Dishonored--The Veiled Terror

by Adam Christopher

  The natural philosophers glanced variously at each other and at the table, unwilling to acknowledge the truth, unwilling to admit the facts. Billie could see it in their faces. Finch, meanwhile, had managed to get to his feet. Billie turned her gaze on him and he took a step backward, his throat bobbing as he swallowed in fear. He stepped back again until his back hit the wall.

  “Or maybe it’s nothing,” she continued, her gaze fixed firmly on Finch. “Perhaps it’s a conjunction of the stars. Perhaps it’s a change in the weather. The world moves in cycles, in seasons, and maybe that’s all it is. And trust me, I hope you are right.”

  Billie stood back, relaxing her hand. At least she had their full attention now.

  “But if I’m right, then we’re in danger—all of us. Maybe we can solve things. Maybe we can fix things. That’s why I came here. I’ve seen what’s happening, but I don’t know what to do—only that if we don’t do something, and soon, it’s going to get worse. There will come a time when you won’t be able to ignore what’s happening, no matter how afraid it makes you.”

  Silence. The seconds grew long, then Finch reached behind him and pulled on a thick velvet rope that hung on the wall. Somewhere far away a bell sounded.

  “I think we have heard enough,” he said. Behind Billie, the doors to the council chamber opened. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the portly form of the Porter standing in the doorway.

  “Yes, Professor?”

  “You can show our visitor out, Porter.”

  “At once, Professor.”

  The Porter stood to one side, and gestured to the open door. Billie looked at him, then looked around the council again.

  “It really frightens you that much?” she asked.

  Professor Finch clasped his hands in front of his gown and lowered his head, looking at Billie down the length of his not insubstantial nose. He cleared his throat in an effort to regain some level of authority.

  “We owed Anton Sokolov a great many things,” he said, his voice perhaps not carrying as much gravitas as he had clearly hoped, “but you can now consider that debt paid in full. It is time for you to leave, and I suggest you do not come back.”

  Billie’s head throbbed. The effects of the Green Lady were fading. Her vision crackled with the blue-red halo as behind her eyepatch, the Sliver saw a little beyond the veil of the real world, and her magical arm ached with the familiar, creeping cold.

  Then she turned on her heel and marched out of the room.

  That was it. Mission failure.

  She was on her own.

  7

  ACADEMY OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, OXBLOOD WAY, DUNWALL

  4th Day, Month of Wind, 1853

  After so many hours wasted inside the Academy, the sudden daylight in the square outside the massive building was a shock to Billie. She stood at the top of the main stairs, feeling the eyes of the Porter boring into her back, but she was in no hurry to move. That they hadn’t called the City Watch was telling. They were frightened of her, but didn’t want to cause a scene. And now her head ached, the dazzling light was strongly tinted in red and blue no matter how much she tried to ignore the view of the world as seen through the Sliver, and to top it off she was tired and hungry.

  And angry. What had she expected to happen, really? Yes, she’d been friends with Anton Sokolov. She had helped him. Saved his life. They were from opposite ends of society, forced together by circumstances far from their own choosing, but there was no doubt in Billie’s mind about the bond they had formed.

  A bond that, clearly, Professor Finch and his mummified cronies didn’t put much value on.

  Billie looked back. The Porter was still standing by the great oak doors of the Academy, hands clasped firmly in front of his gown, his lips pursed together as he stared at her. She shook her head, and he turned with a sniff and disappeared back inside.

  Asses, the lot of them.

  The square lurched a little in her vision, the edges sparking red. The Sliver of the Eye of the Dead God was being… difficult. More than usual. She reached into her coat and felt for the pouch of Green Lady again.

  “I would think you’ve had more than enough of that today already, young lady!”

  Billie looked up. Standing in the square, beneath the statue of Erasmus Kulik, was an old man with collar-length white hair swept back from his forehead. He was wearing a tattered charcoal-gray cloak with black bands on the arms. He lifted his hand, the gown falling away to reveal a bony white arm.

  “Nasty stuff, that particular plant,” he said. “Sold as Green Lady here, but another variant is known as the Black Weed of Karnaca, as I’m sure you know. The nomenclature varies, but the stuff is all the same. My favorite is the name they call it by in eastern Morley—Fool’s Fancy. Fool’s Fancy! Sounds right to me. Nasty stuff. Addictive, dulls the senses—”

  “And makes old fools like you tolerable.”

  Billie trotted down the steps, approaching the stranger at a pace. For his part, he didn’t move, although he did pull his arm back and clutch the edge of his gown, lifting his chin defiantly as she approached. When she was close enough, she saw he was shaking, just a little.

  “I’d ask how it was any of your business,” she said, “and also why you were following me this morning, before I gutted you like a hagfish, but I’ve wasted enough time today already.”

  She brushed past the old man—not enough to knock him over, but with enough force to, hopefully, give him the message to stay well away—but she hadn’t gone a handful of steps before he called out to her again.

  “It is my business, young lady,” he said, “quite simply because I believe you.”

  She stopped in her tracks. She didn’t turn around.

  “You are quite right,” said the stranger. “Your observations keen, your deductions astute.”

  Billie cocked her head. “Right about what?”

  “Oh, most things. The rifts. The dreams. And how it all started, of course.”

  Billie turned slowly on her heel. She set a steely look on the man and walked back toward him. Again, he didn’t move, although, if anything, he now looked more scared of her than he had before, a sharp contrast to the confident bluster in his voice.

  She looked him up and down. He was old, perhaps in his seventh decade or beyond—certainly older than Sokolov had been when she had known him. Thin, wiry, clean-shaven but with patches of whisker on his neck that he had missed. His white hair had a yellowish tinge and was in need of a wash, as did his cloak—which Billie now saw was the formal academic gown of a senior natural philosopher, the same as those worn by the members of the Academy council she had just met with.

  The two stood facing each other for a few moments, then the man cleared his throat and looked around, finishing with a glance over his shoulder back toward the Academy. Billie followed his gaze, but the doors were still closed and there was nobody about.

  “Well, I suppose—”

  Billie grabbed the man by the throat and dug her fingers in. She lifted him under the jaw—he was small and light and old, but she had no intention of decapitating him outside the Academy—until he was forced to balance on his toes.

  “Who are you?” asked Billie.

  “Gah!” The man gurgled, his bony hands clutching at the sleeve of Billie’s greatcoat—the sleeve hiding her black shard arm.

  Billie hissed between her teeth and let the man go. He dropped to his feet but didn’t fall over. Instead, he coughed twice, then straightened his back and took on an air of faded authority as though nothing had just happened. Adjusting his gown, and gripping the lapels with two skeletal fists, he lifted his chin to Billie—who stood a good six inches taller than him.

  “My name is Dribner. Withnail Hugh Bruce Dribner, Professor Emeritus of the Academy of Natural Philosophy, at your service.”

  Dribner gave a deep bow, sweeping his moth-eaten cap off his head as he did so.

  Billie looked down at him, and frowned. “ You’re a professor?”


  Dribner looked up, before he straightened up. “Well, Emeritus, but yes, young lady, a professor indeed—”

  “Emeritus?”

  “Ah… indeed.”

  “Meaning, you’re retired?”

  Dribner pursed his lips. “Well, some may adhere to such a definition. Personally, I prefer to call it a temporary sabbatical.”

  Billie felt her eyebrow moving up of its own accord. “Don’t tell me, it wasn’t voluntary?”

  The retired professor peered up at Billie, then looked around again, before stiffening. Glancing over his head, Billie saw that the Porter had reappeared outside the doors of the Academy and was watching them.

  “I suggest we decamp to my laboratory at once,” said Dribner, pulling at Billie’s coat while watching the Porter, any sign of fear now gone. “I feel we have much to discuss.”

  “You’re telling me you have a laboratory?”

  Dribner turned around. “I believe that is just what I said, young lady! Do pay attention, please!” He made to move off, but Billie caught his gown. It slid around his body a good deal before he noticed.

  “What do you know about what’s happening?”

  “Young lady, I know a very great deal. About the Void, about the Outsider—and about what became of him.” He tugged his clothing free from Billie’s grip. “Now, if you will come with me, perhaps I can provide some of the answers that those buffoons in there refused to furnish.” He jerked his thumb back toward the main building.

  Billie released the gown. Dribner nodded appreciatively, readjusted his clothing, and smoothed his hair down, then, with a final glance at the scowling figure of the Porter, gripped his lapels once more and marched across the square.

  “This way!” he called over his shoulder.

  Billie watched him for a moment, then sighed, and followed.

  What did she have to lose?

  8

  DRIBNER’S LABORATORY, ACADEMY OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, DUNWALL

  4th Day, Month of Wind, 1853

  As she followed the little man who claimed to be a former professor of the Academy of Natural Philosophy, Billie argued with herself about whether it was a waste of time or not. Dribner was a strange fellow, and Billie wasn’t entirely sure what to make of him, or his position. Professor Emeritus? She wondered if he’d awarded the title to himself, given his implication that he had been, well, forced into retirement.

  And where, exactly, was this supposed laboratory? Surely not within the bounds of the Academy itself? If he was fired, or retired, or on sabbatical, would he really still be working at the very institution he was no longer, technically, a full member of?

  Dribner led Billie on a circuitous route around the huge Academy building, back to Oxblood Way, then down a series of side streets until finally they looped back around into the cloisters that formed the rear of the Academy campus. He walked with purpose between the sunlit columns with Billie close behind, and none of the academicians or students they passed stopped them.

  Then Dribner turned and led her through a tall, arched doorway back into the building itself. The passageway was short and hairpinned into an overgrown garden parallel to the cloisters, although clearly far less frequented. There was a path through the unkempt lawn that led to a narrow, crumbling stone staircase. Dribner trotted down the steps, and when Billie caught up with him he was fussing at a rusted iron grille secured by a multitude of padlocks of different shapes and sizes looped through the gate from top to bottom, each apparently opened by a different key from a huge ring he had unearthed from somewhere in his gown.

  It was almost laughable, but for some reason, Billie wanted to know what he had to say. He was an old man, and she wondered if he had known Sokolov. Was he a former colleague, perhaps? Sokolov had never mentioned his peers—with characteristic arrogance, he had only ever been interested in his own work.

  Given the behavior of the Academy council members, perhaps he was just like everyone else here, in that respect. Did that include Dribner? It seemed likely. He had an air of superiority about him, although tempered by the hard times on which he had apparently fallen.

  He finally opened the gate and waved her through. As they walked down a long stone corridor, the walls slick with slime, into what must have been one of the oldest parts of the Academy, two things in Billie’s mind kept her following the strange little man down the narrowing corridors.

  The first was that he had found her, not the other way around. He had been following her, seeking her out. While she had been in Dunwall for all of a month, the first time she had seen him had been this morning. But he clearly knew who she was—and more importantly, why she was here—and he wanted to talk. Perhaps there was far more to him than met the eye.

  Second, he claimed to believe her—although so far she hadn’t said anything to him about what she’d seen. She wondered if he had been listening outside the council chamber as the seven members of the council pointlessly debated nothing at all. Had he somehow slipped past the withering gaze of the Porter? That seemed likely. From what little she had learned of him, Dribner seemed like an independent spirit, able to move about the Academy without much difficulty.

  More and more like Sokolov, she thought.

  Deep in the bowels of the building, the passageway ended in a black oak door behind another iron gate, the space illuminated by the bright but dappled daylight that fell through what looked like drainage grates over their heads. The door had a single, huge lock, and it took Dribner so long to twist the large key in it that Billie wondered if she should offer some help. But then the mechanism clunked home, and he took hold of the door’s giant ring handle. He paused, and glanced over his shoulder, his lips pursed.

  “I must insist that you consume none of your Fool’s Fancy in my laboratory,” he said.

  Billie shrugged, but then she felt the growing pressure between her temples, the Sliver lighting up in her skull. Almost at once, her vision flashed red and she nearly staggered, supporting herself in the narrow passageway with her magical arm. As soon as it touched the wall, the pale stonework frosted over.

  Dribner glanced at it. “Yes, I suspect things like that will happen. It will be worse once you are inside the laboratory, but I must insist, on no account take any Fool’s Fancy. It is imperative I have you at full, well, capacity, shall we say, for what I need to show you.”

  Billie said nothing, but she nodded. She felt a little ill, her head beginning to pound, like it did whenever she was near…

  Near a Void rift.

  Dribner sniffed. “Prepare yourself,” he said, turning back to the door. “Personally, I find the experience somewhat invigorating, but then I don’t have an arcane artifact in my head, now, do I?”

  Then he twisted the ring handle with both hands. There was another heavy sound as the mechanism disengaged from the ancient wall, and with all his strength he pushed the portal open.

  Billie’s head spun, her vision flashing with red and blue afterimages. Gritting her teeth against the pounding in her head, she pushed herself along the wall to step into the chamber beyond. As she crossed the threshold, she yanked her eyepatch off, as if that would make the burning pain go away.

  The room was circular, built from the same ubiquitous brick and limestone as the rest of the Academy, but here the walls were dark with damp and mildew. At the cardinal points, reinforced iron pillars stretched up to the low ceiling, and in the space between the pillars and the chamber walls were crammed workbenches and cupboards, every surface stacked with equipment—glassware, retorts, frames, burners, crucibles. Loose paper leaned precariously on pyramids of books. Magnifying lenses, pens and pencils, measuring devices, and drawing instruments littered the surfaces. In one corner there was a pile of five empty whale oil tanks, and three full ones were rather more carefully arranged beneath a table, with another installed in a power unit set into the wall. There were no windows, and no other door, and while the pale blue glow of the full whale oil tanks was reasonably bright, they
were not the main source of the light in the room.

  Billie was right. In the center of the chamber was a Void rift.

  She stared at it, feeling herself so powerfully drawn to it that she forced herself to take a step back, planting her feet firmly on the stone floor. Next to her, Dribner nodded.

  “Yes, it has a certain effect, doesn’t it?” he said, closing the door. He circled the room, walking behind the pillars as he checked over various pieces of equipment. Billie remained by the door, transfixed by the rift.

  It was small, and it hung in the air well clear of the walls, floor and ceiling. It undulated, a shimmering curtain of blue light, roughly rectangular in shape but with a flickering, flame-like edge that glowed red.

  It was beautiful, this hole in the world. As Billie stared at it, the vision provided by the Sliver of the Eye of the Dead God began to take over, rendering the rift in monochrome red, the intensity increasing the more she looked. When she turned away to look for Dribner, the intensity faded immediately, but she felt an almost physical pull back toward the rift as the Sliver was drawn to it. Like the other rifts she had seen, it had some of the characteristics of a Void hollow, but with nothing visible on the other side.

  Dribner appeared from behind one of the pillars, chuckling. He pointed at the rift.

  “I had surmised something like that would happen,” he said. He tapped his cheek with a finger. “That artifact in your head, it is drawn to it, isn’t it? My theory is quite obviously correct. That object is more part of the Void than the real world—consequently, you are too, and you are drawn to it.” He chuckled again. “A fortunate and rather useful situation, I think. Yes, very useful.”

  Billie shook her head. She turned back to the rift, and just as Dribner said, she felt the pull of the Sliver again.

  “How did you know the rift was here?” she asked.

  “Ah, now, there we must thank our mutual friend, the renowned Anton Sokolov.”

  “So you did know Sokolov?”