The Iscariot Sanction

by Mark Latham

  Hu bowed again. The Artist waved him away, and he hurried backwards out of the room, closing the door as he left.

  The Artist turned again to the painting and smiled. His place was not to judge, nor to intervene in earthly matters. His place was to use his gift as his conscience—or lack of it—dictated. His place was to provide information, and to make money. No more, and no less.

  He took a deep breath, pleased with his day’s work, and turned back to his reflection. He admired once more the chiselled features, and the sleek torso that, in the reflection, was curiously free of tattoos. He smiled at his reflection, and the man in the mirror merely nodded, knowingly, and turned back to his own studio, in the mirror-world.

  SIXTEEN

  Sir Toby Fitzwilliam stepped though the screen that separated Lillian’s hospital quarters from the rest of the large, empty ward, and placed a hand on Lord Hardwick’s shoulder.

  ‘How is she, old friend?’ he asked.

  Hardwick said nothing; he sat motionless in his chair and stared at his sleeping daughter. To Sir Toby’s eyes, Lillian looked as though she were dead. Her skin was pale and hard, free of the suppleness and colour of life. Her dark-brown hair made a ghastly contrast against her pallid features. Her lips and fingernails were grey-blue, her eyelids dark, and her breathing so shallow that she would doubtless pass for a corpse in any mortuary in the land.

  It was Cherleten who answered, stepping from the shadows. Sir Toby had not realised he had been there.

  ‘We have performed every test that we know,’ he said.

  ‘And?’ Sir Toby had no patience for Cherleten’s obstructiveness at the best of times.

  ‘It is as I suspected. The process is… irreversible.’

  Sir Toby sucked the air through his teeth, his eyes upon Hardwick, who held his peace.

  ‘If they made it so, why can it not be unmade?’

  ‘It is not a disease, to be transmitted through infection,’ Cherleten explained. ‘If it were, the Knights Iscariot would be no threat to us. She is transformed, fully. She might as well have been born this way.’

  ‘And so their threat to the world is revealed,’ Hardwick said, absently.

  ‘Quite,’ Cherleten agreed. ‘They threaten to do this to the prince, and reveal the results to the world. Can you imagine?’ There was an edge of gleefulness to his tone that riled Sir Toby at once.

  ‘This is not some scandal to be whispered of at the card table,’ Sir Toby chided.

  ‘Of course not. But it rather puts us on the back foot, does it not?’

  ‘What becomes of Agent Hardwick?’

  ‘She will be sedated until we are sure we can control her. And then we will begin her rehabilitation. If such a thing is possible.’

  Lillian had not spent long awake since returning to the club two days prior. She had not submitted peacefully to testing, and had been gripped by fits of rage and uncontrollable bloodlust, which had only been sated with massive blood transfusions. She drifted from lucidity to madness with alarming speed, as though possessed by two intellects, and had already injured an orderly, two nurses and Agent Smythe during her episodes. Now she was confined to a room in Cherleten’s secret domain, sealed beneath St. Katharine Docks, with several tons of water overhead to flood the facility in case of a security breach. Lillian represented the most severe threat to security since Apollo Lycea had constructed the armoury’s secret headquarters.

  ‘What will this “rehabilitation” entail?’ Sir Toby asked.

  Cherleten smiled mirthlessly; for once, Sir Toby did not think the peer relished what was to come.

  ‘Training. She will spend time with alienists. And, of course, the Nightwatch will have her for a time, to ensure that she is not… compromised.’

  ‘The Nightwatch?’ Sir Toby spluttered. ‘Has she not endured enough?’

  ‘I fear, Sir Toby, this is only the start of Agent Hardwick’s troubles.’

  Marcus Hardwick stood abruptly, and stared at each man in turn, worry etched upon his face. He looked for a moment as though he might speak candidly, but then his features took on their more customary hardness. ‘Gentlemen, I am sure my daughter is in safe hands, and thus I am afraid I must leave. I have unavoidable commitments at the palace; I have kept Her Majesty waiting long enough already.’

  ‘Lord Har— Marcus, I am sure the Queen will understand a little tardiness at this most difficult time,’ Sir Toby said. He knew Hardwick was not late for the appointment, so why he would quit his vigil now was a mystery.

  ‘Then you do not know the Queen,’ replied Hardwick. ‘Where her own children are concerned, there are no allowances.’

  ‘You will return tonight?’ Cherleten asked, showing uncharacteristic concern. ‘She will wake in a few hours, and we shall need your permission to—’

  ‘You have it. Do what you must. I am afraid I shall not return tonight, nor for perhaps a week hence. The work I am conducting has suffered long enough due to this complication.’

  ‘Complication? Marcus, have you—’ Sir Toby began

  ‘Do not presume to lecture me on this matter,’ Hardwick interrupted. ‘You know as well as I do the importance of this project. The fate of the very world rests upon its success. Cherleten’s sequestering of Tesla has already caused a great delay—there can be no more upsets if we are to weather the coming storm.’

  Sir Toby nodded. The Hardwick obsession with duty was often admirable, sometimes unfathomable. They walked together through the dark hospital ward to the door, whereupon Hardwick stopped, and took something from his breast pocket.

  ‘Toby, would you see that my daughter gets this,’ he said, quietly. It was a small sealed envelope that bore the Hardwick seal.

  ‘Of course, Marcus.’

  Hardwick looked for a moment as though he might say more, but instead he nodded curtly and took his leave.

  ‘You know,’ Cherleten said when Sir Toby returned to Lillian’s bedside, ‘Agent Smythe tells me that the girl asked to die in Yorkshire. Her brother spared her, naturally, although I don’t believe he fully comprehended the situation.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that from the point of view of national security, not to mention the well-being of the girl herself, pulling the trigger would have been the best solution all round. A convenience for the Crown, and a mercy for Agent Hardwick.’

  Sir Toby slumped into the chair that had been vacated by Lord Hardwick, and squeezed his lined face with his hand.

  ‘Lord Cherleten,’ he said when at last he looked up, ‘you and I rarely see eye to eye, and I confess that the Order is often healthier for our differing views. But I warn you—never say that out loud again. Not to me, not to anyone. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ said Cherleten, a thin smile playing fleetingly upon his lips. ‘I shall give you a moment alone. The guards are outside, should you need them.’

  Sir Toby listened to the sound of Cherleten’s footsteps recede through the ward and into the corridor beyond. When he was sure that Cherleten was gone, he placed Lord Hardwick’s letter on the table beside Lillian’s bed, and took her hand in his. It was ice-cold, and hard.

  ‘My dear girl,’ he whispered. ‘I swore to your mother I would keep you safe, and yet here you are. How can I ever forgive myself? Because I knew… I am sorry, my girl. I knew.’

  Sir Toby bowed his head, and remained there motionless, taking up the vigil abandoned by Lillian’s father. He understood a little of Marcus’s sense of duty; for after all, no matter how much he gave to the Hardwick family, he always felt that his debt to them would never be repaid.

  * * *

  John paced about the waiting room, his growing agitation exacerbated by the departure of his father with barely a word. It had been hours since the doctors had last attended Lillian, and John had been kept in the dark ever since.

  He tried once more to enter via the stairs that led deeper into the armoury basements, and was met for the second time that afterno
on by two guards, whose expressionless faces and imposing stature suggested they had not been picked for the role for their reasoning abilities. He held up his hand in a placating gesture and returned to his seat in the waiting room.

  The escape from Yorkshire had not been easy. The agents had been hounded every step of the way. They had bribed, cajoled or bullied cabbies and goods drivers to cover fifty miles of enemy territory before commandeering a canal barge and taking a slow journey to Lincolnshire, where finally they were able to catch a train. With Lillian prone to alternate fits of rage or trance-like melancholy, progress had been wearying. They had fought men who opposed them, and run from the accursed vampires more than once. And yet John knew they had been allowed to leave. The Knights Iscariot could have killed them many times over, but chose not to. They wanted Lillian to return to London, and John was the means of her delivery—he was certain that was the only reason de Montfort had not honoured his promise to kill John should he return to the north. No, John knew the only reason he was alive and home again because this was where the Knights Iscariot wanted Lillian to be. She was their message, their example to the world. De Montfort fancied himself a prophet, and he now had the means to create disciples, born of his own blood. Born into murder.

  ‘Lieutenant Hardwick? Lord Cherleten will see you now.’ A servant had appeared at the stairhead. The young man was dressed like a club servant, in tailored suit and black tie, even though the armoury facility was certainly nothing like a gentlemen’s club. The man escorted John down the stairs, past the guards, and into a long, whitewashed corridor, walking straight-backed like a waiter escorting a diner to supper.

  The armoury facility was far larger than the basements beneath St. James’s Square and Pall Mall. A large network of corridors divided up a labyrinth of laboratories, workshops, storerooms and operating theatres. John had heard tell of another level below these, which extended into an old catacomb pre-dating the Great Fire, and of large boathouses that could send men out onto the Thames by means of massive sluice gates. He had passed these off as fancies, but could never be sure. Cherleten was always one for the ostentatious display of power and prestige.

  John met the man himself outside a ward in the hospital wing; a ward in which there was at present but one patient.

  ‘We have done everything we can, and I am afraid the transformation is irreversible,’ Cherleten said, without preamble. ‘She has been told already, naturally, and has taken it surprisingly well.’

  John felt his world began to fall apart. All of his training at the academy had taught him to make his face a mask, and he did that now, instinctively. His little sister… Cherleten was now telling him that she was replaced by a monster, perhaps for ever. And because Cherleten was a man of the Order through and through, he expected certain conduct from John. He expected a cool head. He expected acceptance. Acceptance!

  ‘There is much more to ascertain before she is allowed beyond this ward… She has retained some semblance of her own personality, and may be close to her old self once the trauma has passed. We shall have to keep her secure down here. A month at least, perhaps longer; you understand—’

  ‘May I see her now?’ John said.

  Cherleten hardly batted an eyelid at the interruption. ‘She is not best prepared for visitors. She has had a trying time. More trying than you could possibly imagine.’

  ‘I must see her.’

  ‘Hmm. The alienists should be finished with her by now… I can make an exception for you, I suppose. It may do her good to see a friendly face. Or it may drive her into one of her fits. It shall be interesting nonetheless, don’t you agree?’

  John stared at Cherleten icily. Even now, all the man could think about were his experiments.

  ‘I see you share your father’s lack of humour,’ Cherleten sighed. His devilish smile quickly returned as he extended an arm towards the wards. ‘This way. Ibi cubavit lamia.’

  * * *

  Lillian sat upright in bed, looking uninterested as a doctor withdrew a needle from her arm. She turned as her brother and Lord Cherleten entered; John found the way she looked at him unsettling. She did not behold him with great recognition or fondness. Indeed, John was put in mind of his cat, Chuzzlewit, when he espied a sparrow outside the flat window—the knowledge that he could not reach the bird did not stop the cat contemplating how tasty it would be.

  John paused momentarily, and then resumed his advance towards his sister. One of Cherleten’s alienists—a mind doctor—scratched away in a pocketbook, no doubt assessing Lillian’s mental condition. As John drew near, he felt a tingling sensation at the back of his head, and the cold creep rushing over his skull that signified the intrusive presence of a Majestic. He noticed that in the shadows around the edge of the ostensibly empty ward, curtains had been pulled around rails. Behind the curtains, something moved, and breathed raggedly. The Nightwatch. Too socially distasteful to be left in open view, even down here, they had been concealed behind the curtain, probing Lillian’s mind, and John’s too, for signs of psychical weakness. John shuddered at the thought of the wasted, shaven-headed form sitting behind the curtain, electrodes attached to its scalp, its breathing assisted by valves and billows, while etherium regulators steadily pumped the psychic opiate into its body.

  It. John chastised himself for thinking of the wretch in such a fashion. He was not sure what he found worse: the process that transformed young men and women into living difference engines, or the fact that they often volunteered for the part.

  ‘Dear brother, so good of you to visit,’ said Lillian. Her voice was mirthless but a thin smile played upon her colourless lips. ‘You are my only visitor, you know, besides… these.’ She waved a hand dismissively to indicate the attendants, and John fancied she included Cherleten in her gesture.

  ‘Not entirely true, dear sis,’ John said. He swallowed the feeling of reticence and apprehension, buried it deep, and stepped confidently towards Lillian, taking her hand in his. He almost did not react when he felt her ice-cold skin. Almost.

  ‘I hope you are not about to tell me that Father sat dutifully by my bedside,’ she said. ‘For I would find it hard to believe.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, he was here for a while,’ John said, flushing as he thought of their father abandoning Lillian in her darkest hour. ‘But it was Sir Toby I meant.’

  Lillian looked surprised.

  ‘It’s true,’ John continued. ‘He sat with you for the longest time, when no one else was allowed admission. He only left but recently due to a summons to Number 10.’

  She appeared to consider this, and then said, ‘Did you know Father left me a letter?’

  ‘I… yes, I had heard.’ John knew he would have to find some way to defend their father in the coming exchange, though his heart was not in it. He resolved to do his best to change the subject as soon as possible instead.

  ‘He wrote that he was very sorry about my condition, but he could delay no longer, for his great work must take precedence in this most trying of times. Finally he has entrusted me with some snippet of information. He believes he has the means to our salvation—not mine, obviously, but the world’s. Apparently Mr. Tesla is an even more vital player in this little game than I had first thought. Do you know what he’s talking about, John?’

  ‘Agent Hardwick,’ Cherleten intervened, ‘might I remind you that the contents of that letter represent more than an exchange between father and daughter. They contain secrets of Apollo Lycea that are known by fewer than a dozen people in the world, and are not to be divulged openly.’

  John was relieved—he had heard a little about his father’s plans purely by keeping his ear to the ground in the right places. He was certain he knew more than he ought, and did not want to get into a guessing game with Lillian.

  Lillian smiled at Cherleten; it was not a friendly smile. At last, she turned to John again.

  ‘Our father goes to explain himself to the Queen. Is there any news of the prince?’

&
nbsp; ‘None,’ John said. ‘The Knights Iscariot have made no demands as yet. We have no idea if they will make good on their threat to—’

  Cherleten coughed. ‘That is enough for now, Lieutenant. No need to tire your poor sister out with all of this talk of business.’

  ‘He means I cannot be trusted,’ Lillian said. ‘I am one of them now, John. Although I’m not sure they’ll knight a woman. What do you think?’

  ‘I am sure you do not really wish to find out,’ John replied. Then he added, gently, ‘You will never be one of them.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, brother,’ she said. ‘Lord Cherleten has already told me that I am slowly rotting, and that my humanity is slipping away by the hour.’

  John shot an angry look at Cherleten.

  ‘That is not what I said… not precisely,’ Cherleten said.

  ‘My flesh is necrotising, because I am dead. Have I not understood correctly?’

  ‘In a manner,’ said Cherleten, as much to John as to Lillian. ‘You are not dead, strictly speaking. The fluid that flows through your veins is unlike human blood. It is pinkish, it is cold, and it does not nourish the flesh. As a consequence, your flesh will begin to lose pliability and colour, and may slowly come to… decompose.’ He looked awkward as he said it. ‘We can treat it though, have no fear. You do not have to look anything less than your old self, if you wish it. But more than that, you must understand that you are undergoing a transformation—a very long transformation—which may or may not ever reach its final stages.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ John asked, his throat going very dry.

  ‘He means, brother,’ Lillian interjected, ‘that the Knights Iscariot are not human; that at the end of their very long lives, they become something ugly and monstrous—something that no living soul has ever seen, but that we are assured is terrible indeed. And if I have truly become one of their “purebloods”… then that fate awaits me, one day.’