The Jackal's House

by Anna Butler

  I copied his method of locomotion. I can’t say it was the most dignified way of getting down a set of stairs, but it did the trick. Within a few moments, we were inside the enclosed deck in the passageway that led to the stern.

  Six staterooms, three on each side, with the door to the saloon facing us at the other end of the passage. We checked each one, Hugh opening doors while I wielded a pistol set to neural disrupter charge. The glow from the aether chamber gave us just enough light to see by, yet wasn’t so bright as to disturb the occupant of the stateroom, if any.

  Not that there were any. Each stateroom was empty. No sign of Harry or Archambault anywhere.

  What’s more, not one of the stateroom doors was locked. I stood at the last door, tapping on the stanchion with a fingernail. This casual attitude to locking up captives was unprofessional, to say the least. Unlocked doors suggested no captives at all. Had we hared up the canal on a wild goose chase? If so, where in each of the seven hells was Harry and Archambault?

  The two of us fetched up outside the closed saloon door, looking, I suspect, rather silly and disconcerted—two conspirators who’d somehow fallen into the wrong plot.

  I pressed my ear against the saloon door. A murmur of voices, no more. Certainly the actual conversation could not be distinguished, but the cadences and intonations…. I knew for certain, now, who had tried to have me killed at Christmas. I’d suspected since the Pasha had mentioned it the previous day, but now I was sure.

  Englishmen One and Two were on the other side of that door.

  “What now?” Hugh asked. He, of course, had no idea what we were facing. His voice, a mere soft breath, was barely to be heard.

  I straightened up. “I suppose I had better just go and ask.”

  My voice was no louder than Hugh’s had been, but its effect was mildly comical. Now he looked like a conspirator who had stuck a finger into an aether-electrical generator: eyes wide, mouth dropping open.

  “Are you mad?” Hugh mouthed the words at me in emphatic fashion, in lieu, I suspected, of shouting to relieve his feelings.

  I couldn’t answer in the negative, to be honest. It was a wild idea born of desperation. I pointed at Hugh and then at the nearest stateroom—I didn’t want all my eggs in the one basket, and I fancied I might well need him to come to the rescue before all was done that night.

  Hugh rolled his eyes, but his frown, his downturned mouth, and the way he shifted his weight from one foot to the other betrayed his anxiety. Still he accepted the Marconi I removed from my ear, and my pistol—Lancaster guile and a good dose of the Lancaster Luck were needed here, not weapons—and went to the stateroom door.

  “Come in when Anubis arrives,” I said quietly and opened the saloon door.

  I stepped inside before closing the door behind me. A big semicircular room, the saloon filled the stern of the boat. A wide divan, thick with cushions, had been fitted along the curved wall at the back of the boat beneath a bank of windows. In daytime, this would be a well-lit room. With its scarlet curtains closed and rich mahogany furnishings, it had the look of one of the better gentleman’s clubs.

  There were five people in the saloon. Archambault sat at one end of the curving divan, his back to the windows overlooking the village street. Harry was curled up beside him, apparently asleep with his head on Archambault’s lap. A thin Aegyptian in a Western suit sat a few feet from them. The remaining two men occupied a pair of leather club armchairs set before a carved fireplace. Harry aside, they all stared at me as if I were a conjurer’s rabbit, popping up out of a top hat.

  I smiled.

  “Good evening, John, Peter. I see you have our missing belongings, after all.”

  Chapter 27

  JOHN LEAPT to his feet with an oath that I could not repeat in mixed company, jerking up with such force that his chair squealed and skidded backward over the polished decking. It teetered for an instant when it reached the edge of the thick Persian rugs, then went over with a satisfying thud. Peter let out the pained squeal of a man whose underclothing has suddenly contracted to something five sizes smaller. His eyes bulged, his face flushed the shade of scarlet a doxy might use as lip-rouge, and all he was able to do was clutch at his throat and make strangled choking sounds. There he sat, the tall dark-haired man with the red face.

  The thin Aegyptian suppressed a start, jerking slightly where he sat. He kept his face as impassive as a Pharaonic statue. By contrast, old M. Archambault sagged against the wall of the saloon. He rested one hand on Harry’s head, and even at that distance, I could see how it trembled. The other hand he passed over his face before nodding and giving me a tremulous smile. Harry didn’t stir. Asleep? Even through the noise John made?

  “You!” John appeared to have a natural talent for farce.

  “Surely you were expecting me, John.” I took a half step to the right, the better to see Harry’s face. He was frowning, but his eyes remained tightly closed.

  “How in hell did you know we were here?”

  I stared for a moment. “You are sitting on the dahabiya known to be rented to a secretive Englishman, who is supposed to be exploring the antiquities of this area but who has carefully avoided coming within half a mile of the biggest ancient site there is. Perhaps you can work out how I suspected you were here, John, and perhaps next time you want to sneak and hide, you won’t entrust my idiot brother to set it up for you.”

  John shot Peter an ugly look. If Peter had any sense, he’d crawl under John’s upturned chair and get out of range. But all he did was sit and gape at me, his mouth making the ob-ob-ob shapes of a codfish gulping air for the first time.

  Really, John trusted Peter far too much, given my dear brother’s incompetence was behind the breach between Stravaigor House and our Convocation master, the Cartomancer, from which all the House’s ills had flowed. If nothing else, that showed Peter couldn’t be trusted to cross a road unaided. He couldn’t even find a sensible place to hide. They couldn’t sail much farther north before running out of open water and grounding the dahabiya in silt, and their escape route south would bring them right under the Gallowglass guards’ guns. I suspected that fact hadn’t even crossed their minds. Far be it from me to enlighten them. The more confident they were, the better.

  I looked beyond their flushed, angry faces to the Aegyptian. Something about the shape of his narrow face, the set of his jaw, was familiar. “You, I expect, are Mr. Nazeer Sulayman.”

  Sulayman made a cursory bow, his hands moving in a sinuous approximation of the usual Aegyptian salaam that had more threat about it than greeting.

  I slipped my right hand into my trouser pocket, seeking some change to jingle. A few thin Aegyptian shillings were all my fingers could find to turn over and over—and the little scarab I’d found in the tunnel. My fingers closed over it, giving it the welcome owed an old friend.

  I nodded. “The Pasha would like a word with you, I believe.”

  His answering grin was predatory.

  “How in hell did you get aboard?” John’s eyes rivaled Peter’s when it came to bulging.

  “Oh, I shinned up the anchor chain.”

  He choked in a most satisfying way. Although, really, if he’d employed a scrap of imagination and observation, it must have been obvious from the state of my clothes. The fronts of my trousers and shirt were damp and slimy green.

  The Aegyptian, however, smothered a curse and leapt up. He pulled aside the curtains at the stern windows, pressing up against the glass to squint down. “There’s a boat. No one in it. Must have got up onto the roof.”

  “Oh, I did.” I kept my tone as cheerful as I could manage, with all the insouciance of the English Gentleman at Bay.

  John choked again. “You’re alone?”

  I made a sweeping gesture at the empty space behind me, but I forbore to lie outright.

  Peter tugged at John’s sleeve. “He’ll be armed, John.”

  “I dare say. Sulayman, deal with it please.”

  The
Aegyptian grinned. I offered no resistance. The scarab slipped from my fingers. I left it in my pocket as I raised my arms to keep the hidden Marconi from being found. Sulayman patted me down and retrieved my little hideaway gun from my jacket pocket.

  “A popgun!” He laughed, twirled the gun over his finger, right in my face, and backed away to his place on the divan, too near Harry and Archambault for my comfort.

  “It stops a man just as well as a cannon,” I said, and Sulayman’s smile faded. I gained the impression he didn’t like me much.

  “Yes, they do.” And John, to my everlasting surprise, pushed up his left sleeve and slid an almost identical little pistol from a holster strapped to his forearm. The grin he gave me boded ill for my future health.

  “I can’t believe he came alone,” Peter said in his usual fretful tone.

  Sulayman stuffed my little gun into his pocket. “The guards are quiet, and they’d have reacted if they saw anything. I’ll check.”

  He strode out of the saloon.

  I turned my attention to Archambault. “Harry?”

  “They gave him something to keep him quiet. He was very upset when Fran—” Archambault stopped and shook his head. “Laudanum, I think.”

  “We haven’t hurt the brat.” John righted his chair and sat down in it with an ungraceful thump, returning his little gun to its holster.

  They let me join Harry and Archambault with little more than another of those high-pitched squeaks from Peter. John waved a lordly, dismissive hand in my direction and pretended to find the glass of scotch that Peter rushed to pour for him far more interesting than anything I was up to. Peter poured himself a hefty dram or two as well, I noticed.

  Archambault’s trembly hand gripped mine for an instant before he shifted, pressing back against the divan cushions to give me room to raise Harry’s head. The child was flushed, a little too hot to the touch, and deeply asleep. Despite the marks of tears plain on his face, he didn’t appear to be hurt. He didn’t stir when I brushed his hair back.

  “I am sorry, Rafe, that my cousin’s son….” Archambault choked and shook his head. His voice was a mere thread. “I had no idea that my letters…. I write to her always, you see, we are so close…. He came to the house… forced his way in….”

  His cousin’s son? John?

  I touched the old man’s hand to stop him and mouthed the words at him. “Be ready.”

  Archambault’s watery eyes met mine. He was far too clever to nod, but he gathered Harry into his lap, getting his arms around the child.

  I glanced at John, who smirked back. I nailed down a vague memory. The Stravaigor had said he had a link to Ned in Aegypt but not a strong one. John’s mother was French, and there was the connection, lines linking us all like threads in a spiderweb: Ned to Archambault to Madame Stravaigor to the Stravaigor to John to me. Archambault had kept quiet about having an interest in my House. Not that it was anything to boast of, mind. I wasn’t going to point a finger at him for that. There were more important things to worry about.

  I brushed Harry’s hair back again and stooped to press my lips against the child’s forehead. He had such a look of his father about him in the shape of eyes, nose, and mouth. I’d get him out.

  I turned back to John just as Sulayman returned to the saloon. The Aegyptian gave me another of those dark glances. “All quiet. The guards saw nothing, so maybe he did come up via the anchor chain. No one on the upper deck, and the staterooms are empty. I’ve rousted out the crew to help stand guard. Nothing will get past them.”

  I hoped devoutly he was wrong, there. Not to mention I wondered where Hugh had hidden so well that Sulayman had missed him.

  I took a few steps away from Harry. If there was to be any sort of altercation, I wanted him and Archambault to be out of the line of fire. I fetched up almost back in my original position, back to the door, facing John and Peter. “What do you think you’re doing, taking the Gallowglass child? You do know Ned Winter has a couple of dozen guards on hand? Are you mad?”

  John glowered, and Archambault said, “They promised they would not hurt Harry, Rafe. He was taken as leverage to be returned when they got you in exchange.”

  I shook my head, in pitying fashion. “A couple of dozen Gallowglass guards, John, who are a touch vexed with you. I’d go so far as to say they are several kinds of very upset. What in hell were you thinking?”

  Sulayman returned to his seat with a lazy, loose-limbed gait intended, I think, to signal his indifference. “They’ll be too busy trying to get Winter out of that tunnel.”

  I opened my mouth to brush that aside… and closed it again, the words we got him out a couple of hours ago unsaid. If they believed themselves safe from the guards, if they believed that Gallowglass’s focus was solely on the collapsed temple entrance, that might play to my advantage. “Were you responsible for that?”

  He smiled and made that mocking obeisance again. “A false beard, a galabeyya, and you walked past me three times a couple of days ago, Lancaster, and didn’t realize I wasn’t one of your normal work crew. We all look alike to you Englishmen, do we not? Blowing up the village generator was easy. Setting charges in the tunnel was easy. Slipping away afterward was easy.”

  “Dying when Gallowglass catches up with you will be easy too.” The faint familiarity explained, I dismissed him with a shrug, returning my attention to John. He crossed his arms over his chest in a move I suspect he thought looked imposing. It looked decidedly defensive to me. “What are you about, John? What can you possibly achieve with this but war with Gallowglass?”

  He glanced sidelong at M. Archambault. “Cousin Raoul has it right, Rafe. I would never harm the Gallowglass boy. It’s you I want.”

  “Then you’d better allow Archambault to take Harry back to Abydos. That may weigh in your favor when Gallowglass gets here.”

  “I might. But then, where are they, those Gallowglass guards?” He looked around in exaggerated fashion. “I don’t see them.”

  I didn’t reply, except by allowing my mouth to twitch into a faint smile and inclining my head.

  “So, no.” John sat back and smirked. “I’ll let the brat go when I’m good and ready.”

  “Your father won’t be pleased. You’re risking everything he’s done to improve relations with Gallowglass.”

  “My father. Yes. My dear, dear papa. I devoutly hope he won’t be around to worry about it—and nor will he, when I get back.” John’s expression darkened. His tone surprised me with the depth of hostility and hate, but he waved a hand as if waving his father away with it. “Allow me to turn your question back upon you, Rafe. What are you about, coming here alone? What did you expect to achieve by it?”

  “Oh, consider me a sort of scout, if you like. A reconnaissance party of one. I couldn’t be sure you had Harry and Archambault. I thought that if what the Pasha told me tod—no, early yesterday now, isn’t it? Well, if what he said was correct, I suspected our mysterious Englishman might be Harry’s kidnapper. I thought I’d come along and see for myself. I admit, it wasn’t until I pressed my ear to the door that I realized you weren’t a mystery at all.” I took a step forward. “John, I want Harry away from here and safe. Whatever your animus against me, he’s a child. Let him go. Let Archambault take him back.”

  “Oh, very touching.” John appeared to be gaining in confidence, sitting straight and proud. “This is so tedious. The simple fact is that I want you gone. You annoy me, and you are inconveniently in my way. Sulayman has been paid to remove you. Do kill him, Sulayman, and toss him overboard for the crocodiles.”

  “Oh,” came a new voice from the door. “I wouldn’t do that, Mr. John.”

  A medium-sized man in a dapper linen suit lounged against the door stanchion, his bald head crowned with an incongruous bowler hat. But for the long-barreled gun sloped up against his shoulder, he looked like a shopkeeper.

  As I lived and breathed.

  Tatlock.

  The Stravaigor’s right-hand killer.


  WHAT A melodramatic tableau we made, all staring in astonished surprise.

  I slid my hand back into my trouser pocket again, to find the scarab to play with. John went red, then white, while Peter gobbled like a turkey.

  A small Aegyptian in a striped galabeyya bobbed up at Tatlock’s elbow and said something in Arabic to Sulayman before bobbing away again with some alacrity. He had evidently correctly interpreted Sulayman’s expression. Our Coptic assassin was not pleased.

  “The guard says this is a Stravaigor man. He walked up to the gangplank and demanded to come on board.” Sulayman looked at John and Peter, and raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes. Yes, he is.” Peter’s mouth dragged down, his brow creasing into a deep frown.

  John scowled. “What in heaven’s name are you doing here, Tatlock?”

  “Your father sent me, sir. He was concerned-like that you’d gone to foreign parts without a guard with you. He’d have sent one, if he’d known.”

  “You’re here to protect me?” John’s voice rose. Indignation or astonishment, I couldn’t quite tell which.

  “It’s my job, sir, to protect him and his Heir.”

  John’s mouth, never a generous organ, twisted into a thin-lipped sneer. “Ah yes. And I am his Heir. I didn’t think he’d even notice I was gone.”

  “Oh, he noticed, sir. He’s quite a knowing cove.”

  John laughed, looked at me, and actually managed to curl his lip, lifting one side of his mouth in acidic contempt. “He is indeed. Too damn knowing. And so I must dispose of Rafe, here.”

  That he didn’t like me, I’d known for years. But to the point of murder? “Why?”

  “You know what this is about. Don’t pretend you don’t.” The venom in his tone would have melted high-grade steel.