Scoundrel

by Zoë Archer

  “You abducted me from my cabin in the middle of the night, forced me off my ship, stuck me in a minuscule boat, and then brought me here,” London said, her voice surprising her with its strength. “If all you want to do is talk, then it sure as hell had better be good.”

  Chapter 4

  Mrs. Harcourt’s Education

  She refused all offers of food and drink. No coffee or wine or figs. She would not sit comfortably inside upon some cushions. She would do nothing except keep her place, clutching the wine bottle, until an explanation was provided as to who these people were and what they wanted with her.

  London gave them this much credit. Neither Drayton, nor the woman called Athena, nor any of the sailors brandished any weapons or threatened her. But the night was only just beginning.

  Seeing that London was not to be moved except by force, Drayton brought out a folding chair for Athena and, after seating her, leisurely paced back and forth on the deck. The soft lantern light cast him in a burnished glow, illuminating the pristine lines of his face. As he paced, his boots made a soft staccato as they struck the wooden floor, but his step was light and nimble. Now London knew just how agile, the proof of which had been her undetected abduction from a ship bristling with armed men. And, she acknowledged in the innermost recesses of her mind, she’d felt the movements of Drayton’s body, his strength and ability. Finely wrought, potently masculine.

  She chided herself a fool to think of such things when that man had taken her from her ship and was, no doubt, her father’s enemy. Which made him her enemy.

  “What do you know of your father’s work?” Drayton asked her, as if reading her thoughts.

  “I know enough,” London shot back. She would give neither Drayton nor his refined female companion any true information.

  “It’s the same work as your brother, and your late husband,” he said. “It takes them away and they don’t come home for long periods of time.”

  “If they come back,” added Athena.

  London’s gaze flew to the Greek woman. “Maybe you have something to do with that,” she snapped.

  Instead of contradicting London outright, Athena shrugged, her hands neatly folded in her lap. London turned her eyes back to Drayton. He looked uncharacteristically grave.

  “Sometimes, it comes to that,” he said, a trace of regret in his voice. “But, know that our cause is good. We never want to hurt anyone. Yet there are occasions when there’s no choice.”

  A thrill of newfound fear snaked through London. These people were killers. “Is now one of those occasions?”

  “Absolutely not. Mrs. Harcourt,” he said sincerely, “you’ve got to understand that, no matter what your father has told you about us, our goal is to protect life, not harm it or take it away.”

  “Who is this ‘we’ and ‘our’ you keep talking about, Mr. Drayton?” she demanded.

  He stopped pacing and dragged his hands through his thick, dark hair. “Firstly, my name isn’t Ben Drayton. It’s Bennett Day. And this is Athena Galanos.” The Greek woman regally inclined her head at the introduction.

  A small, frantic laugh burst from London’s throat. This wasn’t a tearoom. “Very well, Mr. Day,” she said, tamping down her incipient hysteria. She was actually rather amazed that she had not dissolved completely into crazed tears and was, in fact, fairly lucid and steady. She clutched the bottle tighter in her hand. “We’ve gotten those niceties out of the way. Give me answers.”

  He turned to Athena. “Now that she’s here, I’m not certain what to say.”

  “That is because you have to be serious, for a change,” the woman said dryly.

  London smothered a smile. Whomever this Athena Galanos was, she certainly knew Bennett Day well enough.

  “Just begin at the beginning,” Athena said as Day hesitated.

  “I’ll need some visual assistance,” he answered.

  Athena sighed, then rose to her feet. She closed her eyes and let her hands drift open, as if she held an invisible object. Then she began to speak softly in a smooth whirl of words. London recognized some of them. Light. Strength. Goddess. An ancient language originating from the cradle of time, nestled in the heart of Assyria.

  For a moment, there were only the sounds of Athena chanting to herself and the slap of the waves against the hull of the boat, the wind snapping the sails. And then, so faint as to be almost undetectable, came a trill, like a songbird on a distant tree. London glanced around to see where the sound came from, thinking, perhaps, that one of the sailors played upon a pipe, but it was not so. The sailors clustered in the boat’s stern, watching Athena. Day, too, had his attention fixed on the Greek woman.

  A glowing orb formed in the space between Athena’s hands. London gaped. It was small, at first, no bigger than a croquet ball, but then grew larger and larger, until it was almost three feet in diameter. The deck of the ship was bathed in an amber light, surpassing even the lanterns’ illumination.

  “What is that?” breathed London.

  “Magic, Mrs. Harcourt,” Day answered.

  She shook her head. “Magic does not exist. That”—she gestured toward the luminous orb—“is some kind of spiritualist trick. Like a false medium at a séance.”

  “No trick here. Nothing false. See for yourself.”

  Slowly, London walked toward Athena and the ball of light. As London neared, she felt the air turn warm and alive. Her skin buzzed with a million tiny vibrations, a host of microscopic butterflies beating their wings against her. She reached a hand toward the orb, then hesitated.

  “You may touch it,” Athena said in a whisper.

  London pressed the fingers of her free hand to the surface, then, finding it yielding, pushed them deeper into the globe. It felt like honey, thick and unctuous, but honey made of distilled energy. London pulled her hand back, and small golden droplets clung to her fingers before dissipating into wisps of light that vanished into the starry darkness.

  Understanding slammed into her. This was no spiritualist ruse. It was real. Real magic. The bottle slipped from her stunned fingers and rolled away.

  She stumbled backward, swung her eyes to Bennett Day. He did not seem at all surprised by what should have been impossible.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t understand how this can be.”

  “The world, Mrs. Harcourt, is filled with magic,” said Day. “It exists everywhere and in everything. You see—” He waved toward the orb, which shifted into a topographical globe, continents and oceans forming from the energy. And connecting the land masses and the bodies of water was an infinite lacework of brighter light. “It’s been this way since humans formed societies and cultures. With knowledge came magic.”

  “But I was always taught…I mean, everybody learned that it wasn’t real, it was for fairy stories and old myths.”

  “As mankind developed, so did its capacity for destruction and abuse. Magic needed to be hidden to keep humanity from annihilating itself. And so it was sheltered in legend. But that didn’t stop others from concentrating it into physical things, tangible objects that hold great power. Those objects are known as Sources.”

  “Sources,” London repeated on a breath. Even saying the word made the shining globe pulse brighter.

  “Sources are found all over the world,” Day continued. “Most are safely hidden from those that would exploit them. But that doesn’t keep people from trying to find the Sources, using them for their own gains.”

  “What kinds of gains?”

  “Some of them small and selfish,” said Athena. “Wealth. Love.”

  Day said, “But there are others, larger organizations, who want the Sources to expand their nation’s power to the cost of everyone else. Especially now that the world is expanding, the hidden corners of the planet being forced into the hard glare of an empire’s sun. Such organizations can be found in all countries seeking to dominate the globe. They’re even found,” he added, looking hard at her, “in England.”


  London swallowed tightly. “And that’s who you are.”

  “No. We’re the few who try to stop them. The Blades of the Rose.”

  The name held a potent resonance. “Only you and Miss Galanos?”

  “There are many other Blades, found all over, but there are never enough. Our enemy is large and powerful.”

  A sudden chill caused London to pull her robe tighter around her body. She felt as though she stood at the very edge of a great abyss. Any moment she could fall into it, disappearing forever. She was afraid to know more. She had to know everything.

  She began, “And those people in England, the ones who want the Sources—”

  “They call themselves the Heirs of Albion,” he said.

  London wrapped her arms around herself.

  “The name alone gives you an idea of what they believe in,” added Athena darkly. She lowered her hands and the luminous orb disappeared. “England first. Above all and any. They do not care who or what stands in their way. They pillage and plunder Sources, eradicating any who oppose them, and subjugate whoever has the misfortune of being left alive.”

  An awful thought, horrible to contemplate. But, then…she remembered hearing her father, her brother, Lawrence, and other men of their circle discussing heatedly how England deserved the greatest share of the empire, that the world was populated by savages and children who needed England’s guiding hand. They never spoke this way in front of her, of course, but London caught snippets of conversation as she passed them huddled in groups at parties or gathered in smoking rooms, away from women and frivolity.

  Those men. Lawrence. Jonas. Her father. Oh, God.

  London clutched herself tighter. “I cannot believe you.”

  “Opium,” Day said flatly.

  “They didn’t invent opium,” London shot back.

  “No, they didn’t,” he answered. “But the Heirs helped England develop its crops in India and turn it into profit. The Heirs ensured Britain could peddle opium in China, turn the entire country into a land of poppy addicts. They used Llyr’s Might to defeat Chinese ships, and brought the whole of the nation to its knees. The Heirs were there, again, fourteen years later, your father among them.”

  “I was a child then,” London protested. “I can’t vouch for the whereabouts of my father when I was only seven years old.”

  Athena asked, “Do you recall the autumn of 1868? Lawrence Harcourt, your late husband, was away then, wasn’t he?”

  London nodded slowly, recalling how they had only lately returned from their bridal journey before Lawrence insisted he had important work to do, and was gone for several months. It was the first of what was to be many absences. She remembered how empty and silent their house was, how she’d wandered the rooms like a specter haunting her own marriage.

  “He was in India,” Day said. “In Tirupati, stealing a Source from a temple dedicated to the god Venkateswara. Later, the Source was used to crush a pocket of rebellion in the Aravalli mountains. Women and babies killed.”

  “Using India’s own magic against itself,” Athena added.

  “He came home,” London said, her mind drifting back, “recovering from malaria. By the time he was fully well, he was gone again.” Not before they’d gotten into yet another awful fight, and he’d exercised his husbandly rights only once.

  Was it true, what Day and Athena Galanos said?

  “Gone to Constantinople,” Day said. “He was wounded there, by Tony Morris, a Blade. A cut across his left shoulder.”

  She knew the scar. “No,” London said, her chest constricting.

  “Yes,” said Day.

  “You’re wrong!”

  He shook his head sadly. London turned to Athena Galanos and saw pity and truth in the woman’s eyes. It could not be, but it was, and everything fell to pieces, crashing around London and crushing her beneath the rubble.

  “Lawrence?” she asked. “Truly?”

  Day nodded, his expression shuttered. “He was one.”

  “And my father,” she choked, “who is he to these Heirs of Albion?”

  “He has a seat within the inner circle,” Day said. “As his father did, and his father before him. I imagine that Jonas will take over, someday.”

  London fought back tears. “No. Jonas never leaves the house. Some months ago, he came back from a trip abroad. Burned. Scarred.” She and Jonas had never gotten along. He was a bully, stole her toys and tore up her books when they were children. And when they grew older, neither had much to do with the other. Even so, she would not for all the world have wished such a fate upon him.

  “From the Transportive Fire,” Day said grimly. “In Mongolia. He was with Henry Lamb, trying to seize a Source for the Heirs. The Blades stopped them.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I was there when it happened.”

  Her throat felt tight, choking her. She thought she would be ill. “You caused Jonas’s burns.”

  “Your brother fled by jumping into the Fire. None of us touched him.”

  She barely heard Day, her mind a whirling mass as she struggled to make sense of a world in ruins. “If what you say is true, about my father and Jonas and Lawrence, then this entire time, since I was born until now, I have been living under their roofs, eating their food, wearing their clothes.”

  “All paid for in blood,” Athena said, blunt.

  “Mrs. Harcourt,” Day began gently, taking a step toward her. “London.”

  She gazed at him with stricken eyes, stopping him. “I never knew. I don’t think any of us women knew.” She thought of her mother, all the wives and daughters of her father’s associates, shopping, giving parties, paying calls, the girls playing with their dolls in nurseries, later making their society debuts. Each of them culpable by silent consent to rape the world of its magic and profit by its theft. While the dead remained mute but accusing, hovering in the corners of conservatories and over trim green lawns.

  “The Heirs do not allow women into their ranks,” said Athena. “However, you seem to be an exception.”

  “Me? I’m not doing anything for them!” She shook her head in denial, even though she knew her protests to be futile, even to herself.

  “But that’s why your father has brought you here,” Day explained. “He needs you to translate the ruins on Delos in order to find a Source. He wouldn’t have taken you to Greece, involved you with the Heirs, unless the Source he sought was extremely powerful.”

  Athena added, “We’ve learned, recently, that the Heirs have recently seized the legendary Primal Source from Africa.”

  “The Primal Source is the oldest and most powerful Source of all,” Day said, grimly. “No one knows what will happen once the Heirs unlock its secrets. Something incomprehensible. All we can do now is keep them from taking more Sources, including the one here in Greece.”

  That meant the literal fate of millions could rest on London. It almost made her laugh. She was no one special. Just a well-bred widow who happened to love languages. She had been taught from birth that she should bring honor to her family, a quiet adornment who softened the hard edges of the world. But who had taught her this? Her father. An Heir of Albion. But she could stop him and the Heirs. If she chose.

  “And that is why you brought me here,” she said, waving toward the caique. “Because it is my translation that will guide them.”

  “Yes.” Day came closer, until he stood not a foot away. They stared at one another. Even in the midst of this chaos, London felt it anew, the insistent pull that drew her toward him, itself a kind of spell or charm that possessed no countermeasure. When he reached for her, she did not pull back. And when his fingers lightly brushed over her cheek, the softest, barest touch, she let her eyes close for a moment. Solace. Support. She found them with him in this newly minted world. “The Blades need you, London,” he said quietly.

  She did pull away, then, turning from him and walking to the rail. A clear and endless night on every side. Water and s
ky both black and shimmering with stars. She wanted to be swallowed up in the blackness, to disappear, weighted down with secrets. Somewhere out there were her father, Fraser, Chernock. All of them were Heirs of Albion. How long would it take before they realized she was missing? And when they did, what would happen then?

  “I don’t know what you think I can do for you,” London said, still looking out at the sea.

  “Join us,” he said from close behind her. “Join our fight.”

  London managed a strangled laugh. “How funny you are, Mr. Day. In case you had not noticed, I’m not much of a fighter. I posed not the smallest obstacle when you took me from my cabin.”

  “We’ll teach you to defend yourself—”

  “And I haven’t any magical ability.”

  “Athena is a rarity in the Blades. We hold to a creed whereby none can wield magic that isn’t ours by right or gift. She’s born into a long line of witches. And I,” he said, standing nearer so that she was bathed in the warmth of his body, “am just a man.”

  With an indrawn breath, London suddenly realized she was wearing only her nightclothes, and nothing underneath them. Only now, with him so close, did she become aware of this, how bare she really was. He might not have possessed true magic, but he commanded his own kind of sorcery over her.

  She faced him and had to tilt her head back to look into his eyes. She breathed, “What you ask of me is impossible. I cannot simply turn my back on my father, my family, everything I have ever known. I must give my father a chance to refute these allegations.”

  Day opened his mouth as if to argue, but Athena’s voice cut in. “Bennett, we shall not force her. A Blade must always use their own will and never impose theirs on anyone else. So stop looming over the woman and let her think.”