Dawn's Early Light

by Pip Ballantine

  Just beyond the service entrance stood the carriage of Madame Zamora. Sophia pulled herself up into the driver’s seat, and began sifting through the papers covering half of the long seat. These documents appeared essential for the fortune-teller’s travels. There were flyers for upcoming summer fairs, many of them noted with names, performance rates, and individual notes pertaining to special guests at these events.

  Then she spied one for the Palace’s current exposition. It had a contact’s name, a rather impressive rate, and the number twenty-two.

  Sophia returned to the alleyway and slipped her hands inside a gift from the Maestro. With the stealth and swiftness of a cat, she clambered up the side of the caravan, and then clambered up the side of the building, her fingers digging deep into the hotel masonry. The speed and nature of her climb, she knew, would have appeared superhuman, and indeed it was thanks to the “ascent claws” and rubberised footwear.

  The second storey did not offer a lot of extra purchase; but that narrow marble decoration was all she needed, her specialised shoes providing excellent grip. She only had to drop and crawl beneath the windows of two other rooms before she was in the right place.

  Crouching, Sophia peered into the window. The suite was dim, but for the light from two gas fixtures on the wall. The woman—apparently an actress of some degree as she was checking her makeup in the mirror—slipped over her raven hair a fine salt-and-pepper wig of fantastic curls. Decorated with beads and bangles that Sophia could hear clinking against each other through the window, “Zamora” now flitted over a small table covered by a red-patterned cloth, a crystal ball as the centrepiece, and a deck of large cards. Looking about the room, the performer suddenly caught her breath and then fished out of a pouch hanging from her waist a box of matches. With a quick flick of her wrist, she went from candle to candle, bathing the room in a deep amber glow. Details and atmosphere were always important in the art of the confidence game.

  Sophia removed from her belt sheath a thin stiletto, slipped it between the windowpanes, and flipped the latch. Once inside, she removed one of the darts from her bandolier and waited.

  When Zamora went to her window to shut the curtains, Sophia jabbed her dart into the woman’s wrist. It was not a deadly poison—since some part of her own heritage was Romani—but the confidence woman would remain asleep until morning, and wake with a pounding headache only. Sophia dragged her back into a bedroom, and then opened up the closet to survey the fortune-teller’s limited wardrobe.

  “Variations on a theme,” Sophia said to the slumbering woman. “You should try it sometime.”

  The outfit Sophia pieced together was similar to the original, but instead of the elderly wig and exaggerated makeup, Sophia wore a scarf decorated with coins and beads on her head. The skirt and puffy blouse, all decorated with the jingling baubles, transformed the assassin into a mystical medium, perhaps with a little more finesse than the other. Now her visitors would find a fetching gypsy rather than a haggard old one. She didn’t believe tonight’s clients would mind terribly.

  It truly was a clever notion, featuring a fortune-teller at a science exposition. There was a notion that clankertons, many notorious for being sceptical of the supernatural, enjoyed daring one another to consult supposed psychics and seers, perhaps to test the boundaries of probability. Others, however, were true believers, and even based their future projects on premonitions. Whether a doubter or a believer, Sophia’s “Zamora” would have a most lucrative run here at the exposition.

  With the suite’s clock chiming thrice, she could hear the exposition outside begin anew: music, voices, the clattering of silverware, and the sound of footsteps. Sophia waited patiently, sitting behind the table, with her hands folded and eyes on the door.

  When her first client came through the door, she was disappointed. He was not the heir to the English throne, although he was old enough to perhaps be heir to the throne of Caesar. Sophia sent the crooked old gentleman on his way with an admonishment to stay away from ladies of easy virtue. Hearing the dreadful wheeze from him when he stood to leave, she knew she had done him a great kindness.

  Another clankerton entered, and soon Sophia began to warm to her role. It was rather fun to speak in the outrageous accent most people expected from a gypsy, wave her hand over the milky depths of the crystal ball she operated through a pneumatic pedal system. It was a clever contraption this confidence trickster had employed, as with each pedal under her right foot, the currents in the sphere changed colour, direction, and the viscousness of what flowed inside.

  Into the evening, Sophia continued to pronounce what the future held for the Palace patrons through the crystal’s parlour tricks or tarot readings. While she knew nothing behind the meanings of the artful cards, her visitors knew even less. This made for very active storytelling. Some of her customers she warned of imminent death; others she told they would find love. Everything she had learned about judging a character and manipulating a person, translated very well to this particular con. After only two hours, she had made quite a tidy sum at it.

  When Prince Albert appeared at the door, Sophia felt a sudden jolt. Of course, she needed to corner the prince, interrogate him; but this was not the jovial prince she had met under the guise of the contessa. He looked very ill at ease, shifting from one foot to the other, and glancing through the gap in the door he had left open. He had shadows underneath his eyes, and he looked like he had not slept well since her botched abduction. Perhaps he had been attached to the valet she had murdered. That would not surprise her.

  Sophia’s suspicions were confirmed when he spoke; his voice was full of genuine grief. “I am sorry, madam, I think I am wasting your time. My colleagues rather shoved me into this, and I really don’t believe any of this mumbo jumbo.”

  Sophia sat up a little taller in her chair. “Well, something has brought you here. Perhaps it is the spirits, perhaps it is fate, or it could simply be a heavy conscience? Whatever it is, you are here. At the very least, I can offer you some insight.” She tilted her head, making sure to keep her features in shadow. “What exactly do you not believe?”

  Albert stepped in a little, and she understood she had taken the right tack. He was a man that enjoyed a good debate—even with a woman. “I cannot believe in what I cannot see. My mother . . .” His voice trailed off. He leaned back and pushed the door the rest of the way closed. “Well . . . my mother became quite obsessed with the occult after my father was killed. She kept claiming he could talk to her, but that was just grief. I always thought it foolish . . . but over events of the last few days . . .” He paused and adjusted his ascot. “Well, let’s just say they have made me think about my own mortality.”

  Sophia looked at him carefully, judging. He probably didn’t notice it, but he had sidled closer to her.

  The assassin gestured with one open hand to the chair. “Grief is one thing that can be assuaged by reaching into the darkness. Would you not like to speak to your father also?”

  Albert jerked a little, and she realised she had stepped on dangerous ground. “My father was a man of science. The only spirits he believed in were scotch, brandy, and cognac.”

  The prince was close to banging out of the room, and Sophia could not have that. “Yet as a man of science,” she said smoothly, “he would always repeat an experiment before declaring it a failure . . . is that not so?”

  They looked hard at each other. Sophia slipped a solitary hand to her lap where her dart gun resided, just in case the prince saw through her disguise.

  With a sharp sigh, the prince sat down in the chair opposite her, and rested his hands on the velvet of the tablecloth. “If you can summon my father, and he answers questions only a family member would know, then I will believe you.”

  He really did not sound as though he believed her at all. That was perfectly fine; she had no plan to conjure the dead up for him. Instead, Sophia leaned forward
s and took his hand.

  Prince Albert had no chance to escape. Her fingers wrapped around his, and the tiny spike on the inside of her ring punctured the prince’s flesh just enough for her agent to begin its work. By the time he had jerked his hands away it was already too late.

  “I say,” the prince slurred, his eyes glassy, “what was that?”

  The paralytic effect hit him fast, so when Sophia placed her dart gun next to the crystal ball, rose from her chair, and opened the backpack she’d brought with her, there would be no worry that he would escape her. By the time she had turned around, Albert had sagged back in his chair, his gaze fixed on the ceiling, while his arms hung limp on each side of the chair.

  Swinging her leg over him, Sophia sat across his lap, face-to-face. It was a position that he would have undoubtedly enjoyed if he were truly conscious.

  Over his head she slipped the brass cage with all its screws and struts. Albert’s head lolled backwards and forwards in a final act of defiance of trying to escape it, but she held him easily in place before sliding out the brace portion. She hummed under her breath as her fingers flickered over the screws, tightening what needed to be done. The whole device ended up holding his shoulders, neck, and head completely still, facing her. A guttural groan escaped the prince, but that was pretty much all that could get away from her.

  Now the tricky part. Sophia’s tongue slipped between her teeth as she set about adjusting the cage’s lid hooks around the prince’s eyes. Each of the reed-thin spindles locked around the flesh of his eyelids with tiny hooks, then pulled them back, keeping his eyes open. It was imperative that the prince did not blink as she worked on him. The information that she needed had to be accurate or the Maestro would be most displeased.

  She then used the eyedropper to deliver a clear liquid she didn’t know the name of to each eyeball. The prince jerked a little under her, but both the paralytic and the cage held him in place. There must be some chemical in the solution that might burn a little.

  With all these devices in place, all that was needed were the goggles, larger and chunkier than any airship pirate or Arctic explorer would have known. These bulky monstrosities were specialised lenses that, even after adjusting them over her own eyes, felt heavy on her. Layers of colours stood between her and the heir’s own eyeballs. It was a confusing mess—or at least would have been to one not trained in their use.

  The neuro-ocular was not the Maestro’s making, but the obsession of a strange Swiss gentleman who had lived twenty years in isolation within the Black Forest. Karl had amused her for a couple of weeks, but then turned rather angry when she’d tried to leave with several of his creations, the neuro-ocular being one of them.

  Sophia had left Karl bleeding quietly to death on his own Persian rug.

  Still, his devices lived on while Prince Albert remained limp in the chair, his head, shoulders, and eyes held still; and she looked into the royal’s brain.

  She adjusted the left lense until she could—by squinting—observe the rush of blood through his head. Through the right lense, portions of his brain lit up from thought and sensation. So far everything was still and quiescent.

  Now she just had to ask the right questions.

  “Who are you?” she whispered, her voice dripping with erotic overtones, as if they were both naked and in bed. The paralytic had made any movement in his privates impossible, but Sophia wriggled slightly, enjoying a tingle of her own. Stripping a man’s mind was perhaps the most erotic thing she’d ever done.

  “Prince Albert Edward,” he replied, his voice flat and lost.

  It was a simple question that she used to discern if the equipment was working and to mark the correct rush of fluids, and the twitching of his eyes. However, even in this he had revealed something. He had not mentioned his mother.

  It was a little aside that the Maestro might find of interest—once she had told him what she’d discovered lay deeper.

  “Do you know the Director of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, Doctor Basil Sound?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever been to the headquarters of that Ministry?” Sophia shifted slightly, wondering at the marvels the prince might have observed there. It was one of the few places that the assassin had not dared. At least not yet.

  “Yes.” The prince swallowed, and his eyes darted left to right for a minute. There would be, sadly for the prince, no escaping the effects of her device. “I went with my father when I was young, to see it built.”

  The neuro-ocular was working better than she had hoped. Sophia glanced up at the door, pleased to hear the uninterrupted sounds of the exposition’s social gatherings continuing. For a moment she imagined her device released on so many of those amazing minds at the convention. The things she might learn from them!

  Perhaps, another time. Sophia would have played this gypsy game once more; but the Maestro had been specific. She had to return to his side immediately, and she must not be caught.

  Leaning forwards, she whispered into the prince’s ear, allowing her lips to brush the sensitive skin there. “You must have seen many things, Albert. Tell me, did you ever see the Archives?”

  A shudder of repressed muscle activity ran through the man. If he’d been capable, she knew he would have lurched upright and thrown her against the far wall. He could not—would not—resist her, and that set her skin aflame. The fact that he was held prisoner thus, made the assassin twitch in her own, much deeper, way.

  His brain was alight now, flickering scarlet with flashes of yellow and orange, those flashes showing he was attempting to keep his tongue silent. The movement of blood there told her he still was incapable of lying to her, still well under her control.

  “Tell me, Albert,” she implored.

  “I’ve been to the Archives many times. Such treasures. Such power.” The flashes were nearly blinding Sophia in her right eye, but they dimmed as Albert added, “I’ve seen the Restricted Area.”

  This. This was what the Maestro wanted. “What is the Restricted Area?”

  Though his jaw was locked tight, he let out a low growl, before choking out, “The beginning and end of all things. Alpha and Omega.”

  He was not lying to her, but more like he was avoiding the truth. Albert’s allegory was difficult for the neuro-ocular to process, the red now punctuated by growing masses of deep blues and black. His stamina and resistance were impressive.

  “I need to know more,” Sophia demanded, pushing down on him, now gyrating slowly against him, attempting perhaps to ride the truth out of him. “What is in the Restricted Section of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences?”

  A long drawn out breath was forced from the prince’s lips, while through the lense of the neuro-ocular his brain flashed with oranges and golds. He was so close, and she too, that Sophia wanted to scream. “So many things,” he finally ground out. “All things. All in joy. All in sorrow.”

  “What do you mean?” she said with a hiss, her legs quivering around his waist while her fingers wrapped around his arms. “What does Doctor Sound have down there? Tell me now, Albert!”

  Albert’s trapped eyes flicked this way and that trying to avoid looking at hers. “It is Genesis. It is Revelations. He has . . .” Bertie was gnashing his teeth together, his chin feeling the cool touch of his own spittle as he tried to resist her. “He has . . . all the . . .”

  The door to the party flew off its hinges with a resounding snap. The ebony-skinned, imperious-looking female agent of OSM stood there, her elegant evening wear billowing with her every move, capped with her dark eyes hidden behind a pair of iridescent glasses. A long device such as a road worker might have, was balanced in her hand, while behind an outraged clankerton was yelling at her a string of obscenities and slurs.

  Sophia smiled slightly. She appreciated a woman capable of making a situation work to her advantage. What she did not appre
ciate was the terrible timing of this creature’s interruption.

  “I could see through the door when you got on top of him—but you weren’t moving much,” she said, yanking down the goggles to let them hang across her neck. “That just didn’t seem right.”

  Glasses that allowed the agent to read heat signatures—quite an advantage, Sophia mused. “So you like to watch?” Sophia clicked her tongue as she slipped away from the prince, her hand reaching behind her for the dart gun. “Naughty girl.”

  Agent Harris hefted the steam lever in her hands and swung at Sophia, the small boiler travelling on the woman’s back puffing and chugging as she did so. The assassin leapt backwards, feeling the heat of Harris’ makeshift weapon brush past her. Sophia landed on her feet just as the steam lever shattered the table and crystal ball, sending a light vibration through the floor . . .

  . . . which Sophia could still feel through her shoes even after Harris removed the lever from it.

  When the chandelier above them and light fixtures began to tremble, Sophia chuckled. “It appears you do not know your own strength, Agent Harris.”

  The mild tremble was now rumbling and reverberating in their ears. The irate engineer and comrades initially alerted to the skirmish in Zamora’s suite now scattered like snowflakes in a wind gust, screams of “Earthquake!” flitting into the room and down the hallway. Sophia kept the agent in her sights as lamps and small statues in the room toppled over. A light fixture behind Martha’s head exploded, sending out a small plume of fire.