The Iron Assassin

by Ed Greenwood

  “I’ve done many unwise things in my life,” came the royal reply, “but doing what is needful and proper for the succession isn’t one of them. Traitors be damned. Deliver a royal summons to my son. I want him by my side just as soon as he can be here.”

  A beagle peered around the edge of the barricade, and four pistols barked as one. His body was propelled backward, suddenly and messily faceless, to bounce on the floor. It twitched once or twice, and then lay still.

  The junior herald, Prycewood, took a stand over the cooked body of his predecessor, snatching up the poker Throckmorton had dropped when shielding the Queen.

  “Take the turret stairs down,” he told the beagles fiercely, “and get out of here. Drake can’t have men enough to block them all. And whatever happens, you find him, and you see that he hangs for this. Because if he somehow gets off, I’ll hunt him, and I’ll find him—and then nothing, but nothing will save him. With these two hands I’ll break his neck, I will. And stab him through the heart, burn what’s left, and dance on the bloody ashes.”

  Sir Fulton felt tears welling up. “You, sir,” he declared, “are full of what is good about England, and the Empire.”

  “Save the speeches. Just get word,” the Queen gasped, faintly, “to my son.”

  “I’ll do it,” Sir Fulton promised. Then he turned to the beagle who’d told him about the knockout gas and murmured, “Is she dying?”

  The constable muttered, “She believes she is, and, after all, it’s her body. Look at her; obviously a lot of pain. Who knows?” He shrugged. “Yet a royal command is—”

  “A royal command,” Sir Fulton joined in. “So I’ll go. Is there any armor here that can stop bullets?”

  “Armor doesn’t stop bullets,” another beagle informed him grimly. “Not direct shots, from pistols like they’re using. And armor helps steam cook you and will slow you down, as you’re not used to it. Just run.”

  “And get shot down like a bunny munching prized flowers in a garden,” Harkness rasped, from the floor. “A diversion, men!”

  “Rush them and die, you mean?”

  “Three of you. The rest, form a ring around Birtwhistle—and you, Pritchard—and get them both out the back way. Pritchard, get to the signals and send to our West Hill tower. The summons, but warn the Prince he’s heading into a trap.”

  “Signals? West Hill?” Sir Fulton asked, a little overwhelmed.

  “We have a signal tower here at the Tower. Uses colored lanterns hung in patterns. The West Hill tower is in Wandsworth; messengers can hurry from there to Foxden. In case something happens to you.”

  “Then why…”

  “Risk you at all? You have a better chance than Pritchard, sir, if Drake’s men hold as much of the Tower as I think they do. There’s no cover for a lot of the way he’ll have to go.”

  Sir Fulton Birtwhistle sighed. “Right,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  Helmeted beagle heads nodded all around him, men started to rush—and bullets started to fly.

  * * *

  The first two men who rushed around the end of the barricades were shot down before they got more than a few running strides toward Drake’s waiting men—who shouted as they saw, over the heaped furniture, the top edge of the bedchamber back door move as it swung open.

  “They’re making a break for it! The Queen’s getting away!”

  Thank heavens for that latter assumption, Pritchard thought, pelting down the turret stairs just behind the already winded and puffing magistrate. It just might keep us all from being blown up, or gunned down in a no-holds-barred barrage.

  Sparing me the irony of being killed by our side.

  Outside the White Tower itself, Drake’s force was spread thinly indeed, just to hold all the vital points in the maze of buildings, tunnels, and fortress walls that made up the Tower. So the ring of rushing beagles around Birtwhistle stood a pretty good chance—if they didn’t blunder and take the wrong route—of getting out and away.

  While he himself, one of Drake’s secret conspirators and therefore knowing exactly where his fellow traitors had orders to be and to fight to hold, had a clear, safe run to the signals.

  He would send the signal to Foxden, though it would just be the urgent “the Queen is dying” summons and include no mention of a trap.

  But first …

  Pritchard reached the signals out of breath but was recognized by the two fellow conspirators standing guard there. They waved him to the lanterns.

  Where he caught his breath, smiled, and set about sending his first and most important message—to the Mary Rose.

  The airship should have been seized by now at its mooring in Limehouse. Which meant receipt of his signal would make its new crew of fanatics with parachutes commence to sail the airship to the Tower, loaded with ready explosives.

  There. Done. Sent twice.

  There came an answering flash from Limehouse.

  Good. Pritchard turned the signaler around to face distant West Hill.

  He was just starting to unhook lanterns when he saw a small, fast “flitter” airship in Westminster livery rise into the air, banking with an alacrity seldom seen in court voyages, to race off toward Foxden.

  Well, well. It seemed even pompous, troublesome magistrates could really run when they felt the need.

  * * *

  Rose and Hardcastle burst into the room rather breathlessly.

  Tempest looked up from something small and metallic he was tinkering with, which was clamped between metal frames at a littered table, and he gave them a smile.

  “There you are! I shut down the machine, as I believe I now know exactly where Marlshrike’s apparatus is. We can—”

  “Lady Roodcannon’s airship is headed straight for the Tower!” Rose interrupted excitedly.

  “With its running lights all out,” Hardcastle added, “which means—”

  “She’s up to no good,” Tempest finished for him. “Well, now!” He sprang up, strode to the wall, and tugged heartily on a bellpull.

  “Is that food?” Rose asked, peering at the litter on the table and suddenly realizing how famished she was.

  “Oh, yes,” the tinkerer noble replied, looking around in some surprise. “I never got around to the kippers. Too busy testing this new control key for the Assassin. Help yourself, m’dear.”

  “I, too, am starving,” Hardcastle observed, with some dignity, following Rose to the plate.

  Behind them, the door they’d come in through burst open, and a beagle peered in. “Sir?”

  “Go tell the Lord Lion that an airship, its lights out, has been sighted heading for the Tower. Lady Roodcannon’s airship, mind. The first of your fellow constables you see on your way to the Prince, tell him to get up to the hill with a spyglass and look for signals from the Tower—oh, and from the West Hill Constabulary post. The second constable you see, send to the kitchens; we need something fast, simple, and filling for two tired agents to eat, in very short order. Then go make sure everyone’s awake, dressed for battle, armed, and ready.”

  “Sir?”

  “And anyone who disagrees with you—or you, if you don’t want to take orders from me—know this: Commissioner Harkness and I discussed such situations (well, all but the protocol for feeding tired agents, that is), and these orders he gave to me to pass on. So you might say they come from the Commissioner himself.”

  “Yes, sir,” the beagle replied dryly. “You might say.” But one corner of his mouth was lifting in a grin as he hurried out of the room.

  “For a kipper,” Rose said appreciatively, “this is a darned good sausage.”

  “Oh, did I miss one of the sausages? Well, my loss and your gain, m’dear. Now, let me just do one thing more…”

  Tempest touched two wires to either end of the control key in its clamps and pumped a foot treadle. There was a hiss of steam, and then a spark snapped blue-white and angry as it leaped from wire to key and then to the other wire, and the key briefly glowed with the same hu
e.

  “Good. It will work,” he announced, satisfied. Tossing the wires in opposite directions, he undid the clamps, plucked out the control key—like all the others, a little box, akin to a square snuffbox, though this one lacked any glued-on glass eyeball or other adornment—and handed it to Rose.

  “If you would do me the great service of carrying this on your person, Lady Harminster, my mind would be greatly eased. I would consider the key safe.”

  “Oh?” Meeting his eyes, Rose slipped the key down her bodice and into the soft leather bag she wore under her bosom when she had occasion to carry valuables along the streets of London. She was carrying a small vial of pepper there now, for dashing into the eyes of assailants—though in the woods full of wildly firing masked agents, she’d found no prudent targets for such an intimate-quarters weapon. “Safe enough?”

  Tempest grinned. “And is there a safe answer to that question? I wonder. For now, let it suffice to say—”

  The door behind them banged open again, and his face changed.

  Rose didn’t waste time turning around to see what the peril was. Not when doing so was quite likely to bring her nose to nose with whatever it was—and she had her suspicions about that—without any time to dodge or defend. Instead, she sprang past Jack Straker and his littered worktable to fetch up against a wall before she looked back.

  In time to see Bleys Hardcastle grappling with an all-too-familiar lurching adversary.

  Even as he landed a solid punch to the Iron Assassin’s jaw, Bentley Steelforce caught hold of the front of his jacket, lifted Hardcastle off his feet as though he weighed no more than a child’s doll, and flung him away.

  He landed with a tinkling crash atop Tempest’s machine. Sparks spat, metal tubes spun and clanged away, steam hissed—and Bleys Hardcastle shouted in pain and bounced to the ground, spasming as tiny bolts of lightning raced down his limbs and snarled out from his fingertips to fade away.

  He was still groaning and moving—feebly—so he wasn’t dead, but …

  The Iron Assassin stalked toward Tempest. Who coolly stepped forward to wrest a length of pipe out of the midst of his damaged machine. Hefting it, he faced his creation calmly.

  Steelforce loomed up over the nobleman, moving with slow, silent menace, spreading his arms wide as if he expected Tempest to try to dart away.

  The tinkerer stood his ground, launching no attack on the Assassin. Rather, he held the pipe up in front of himself, in both hands, vertically as if it was the shaft of an umbrella.

  Steelforce raised his spread arms—and then brought them down to grasp and rend. Yes, yes, came a tinny, gloating voice from the back of his head. Slay Tempest, my creature! Tear him limb from limb!

  Jack Straker smiled bitterly at that, as he spun the pipe into a horizontal position and sank down, so those descending arms couldn’t come together and their owner had to bend over and over to reach him at all.

  Then the tinkerer struck, shoving the pipe up to knock against Steelforce’s hands as he touched one of the wires to it and kicked at the steam treadle again.

  Fat blue sparks spat, the Iron Assassin threw back his head and howled—and Tempest dashed him across the chin with the pipe, let go of it, and fled.

  Under the table and past his machine.

  The Assassin turned and lurched after him, flinging the table aside with a casual ease that made Rose shriek. It was splintering against the far wall of the room when Steelforce made his next grab for Tempest.

  Who ducked low, sidestepped, turned the movement into a spin worthy of any music-hall dancer—and sprang up and over his own machine.

  He almost made it, but his heels caught in a tangle of hoses and wires that sent him crashing headfirst to the ground, quite a few pieces of his rapidly dismantling apparatus tumbling and clanging in his wake.

  The Iron Assassin didn’t bother with any leaping nonsense. He simply trudged forward into the heart of the machine and started smashing his way through it.

  And Tempest, with a tight and triumphant smile, spun around on his shoulders and kicked hard at the nearest legs of his machine.

  Having come from a folding sewing machine, they did what they were designed to do. They promptly buckled and folded up, dragging the machine sideways into a toppling fall—that dragged Steelforce off his feet with it.

  No! The voice shouted faintly, out of the Assassin’s head. Don’t let him—stop! Don’t—

  Tempest was up and rushing around his creation in a trice, avoiding Steelforce’s wild grab and leaning in to flip open the door in the back of the Assassin’s head and claw out the control key.

  Marlshrike’s control key. That was crackling faintly now, the violence of its distantly shouting creator silenced with its removal.

  Steelforce made a sound that might have been a sob or might have been a pleading growl and flung himself around to face Tempest in a titanic effort that dragged half of the disintegrating machine around with him in his slow and staggering turn. He promptly made another straining, reaching grab for the key.

  His fingers came up just short.

  Jack Straker looked at the man he’d brought back from the grave, and the man who had been Bentley Roper looked back at Straker … and the tinkerer stepped forward and gently put the control key into the Iron Assassin’s hand.

  That hand tightened into a fist, quivered with a force and fury neither Tempest nor Hardcastle could ever match, and then opened again.

  Shards of metal and winking dust spilled out between the spreading fingers, to clink and sigh onto the floor.

  Rose and Tempest stared at the Iron Assassin, and he stared back at them. As Hardcastle’s faint groans faded and a tense silence fell.

  And stretched.

  * * *

  The sound of shattering glass had never been more satisfying.

  Alston Drake smiled and cocked his head to listen.

  Silence.

  There were gasproof masks in the Tower, but they were all under his control, not in the royal bedchamber. From which came only silence. Which meant the Queen and her handful of defenders were now asleep.

  “Sir,” one of the beagles asked, “your orders?”

  “Move the explosives I listed earlier up from the Tower armories. I want four chests just there, then break down that door and put two more in there, and then find Alworthy and have him wire them up. Oh, and address me henceforth as ‘my lord.’”

  “Uh … very good. My lord.”

  Drake smiled. “See? That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” Then he gave the man his best scowl and roared, “Hop to it! Now! As fast as if all steam-driven hell was after you! Move, man, move!”

  The beagle moved, and so did all the others within earshot, scrambling as if their very lives depended on it.

  Drake’s smiled widened as he hefted his pistol. Perceptive fellows. Their lives did.

  Once the explosives were set, he sent them down in small groups to rearm, then positioned them in a well-hidden cordon in the towers that ringed the White Tower.

  “Yes,” he murmured to himself, feeling more satisfied than he had in years. “We’ll let the Prince get in, all right. Yet whether the lady’s plan works out or not, neither Queen nor heir shall get out alive.”

  * * *

  “Captain!” one of the beagles shouted. “Behind us! Coming up fast!”

  The captain of the flitter whirled around so quickly he almost knocked Sir Fulton Birtwhistle over. Grabbing for railings, the two men stared up at what was looming out of the night.

  Black as ink, showing no running lamps and blotting out the stars and city lights with its ever-larger bulk, was an airship—an airship with a distinctive, ornate bowsprit carved to look like four entwined and very affectionate gilded mermaids were climbing hand over hand along a central harpoon.

  Both the magistrate and the side-whiskered old flitter captain knew it at a glance. The ship bearing down on them was Lady Roodcannon’s personal vessel, The Steel Kiss.

  �
�She’s going to ram us,” the captain snarled, and spun around again to haul hard on the flitter’s helm. Catching hold of the king spoke, he wrenched it down to his right, slewing the flitter around so sharply that men shouted in alarm from one end of the ship to the other as they started to tumble or lost hold of items that promptly began to plummet down on sleeping London below.

  The wheel spun in the old man’s hands as he fell into a kneeling position, his knees on the treadles that would tilt vanes to send the flitter soaring. They were too low over the rooftops to try diving under their huge pursuer.

  Clinging to a railing with both hands and all the strength he could muster, Sir Fulton Birtwhistle caught a brief glimpse of the Thames glimmering below, waters reflecting lamplight from dockside warehouses, and then the flitter’s sharp turn became a sharp climb, and all he could see was the dark emptiness of the night sky, a handful of stars twinkling serene reassurance at him as—

  The bowsprit of Lady Roodcannon’s airship slammed into the left rear of the flitter like a giant’s fist, numbing every man aboard the flitter in a breath-snatching instant. Sir Fulton saw the mermaids thrusting through the flitter deck, men and lines being flung up in all directions—as The Steel Kiss sheared shriekingly right through the back of the flitter, slicing away rudder, steering cables, hull, and all.

  Ballast stones tumbled, the portside flotation bladder exploded with a fierceness that flung the flitter through the sky head over heels over head again—and then they had stopped tumbling and were falling … plunging down through the darkness in a sudden, sickening quiet in which they could hear a woman’s low-pitched but gleeful laughter fading behind them.

  Lady Roodcannon, it seemed, was amused.

  “That’s her at the wheel,” Sir Fulton snapped, catching a glimpse of long hair streaming out behind shapely shoulders. “She rammed us, she did!”

  He turned to the flitter captain for the old man’s reply and found himself alone on the open wheel deck. There was blood on the spokes of the unmanned, freely turning wheel—and, far below, the captain’s limp body was falling through the night.

  Sir Fulton turned and looked wildly around the flitter decks. “Is there anyone who can fly this ship?” he shouted. “Anyone?”