The Iron Assassin

by Ed Greenwood

  “Let’s see the real color of your blood,” Grimstone murmured, as the door folded back with a last protesting creak.

  Leaving them staring at a tall, narrow doorway into darkness.

  A silent, waiting darkness.

  “Come out, you coward!” Whipsnade called, expecting no answer and receiving none.

  He looked at Grimstone. “No echo, so not a tunnel. It should be just a little room. So unless this whole thing has been a ruse, with all of these fools fighting like tigers to protect nothing at all, with His Royal Nibs elsewhere all along…”

  “Toss in a lit oil lamp,” Grimstone replied calmly, “and, one way or another, we’ll see.”

  “Derringer?” Whipsnade suggested, as he stepped back to look around for an oil lamp.

  “Derringer,” Grimstone agreed, reaching into his sleeve.

  It was at that moment that Lord Tempest burst through the narrow door and charged right into him. Head down and trying just for speed, ramming the Tentacles man right in his gut like a bull and keeping right on going, rushing the staggering and winded Grimstone across the room.

  Whipsnade raced after him with poker raised—or tried to. It was hard to race anywhere with a woman’s garter around your neck and wrapped around your poker, and with a woman dropping to the floor right behind you, putting her full weight into strangling you.

  He arched over backward, sobbing for breath and trying to get one hand under what was cutting so cruelly into his throat, while he tried to tear the poker free with the other.

  “Excuse me,” said a cultured voice, “but I don’t think so.”

  Whipsnade had a brief glimpse of the butler—the butler?—striding past him from the priest hole, an ancient but recently shortened halberd in his hands. That comment had been directed at him, and Malmerston reinforced it by deftly slashing a few fingers off Whipsnade’s poker-wielding hand.

  Whipsnade tried to scream but lacked the air. Lady Rose had her knees up against his back and was pulling with all her might; if the garter didn’t break, there would be no more screaming for Miles Whipsnade, or anything else …

  The garter broke.

  By then, Malmerston had run the business end of his halberd through Grimstone’s leg, and Lady Roodcannon’s faithful aide was doing enough screaming for both agents of the Order.

  Sobbing for breath, Whipsnade fell forward. He kicked out viciously behind him as he did so and sent his unseen assailant tumbling.

  Snatching out his derringer, he fired—at Malmerston’s face, but the halberd got in the way. The result was a clang, sparks, and Malmerston’s wringing a bleeding hand as the halberd cartwheeled to the floor, its shaft striking Tempest across the forehead and leaving him dazed.

  It was at this juncture that the two men of the Ancient Order decided they’d had enough and staggered for the bedroom door.

  “Victory!” Grimstone gasped, limping and bleeding copiously as they hastened down the passage outside.

  “Survival!” Whipsnade husked in reply, clutching his throat with both hands.

  Had even one of the Foxden house cats barred their way, the pair might have gone down to defeat, but the felines, being sensible creatures, had hidden under beds upon the Iron Assassin’s violent arrival, so the way was clear.

  A shouting army of reinforcements were cautiously approaching the front doors of Foxden, with more guns and lights than Whipsnade had ever seen gathered in one place before, so the two men of the Order turned and made for the kitchen door, and the waiting night outside.

  Where it was dark, and the foremost soldiers sent to form a ring around the house were still stumbling and cursing their way through unfamiliar terrain, firing bullets through offending topiary that loomed up out of the night like silently waiting men.

  The two battered Tentacles agents raced past the soldiery and into the forest, which seemed to be alive with bellowings and crashings.

  “I am the Iron Assassin!” echoed one shout, nearer than the rest.

  “That’s—” Whipsnade panted.

  “Certainly sounds like him,” Grimstone panted back.

  They stopped to listen, clinging to each other and a handy tree for support. It very soon became clear that the Assassin was off that way, and most of the crashings were coming from persons pursuing him.

  “So if we merely keep him between us and his pursuers, it matters little what noise we make,” Grimstone concluded.

  “Find the path,” Whipsnade croaked, “and things will go more quietly, anyway. Back to London.”

  “Back to London,” Grimstone agreed. “Good innings, what?”

  “Good innings,” Whipsnade agreed, and stumbled after his fellow Tentacle, rubbing his aching throat. He couldn’t stop rubbing it.

  He’d never been desperately garroted before, and he hadn’t expected it to itch so much.

  * * *

  “Lord Tempest?” Malmerston inquired imperturbably. “Are you … functional?”

  The man on his knees groaned, explored his left temple with tentative fingers, and replied, “That’s been a … matter of debate for … some years.”

  “Ah. I was hoping you might assist me with a small matter of bandaging.”

  Jack Straker staggered to his feet, finding his knees more than a trifle rubbery. His head hurt like blazes—especially the head on the left. “Er—ah?”

  The butler held out a hand from which blood dripped steadily from the fingertips. “If you would be so good as to wrap this bandage tightly around this gash, here…”

  “That gash, Malmerston, is a bullet hole.”

  “Be that as it may, sir…”

  “Of course, of course; here, let me—there. Tight enough?”

  “I believe so. Tie it so the ends … yes. Quite so, sir. I thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Malmerston. So, did we win?”

  “They got away, sir. I believe the Lady Harminster is only bruised and winded, sir; I have assisted her to a chair. The others—Mister Hardcastle, the Chief Inspector, and the rest—appear to have suffered the effects of something causing paralysis, but it is already passing off.”

  “Yes, but the Prince, man! Is he—?”

  There was a thump from the secret doorway, and the Lord Lion of the Empire staggered out of the priest hole into the bedchamber, asking aggrievedly, “Who hit me?”

  OCTEMBER 16

  It was the custom of Mister Halworthy Burton, Lord Staunton, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Commissioner of the Queen’s High Constabulary to meet at dawn in Burton’s innermost office in Whitehall at least once a fortnight—and in these latter months, more often once a week—to discuss threats to the Empire.

  They were meeting now, over steaming cups of the blackest coffee, amid the reek of the thinnest and most fashionable new black cigars. Outside the windows, the fog hadn’t yet lifted off the Thames, but it was busily doing so.

  Which meant matters were coming to a seeming boil on both sides of the windows.

  With a relatively new Lord Chamberlain at the table, some old arguments had become new ones. Bertram Buckingham, like Lord Staunton, was apt to be more accepting of progress and innovation than either Burton (for whom “the new” always meant more headaches—new laws and regulations, new dodges, new unforeseen bad consequences) or Lord Percy Harkness, who had to enforce laws and regulations and liked to know where he—and for that matter, the Empire—stood. Hopefully on solid ground that shifted little or not at all.

  “Burton,” the Lord Chamberlain sighed now, “why can’t you ever see the larger picture? The longer view?”

  Lord Staunton rolled his eyes, anticipating one of Burton’s potted speeches. He was not disappointed; Halworthy Burton wheeled an all-too-familiar verbal cannon into position and let fly.

  “There are those who say we should concern ourselves with grand plans and bold schemes and that only the small-minded concern themselves with the characters and doings of mere individuals. Yet in my experience, people who hold such views a
re the very same souls who are most apt to ride roughshod over anyone who holds views that don’t accord with their own—or just anyone it pleases them to play the charging bull against.”

  “Ah. I see matters rather differently. I see someone who begins our every debate with either ‘That won’t work, and I’ll tell you why’ or ‘We must not under any circumstances allow that, because.’ Which may well be the right way to avoid all work but rather a poor way to run an empire—where change will be thrust upon us no matter how energetically we forbid and deny. I would rather steer change than be booted up the behind by it, time and again.”

  “Lord Chamberlain,” said Burton heavily, exasperation clear in every syllable, “you seem willfully unaware that we of the Crown do, in fact, daily manipulate which steam innovations succeed most swiftly by either supporting or frustrating inventors.”

  “‘Frustrating’ as in—?”

  “As in,” Harkness growled, “setting fires in workshops, perpetrating strategic thefts and vandalism, and—oh, yes, as very much a last resort, it seems, ‘hiring aside’ certain inventors into other work.” The lawlessness was obviously a sore point for the Commissioner.

  “We’ve had this out before, Harkness,” Burton snapped. “The ends far outweigh the means. Why—”

  “There speaks the archconservative,” Buckingham interrupted. “Just because a matter has been debated before does not mean it has been settled until the end of time and can never be raised again. Governance consists of continual revisiting and reevaluation, or we’d still have slavery and serfdom, and—”

  “Ah, but that’s just it, Buckingham,” put in Lord Staunton dryly. “We still do.”

  “If we could return to the point,” Burton said fussily.

  “Which is always whatever point you wish to pursue,” Harkness said flatly, “rather than whatever we’re getting around to discussing that you don’t want discussed.”

  “Yes,” Buckingham pounced. “I, for one, would very much like to discuss just why ends always justify means. Isn’t that the position of every tyrant? Every warmonger? Every—”

  “Oh, do leave off speechifying, man! You’re not in Parliament right now, you know!”

  “If you want me to stop making speeches, Burton, suppose you return to specifics. Name me some of these tinkerers we’re encouraging and some of those we’re working to stop. If I like your choices, you just might find that my resistance on this issue vanishes like river mist in the noonday sun.”

  Burton blinked across the table, then said slowly, “Well, that’s reasonable enough, I suppose. We’re encouraging Halvingham of Surrey, who’s working on small steam-pump vacuum effects under glass domes, for domestic uses—tube systems to whisk small items around a house or shop and to remove air under a dome to make food get stale or spoil more slowly. Our aid consists of lowering his taxes for a year and seeing that he has unfettered access to suppliers—the best glassblowers, the rubber importers. We’re helping Blustard of Liverpool the same way; he’s trying to make large rubber roundels for carriage wheels that he calls ‘tyres.’ Imagine the rumbling of carts by night being a sort of whishing sound or the din in some factories losing all the thunder of wheels and just retaining the hissing and piston noises of the steam.”

  “Both of those seem worthy of encouragement. So, one you’re trying to stop?”

  “Tyndale and his lightning gun,” Harkness put in. “Zaps anyone and everything within half a mile—more when a storm’s coming and the air is heavy. He’s killed sixteen people we know of, so far, just with his prototype—grandmothers, young lads and lasses—oh, and any number of birds, family pets, and livestock. Cooks chickens but leaves them raw.”

  The Lord Chamberlain shuddered. “That, too, I have no quarrel with.”

  “The real danger,” Halworthy Burton told him, leaning forward across the table, “is the maverick, the gifted amateur—Tempest, for instance.”

  “So he is,” the Lord Chamberlain agreed, “but your maverick is also the source of most of the great advances, the ones that don’t come by increments and painstaking refinement but are truly new. Innovative.”

  “Dangerous,” Harkness and Burton growled together.

  “Enough of this,” Lord Staunton said firmly. “We have some truly pressing concerns before us, and we can revisit these particular battlegrounds whenever we have the leisure and inclination to do so. I believe we are all agreed that the Ancient Order is raising steam for something?”

  “It certainly seems that way.”

  “Yes, but it always seems that way,” Burton growled. “They achieve importance by the controversy they court, by being outrageous. They never stop.”

  “Thereby wearying you, so you won’t react fast and hard enough when they make their real move,” Harkness told him. “I’d say they’re counting on that.”

  “Well, then, impress me. Convince me that this is a ‘real’ threat and not the usual ‘each agent tries to make a name for himself by seeing how much he can accomplish’ alarums.”

  Harkness looked up. “Buckingham, you can put it more clearly and quickly than I can, and we’ve wasted enough time. Go to it.”

  “Well, I’ll try.” The Lord Chamberlain cleared his throat, pushed aside the ashtray in which the Commissioner’s row of three lit cigars were smoldering, and said, “The most worrying signal is the arrival of Venetta Deleon, maid to the Dowager Duchess, and her visits to seemingly all who carry weight within the Ancient Order of Tentacles. The woman is wearing out shoes; those we have following her certainly are. And being as some of those she’s going to see include high-ups in some guilds and all of the important political parties, this looks to be really big; the future of the Empire may well be at stake.”

  “Speechifying again,” Burton muttered.

  “Perhaps, but I cannot overemphasize the gravity of this. The Dowager Duchess is trying to talk to everyone of consequence in the Ancient Order in a matter of days.”

  “A call to war?” Staunton asked quietly.

  “Looks like,” Harkness agreed.

  “Well, then,” Burton said, “the question before us is: What do we do about it? Stop her?”

  “No,” Buckingham replied. “We’ll only delay whatever’s about to happen and drive the Duchess to using other agents.”

  “No,” Staunton agreed, “because this Deleon woman may yet reveal to us the identities of some new and hidden Order members in her travels.”

  “I, too, vote for not stopping her,” Harkness agreed, “but I must caution that watching and following everyone she’s visiting is going to strain the resources of the Constabulary to the limit. We’re hard-pressed to keep patrols on the streets right now, and rushing out to Foxden every night for a few more of my men to get shot dead or sent to hospital with major injuries isn’t helping matters.”

  “So strip the counties,” Burton suggested. “Bring your most competent men in from the countryside.”

  “All three of them,” Harkness grunted.

  “Strip York, Manchester, Liverpool, and the Tyneside nearly bare,” Staunton put in, “sacrificing their safety—as quietly as possible, of course—to ride herd on everything in London. And arm every last beagle watcher and follower, and damn the consequences. If innocents get killed, so be it, if greater disaster is averted. We need sufficient armed might to move fast, win battles, and clamp down if need be.”

  They all looked at Buckingham, who sighed, nodded, and said reluctantly, “In this case the end does seem to justify the means. Do what you must.”

  “Well, then,” Burton said, reaching for his cigar, “it seems to me that we need to commandeer the royal airships, too.”

  The Lord Chamberlain frowned. “The—?”

  “Both the huge sky yacht Britannia and the little Swift that shuttles the Lord Lion to and from his, ah, more private engagements. We need to be able to follow Order members who have their own airships—such as the Lady Roodcannon, who’s been known to ferry entire shooting partie
s to stately homes all over the countryside and, we suspect, arranged that some of those shooting parties were really sniper training.”

  Buckingham winced. “I’ve no objection.”

  Burton looked around the table. “Anyone? No? Decided then.”

  Buckingham rubbed his upper lip with a thoughtful forefinger. It was amazing how Burton went from being the embattled odd man out to deciding and dominating. Perhaps it was because it was his office and his table …

  Harkness took a small hammer of the sort used for cracking sheets of hard sweets and a small bell hanging from a hook like a drooping bluebell and struck the one with the other. The room echoed with a piercing ring, an astonishingly loud sound from such a small bell.

  It brought Assistant Commissioner Alston Drake into the room in a rush. Burton had already finished scribbling something on a paper, which he folded and handed to Harkness, who put it in Drake’s hands and ordered, “Take this to the Prince Royal at Foxden and get his approval. Don’t tarry.”

  Drake hurried out, and the door had barely closed behind him when a distant explosion rattled the windows, smiting at their ears like a blow.

  All four men rushed to see what had happened out on the river.

  They had to crane and peer for quite some time and wait for more fog to lift, but it became apparent that two ships—or rather, a steamship and a row of barges—had collided. The Thames filled up with small boats full of shouting men trying to help, as the barges sank beneath the waters and the steamship started to list, giving off a huge plume of black smoke. It looked to be an accident, rather than deviltry or a deliberate ramming among rivals.

  “Third one this week,” Harkness commented. “More work for my lads.”

  “There’s going to be more and more of that—and in the air, too—if we don’t keep a firm hand on the tiller, gentle sirs,” Burton said crisply. “We need strict and clear laws, and plenty of them, and soon. Things are moving too fast.”