Blameless: The Parasol Protectorate: Book the Third

by Gail Carriger

  “Queen Victoria,” he said to his Alpha, “is not going to be happy about this. Why the hell didn’t he send someone else to do his dirty work?”

  Lord Maccon did not look up from his self-prescribed penance: bite, lick, bite, lick.

  Together, the three drones hefted their dead master and made their way slowly up the stairs around the earl and Biffy’s still form. Even in their grief, they winced away from the sight of an Anubis feeding. As they passed, Professor Lyall noticed that Lord Maccon’s bullet had hit Walsingham directly in the heart—a lucky shot, indeed.

  A vampire was dead. There weren’t enough of them around to forgive a transgression like that, even from BUR’s chief sundowner. The potentate was a rove, with no major hive connections, and for that Professor Lyall was grateful. But there would be blood payment due to the greater community regardless, and it was the potentate’s relationship with Buckingham Palace that was the real stickler. Even if, by his actions, this vampire had shown himself a traitor to his own kind, kidnapping another’s drone, his absence left a gap Queen Victoria would find hard to fill. He had served as advisor to the throne since Queen Elizabeth’s day. It was his knowledge of Roman strategy and supply management that drove the expansion of the British Empire. For someone like that to die because he had made a mistake, because Alexia Maccon, soulless, had become pregnant by a werewolf and he panicked, was a loss to every British citizen. Even the werewolves would mourn him, in their way.

  Professor Lyall, who was cultured and not given to profanity, watched the drones cart the disanimated potentate away and said curtly, “What a bloody awful mess.”

  After which he stood, silent and waiting, wary and alert, for five long hours while Lord Maccon, stubborn to the last, held Anubis Form and worked over the dying drone.

  The earl’s stubbornness was rewarded when, just before dawn, before all his labor would be lost to the sun, Biffy’s eyes opened, as yellow as buttercups. He howled out his pain and confusion and fear as his form shifted, and he lay there, shuddering but whole, a lovely chocolate-brown wolf with oxblood-red stomach fur.

  Lord Maccon changed out of Anubis Form and grinned hugely at his Beta. “And there’s another one for the howlers to sing about.”

  “What is it with you, my lord? Can you only metamorphose the difficult cases?” Professor Lyall was impressed despite himself.

  “Yes, well, he is your charge now.” Lord Maccon stood and stretched, his spine popping as it realigned. His tawny eyes turned with surprise toward the rapidly lightening sky.

  “Best get him indoors right quick.”

  Professor Lyall nodded and bent to pick up the newly made wolf. Biffy struggled halfheartedly before sagging weakly into the Beta’s strong arms. Metamorphosis took even the best of them like that.

  Lyall made his way silently up the steps to the top of the embankment, thinking hard. They would have to find shelter nearby. A new pup couldn’t take direct sunlight without considerable damage, and poor Biffy had been through more than enough for one night. Just as he figured out a destination and headed purposefully north toward Charing Cross Station, he noticed his Alpha wasn’t following him.

  “Now where are you going, my lord?” he hollered after Lord Maccon’s rapidly retreating back.

  The earl yelled over his shoulder without breaking stride. “I have a boat to catch and a wife to find. You can carry on from here.”

  Lyall would have rubbed his face with his hands, except his arms were full. “Oh, yes, certainly, feel free to depart. And me with a drone changed into a werewolf and a dead potentate. I am certain I have had Alphas leave me with worse messes to tidy up, but I cannot recall them at the moment.”

  “I am sure you will do very well.”

  “Wonderful, my lord. Thank you for your confidence.”

  “Toodles.” And with that, Lord Maccon wiggled his fingers in the air in the most insulting way and disappeared around the side of a building. Presumably, he was heading for a busier part of London where he might stand a better chance of hailing a hackney posthaste for Dover.

  Professor Lyall decided not to remind him that he was completely naked.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Picnicking with Templars

  Alexia took a moment before breakfast to drag Floote into a secluded corner.

  “We must get a message to the queen on this relic business. Or at least to BUR. I cannot believe you knew about it and never told anyone. Then again, I suppose, you never tell anyone anything, do you, Floote? Even me. Still, I know now and so should the British government. Imagine using preternatural body parts as weapons. Just think what they could do if they knew how to mummify.”

  “You are no longer muhjah, madam. The supernatural security of the empire is not your concern.”

  Alexia shrugged. “What can I say? I cannot help myself. I meddle.”

  “Yes, madam. And on a grand scale.”

  “Well, my mama always said, one should do what one is best at on as large a scale as possible. Of course, she was referring to shopping at the time, but I have always felt it was the only sensible sentence she ever uttered in her life.”

  “Madam?”

  “We have managed to keep the mummy business mum, even from Madame Lefoux. The point being, we cannot let anyone know that mummies are useful as a weapon. There would be a terrible run on Egypt. If the Templars are using dead preternatural body parts and they figure out the mummification process, I am in real trouble. Right now it is only natural decomposition, and the fact that they have to preserve tissue in formaldehyde, that keeps preternatural-as-weapon limited to special use.” Alexia wrinkled her nose. “This is a matter of supernatural security. Italy and the other conservative countries must be kept from excavating in Egypt at all costs. We cannot risk them figuring out the truth behind the God-Breaker Plague.”

  “I see your reasoning, madam.”

  “You will need to develop a sudden malaise that prevents you from attending this picnic the preceptor is dragging me on. Get to the Florentine aethographic transmitter by sunset and send a message to Professor Lyall. He will know what to do with the information.” Alexia rummaged about in the ruffle of her parasol until she located the secret pocket and extracted the crystalline valve, which she handed to Floote.

  “But, madam, the danger of you traveling about Italy without me.”

  “Oh, fiddlesticks. Madame Lefoux has entirely refitted my parasol with the necessary armaments. I shall have the preceptor and a cadre of Templars with me, and they’re bound to protect me even if they cannot look at me. I even purchased this.” Alexia exhibited a clove of garlic dangling from a long ribbon about her neck. “I shall be perfectly fine.”

  Floote did not look convinced.

  “If it will help allay your fears, give me one of your guns and some of the spare bullets you purchased yesterday.”

  Floote did not seem at all mollified. “Madam, you do not know how to shoot.”

  “How difficult can it be?”

  Floote ought to have known after a quarter century of association with Alexia that he could not hope to win any argument, especially as a gentleman of few words and even less inclination to use them. With a faint sigh of disapproval, he accepted the responsibility of sending the transmission and left the room, without giving Alexia one of his guns.

  Professor Lyall spent the last hour before dawn coping with the consequences of Biffy’s sudden change into a werewolf and the potentate’s sudden change into a corpse. He began by seeking out the closest safe house, where no one else would think to look for him and his new charge. And since Charing Cross Station was just south of Soho, he headed north toward the Tunstells’ apartments, in all their pastel glory.

  While midnight was considered quite an acceptable hour for calling among members of the supernatural set and among the younger, more dashing mortal crowd—drivers of phaetons and the like—dawn was not. In fact, dawn might be considered the rudest time for anyone to call upon anyone else, with t
he possible exception of groups of hardy fishermen in the backwaters of Portsmouth.

  But Lyall felt he had no choice. As it was, he had to bang on the door a good five minutes or so before a bleary young maid opened it cautiously.

  “Yes?”

  Beyond the maid, Lyall saw a head stick out of a bedroom far down the hall—Mrs. Tunstell in an outrageous sleeping cap that resembled nothing so much as a frothy lace-covered mushroom. “What has happened? Are we on fire? Has someone died?”

  Professor Lyall, still carrying Biffy in wolf form, muscled his way past the astonished maid and into the house. “You might put it like that, Mrs. Tunstell.”

  “My goodness, Professor Lyall! What do you have there?” The head disappeared. “Tunny! Tunny! Wake up. Professor Lyall is here with a dead dog. Arise at once. Tunny!” She came bustling down the hallway wrapped in a voluminous robe of eye-searing pink satin. “Oh, the poor lamb, bring him in here.”

  “Please do forgive me for the presumption, Mrs. Tunstell, but yours was the nearest house.” He lay Biffy down on the small lavender couch and quickly reached behind it to draw the curtains over the window, just as the sun’s first rays peeked above the horizon. Biffy’s previously still form stiffened and then began to shudder and convulse.

  Throwing all decorum to the winds, Professor Lyall rushed at Ivy, got one arm firmly about her waist, and hustled her to the door. “Best you not be here for this, Mrs. Tunstell. Send in your husband, would you, once he awakens?”

  Ivy opened and closed her mouth a couple of times like an affronted poodle, and then whirled to do as he had bidden. There was a woman, Lyall thought, forced into efficiency through prolonged exposure to Alexia Tarabotti.

  “Tunny!” she called, trotting back down the hallway, and then with far greater sharpness, “Ormond Tunstell, wake up. Do!”

  Professor Lyall closed the door and turned back to his charge. He reached into his waistcoat for one of his trusty handkerchiefs, only then remembering he was wearing no more than a greatcoat, retrieved from the shore, having dressed for change, not company. Wincing at his own temerity, he grabbed one of Ivy’s pastel throw pillows and wedged a corner of it into the new werewolf’s mouth, giving Biffy something to bite down upon and also muffling his whimpering. Then Lyall bent low, bracing the shuddering form of the wolf with his own body, curling about him tenderly. It was partly Beta instinct, to protect a new member of the pack, but it was also sympathy. The first time was always the worst, not because it got any better, but because it was so unfamiliar an experience.

  Tunstell let himself into the room.

  “God’s teeth, Professor, what is going on?”

  “Too much to explain fully right now, I’m afraid. Can that wait until later? I’ve got a new pup on my hands and no Alpha to handle him. Do you have any raw meat in the house?”

  “The wife ordered steak, delivered only yesterday.” Tunstell left without needing to be pressed further.

  Lyall smiled. The redhead fell so easily back into his old role of claviger, doing what needed to be done for the werewolves around him.

  Biffy’s chocolate fur was beginning to retreat up to the top of his head, showing skin now pale with immortality. His eyes were losing their yellow hue in favor of blue. Clutching that writhing form, Lyall could feel as well as hear Biffy’s bones breaking and re-forming. It was a long and agonizing shift. It would take the young man decades to master any level of competency. Rapidity and smoothness were markers of both dominance and age.

  Lyall held Biffy the entire time. Held him while Tunstell returned with a large raw steak and fussed about with varying degrees of helpfulness. Held him until, eventually, he was left with an armful of nothing but naked Biffy, shivering and looking most forlorn.

  “What? Where?” The young dandy pushed weakly against the Beta’s arms. His nose was twitching as though he needed to sneeze. “What is going on?”

  Professor Lyall relaxed his embrace and sat back on his heels next to the couch. Tunstell came over with a blanket and a concerned expression. Just before he covered the young man over, Lyall was pleased to notice that Biffy appeared to be entirely healed from the bullet wound, a true supernatural, indeed.

  “Who are you?” Biffy focused fuzzily on Tunstell’s bright red hair.

  “I’m Tunstell. Used to be a claviger to Lord Maccon. Now I’m mostly just an actor.”

  “He is our host and a friend. We will be safe here for the day.” Professor Lyall kept his voice low and calm, tucking the blanket about the still-shivering young man.

  “Is there some reason we need to be? Safe, I mean.”

  “How much do you remember?” Lyall swept a lock of brown hair back behind Biffy’s ear in a motherly fashion. Despite all his transformations, his nudity, and his beard, the young man still looked every inch the dandy. He would make an odd addition to the gruff soldiering masculinity of the Woolsey Pack.

  Biffy jerked and fear flooded into his eyes. “Extermination mandate! I found out that there is a… Oh, dear God, I was supposed to report in! I missed the appointment with my lord.” He made as if to try and rise.

  Lyall held him back easily.

  Biffy turned on him frantically. “You don’t understand—he’ll swarm if I don’t make it back. He knew I was going after the potentate. How could I have gotten caught? I’m such an imbecile. I know better than that. Why, he’ll…” He trailed off. “How long was I down there?”

  Lyall sighed. “He did swarm.”

  “Oh, no.” Biffy’s face fell. “All that work, all those agents pulled out of covert placement. It’ll take years to reintegrate them. He’s going to be so very disappointed in me.”

  Lyall tried to distract him. “So, what do you remember?”

  “I remember being trapped under the Thames and thinking I would never escape.” Biffy brushed one hand over his face. “And that I really needed a shave. Then I remember water flooding in and waking in the darkness to shouting and gunshots. And then I remember a lot of pain.”

  “You were dying.” Lyall paused, searching for the right words. Here he was, hundreds of years old, and he could not explain to one boy why he had been changed against his will.

  “Was I? Well, good thing that didn’t take. My lord would never forgive me if I up and died without asking permission first.” Biffy sniffed, suddenly distracted. “Something smells amazing.”

  Professor Lyall gestured to the plate of raw steak sitting nearby.

  Biffy tilted his head to see, then looked back at Lyall in confusion. “But it’s not cooked. Why does it smell so good?”

  Lyall cleared his throat. As a Beta, he’d never had to perform this particular task. It was the Alpha’s job to acclimatize the newly turned, the Alpha’s job to explain and be there and be strong and be, well, Alphaish for a new pup. But Lord Maccon was halfway to Dover by now, and Lyall was left to deal with this mess without him.

  “You know that dying issue I just mentioned? Well, it did take, in its way.”

  At which juncture, Professor Lyall had to watch those beautiful blue eyes turn from dazed confusion to horrified realization. It was one of the saddest things he had ever seen in all his long life.

  At a loss, Lyall handed Biffy the plate of raw steak.

  Unable to control himself, the young dandy tore into the meat, gulping it down in elegant, but very rapid, bites.

  For the sake of his dignity, both Professor Lyall and Tunstell pretended not to notice that Biffy was crying the entire time. Tears dribbled down his nose and onto the steak while he chewed, and swallowed, and chewed, and sobbed.

  The preceptor’s picnic, as it turned out, was a little more elaborate than Alexia and Madame Lefoux had been led to believe. They trundled a sizable distance into the countryside, away from Florence in the direction of Borgo San Lorenzo, arriving eventually at an archaeological excavation. While the antiquated carriage attempted to park on a hillock, their Templar host announced with much pride that they would be engaging in an Etru
scan tomb picnic.

  The site was lovely, shaded with trees of various bushy Mediterranean inclinations that took being leafy and green quite seriously. Alexia stood up while the carriage maneuvered around, the better to take in her surroundings.

  “Do sit down, Alexia! You shall fall, and then how will I explain to Floote that you had—” Madame Lefoux stopped herself before she inadvertently mentioned Alexia’s unfortunate condition in front of the preceptor, but it was clear her worry was largely for the child’s safety.

  Alexia ignored her.

  They were surrounded by a series of tombs: low, circular, and grass covered, almost organic in appearance, quite unlike anything Alexia had ever seen or read about. Never having visited anything more stimulating than a Roman bathhouse, Alexia was practically bouncing with excitement—if a lady once more corseted and trussed up to the height of proper British fashion and encumbered by both parasol and pregnancy could be described as “bouncing.” She sat down abruptly when their carriage went over a bump.

  Alexia refused, on principle, to admit that her new high spirits were on account of Conall’s printed apology, but the world certainly seemed a far more fascinating place today than it had yesterday.

  “Do you know anything of these Etruscans?” she whispered to Madame Lefoux.

  “Only that they came before the Romans.”

  “Were they supernaturally based or a daylight exclusive society?” Alexia asked the next most important question.