The Iron Assassin

by Ed Greenwood

  “Kindred needs, indeed,” Grimstone replied, meeting the other man’s eyes. “When we’re done here, perhaps a pint together, at—”

  There was a loud thud from nearby—from back the way he’d come.

  From his first crypt, as it turned out. He and Whipsnade hastened there together and found one of Sarkbottle’s two thugs lying dead on the crypt threshold, his head crushed by a falling-block trap.

  It was Fang, by his boots. There wasn’t a lot of his head left to get a proper look at his face.

  “That didn’t take long,” Grimstone observed calmly. “Help me drag him inside so we can reset the block fall. With any luck, we’ll bag the other one.”

  “You first,” Whipsnade replied. “Being as I’m sure you have other traps in there.”

  Grimstone showed his teeth in what was almost a smile. “But of course.”

  * * *

  The gates of the Tower of London had always been forbidding. Iron spikes, painted black, thick and so close together that only a thin man’s arm could thrust through them beyond the elbow. Sir Fulton Birtwhistle had just discovered that he did not possess a sufficiently emaciated arm.

  The discovery did not hearten him. Neither did the reception he was getting from the guards inside the gates, who were steadfastly refusing him entry.

  Well, at least it had stopped raining. For now.

  Not that the cessation of the downpour had done anything to improve Sir Fulton’s temper. He had a client in there and was being denied access to the man! Prisoner in the Tower or prisoner in a village lockup, it made no difference! No citizen of the Empire could be denied their clear right to counsel!

  So this is what “utterly furious” felt like. Well.

  “You have no right to deny me, sir!” he bellowed, rapping his walking stick upon the bars. “Citizens of England have clearly established legal rights that you, sir, are flouting! I demand to see—”

  “Demand all you like,” the Yeoman Warder he’d been dealing with said coldly, drawing the fattest pistol Birtwhistle had ever seen from a leg holster and cocking it meaningfully. “He’s not here.”

  “What? Well, what have you done with him?”

  “Not at liberty to say. Sir. Go away, sir.”

  “I—I will not, so long as you deny me access to my client! Tell me where he is, or I’ll assume you’re lying, and that he is indeed insi—”

  “Birtwhistle,” an exasperated voice said from behind the Warder, “he’s telling you the truth. There’s been a gas leak, and although no one’s hurt, we’ve moved every prisoner out of the Tower for the time being. He’s in lockup at Cannon Street; take yourself there.”

  It was Halworthy Burton. Sir Fulton stared at him, eyes narrowing. Burton’s every third sentence was a lie, if his own experience was anything to go by, and he detested the man. Moreover, the man detested him. It was hardly a relationship likely to foster trust, and here he was, being expected to trust—

  A steam-powered coach rumbled up out of the night and stopped before the closed gates. Out climbed the Lord Chancellor of the Empire, who gave Birtwhistle a quizzical look. As he was doing so, a second coach wheezed up out of the night—and it disgorged old Throckmorton, the Imperial Herald, followed by the junior herald, Prycewood.

  Sir Fulton’s eyebrows rose, then lowered into a real frown. He turned to Burton. “Highly placed gas fitters you call, indeed!”

  “Get gone,” the Yeoman Warder said grimly, “or I’ll—”

  “Or you’ll what? Shoot me down in cold blood?”

  “Or my finger will slip on this heavy, awkward trigger, and this just might go off.”

  Whatever reply Sir Fulton might have made to that was lost forever in the steaming din of a third coach arriving.

  Men sprang out of it, a lot of them, and commenced to advance threateningly on Birtwhistle. Uniformed, every last man—beagles and members of the Royal Household Guard.

  Sir Fulton Birtwhistle backed hastily away, shaking his head.

  Their presence could mean only one thing. Still in that third coach was the Queen herself.

  Gas leak, indeed.

  * * *

  Uncle was eating a late-evening repast of snake with fried mushrooms. Whipsnade stood at ease at his master’s shoulder, ready with the decanters.

  “Something seems to be afoot, sir,” he reported. “Assistant Commissioner Drake of the beagles pushed two houndcars into breakdown, one after the other, to get from Foxden back into London in great haste—and he’s just been sighted leading a small force of heavily armed beagles from somewhere they were hiding—in Hackney, of all places—to the Tower of London. Fast.”

  His master gave him a look of real surprise. “Has a prisoner escaped?”

  Whipsnade smiled like a cat. “That’s the thing, sir. It seems all of the prisoners were removed from the Tower earlier today, very quietly. And the Lord Chancellor, the Imperial Herald, and the gray-haired half of Whitehall are already there.”

  Uncle’s eyebrows shot up. “Cordon, yes? So we can’t contact our spy inside the Tower?”

  “Cordon.”

  “Well, now. I think you’d better pay a visit to Lady Rood—”

  “Her private airship was seen departing London earlier today, sir. Heading south.”

  “South? Good heavens, as they say. Well, then, collar Smythe and Hulbread and Riverbree, and the thugs they lead, and head for the Tower. See what can be seen, learn as much as you can—and everybody armed, so anyone who gets a good look at you dies. After all, any dead beagle—”

  “—is a good beagle! Sir!” Whipsnade nodded and hurried out.

  * * *

  “Is it working?”

  Tempest looked up from needles dancing wildly across dials. “Of course it’s working, Drake. That’s what my machines do.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  Drake waved impatiently at the array of dials. “Haven’t you found him yet? That’s what your machine does, doesn’t it?”

  Tempest favored the senior beagle with a rather scathing look. “Haven’t you got murders to solve? Go do something about that, Drake, or have a drink or something! Night’s only just fallen, so all the noise the sun puts out is fading, but this device of mine traces etheric transmissions—any and all transmissions, not signals emanating from Norbert Marlshrike and no one else. There’s quite a bit of sorting out in my immediate future. Perhaps a night or two of sorting; who knows?”

  “Bah!” The Assistant Commissioner strode angrily away. “Music-hall flummery! Conjurer’s tricks!”

  Hardcastle uncoiled himself from where he’d been leaning against the wall, gave Tempest a grin, and asked, in nigh-perfect mimicry of the belligerent beagle, “So, is it working?”

  His old friend chuckled, then tapped one of the dials. “I’m pretty certain that’s Marlshrike. But only pretty certain.”

  “Ah. ‘Pretty certain’ being better than ‘somewhat certain’?”

  “Much. Yet look!”

  “At?”

  “The needles, man! Look how they’re dancing! It’s almost as if he’s talking!”

  “Well, what if he is? Talking on the ether, I mean?”

  “If he is, and if I can rig something up, we might just be able to hear him—for a moment or two, that is, not listen in; the signals are leaping all over the place.”

  “But if that moment or two is long enough for us to identify him—”

  “Precisely,” Tempest said delightedly. “Here, help me with this. We’ll power down—disconnect the steam pump, thus—and then, if you’ll help me with these rods…”

  “Jack,” Hardcastle said quietly, “these are lightning rods.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, ah … how safe is this?”

  “My dear fellow, tinkering is never safe. That’s why only crazed men like you and me—”

  “I accept the compliment,” Hardcastle said heavily. “So what must I do?”

  For some minutes
, to the flow of Tempest’s excited instructions, they worked feverishly, aligning rods and propping them in place with untidy stacks of books hastily scooped off the Prince’s shelves, coiling bare wires around the ends of the rods, and …

  Tempest sat back with a sigh. “No,” he said at last. “No, we can’t hear the man, if it’s him. Not with what I’ve got here. If I had the time … but I don’t. We’ll just have to settle for tracing this signal I think is Marlshrike.”

  “Ignoring all others?”

  “For now. Only this one seems to originate close to here. If it proves to be something else—after all, Marlshrike isn’t the only tinkerer in southern England, and quite a host of men seem to grasp the potential of etheric telegraphy—then we’ll concern ourselves with the weaker and less likely.”

  “I follow your thinking,” Hardcastle agreed, “but I’m not the tinkerer here. I understand the dangers of steam and lightning better than how we harness them.”

  “Which, Bleys, puts you head and shoulders ahead of the general populace. So let go of that rod, O heeder of danger, and we’ll have another stab at tracing.”

  That stab took only moments before Tempest sprang to his feet, rushed to the map on the table, laid several rods across it, frowned at them and then rushed back to his dials, returned to the map and made minute adjustments to the rods, then pointed.

  “Here. Where there’s a disused mill, I believe. Not all that far to the west of Bishop’s Bottom, as it happens.” He looked up at Hardcastle. “Go and tell Drake—”

  “I heard,” the Assistant Commissioner interrupted from the doorway. “So you’ve found him. Have my thanks. And sit tight here, both of you. This is now a job for the Constabulary, not you or any other handful of dabblers blundering about the landscape with—”

  “Beards grown long and gray waiting for your lot to draw up plans and contingencies, train everyone, retrain everyone, and—”

  “Lord Tempest,” Drake growled, “your wildly misplaced personal opinions of the force have no place in—”

  “I,” declared Lady Rose Harminster firmly, from the doorway behind him the beagle commander, “am ready to go. If Assistant Commissioner Drake is not, woe betide the Empire, and small wonder so many murderers go unapprehended. Bleys?”

  Hardcastle caught up his hat and walking stick. “I’m ready.”

  “What’re you—? Really, this is most irregular. And unwise. I cannot allow—” Drake sputtered.

  “It is the role of the Queen’s High Constabulary to apply the laws of the land,” Tempest snapped, rising to confront the Assistant Commissioner nose to nose. “It is not their role to take it upon themselves to, outside the laws, ‘allow’ or ‘disallow’ anything. We have the courts for that, and Parliament, and the Crown. God knows the three of them are large and powerful enough to manage that between them. May I remind you, Drake, that Sworn Swords and Dread Agents of the Tower outrank you and for that matter Harkness? We give orders, and you follow them, not the other way around.”

  “But-but—he’s not a Sworn Sword!” Drake growled, pointing one large and shaking finger at Hardcastle.

  “Oh? And how is it, exactly, that you know that? Since when is an Assistant Commissioner privy to the membership rolls of the Dread Agents of the Tower? Or familiar beyond all doubt with the unwritten roster of the Sworn Swords?”

  “I-I—oh, hang it,” Drake sputtered. “Go. Go and gallivant. Just don’t come crying to me when…”

  Tempest peered at him closely. “When what?”

  The Assistant Commissioner waved a dismissive hand. “Figure of speech,” he said curtly. “The Constabulary remains ready—as always—to haul your carcass out of whatever trouble you get yourself into, Lord Tempest. Ready and willing.”

  Rose had seldom heard the word “willing” uttered in more unwilling tones, but forbore from commentary. Someone in this room had to display a little prudence.

  “As it happens,” she said crisply, “Lord Tempest’s carcass is too valuable—and too battered at the moment—to risk any gallivanting. I and Mister Hardcastle shall be, ah, sallying forth.”

  Drake looked her up and down. Knee-high leather boots, riding breeches, airship-crew leather jacket, cap, gloves, and night goggles … well, at least she wasn’t foolheaded enough to try marching out into the forest by night in a gown, petticoats, silk stockings, and fashionable heels.

  “Far be it from me to presume to give a peer of the Empire orders,” he said heavily, “but as a friend and as one all too experienced in tramping about the countryside by night, may I strongly suggest you just locate this Marlshrike’s whereabouts and not attack the place, try to capture the man, or even reveal your presence to whoever’s there?”

  “Assistant Commissioner,” Rose said politely, “your suggestion has been entertained, but—”

  “But I can give you orders,” Tempest interrupted her, “and in this, I agree with Drake. Not that I think you’ll obey. Hardcastle, when things get rough, get her and yourself out of there as quickly as possible. No heroics.”

  Hardcastle gave him a mocking bow. “Of course.”

  Rose gave him a look. “So now you’re my keeper? Who’s the Sworn Sword here, if I may ask?”

  Hardcastle took a step back—and winked. Then he mumbled, “You are, m’lady, but you’re also new to this, and I thought…”

  “Oh you did, did you? Well, as it happens, I, too, share Commissioner Drake’s misgivings, so I agree fully with his suggestions.”

  “Oh,” blurted out Drake. Then he added hesitantly, “Actually, Lady Harminster, it’s Assistant Commiss—”

  “Ah, well, for now, perhaps,” she said sunnily, giving him a sparkling smile that left him blushing and standing taller.

  Then she whirled around and strode from the room, slapping her thigh with her gloves as if they were a riding crop. “Come, Mister Hardcastle. We have a mad and evil tinkerer to find, and the night grows steadily older!”

  Hardcastle looked at the other two men, rolled his eyes, adjusted his hat, and hastened after her.

  Leaving Tempest and Drake to look at each other.

  The Assistant Commissioner coughed. “Uh, having women, uh, mixed up in things certainly livens matters up,” he offered.

  “Indeed,” Lord Tempest agreed, eyes twinkling. “You should try it on the force.”

  Drake choked and backed away, red-faced and aghast. Then, eyeing the lord seated behind his dials, decided Tempest was joking. Scowling, he emitted an exasperated sigh and stormed out of the room.

  Tempest’s explosion of laughter was as quiet as he could make it, but his bid for silent mirth was not entirely successful.

  * * *

  “It’s a nasty choice,” Hardcastle whispered, as they crouched down in the lee of an oak tree that had probably been young when the first castles were being built in what would become England, well downriver. “Keep to the paths, where they can’t help but see us and probably have traps and ambushes ready—or blunder through the forest and sound like a wild herd of large and drunken somethings trying to creep closer.”

  Rose suppressed a giggle. “You put things so eloquently, Mister Hardcastle.”

  “Call me Bleys,” he whispered back. “It’s shorter.”

  She rolled her eyes at that, rose, stepped back onto the path—and promptly fell over on top of him in some haste, as a bullet came whining out of the night, along the path, far too close for comfort.

  Hardcastle wrapped his arms around her and rolled over in a frenzy of disturbed leaves, and then lay still. Silence slowly returned to the dark forest … and then the small night sounds, the hootings and rustlings, began again.

  “Mister Hardcastle,” Rose whispered, into the face so close above hers, “what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Shielding you against the next shot,” he replied, as if explaining matters to an idiot.

  Well, at least he wasn’t one of these greasy Lotharios, smilingly seizing on any opportunity.


  “I appreciate your gallantry,” she whispered, “even if it is entirely misplaced. However, I can’t help but observe that it’s going to be very hard for me to get closer to this mill and attempt to locate Marlshrike with you pinning me to the ground and holding my arms. So unless you’d like to feel a rather sharp knee where it’s unlikely to do you any good…”

  “Umm,” Hardcastle replied, hastily rolling off her. “Delicately put.”

  “Your point about the nasty choice, however, stands,” she hissed. “Have you any solutions in mind, or—?”

  The rest of her words were lost as she gasped to a halt. The woods in the direction they’d been heading had suddenly erupted into what sounded like open warfare. Guns blazed away, at least a dozen men jumped or fell heavily out of trees and started running, crashing very noisily through leaves and underbrush, and someone screamed.

  “What the devil?” Hardcastle exclaimed, trying to peer around a tree and keep his chin low to the ground.

  “Drake’s doing, do you think?” Rose asked.

  “The beagles, without lanterns and a lot of ‘stand and surrender in the name of the law’ shouting? Doubtful,” he muttered.

  The battle seemed to be heating up, not subsiding, although there were fewer noisy descents from trees nearby.

  “All those men were waiting for us,” Rose gasped, realizing how close they’d come to being killed.

  “There may be more,” he replied. “If Drake’s not going to shift until daylight, why shouldn’t we wait a bit, and see if they kill each other off?”

  “I’d be more sanguine about such a tactic if I had the slightest idea who ‘they’ were—either side,” Rose told him.

  “Look!” Hardcastle hissed, pointing. Flame had kindled, off to the west, in the direction they’d been heading. Flaring up vivid and sudden, shining through the trees so brightly that—

  “It’s the dirigible!” Rose gasped. “That the Order’s masked men have been riding about in!”

  The blaze was higher than the trees—just—and lit up the wood as it drifted away; they could clearly see men in masks and dark suits and gloves rushing through the trees, gleaming pistols in hand. A few had walking sticks in their fists, and one or two wore long coats. They were all hurrying west, to where more firing was breaking out. Rose and Hardcastle could see muzzle flashes and men staggering and falling.