by Ed Greenwood
“Things are already moving too fast,” the Lord Chamberlain retorted. “Just as laws always lag behind the troubles they seek to redress or curb. It’s never an excuse for running roughshod over liberties.”
Burton gave him a look of open dislike. “So what would you have us do, my lord Liberty for All? Loose the hounds and have no one whipping them or calling them off?”
Lord Staunton shook his head. “No. That’s not working.”
Burton turned to give the nobleman an incredulous look. “What?”
Lord Staunton met it with a smile and said mildly around his cigar, “Oh, yes, we’re trying that right now, Burton. Haven’t you noticed?”
* * *
Uncle looked up from his steamed frogs and kedgeree. “You were missed at breakfast, Whipsnade,” he observed. “Suppose you tell me why.”
“Foxden, sir,” Whipsnade husked. “Didn’t manage to bag the Prince, but there are a lot of beagles and soldiers—and so-called royal servants who’re really the Prince’s bodyguards—who’ll never see another sunset.”
“I see. I don’t recall ordering you into the vicinity of Foxden.” Uncle’s voice was mild, but Whipsnade knew that glint in his master’s eye.
“You commented regarding the arrival from the Continent of the maid, sir. Said her arrival couldn’t help but create a stir and force us to see to things we’d been neglecting.”
“Such as the murder of the Prince Royal? Small matters of that sort, that I might have overlooked?”
Whipsnade winced.
“Suppose you tell me about it. Omit nothing. Who struck whom, who hit back, all that sort of thing. Mind you don’t leave out a detailed description of whoever tried to garrote you.”
“Yes, sir,” Whipsnade replied, and did as he was ordered.
As his narrative unfolded, Uncle’s anger gave way to amusement, and before he was done, his master looked eager, almost delighted.
“I trust you’ve learned a lesson regarding frolicking with noblewomen,” Uncle commented, then sat back, put down his cutlery, and smiled.
He stared through the far wall, thinking, and his smile broadened. Whipsnade waited.
Then his master stirred. “I shall be most interested to see what unfolds as a result of this,” he announced, and pointed at his plate. “Take this away, Whipsnade. The frog is entirely too froggy this morning; I’ll have none of it. Bring me some fried snake, instead.”
* * *
The room was shrouded in black taffeta, walls and ceiling. It had no windows and was dominated by a mirror taller and broader than even a strikingly large person. That plain but beautifully silvered mirror was flanked by two gaslamps that protruded from the taffeta on long, upcurving brass arms. It was Lady Roodcannon’s most private chamber, the refuge she sought out when she needed to talk to herself.
She was talking to herself—in the mirror—right now.
Lady Constance Roodcannon was by no means as icily or breezily self-confident as she liked the Empire to think she was. Yet a woman who showed the slightest weakness got savaged, swiftly, by the human sharks who cruised tirelessly, watching.
It had been a very long time since she’d been savaged, and she fully intended that it would never, ever, happen again.
Just now, she was troubled, and she hated that, had worked hard these last twenty years to ensure that very few things troubled her. Every matter that did was, after all, a weakness.
The maid Venetta had just departed. The messenger from the Dowager Duchess, who’d called on her in accordance with detailed instructions from the Duchess. The call to arms she’d delivered had so obviously been a bid for absolute control over the Ancient Order. Not to mention a warning to anyone who presumed to act with any measure of independence at all, noble ladies more than others, and noblewomen named Lady Constance Roodcannon in particular.
So.
Before coming to this room, she’d gone and reassured herself that the love letters from the Prince Royal she’d kept for so long and the physician’s letter stating that the Prince was the father of her son—who was a dead ringer for the Prince, anyway—were still safe. They were, and their defenses were now redoubled.
She’d known this challenge would come and heralded a battle that would come soon. Why, then, was she so filled with sudden misgivings, her heart thudding so?
Grimstone. It was Grimstone. Where had he gone? Oh, he often vanished of nights to do her bidding or to see to any of the scores of minor matters that kept her household running smoothly, and she trusted him to do so. Thus far without any hint, no matter what spies she sent after him, that her trust was misplaced. Yet he usually reappeared long before this time of day; what could have happened to him?
She was fond of him—she could admit it now. And it would be so tiresome to find and train a proper replacement.
And if—horrors!—he’d betrayed her and thrown in with a rival, it would be utter disaster—but, no, she couldn’t bear to dwell on such possibilities. Not until they became probabilities and had to be faced.
“So,” she told her mirror, “the Duchess has married a German noble. And one of the most thick-necked brutes among them, too. Why, I wonder? For his money? Or in his dabblings in the slave trade has he built himself a band of thugs strong enough to be useful when she sails into our midst to conquer the Ancient Order of Tentacles?”
The image in the mirror gave her no answers, staring back at her with a solemnity that bordered on sadness.
Staring into her own somber eyes, she came to a sudden decision.
Stripping off her clothes—everything, every last piece of jewelry—she donned the leather trousers and jacket of an airship pilot, headpiece and goggles and all.
Throwing a dark inverness over them, she turned off the gaslamps that flanked her mirror, making the pilot in the mirror vanish in an instant, and hastened out.
* * *
Grimstone was heartily sick of limping and staggering. Almost sick enough to be glad to see Clarence Sarkbottle.
Officially, Sarkbottle was a doctor no more. The courts were rather unforgiving of doctors who did some of the things he’d done. Nor was he a handsome man, or wealthy, or well-connected.
Wherefore he could now be found here, in this ramshackle shed and yard that stank of dead dogs, in a part of London not safe for a lone wounded, limping man. Grimstone had been forcibly reminded of that several times during his journey, and although he had prevailed, his temper had suffered.
The door opened before Grimstone could pull the rusty chain that rang the bell, and Grimstone found himself regarding one of Sarkbottle’s thugs. He had to look up to meet the man’s childlike face, marred by the grotesque hole left behind by a missing nose. Sliced off years ago. Sarkbottle had stitched on any number of replacements, but a man looks even worse with someone else’s rotting, dead nose dangling from his face.
“Urrr?” the man inquired, in unfriendly tones.
“Sarkbottle,” Grimstone replied. “I need to get stitched up.”
The thug’s eyes flickered, and he stepped back and slammed the door.
Grimstone waited, leaning on the stick he’d liberated from the clutches of a timid old man some thirty streets back.
Sarkbottle appeared at the door, as sour and chinless as ever, his thick glasses even more smudged and ill repaired, and greeted his visitor without enthusiasm.
“Halberd through my leg,” Grimstone explained tersely. “Want to be able to walk.”
Sarkbottle peered down at a leg that was by now black with dried blood and soaked dark red with the more recent bleeding of Grimstone’s adventuresome journey. “The price will be high.”
“I’ll pay it, or I wouldn’t be here.”
“In,” Sarkbottle replied, retreating from the threshold so Grimstone could do so.
What followed was bloody and excruciatingly painful, and the price was high, but whatever Sarkbottle injected into him numbed the pain entirely—for now. Grimstone retained the walking stick,
for later, and went to get the doctor’s payment.
Sarkbottle ensured his clients paid by sending two burly thugs with them, two unlovely and unshaven mountains Grimstone privately thought of as Noseless and Fang. Noseless was the lout who’d opened the door, and Fang was an older man with just one tooth left—a canine that protruded down over his lower lip and gave him the look of an old and crotchety crocodile.
Grimstone led them across London to one of the older city cemeteries, where he went to a grand but overgrown family crypt that did not bear the name Grimstone.
“Here,” Fang snarled, “what’re you playing at?”
Grimstone went up the worn stone steps, unlocked the ornate black door, and said, “Wait here.”
Noseless did just that, standing like a patient fence post, but Fang shifted from foot to foot for a short time, lost patience, and went up the steps and through that dark door.
Where he found himself looking down the barrel of a large pistol—and feeling the hard, round maw of another in his gut.
“I told you,” Grimstone said very quietly, “to wait outside.”
Fang blinked, backed away, and found himself being herded back down the steps. The inevitable ravens flapped past, to land atop the headstones of the lesser dead, cock their heads, and watch with interest. Professional interest. You never did know where your next meal was coming from.
Grimstone returned to the crypt briefly, then emerged again and relocked the door. “Don’t try to rummage in there later on,” he warned. “The traps will kill you. Painfully. And you’ll never find them all.”
Fang was taller than Grimstone and so had caught a glimpse of what was in the casket Grimstone had opened. A moldering, reeking corpse alive with gnawing worms, that seemed afloat in a sea of gold coins, and of course more pistols. Aside, that is, from the two he had menaced Fang with and was undoubtedly carrying now.
“What is all this, then?” Fang demanded, waving at the crypt.
Grimstone regarded them both for a moment, considering. Then decided telling them the truth was the best way to frighten them into leaving his hideaway alone.
“I,” he announced, “am a bone thief.”
They paled and shifted their feet, backing away from him a little, so he knew they grasped at least a little of what that meant.
“On the side,” Grimstone added pleasantly. Noseless just looked blank, but Fang started to frown in puzzlement. It promptly started to rain. Cold and hard.
So Grimstone explained, “Sometimes, I’m ordered to kill people, and their bodies are left to be found, as warnings. Other times, the body isn’t to be found; they’re just supposed to vanish. Yes?”
Fang nodded. Noseless looked at Fang, then started nodding, too.
“So when I have to make them vanish, I go to one of the older boneyards, break open a crypt, and put the body in one of the coffins that’s in there. I have to take the bones that’re already there out, to make room—so I sell them to rag-and-bone men or, better, to the likes of Doctor Sarkbottle, who’ll pay more, because he can resell them to tinkerers and cultists and the like. That’s why he agreed to doctor me at all—because he’d promised.”
“We keep promises,” Noseless intoned, obviously repeating what Sarkbottle had told him.
“Indeed. Which is why you’re going to promise me now to leave this crypt alone. Never come near it, never open its door, never tell anyone else what’s inside. Even Doctor Sarkbottle.”
“Why?” Fang asked bluntly.
“Because you’ll live longer, that’s why—and you won’t die slowly, screaming in agony.”
“Oh,” Fang replied, and looked at Noseless.
Who smiled brightly, and said proudly, “Never come back. Understand.”
He led the way out of the cemetery, and Grimstone successfully repressed a shudder as they headed for the yard full of dead dogs.
There were times when he really appreciated having Lady Roodcannon as an employer, for all her faults.
His manhood started to itch then, as if reminding him. But of a fault, or a benefit?
* * *
Foxden resounded with many hammerings, sawings, and frequent clatters of boards and posts being dropped atop more boards and posts. Why were carpenters always so abominably noisy?
And this lot were making this infernal din despite the fact that they were being watched over by a coldly suspicious army of defenders!
Still, perhaps royal household carpenters were used to such scrutiny—and to repairing the aftermath of wild gun battles, too.
Beside her, the bruised and bandaged Mister Hardcastle fumbled with his teacup and almost dropped it. Rose stopped reflecting about carpenters, noisy or otherwise, and rescued it just before Hardcastle slopped it all down her leg. And a good thing, too; her wardrobe was not infinite.
He mumbled a mingled thanks and apology, and the two of them returned their attention to Jack Straker, across the table. Lord Tempest, still in his exoskeleton, was more battered and bandaged than the two of them combined yet was talking as excitedly and energetically as if he’d never been in any fights, suffered the slightest discomfort, or missed any sleep, either.
Rose stifled a yawn, shook her head ruefully, and made a mental note to just stop thinking of such things.
“We must remove this new control key from the Iron Assassin to get him uncontrolled again, but I’m afraid—what with this damned exoskeleton of mine getting damaged in the fighting—I now lack the mobility to do it.”
He looked across the table. “So, as much as I hate to ask this of you, my dear…”
“You don’t have to ask,” Rose told him. “I regard it as my duty.”
“Ah, capital, capital! That means Bleys here won’t have to tackle Steelforce alone. I’m thinking he can do the distraction and fisticuffs, whilst a certain Lady Harminster flips open the access door from behind.”
The wounded Hardcastle winced. “I ache just thinking about it,” he said, reaching for his tea again. “Mane of the Lion, but I hurt!”
“We are a trio of wounded old soldiers, aren’t we?” Rose murmured ruefully.
“Indeed,” Tempest agreed, pouring more tea for them all. “This isn’t like a magazine serial or one of those fanciful tales about consulting detectives, where people conveniently confess and everything gets wound up tidily at the bottom of a page. Real life is almost never so clear-cut, so definite, so clean. It’s all messy and dirty and disorganized loose ends.” He flashed a grin. “That’s what I love about it.”
“Excuse me,” Malmerston interrupted smoothly, bending over their table to address Tempest. Behind him, half a dozen burly soldiers were sweating under the weight of some crates of rather unusual dimensions. “There is an immediate and pressing need, my lord, to know where you want all this clobber. Sir.”
“In the room you gave me. It’s large, but not so large that it can’t share space with my bed. If I feel the need to waltz with someone, I’ll borrow another room.”
Rose leaned forward. “Is what large, if I may ask?”
“My machine that can trace etheric waves, so we can have a go at tracing Marlshrike,” Tempest replied—just as Malmerston was shouldered aside by Drake of the Yard.
“This is your doing, isn’t it?” he snapped furiously at Tempest.
“Drake, you seem perturbed,” the lord observed calmly. “Have some tea.”
The Assistant Commissioner of the beagles ignored that suggestion in favor of bellowing, “I am furious! Furious at anyone trying to bring a potentially lethal device, whose purpose isn’t understood by us and for which we must trust a—a maverick inventor!—”
Tempest nodded and smiled.
“—so close to the most precious man in the Empire: the Lord Lion we all serve!”
“I trust him,” said a voice from behind Drake.
The Prince Royal’s utterance brought utter stillness to the room.
During which Drake dropped his face into his hands, shook his head, then s
pread his hands wide in an eloquent “I give up” gesture.
* * *
Sarkbottle had been paid, and, thus far, Grimstone’s leg was holding up. It ached, mind you, but his limp was gone and he was no longer bleeding with each step and feeling that the leg might collapse under him at any time.
So that left him with business to attend to, alone. Those two thugs had too much bone between their ears to ever be thoroughly terrified—or to refrain from talking about what they’d seen, somewhere and somehow.
Which meant, if he wanted to see the rest of his coins ever again, not to mention some quite useful pistols, he had to get right back to the cemetery in a hurry and shift his valuables from the now-known crypt to another one a row over.
The crypt the two thugs had accompanied him to was locked and undisturbed, but a surprise was waiting for Grimstone when he trudged into that second row, his first sack of valuables in hand, and up to the crypt he’d pillaged there a few months back.
Someone familiar was just stepping out of another crypt, three doors down.
Miles Whipsnade.
Who was carrying a sack of his own. Its shape told Grimstone its contents without having to ask: bones.
“Well, well,” Whipsnade said with a lopsided smile. “We meet again.”
“We do indeed,” Grimstone agreed sardonically. “Two upright gentlemen with, it seems, the same sideline profession.”
“Oh?”
“Bone thief.”
“Ah. Such a harsh term. I prefer ‘remains relocater’ myself.”
“Indeed. Such a coincidence that we chose the same cemetery.”
“Among others.”
“Among others, of course. Crypts are ideal for such pursuits, don’t you think?”
“I am gathering the impression,” Whipsnade observed carefully, “that we are both using crypts for more than just ‘bones out, and valuables in.’ I sense … kindred needs. As if I am not the only faithful servant in London who sees the prudent need to slowly and very carefully assemble certain evidence against my master that might someday prove useful if I must attempt to save my own skin. If, for example, I am ever collared by the beagles on a charge of … murder.”