“Now, there’s a funny thing,” replied Cabal. “That is exactly the thing I would like to talk to you all about first. With your permission, Count?” And, without waiting for a reply, he walked into the centre of the salon, where he stood like an entertainer about to start his act. “Please, sit down. You may as well hear this in comfort.”
Nobody moved for a moment, then Konstantin stepped over to Miss Ambersleigh and drew out a chair for her. “Ma’am?” With a weak little noise of affirmation, Miss Ambersleigh sat. It was the catalyst, and the other passengers found chairs, too. Marechal watched the proceedings with contempt, but realised that the perfect moment for shooting Cabal had come and gone, and that he could no longer do it with panache, at least for the moment. He would have to wait for Cabal to finish his piece, and then kill him. This could represent his last wish, Marechal decided. It would have been more convenient if he had just asked for a cigarette and a blindfold like a normal person, but no matter. It would serve only to sharpen Marechal’s anticipation. He’d arranged the execution of so many peasants while putting down the short-lived revolt that he had got quite bored with it. This, he hoped, would serve to clear his palate and restore the pleasure of revenge.
He strolled to the bar, helped himself to a glass and a bottle of Mirkarvian spirits that bore a similar chemical composition and taste to de-icing fluid, and settled himself on a barstool. His revolver remained in his hand. “Very well, Cabal. You have your few minutes’ grace. Amuse us all with your intellect.”
Cabal bowed. It was possible that it wasn’t meant to be mocking, but that was certainly the effect.
“To begin with,” he began with, “it is important to understand how we come to be in this situation. I shall start with my own journey.”
Interludes
And so he did. It is unnecessary to recap much of what he said, but to emphasise that, for reasons best known to himself, he was entirely frank in all details. There are, however, two parts of his story that have not appeared in the narrative thus far. These sections we shall refer to as How Cabal Defeated Count Marechal in a Duel and How Cabal Came to Change His Mind.
How Cabal defeated count marechal in a duel
“I cheated,” said Cabal evenly.
“Aha!” said Marechal. “Finally! I should have you write that out and sign it, Cabal. Everybody from the generals to the sneeriest little putzer has decided that you’re some sort of master swordsman, and that you bested me!”
“Well, technically, I did.”
Marechal’s paper-thin patience was beginning to tear. He slammed his glass on the bar and tightened his grip on his revolver. “You cheated! You just admitted it!”
“I am well aware of that,” replied Cabal, perfectly unperturbed. “I bested you by cheating, but you were definitely bested. I was off and running while you remained behind, tied up. You could not have been much more bested. Although, in hindsight, perhaps I should have killed you while I had the chance.” He was pensive for a moment. “Yes, I should definitely have killed you. So much unpleasantness could have been avoided.”
“It was very easy to outwit the count,” Cabal said to his little audience, which by this time included Captain Schten, who had returned from the bridge and was standing by the door. “He is a creature of pride, and as such is prone to appeals to his vanity — in this case, that of being a great swordsman. Which, in fairness, he is. And, my, doesn’t he like to demonstrate the fact? In this instance, he gave up his revolver, unloading it beforehand, dropping both revolver and bullets to the ground.”
“Go on then, Cabal,” growled Marechal. “Tell them what your great party trick is.”
“I can load a revolver very quickly. I forced the fight to one side of the room, then dashed to where the revolver and the bullets were, and had a round chambered before the count could reach me.”
“Damn your eyes,” said the count. He emptied his glass and refilled it immediately, demonstrating one of his own party tricks in the process.
“Oh,” sighed his audience, disappointed.
“See?” said Cabal. “This is why illusionists and conjurors never reveal their secrets. The sheer banality of it more than offsets any pleasure the feat may have created in the first place. You’re sorry you asked now, aren’t you?”
And, indeed, they were.
* * *
How Cabal came to change his mind
* * *
It meant Leonie Barrow was in terrible danger. No phantasm of peril but true, real, and immediate danger. It also meant that it was none of his concern. He could just walk away.
So he did.
He made his way into the railway station, enjoying the day, the blue skies — although clouds were beginning to drift in from the southeast — and the delicious sense of liberty born of shedding a heavy responsibility. Soon he would be free and clear of the whole mess, and he could get back to work.
The station was a neat, unfussy building clad in sandstone slabs, the mica, quartz, and feldspar it contained lightening its colour and creating the occasional spark of reflected light from the beaming sun. In the ticket hall, Cabal found time to admire its simple but elegant architecture as he surreptitiously glanced around the space for any signs of surveillance on departing passengers, suspicious figures, or a dangerous level of police presence. To his immense satisfaction, he saw nothing of the sort, but for a single bored policeman looking at a poster for weekend breaks.
Cabal’s inner contentment deepened. He was still a long way from home, but he saw grounds for quiet optimism that he would actually reach there. He was looking at the large mosaic rail map picked out on the wall for a likely station in Senza’s western marches to head for when, most unwelcome of things, a voice sounded over his shoulder. “Ah ha, ha, ha!” said a man’s voice in a tone usually reserved for the detection of unauthorised hands in biscuit barrels. “I knew it! I just knew it! ‘Civil servant,’ my maiden aunt’s arse!”
Cabal turned to discover a man with large red sideburns, a rubicund complexion, and a strange little hat with a feather sticking out of it, regarding him as if they were long-lost cousins. But the eyes … Cabal knew those eyes, though it took him a stunned moment to remember where, exactly. “Ach mein Gott!” he said finally. “Herr Harlmann?”
Harlmann shushed him melodramatically with a lot of finger-waving, and steered him by the elbow to a café that occupied a corner of the ticket hall by a newsvendor’s stall. He found a table, attracted the attention of the waiter with a few imperious snaps of his fingers, and ordered two coffees, in — Cabal was astonished and perturbed to hear — a perfect Senzan accent.
Wonderful, he concluded. Now I’m in the hands of Senzan Intelligence. So much for quiet optimism. His hopes of showing a clean pair of heels vaporised like a martyr’s spit upon a bonfire, and he gloomily reconciled himself to spending the foreseeable future in a cell somewhere. At least, he consoled himself, the food would be better this time.
“Well, Herr Harlmann,” said Cabal, as he fitfully considered escape plans without any great enthusiasm. The whole concourse was surely dense with assorted secret policemen just itching for an excuse to kick his spleen into sausage meat. The fact that he was being treated to coffee rather than being bundled into the back of an unmarked van by several burly servants of the state armed with overactive thyroids and lengths of rubber hose implied that the covert machinations of Senza were handled with rather more civility than those of its neighbours, as well as subtlety. He could barely believe that he had so utterly failed to spot the trap. Therefore, he decided, he would wait for the scale of the operation he had wandered into to become apparent before giving any bright ideas for escape serious consideration. “What happens now?”
Harlmann shushed him with the same unnecessary finger-wigglage as the waiter returned with their order. He waited until the waiter had gone again before whispering to Cabal, “I’d appreciate it if you would call me Signor Moretti, old man.”
Cabal looked at him cur
iously, and took a sip of his coffee to hide his surprise. “Moretti?”
“Guido Moretti. Guido means ‘wide one.’” He smirked at some private joke and started on his own drink.
When dealing with devils, demons, and the ungrateful undead, hiding one’s emotions is a survival skill. Cabal — being a well-practised necromancer of several years’ experience and still alive to boot — had long since nailed that particular talent down, and so gave no hint of his inner bewilderment. He had been expecting Harlmann, or Moretti, or whatever his name was, to be in control of their little tête-à-tête, secure in the knowledge that he had any number of goons within easy call to jump on Cabal should he prove intransigent. Instead, he was behaving as if he were on equally thin ice. Guido means “wide one,” he thought. What’s that supposed to mean? Wide one. Wide. A morsel of slang occurred to Cabal, and then he understood. Wide boy.
With calculated nonchalance, he tested the water. “Profitable trip?”
Moretti (as Cabal decided to consider him, given that Harlmann was no truer a name) grimaced over his cup, and shook his head slightly as answer until he had swallowed his coffee. “No. Utter disaster. I was getting somewhere with Miss Ambersleigh on the first evening out, so the old girl could give me an in with her ladyship. Rolling in it, she is, the stuck-up little baggage. I had such plans.” He sighed regretfully. “But then that Digger fella throws himself out of the window, and then somebody has a go at you, and suddenly everybody suspects everybody. Utter, utter disaster. Just getting aboard that flying hotel cost me a fair wad of seed money, I don’t mind telling you. Well,” he added with a conspiratorial wink, “I don’t have to tell you, do I? Setting up as a civil servant, though. I have to hand it to you, that takes some neck. The Mirkies treat the civil service like the state religion. Is it true you can get executed for impersonating a pen pusher?”
It sounded like the kind of thing the Mirkarvians would do, so Cabal affected additional sangfroid on top of his nonchalance, and nodded. To think, he had been an ice-cold master criminal all along and hadn’t noticed. “I believe so.”
“You’re a cool one, Meissner,” said Moretti, chuckling. “So, what’s your real name?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” replied Cabal. His instinct was towards evasiveness, but when he realised that this had furnished him with the sort of bon mot that real master criminals sit up all night devising, he was not displeased.
It certainly had the desired effect on Moretti. He grinned appreciatively and tapped the side of his nose. “I hear what you’re saying, mio amico. I don’t know what game you were playing, but I’m sure it was something big. Hey,” he leaned forward, “so did you have that English girl?”
“I beg your pardon?” said Cabal, honestly perplexed.
“That sweet blonde,” Moretti insisted. “C’mon, you must have, the amount of time you two spent together. What was she like?”
Something slipped inside Cabal’s mind, like a gear slipping in a transmission, or a plate slipping from a shelf. It felt intrinsically wrong, and profoundly unpleasant. Here he was, pretending to be a criminal, which was all very well and good, but he was pretending to be a criminal to a criminal, and he was being all too convincing. Cabal knew that, technically, it was no more than the truth; he broke laws with such monotonous regularity that he no longer even noticed himself doing it. He stole books, he disinterred fresh corpses, and, when necessary, he killed people. He committed misdemeanours with the ease of breathing, and felonies were barely more challenging. In the strict legal sense — i.e., that committing crimes is the act of a criminal — yes, he was a criminal. He was good at it, too. He was very rarely caught, and never successfully punished, which was just as well, since most of the punishments for his acts involved nooses, axes, or immolation. All this, it was reasonable to suppose, made him a master criminal.
Yet here he was with a real criminal, a career confidence trickster, and the man made him sick. Every law Cabal broke, every crime he committed was dedicated to one, single, shining, glorious goal: to defeat death. That was all he desired. Money didn’t matter to him. Power didn’t matter to him. All he wanted was to be humanity’s champion against its first, its last, and its greatest foe.
Money mattered to Moretti. Power mattered to Moretti. He would gorge and bloat himself as a parasite on humanity’s flank, one of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of similar parasites in the world. Cabal saw a sea of filthy sucking things like Moretti, the unconscionable tide, and he saw himself there, too, drowning and indistinguishable.
Moretti was waiting for him to speak through the long silence. “That good, eh?” he said cheerfully.
Cabal ignored him. “Who lies with dogs, shall rise with fleas,” he said in an undertone. Sometimes he wished he still lacked a soul. It hurt so much.
“What?” said Moretti, mystified by the muttering.
“I have to go, Signor Moretti,” said Cabal, rising abruptly and gathering his things.
“On to greater things, eh? Look, old man, if it’s a game you’ve got in mind, I’m a reliable partner. Ask anyone.”
Cabal paused and glared down at him. Moretti suddenly had a distinct sense that his offer had been rash. “My game, Moretti, is not for the likes of you. In the next few hours, I intend to lie and steal for no material gain. Then, I have little doubt, I shall kill some people for no better reason than that they dismay me with their activities and I have decided to prevent them ever doing anything similar again. In my experience, death is an excellent prophylactic measure.”
Moretti, who had only ever heard the term “prophylactic” used in a single context, blanched. “My God,” he exclaimed.
“Your god, Signor Moretti, is of no use whatsoever.” Cabal touched the rim of his hat in mocking salute. “Good day, sir.”
He marched out of the railway station and down the main road in the direction of the aeroport. He had purpose and he had a plan, and his soul sang within him. Well, I’m glad one of us is happy, he thought.
* * *
To anyone with the slightest sense of self-preservation, there is something unnerving about being in the presence of an entomopter that makes one think that going by train might be a better idea. Or perhaps a narrow boat. Or walking. Or staying at home. Perhaps it’s the lightweight construction, or the whirling wings that cut twin figures of eight on either side of the skeletal fuselage. It may even be the frequent and appalling accidents. In fact, it probably is the frequent and appalling accidents that put all but the most suicidal of thrill-seekers (and military pilots, which is to say much the same thing) off even standing near one at rest.
It should be no surprise, therefore, that finding students for an entomopter flying school was a very hard sell. Signor Bruno, of Bruno’s Aviation College, was a man of lean and hungry aspect, at least financially. To show the slightest interest in the aircraft was to find Signor Bruno — a small muscular man with a thousand-yard stare — making himself at home in one’s personal space and employing one of his many tried, tested, and usually futile sales spiels. He would appeal to potential students’ sense of adventure, the possibilities of employment that a flying licence offered, their pride, their poetical spirit, their vanity, their patriotism, and, as a last resort, telling them that they were a big girl’s blouse if they didn’t sign up right this minute.
When the tall pale man in the black suit strolled up to him where he knelt by his entomopter, checking the oil levels in the port-wing clutch assembly, and asked to be taught to fly without so much as a “Hello” or a “That’s a fine machine you have there,” Signor Bruno was momentarily nonplussed; where was all the foreplay? But, being a manly sort of man, he had a low opinion of foreplay, in any case, and warmed quickly to the forthright Herr Meissner. He didn’t even care that the man was Mirkarvian. There were no actual embargoes in place on training Mirkarvians, not least because they were quite capable of getting the same training in their own country. That the valuable Herr Meissner had decided to get h
is training here rather than there was of no import except to Signor Bruno and his thin-lipped bank manager.
They went through the necessary paperwork beforehand, and if Herr Meissner hesitated on some pieces of information that should have been at his fingertips, then Signor Bruno saw no reason to mention it. Indeed, he was otherwise engaged in counting the wad of notes that the estimable Meissner had paid him with, so how could he notice any such momentary indecisions?
Herr Meissner did not care to remove his jacket, but that was of no matter; Signor Bruno had a set of flying overalls that easily fitted over it. Besides, as Signor Bruno pointed out, it gets cold up there. Herr Meissner strapped on his flying helmet, and they were ready to go.
The entomopter that they were using — indeed, the only entomopter Signor Bruno had — was a two-seat Symphony trainer. Not the fastest machine, but stable and relatively forgiving, at least compared with its nimble if fractious military brethren, which would whirl into a hillside at the slightest inattention. Signor Bruno took the rear pilot’s seat, while Herr Meissner obediently took the forward co-pilot’s position.
Signor Bruno had a good feeling about Herr Meissner; he had listened intently to the technical lecture Signor Bruno had given him in the hangar on the principles of insect-like flight, asking rare but trenchant questions. The man was undoubtedly a scientist, by inclination if not actual profession, and Signor Bruno was able to finish the lecture in record time without resorting to training aids like Dino the Dragonfly or Bambalina the Bumblebee.
A quick run-through of the controls did nothing to diminish the good feeling. Herr Meissner needed to be told anything only once. Helmet intercom, loud and clear. Cyclic, check. Throttle, check. Collective, check. Torque pedals, check. Electrical systems on, check. Fuel and oil levels, check. Ignition.
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