Shadows of Asphodel

by Karen Kincy

  “What is it?” Ardis said.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. Merely another migraine.”

  “Ah.”

  That was something she would have to watch out for. Headaches might distract him.

  Diesel hailed a taxicab, then helped Ardis load his luggage into the back. When the driver glanced at them in the rearview mirror, his blue eyes met Ardis’s. For some reason, he wrinkled his nose. She stiffened in her seat.

  Diesel pinched the knees of his trousers and tugged them straight as he sat in the taxi.

  “Driver,” he said, “find us the finest nearby café.”

  The driver nodded, but his jaw tightened. He gave the taxi some gas, and they accelerated smoothly away from Antwerp Central. Diesel leaned back in his seat and gazed at the city, but Ardis remained tense.

  “Where are you from?” the driver said, and again he glanced at Ardis.

  “Ghent,” Diesel said. “I’m here on business.”

  “And your friend?”

  He said the word like it was a synonym for prostitute. As if a lady of the night would ever dress so shabbily, or carry luggage for her client.

  “I don’t know,” Diesel said, politely. “We have only just met.”

  “I’m from America,” Ardis said to the driver.

  The driver shook his head. “What are you?”

  She leaned forward in her seat, not bothering to disguise her sneer.

  “I’m a mercenary. And I’m here to make sure this man gets to where he needs to go as safely and quickly as possible. Understood?”

  The driver’s eyes widened, and he gave the taxi more gas. Ardis’s cheeks burned, but she stared steadfastly out the windshield until they pulled up outside of a café. Diesel paid the driver, and they exited the taxi.

  Before he shut the door, Ardis overhead the driver.

  “Filthy Huns,” he muttered.

  She almost laughed. Was he trying to insult her for being half-Chinese, or Diesel for being German? Luckily, Diesel didn’t seem to hear.

  “Ardis, was it?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “I assume you will join me for breakfast?”

  She mustered a smile, and followed him into the café. It smelled strongly of coffee and toast inside, and the wood-paneled walls gleamed with newness. They sat by a window and ordered waffles, which were promptly delivered steaming hot, with heaps of whipped cream and syrupy canned strawberries on the side.

  “Waffles are essential in Belgium,” Diesel said.

  Ardis nodded in reply. She appreciated his friendly chitchat, though this was a mission. She wasn’t here to entertain him.

  As he shook more sugar over his waffle, Diesel glanced at her.

  “American?” he said.

  She nodded and stabbed a strawberry with her fork.

  “They seem more interested in beer than in inventions,” he said, with a small shrug.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I sold the American rights to my engine to Adolphus Busch,” he said, “but he has been too busy with his brewery to profit much from them.”

  Ardis cocked her head. “Is there more profit in London?”

  Diesel held out his hands as if weighing his options.

  “There is more opportunity there,” he said.

  “Why not Germany?”

  His spectacles flashed. “Are you loyal to America?”

  He had a point.

  ~

  At a riverside restaurant, Diesel’s colleagues joined them—two Belgian men, Georges Carels and Alfred Luckmann. From what Ardis could tell, Diesel and Carels were both directors of the Consolidated Diesel Engine Manufacturers. Carels ran a diesel engine factory in Ghent, where Luckmann worked as his chief engineer.

  The men chatted in French, with a smattering of German, over their cream of endive soup.

  French wasn’t a language that Ardis had mastered, so she sat against the wall and tried to be inconspicuous. Carels kept glancing her way and then laughing to his companions. Luckmann sat farther from her, fidgeting when she looked at him, until finally she pretended he was invisible. Diesel merely ignored her.

  Finally, at six o’clock, they left the restaurant and took a taxi to the docks.

  They boarded the SS Dresden, a gleaming steel steamship, and followed the Scheldt River into the sea. Carels and Luckmann disappeared below deck, but Diesel stood at the railing and watched the sun bleed gold into the water.

  Ardis stood behind him, her teeth chattering in the icy sea spray and the wind.

  “It must be dinnertime,” she said. “Your friends are waiting for you.”

  Diesel sighed, and Ardis saw the darkness shadowing his eyes. He looked tired, so very tired, and older than she had thought.

  “I suppose I should spend this one night with them,” he said.

  Ardis frowned. “Aren’t they travelling to London with you? For the meeting?”

  “They are,” he said.

  She edged closer to him, one hand on the hilt of Chun Yi. The deck was nearly deserted at this instant, but soon they would sail outside of the influence of the Hex. Somewhere out on the English Channel, guns could kill again.

  “You know why the archmages sent me,” she said quietly. “You aren’t safe out here.”

  Diesel shrugged. “I am free to sell my patents to whomever I wish. Even if I sell them to the enemies of the German Empire.”

  “Is the profit worth your life?”

  He laughed dryly. “Do you honestly think that they will act upon their threats? My inventions are far too valuable to them.”

  “Your inventions,” she said, “but you are only their inventor.”

  “Only,” he said, and he laughed again.

  Diesel looked back to the horizon. The sun had set, and the water was the dark color of a bruise. He shivered and rubbed his forehead.

  “My friends are waiting for me,” he said in a distant voice, as if to convince himself.

  Ardis touched his elbow, briefly, and walked with him down to the dining saloon. Inside, it felt a bit chilly, but cheery, with white paneling on the walls and electric lights in the chandeliers. Diesel found Carels and Luckmann and joined them at their table. Ardis sat alone nearby, to the obvious curiosity of the waiters.

  She ordered a simple dinner—oxtail stew and boiled potatoes—and remained vigilant.

  The Dresden’s dining saloon was fairly well visited this evening, with perhaps two hundred other passengers dining. None of them looked particularly out of place, but she didn’t expect anyone to attack Diesel in so public of a venue.

  If she had been hired to threaten a man into cooperation, she would do it in his cabin.

  With that in mind, Ardis waited. She watched Diesel joke and laugh with his companions, the darkness outside almost forgotten. He ordered several courses from the menu, encouraged by the flirtatious blonde waitress. Diesel started with the French onion soup, worked his way through halibut in hollandaise sauce, and finished with a chocolate éclair and coffee. Everything looked delicious from where Ardis sat. She poked at her potatoes broodingly, wishing she hadn’t spent so much money at the swordsmith.

  Luckmann fingered a packet of cigarettes. “Shall we go for a stroll?”

  Smiling, Diesel folded his napkin and stood. “That sounds like a fine idea.”

  Ardis abandoned her oxtail stew and moved to follow them.

  “Don’t forget your shadow, Diesel,” Carels teased.

  Carels smiled at Ardis, but he was also looking at her like she was an exotic spice to taste. She brought that out in some men.

  She followed them above deck, where stars glittered in the sky like shattered glass.

  “Cigarette?” Luckmann said.

  Diesel shook his head. “No, thank you.”

  Luckmann shielded his cigarette from the wind and shared a match with Carels. Diesel leaned against the railing and looked heavenward. They talked together, their voices boisterous, and she wondered how much wine they had drunk.


  “Well,” Carels said at last, “I think it time to be in bed.”

  Diesel nodded. “We have an important day ahead of us.”

  Carels leaned forward to clasp Diesel’s arm, and Ardis smelled a whiff of the wine on his breath. He caught her eye and winked.

  “Good night!” he said.

  Diesel lingered while his friends disappeared below deck. The Dresden plowed through a wave, and he stumbled forward. He staggered against the steamship’s railing. Ardis caught him by the elbow before he could fall overboard.

  “Careful!” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said, and he mopped his brow with his handkerchief.

  “Too much wine to drink, sir?”

  Diesel shook his head. “I had no wine, only water and coffee.”

  Ardis’s stomach plummeted. He didn’t stink of alcohol like Carels, but he slurred his words. He gripped the railing, his knuckles tight, then lowered himself awkwardly to the deck. With unfocused eyes, he panted for air.

  “Diesel,” Ardis said, “I need you to stay awake. Diesel!”

  His eyelids closed, and he slumped on the deck. Ardis swallowed down her panic. She couldn’t fight poison with a sword. She leapt to her feet. A blonde woman in a uniform climbed above deck—the waitress from dinner.

  “Get help!” Ardis shouted. “He needs a doctor!”

  The waitress ran toward them, and then Ardis realized how odd it was for a waitress to be above deck so late, even to sneak a cigarette.

  And how easy it would be to slip Diesel poison in his coffee.

  Ardis’s hand twitched to her sword, and she unsheathed Chun Yi in a cascade of sparks. The blonde pulled a pistol from a holster on her thigh and sighted down the barrel with cold determination in her eyes.

  Ardis squared her shoulders. “The Hex might still reach this far.”

  “Want to risk it?” the blonde drawled.

  “Who are you?”

  “Really, darling? You don’t know?”

  The blonde thinned her lips, and Ardis realized she was older than she had thought. Maybe a decade older than her.

  “Natalya,” the blonde said. “Your superior.”

  Ardis narrowed her eyes at the insult. “Superior? Doubtful.”

  “Go back downstairs,” Natalya said. “Nobody has to get hurt.”

  Ardis shook her head. “You already poisoned Diesel.”

  Natalya rolled her eyes. “Amateur.”

  “What?”

  “He’s only unconscious.”

  Ardis glanced down at Diesel, listening to him wheeze for breath, and Natalya slid her foot forward. Her gun gleamed in the starlight. Ardis tightened her grip on her sword and tensed the muscles in her thighs.

  “Listen, darling,” Natalya said. “You brought a sword to a gunfight.”

  Then why wasn’t she firing?

  Ardis decided to find out. She feinted right, then swung left at Natalya’s neck. Natalya ducked—the blade whistled past her ear—and kicked Ardis in the kneecap. Ardis’s leg buckled, and Natalya shoved her sprawling. Ardis hit the deck hard, and the blonde aimed a kick at her face. Ardis rolled and sliced at her leg.

  Natalya danced back. “Put down your pretty little sword.”

  This pretty little sword wanted to taste blood. Ardis could feel Chun Yi’s thirst like a pulse in the palm of her hand.

  Muscles bunching, Ardis surged upright and lunged at Natalya. She judged the angle to hit a vital artery and swung Chun Yi.

  A blur of movement.

  Pain exploded in Ardis’s head. Pistol-whipped, she crashed to the deck. Stars danced before her eyes, and she had to remind herself to breathe. She clamped down on her fear and pushed it far away. Fear could be fatal.

  Blinking fast, she crawled to her knees and raised Chun Yi. Natalya wasn’t standing in front of her anymore.

  There was a grunt, and a scraping noise.

  Head spinning, Ardis staggered to her feet. Natalya dragged Diesel to the railing, hefted him onto the steel, and pushed him over. She watched him fall, and waited until the splash. Then she glanced back at Ardis.

  “You saw nothing,” Natalya said. “If you want to survive.”

  She vaulted over the railing and dove overboard. Ardis followed in her footsteps.

  A long way down, the choppy waters of the English Channel unfurled.

  Nausea washed over Ardis, and she retched. She stumbled to the stern, where the giant propellers of the steamship churned the waves. Out in the darkness, between tatters of fog, she saw a light bobbing in the waves.

  A boat.

  Shadowy figures dragged two people aboard—Diesel and Natalya. The light flickered out, and the boat vanished into the night.

  Ardis slumped on a chair in the deserted dining saloon. The electric lights hurt her eyes, and her stomach still churned. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, and tried to concentrate on what they were saying.

  The steamship captain frowned and scratched his mustache. “He must have been drunk.”

  “I didn’t see him drink any wine,” Carels said. “Diesel was an abstemious man.”

  Nearby, Luckmann wrung his hands and kept quiet.

  The captain bent down to Ardis’s level. “You saw him fall overboard?”

  She nodded, and the movement nearly made her vomit.

  “There—there was a woman,” she said slowly. “A waitress. She was pretending to be a waitress. She gave him poisoned coffee.”

  The captain folded his arms. “Poisoned coffee? Preposterous.”

  When she tried to remember, it was as if her memories were drifting farther away. Carels and Luckmann shared a glance. Even though she was having a hard time focusing, she could see the skepticism on their faces.

  The captain pulled Carels aside, and muttered to him.

  “…she must be intoxicated…”

  What if this was more than a concussion? What if she had been poisoned, too? Fear chilled her blood, and she tried to stand. She staggered to her knees. The men caught her by her elbows. Bitter bile crept into her mouth.

  “I feel sick,” she gasped.

  They brought a bucket, thankfully, and she emptied the contents of her stomach. After vomiting, she sat shivering on the floor.

  The captain touched her shoulder. “Bring this young woman to her room. She’s unwell.”

  Crewmembers escorted her to a cabin and helped her lie down on the narrow bed. She squeezed her eyes shut against the spinning.

  Listen, darling. You brought a knife to a gunfight.

  Put down your pretty little sword.

  Ardis tried to summon the memory of Natalya’s face, but she saw Diesel falling over the railing into the churning dark water.

  You saw nothing.

  ~

  The steamship docked in Harwich at six o’clock in the morning.

  Fog cloaked the coastline of England, and Ardis’s mind felt equally obscured. She was steady on her feet, at least, and no longer nauseated. But she couldn’t remember many of the particulars from last night with Diesel.

  She had to tell the archmages, before she forgot anything more.

  Quickly, she found the nearest telegraph office. It was a relief to hear English spoken at last. She dictated her message to the telegraph operator in English, as well, since she knew Margareta would understand it.

  Diesel overboard still alive taken by mercenary reply at once

  She waited for the reply.

  Return by airship immediately

  Ardis had enough money to stay several nights—she had meant to book a room in Diesel’s hotel upon arrival—but instead she caught a train from Harwich to London, and then a direct flight from London to Vienna.

  The airship was a lumbering beast of a zeppelin, scheduled for a two-hour journey.

  In the cramped seating, Ardis rested Chun Yi across her knees and leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the porthole window. Below, England drifted away like a patchwork quilt of green fields and gray
city. The zeppelin’s shadow rippled over the English Channel, which looked almost insignificant from the air.

  Diesel could be anywhere by now. If Natalya had an accent, she couldn’t recall it.

  By the time Ardis arrived in Vienna, she had a lingering headache. Gingerly, she touched the right side of her head. The pistol had left a painful lump. She stopped by a café for some ice, and wrapped the cubes in a napkin. Ignoring the stares on the street, she held the ice to her head as she walked to the Hall of the Archmages.

  The Council Chamber was empty, so Ardis knocked on the door to Margareta’s office.

  “Come in.”

  Ardis let herself inside and sat at Margareta’s desk, the ice melting and dripping down her hair. She didn’t care how she looked.

  “Ma’am,” Ardis said.

  “What happened?” Margareta said, without any proper introductions.

  “We were attacked, after dinner, on the deck of the Dresden. This blonde dressed as a waitress—Natalya—she pistol-whipped me.”

  Margareta thinned her lips. “It looks rather painful.”

  Ardis nodded and kept a straight face.

  “And Diesel?” the archmage said.

  “Gone. She… she poisoned him. I think. I’m having a hard time remembering.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “Diesel fell overboard, and Natalya jumped after him. A boat came from the fog and took them both aboard. I’m sure of that much.”

  Margareta said nothing for a long moment. “He was drunk, wasn’t he?”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t think he was.”

  “He was drunk,” the archmage said again, “wasn’t he.”

  This time, Ardis realized it wasn’t a question. “Ma’am?”

  Margareta steepled her fingers and looked her directly in the eye.

  “Diesel had too much to drink and fell overboard. An accident. You have no reason to believe otherwise. That is what you saw.”

  The sickening truth of it settled in her stomach. She dropped the ice in her hand on the carpet and watched the widening puddle.

  Ardis’s voice sounded hoarse. “This was staged?”

  “Although it didn’t go according to plan,” Margareta said.

  Ardis pointed to her head. “Was this part of the plan?”

  “Of course not. But we didn’t anticipate that you would be so aggressive. Since when did you use an enchanted sword?”