are that good at pretending.”
“Ah, good point. But y’know, I never really liked those guys anyway.”
“I take it you’re out of throwing knives?” Thaddeus asked.
“I packed light. Didn’t think I’d need them, what with my compatriots and the clubs and all.”
“That was probably a mistake.”
“Probably.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Finally, Thaddeus asked, “Do you happen to have any oilcloth on or about your person?”
“Oilcloth? I don’t think so. Tell you what, I could just nip over there and check.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Thaddeus gave the plank a shove with his foot. The would-be assassin plummeted out of sight with a shriek. Thaddeus heard a thud as he hit the roof. He didn’t bother to see whether the man managed to stop himself before continuing over the edge.
He set off unsteadily across the tannery roof. His knees screamed at him. The last ragtag ends of adrenaline burnt themselves out of his system, leaving his nerves quivering.
Couldn’t go back home. Too dangerous. Too many dead people lying about too. He felt quite strongly that he should not have to be the one to clean them up, as he had not, technically speaking, been responsible for putting them there.
On the other side of the building, an iron drainpipe made an easy slide to the street—easy, at any rate, when he was well rested and not still shaking from a string of recent attempts on his life. He hit the ground hard, cursing. Then, he picked himself up again and limped off down the road.
If his route home had been circuitous, the path he took now was positively labyrinthine. He went down Boggs Road until it met up with Glevinshire Lane, then doubled back along the alley behind the baker’s to Sentinel Avenue, and from there ’round past Kingsway to Foursquare Street. He was careful to stick to the darkness, out of the light of the gas lamps.
Eventually, he made his way to Hammersmith Street. He kept going, following the road until at last he came to a large brick building with a fat chimney protruding from its roof. Electric arc lamps glowed from a high window. A rust-streaked metal sign hanging out front proclaimed “Bodger & Bodger Iron Fittings.”
Thaddeus hammered on the door.
“Go away!”
He hammered again.
There was a thump from inside, followed by the sound of footsteps. The door opened an inch. A suspicious face looked out at him. The face was several inches above his own. It was connected to a tall person of indeterminate gender, wearing clothes so caked in grime it appeared that if they ever saw the inside of a washtub, they might disintegrate entirely. A heavy leather apron was tied over top of them, probably to keep them from crawling off their owner’s body to do unfortunate things.
“Clai
re Bodger! It’s a delight to see you on such a fine night.”
“Muddy!” Claire threw open the door. “Er…” She lowered the crossbow, looking a bit apologetic. “You shouldn’t maybe be coming around at night. I might have put a bolt in you. Where on earth did you get that hat? You look a complete tosser.”
“That’s a bit of a story,” Thaddeus said. “Not as interesting as the bit that comes after. Is Donnie around? I—” He felt the last of the adrenaline flowing out of him. “I think I’m in trouble. It’s been a bad day…” The world wavered, then turned sideways and slid past him fast. Claire slung the crossbow over one shoulder, slung Thaddeus over the other, and disappeared inside.
In the shadows across the street, a pair of eyes watched the door close. Eventually, the light upstairs went out.
4
High in the skies above New Old London, Her Royal Majesty Queen Margaret the Merciful was very unhappy. As was customary when people in positions of power were unhappy, the people standing closest to her—in this case, one on each side of her—were also unhappy. Say what you want about the monarchy, in some ways those born to power are very generous. It was a matter of perspective which of the three of them was having the worst of it.
“Release me at once!” she demanded. “You will pay for this treason! Guards! Execute these men!”
The man holding her right arm felt that, as these things went, he was probably having a worse day than she was. His name was Julianus Oysterson, and he was dressed in the white cape and plumed helmet of the Royal Guard. “I’m sorry, Your Grace,” he said. “It is the Law.” He pronounced the capital L.
“You treasonous imbecile!” the Queen snapped. “We are the law!”
Julianus sighed. “I swore my oath to the Kingdom, Your Grace. Not to you.”
This was a point, Julianus felt, few people properly understood. It was all well and good to have a government, and if you had to have a government, it stood to reason that someone should be at the head of it. But there was a difference between representing the law and being the law. Even the greatest of leaders, he thought, should still be subject to the rules of civilization. Many of his fellow Guardsmen thought this notion to be entirely too bohemian, but Julianus was firm in his conviction. In Julianus’s view, people who felt the law was something to be applied to others tended to turn it into an instrument of barbarism rather than civilization.
“And I swore my oath to Her Most Excellent Majesty the Queen,” said the man holding the tip of his sword against Julianus’s ceremonial breastplate. He was dressed exactly like Julianus, save for the red stripe that bisected his white cape from corner to corner. The plume in his helmet was red rather than white.
They were standing in the middle of the airship’s enormous grand ballroom. Like everything else on the airship, the grand ballroom was opulent in the way that could be possible only to those with limitless wealth and limited taste. The floor was made of narrow strips of the finest hardwoods, shipped at great expense from the vast forests of the New World colonies. The walls were painted with colorful murals depicting the British exploration of the New World: British surveyors crossing the American continent to the far sea, British merchants establishing trading posts in rugged mountains, British soldiers keeping the Spanish heathens at bay while natives looked on with gratitude. The walls curved gently upward to meet a ceiling tiled with rose-colored French marble.
Julianus had one hand on the hilt of his sword. His other was holding the Queen. His lieutenant, Albert Besthammer, was holding her other arm. Albert was the son of a solidly working-class fishmonger from the dock district who believed the greatest duty of a man was to know his place, even if that place was up to his elbows in fish guts at five o’clock every morning, and who would have been shocked into speechlessness to see his son arresting the monarch. Albert’s sword was drawn in a nonchalant kind of way, as though he just happened to have it in his hand at that moment. It was a small sword, mostly ceremonial, not exactly the kind of thing one would want in a full-on brawl, and he had very little confidence that if things went too far around the bend it would do him very much good at all. Still, it was better than nothing, which was his only other choice given that the Queen strictly forbade firearms aboard her airship.
A tight cluster of very cross men had formed around the three of them, crowding in as close as was prudent when gathering around men with swords. The rest of the Queen’s personal guard, wearing helmets with red plumes and cloaks with red stripes, made up the inner tier. Around them was a second ring of people, identically dressed but with white plumes and white cloaks. There were more of these than the men with red, but no reasonable man would bet on numbers alone; the Queen’s personal guard were chosen for their single-minded zealousness. It also didn’t hurt that she chose the tallest and strongest men for her personal guard, a habit she’d picked up from the French.
And then beyond them was nearly everyone else aboard the airship, save only for a small handful of people upon whom the operation of the great zeppelin relied. Dukes and counts, ladies and servants all stood shoulder to shoulder, craning their necks to see who was going to be first to have his head detached from his shoulders. The Ottoman ambassador Tahkir, surrounded by his own bodyguards, watched from the edge of the dance floor, arms crossed, lips pursed with disapproval. Even the serving maids were there. There is little that unites the disparate classes of humanity more quickly than a Spectacle.
Many of the people in the ballroom were having bad days, save for a small handful of people unaware of the chaos that tended, historically speaking, to accompany changes in the status quo of a monarch’s court and who therefore saw this as nothing but feedstock for the rumor mill.
Julianus thought about how easy life had once been. In those carefree days, fifteen minutes ago, he had been standing at the back of the ballroom, watching the noblemen dance and gossip, and wondering if a certain serving wench was on duty tonight. Things had been simple then. His duty was to keep an eye on the assembled noblemen (or, as Albert referred to them, “that motley bag of criminal buggers,” though only when they were safely out of earshot and usually when he had so much Longfellow ale in him that it came out as “tha’ motely bag of buggered blaggers! Bugg’r’m!”) in case one of them should suddenly turn out to be a foreign assassin or something—something that had happened only once, to his knowledge, many years ago, and caused some excitement for a time and maybe a war or something.
Now, those days seemed so far away he could scarcely remember them. Fifteen minutes doesn’t seem like a long time ago until you’re in a situation where you don’t expect to be alive fifteen minutes from now.
All because of a ring.
They’d searched the airship, just as the Queen had commanded. Albert, good old reliable, unimaginative Albert, had been the one to search her quarters. Personally.
He’d found the ring. Personally.
And, because he followed rules without imagination or thought to consequences, he’d reported it to Julianus. He could have given it to one of the Queen’s personal guard, whose loyalty lay with her and not the Kingdom and who in any event were likely to have better sense, which in situations like this principally meant a sense of self-preservation. Or he could have just stuck it in his pocket or thrown it out a window or something. Anything but reported it to Julianus.
But no. Albert was assertive in his incuriosity. He possessed the kind of mind that, confronted by anything out of the ordinary, simply kicked it up the chain of command to let someone else deal with it. He was not often bothered by thoughts of the consequences of his actions; that sort of thinking, he reasoned, was best left to his betters.
He’d recognized the symbol on the ring, and somewhere in his mind a thought had formed that it might perhaps mean something, but he didn’t quite know what. So he’d fallen back on his routine and given it to Julianus, and, well…
Respect for the la
w was an integral part of Julianus, as much a part of his DNA as his dark, piercing eyes. And judging from the way the evening was unfolding, it might just end up breeding itself out of the species.
“The Law is clear, Your Grace. Those known or suspected of association with the pretender in Rome shall be detained until a court can be convened to determine their guilt or innocence,” he said.
“You stupid, pointy-nosed little man, I am not a heretic!” the Queen said.
“That is not for me to decide, Your Grace,” Julianus said. He touched his nose self-consciously. “My duty is to detain you until the matter of your guilt or innocence can be determined.”
Queen Margaret was positively vibrating with a seething fury barely contained. “You lowbred offspring of a lowbred imbecile,” she said, enunciating each word more precisely than Julianus thought was strictly necessary. “I will have your head on a pike before sunup tomorrow.” There was a mutter of assent from the guards with the red stripes on their capes. The point of the sword resting on Julianus’s breastplate slid up an inch.
Bag the blag of buggered blaggers.
“You may at that, Your Grace,” he said. “But that does not change the Law.”
Alÿs scurried over to her friend Eleanor, who was standing on her tiptoes. Eleanor was trying to look over the shoulder of the portly Lord Bombardier, a man almost as wide as he was tall and considerable in both dimensions. Roderick scurried after her. He had been assigned to guard Alÿs to prevent her from throwing herself out a window. As the standoff had developed out there in the middle of the dance floor, he had discovered within himself a newfound devotion to obeying orders. Especially as Alÿs seemed disinclined to get any closer to the ring of angry men with swords, or to the Queen. The look on the Queen’s face suggested a sleepless night for the headsman.
“Oi now, where do you think you’re going?” he said to Alÿs.
“I just thought I’d nip off and throw myself out the window,” Alÿs said. “You don’t mind, do you? Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’m not serious. Don’t you have any sense of humor?”
Black Iron Page 4